James Heppelmann will be stepping down as CEO of PTC (Nasdaq: PTC), after spending 26 years at the company including 13 in the top spot.
Heppelmann will be succeeded by Neil Barua, president of the company’s service lifecycle management business, when he retires after the company’s annual shareholder meeting in February 2024.
The CEO succession plan was announced Wednesday alongside PTC’s 2023 third fiscal quarter results. Barua is now CEO-elect and has joined PTC's board of directors. Heppelmann has become chairman of the board.
Barua is the former chief executive of ServiceMax, which was acquired by PTC for approximately $1.46 billion in January 2023. Prior to leading ServiceMax, Barua was an operating partner at Silver Lake and CEO of IPC Systems.
The global software company reported a strong performance in the third quarter and raised its full-year guidance for revenue and cash flow.
"Despite a less than ideal macroeconomic backdrop, our financial results in the first nine months of our fiscal year were solid, driven by the resilience of our business model, consistent execution, operational discipline, and the actions we have taken to align our investments with our growth opportunities,” said CFO Kristian Talvitie.
“PTC has become a premier digital transformation partner to our customers, with the most differentiated software portfolio in our industry. I'm confident that PTC has never been in a better position to deliver value to our customers and our shareholders as we begin this next chapter,” Heppelmann said in a statement.
Heppelmann said that having worked alongside Barua since the ServiceMax deal, “I can attest first-hand to his focus on our customers' and employees' success, his understanding of PTC's market opportunities for the entire software portfolio, and his principles of financial and operational discipline.”
Bob Schechter, the chairman of PTC's board of directors for the last eight years, echoed his support for the incoming CEO, saying in a statement that Barua is “a seasoned technology executive with a proven track record of growing software businesses and supporting industrial companies with their digital transformation journeys.”
PTC is one of the state's largest public companies, with about 6,500 employees as of May 2023.
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