Altair Announces Agreement to Acquire Datawatch

Altair and Datawatch Corporation announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement under which Altair has agreed to acquire Datawatch. Under the terms of the agreement, Altair will pay $13.10 per share in cash, representing a fully diluted equity value of approximately $176 million. The transaction was unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies.

James Scapa, Altair’s Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “Bringing Datawatch into Altair should result in a powerful offering consistent with our vision to transform product design and decision making by applying simulation, data science and optimization throughout product lifecycles. We see a convergence of simulation with the application of machine learning technology to live and historical sensor data as essential to creating better products, marketing them efficiently, and optimizing their in-service performance.   Datawatch is a great team of people with best-in-class products, and we look forward to their joining us.”

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Altair believes the acquisition of Datawatch is compelling for a number of reasons, including:

• The data analytics and data science markets are evolving rapidly to leverage many of the same technologies, such as high-performance computing and visualization, as Altair has been leveraging in simulation for many years.
• Datawatch’s solutions, which include data prep, data prediction, and real-time high-volume data visualization technologies, are highly relevant and applicable to almost any company and vertical market.
• There is strong opportunity to cross-sell Datawatch products into Altair’s primarily manufacturing customer base, which will be facilitated by applying Altair’s proven licensing models to Datawatch solutions.
• Datawatch’s historical strength has been in the financial services and capital markets sectors.   There is meaningful opportunity to disrupt these markets and expand usage by making it easier to access products through Altair’s licensing model, and there is a cross-sell opportunity with some relevant Altair products in these markets.

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Michael Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of Datawatch, added, “The Datawatch team is excited to join Altair and benefit from its long track record of success with developing and bringing to market highly differentiated software technology across diverse industry verticals. We feel great about the cultural alignment and look forward to driving continued innovation in our market-leading solutions as an integral part of Altair’s vision.”

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