Siemens reached an agreement to buy software maker Altair Engineering for US$10 billion including debt in its largest-ever acquisition.
The German engineering group will pay Altair investors US$113 a share, according to a statement confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News that the two companies were nearing a deal. The transaction, expected to close in the second half of 2025, represents a 19 per cent premium to Altair’s Oct 21 closing price, the last trading day prior to reports regarding a possible transaction.
Shares of Troy, Michigan-based Altair have gained 29 per cent this year and closed at US$108.63 apiece on Wednesday (Oct 30), giving the company a market value of about US$9.3 billion.
Led by founder and chief executive James Scapa, Altair provides engineering software to companies in the aerospace, automotive, energy and financial services industries. Demand for such tools is expected to grow in lockstep with the increased adoption of artificial intelligence in everyday life.
Under CEO Roland Busch, Siemens has been exiting heavy equipment businesses and shifting to higher-margin, software-driven product lines to catch up to the profitability of automation peers like Rockwell Automation and Schneider Electric.
Siemens flagged last November that it could pursue larger acquisitions with a focus on software as it faced few financial restrictions. In August, Busch said in a Bloomberg TV interview that Siemens is looking for software companies or connected hardware manufacturers whose data can be used in cloud services. Though Siemens has made a couple of smaller acquisitions, larger deals could be “in the billions”, Busch said then.
Busch’s drive to lift margins has come under strain as weak demand in China diminished returns in Siemens’ digital industries unit, which makes products to automate factories. Siemens lowered its margin outlook for the division and is hoping to partially offset the decline with strong revenue growth from grid infrastructure products that power data centres, especially in the US.
The takeover of Altair surpasses Siemens’s biggest-ever acquisition, the purchase of oil-and-gas equipment maker Dresser-Rand Group for US$7.6 billion including debt in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. BLOOMBERG
