Relex products and services are used by thousands of customers in a variety of businesses around the world, including aerospace & defense, medical equipment, telecommunications, electronics and high-tech, automotive, and industrial equipment.
With this acquisition, PTC is broadening its product analytics strategy to include product reliability in addition to the established capabilities for assessing products for environmental compliance. This FAQ is intended to help PTC and Relex customers, partners, media and shareholders understand details about the transaction.
Q: Who is PTC?
A: PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) is a world leading provider of product development solutions to discrete manufacturers enabling them to meet their globalization, time-to-market and operational efficiency objectives. Using PTC solutions, organizations in the Industrial, High-Tech, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Consumer and Medical industries are able to support key business objectives and create innovative products that meet both customer needs and comply with industry regulations. PTC is based in Needham, Massachusetts and has over 5,000 employees in more than 20 countries around the world. For more information on PTC, please visit http://www.ptc.com.
Q: Who is Relex?
A: Relex was founded in 1986 with a clear and simple mission to provide reliability analysis excellence. Over their 20+ year history, Relex has had a history of innovation and is recognized for its leadership, vision, and commitment to providing an out-of-the-box suite of reliability solutions and services which continually exceed customer expectations. Relex offers an extensive and comprehensive tool set which includes reliability prediction, system modeling, failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), risk analysis, cost analysis, and statistical tools.
Q: What are the financial terms of the transaction?
A: Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Q: When is the acquisition expected to close?
A: The acquisition is closed.
Q: Why was PTC interested in acquiring Relex?
A: PTC is excited about this acquisition because it is compelling from strategic and financial perspectives. Providing product analytic capabilities is part of PTC’s strategy to assist manufacturers to make fast, accurate, informed decisions.
Specifically, Relex is able to help discrete manufacturers address the two key factors that influence how a product will perform and ultimately succeed in the field, product reliability and maintainability. In particular, market drivers including brand reputation, increased product complexity, total cost of ownership, warranty penalty cost and safety are compelling manufacturers to focus on analyzing and improving product reliability and maintainability. As a result, there is growing demand for solutions that will enable manufacturers to gain early insight into potential risk and reliability issues, predict reliability performance early in the design process, and track reliability against targets during product development. Further, companies need tools and methods that help strengthen communication of field performance data to design engineering for trends analysis and to incorporate reliability analysis considerations into the engineering change process to help avoid changes late in the design process.
Importantly, PTC views the Relex acquisition as a growth investment that will bring value to joint PTC/Relex customers and to PTC shareholders.
Q: Why is product reliability important to discrete manufacturers?
A: Today there are several market drivers elevating the urgency of discrete manufacturers to focus on analyzing and improving product reliability and maintainability. These include increased product complexity and warranty penalty costs, as well as safety concerns and the need to safeguard brand reputation. Companies are also concerned about risk mitigation, since 0% failure rates are practically unattainable.
To be successful, companies need to improve their ability to predict and measure product reliability but often lack the methods and tool to do this effectively. Relex’s products and services were built with the knowledge that reliability is important in any industry and to any size company. Specifically, Relex’s solutions help discrete manufacturers in the areas of:
•Early reliability planning and risk assessment
•Reliability prediction and simulation
•Reliability reporting
•Closed-loop field performance feedback
Q: How will the Relex solutions complement the PTC product portfolio?
A: The Relex acquisition is a key component of PTC’s product analytics strategy. In today’s competitive world, product development organizations are under constant pressure to understand the interplay among multiple product characteristics (e.g. environmental compliance, cost, reliability). Decisions made to optimize one dimension are likely to negatively impact performance in other dimensions. Ideally, product developers would be able to simultaneously analyze a series of product performance dimensions throughout the product’s lifecycle, achieving the appropriate balance.
These pressures are the impetus for PTC’s product analytics strategy. The addition of Relex to PTC’s product analytics suite reflects the importance of this solution and the aim of PTC to enable product teams to perform product performance analysis and conduct effective tradeoff studies.
Q: What will be the impact on the PTC and Relex organizations?
A: The integration will take place throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2009. Key members of the Relex management team will be focused on helping to integrate the businesses in a way that ensures Relex is positioned to continue its track record of delivering industry leading products and customer value. As we integrate the businesses in the coming months, more details will be provided to PTC and Relex customers.
Q: How will this transaction impact PTC’s go-to-market strategy?
A: Relex sales and services will continue to provide dedicated support to Relex accounts. Additionally, the Relex team will support PTC’s sales team in servicing existing PTC customers.
Q: What is the integration plan for PTC and Relex products?
A: PTC is working to determine the best integration plan based on internal strategy and customer requirements.
Q: Who should customers or partners contact if they have questions about the acquisition?
A: PTC and Relex have developed a communications program for both companies’ customers and partners.
For more information about the acquisition, please visit: www.ptc.com/company/relex
