Shares of Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) surged as much as 6.1% early in today's session after the company announced its strategic acquisition of Octopart.
Altium is a company that provides software specifically for designing printed circuit boards, or PCBs, which help power everyday electronic devices.
That includes devices as small as toasters to larger items such as televisions and even cars. Octopart, on the other hand, is a leading provider of electronic parts data and specialised inventory search.
Essentially, its tools connect electronic component distributors and manufacturers with its user-base of more than 700,000 engineers, scientists and sourcing professionals (according to its website), allowing them to "find parts fast". Notably, many of these customers are also customers of Altium.
Altium's CEO, Mr Aram Mirkazemi, said: "Octopart will be the basis for Altium's next generation smart content creation and delivery platform, where part information, design data and supply chain intelligence will come together to accelerate and inform the design process for engineers. This acquisition will allow Altium to monetize in a way that will make its efforts in content creation and delivery to be sustainable."
In addition, Altium also recently completed the acquisition of Ciiva, which is a cloud-based electronic component management system. Mr Mirkazemi described the two acquisitions as a 'significant step in the evolution of Altium's content strategy", whilst also empowering engineers to design with greater ease and confidence.
Altium's shares have given up some ground since their early morning rally and are now trading 2.4% higher at $4.20. That's down nearly 21% from the stock's 52-week high of $5.31, and now could be a reasonable time to start building a position for the long term.
