ANSYS, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the ANSYS first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. With us today are Ajay Gopal, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nicole Anacinas, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance, and Kelsey DeBrien, Vice President Investor and Government Relations. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you will press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note, this event is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Bryan for opening remarks. Please go ahead. Ms.

Good morning, everyone. Our earnings release, the related prepared remarks document, and the link to our first quarter form 10Q have all been posted on the homepage of our investor relations website. They contain the key financial information and supporting data relative to our first quarter financial results and business updates, as well as our Q2 and updated fiscal year 2021 outlook and the key underlying quantitative and qualitative assumptions. Today's presentation contains forward-looking information. Important factors that may affect our future results are discussed in our public filings with the SEC, all of which are available on our corporate website. We note that uncertainty regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our performance could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. Forward-looking statements are based upon our view of the business as of today, and ANSYS undertakes no obligation to update any such information. During this call, we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures, unless otherwise stated. A discussion of the various items that are excluded and reconciliations of GAAP to the comparable non-GAAP financial measures are included in this morning's earnings release materials. I would now like to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Ajay Gopal for his opening remarks. Ajay.

Thank you, Kelsey, and welcome to ANSYS. And thanks to everyone for joining us this morning. I'm excited to report that Q1 was an excellent quarter for ANSYS where we beat our financial guidance for revenue, operating margin, and EPS. I'm also pleased that we are ahead of our internal plan for ACV. This is significant because, as I explained on our previous call, ACV is heavily loaded towards the back end of the year, following the pattern of the past several years. And we are seeing the continued strengthening of the pipeline of Ansys customer activities across all major geographies. The strong Q1 and our growing sales pipeline, coupled with our excellent Q4 last year, gives us increased confidence in the momentum of our business and in our ability to execute against our goals. As a result, we are increasing our annual guidance for ACB, revenue, EPS, and operating cash flow. We expect to see annual ACV growth, for example, to increase by over one percentage point in constant currency at the midpoint of our new guidance range. Nicole will provide more details in just a few minutes. In Q1, we were pleased to see that small and medium-sized customers who had slowed their purchasing decisions during the pandemic showed stronger than expected sales growth across geographies and industries. Large customer behavior was as anticipated. From an industry perspective, our traditionally strong sectors of high tech and semiconductor, aerospace and defense, and automotive and ground transportation continue to be our largest contributors. Our largest deal in the quarter was a five-year multi-million dollar agreement with a large North American automotive OEM. This longtime customer is realizing savings by using ANSYS simulation for its strategic warranty cost control initiative. The manufacturer is also using ANSYS simulation to identify the sources of electromagnetic noise to prevent interference in wireless communications. This new contract deepens and expands the customer's use of ANSYS solutions for wireless communications, autonomy, explicit dynamics, materials intelligence, and electrification. We saw numerous examples of simulation spurring product innovation and reducing development costs at our recently concluded Simulation World virtual conference. Nearly 40,000 engineers, designers, executives, students, investors, and members of the press registered for this event, which showcased simulation success stories from a number of Ansys customers. From small startups to multinational organizations that span industries, including Northrop Grumman, Whirlpool, Medtronic, SC Microelectronics, Boeing, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Participants attended tracks on electrification, autonomy, digital transformation, 5G connectivity, and digital mission engineering, and listened to simulation use cases for vaccine distribution, spacecraft risk mitigation, crack propagation in gas turbines, virtual crash testing in automobiles, and so on. We heard from Formula One's Red Bull Racing, which has relied on the power of pervasive simulation to provide a competitive edge. Red Bull Racing's engineering team operates within a tight development window to optimize its race car aerodynamics and shave milliseconds off lap times. With only a few days between competitions, ANSYS simulation becomes the team's virtual wind tunnel to run external aerodynamic analysis. Simulation is also key to developing the chassis control circuits in selecting the right materials and in ensuring driver safety through virtual crash analyses. We had an entire track dedicated to electrification where startup Lucid Motors discussed taking advantage of simulation to develop its luxury electric automobile entirely on a computer, significantly reducing the need for physical prototypes. Lucid achieved its goal of creating a battery that will run for 400 miles on a single charge while providing enough power to propel the car from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 2.5 seconds. In the process, the company addressed key customer needs, solved difficult engineering problems, and brought a world-class vehicle to market in a fraction of the time required by conventional approaches. Electrification, of course, is not limited to ground vehicles. Simulation-led breakthroughs in battery technologies are powering all electric aircraft. During Simulation World, we also heard from Air Race E, which is sponsoring a series of international racing competitions for electric aircraft. Air Race E teams are using ANSYS simulation to develop batteries that deliver more power with less weight, and designing electric powertrains that overcome difficult thermal and high voltage challenges. The lessons learned from these races could advance the development and adoption of electrification for commercial aircraft. Nokia discussed its use of ANSYS HFSS and our electromagnetic solutions to investigate and optimize material properties and the performance of phase antenna arrays. By using ANSYS simulation, Nokia was not only able to develop an alternative design that was fast, inexpensive, and accurate, but also one that facilitates design sharing with vendors and mobile network operators. One of the most exciting presentations was from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, which highlighted simulation's role in the Mars Perseverance rover mission. The JPL simulated every component of the landing, giving engineers confidence that the rover would successfully endure the so-called seven minutes of terror from atmospheric entry to landing. Simulation was also used to ensure that the mission's Ingenuity helicopter could navigate the thin Martian atmosphere. Simulation World left me more confident than ever that the ANSYS strategy of pervasive simulation is working. With over 60 hours of content and more than 300 speakers from companies around the world, there are simply too many ANSYS customer success stories to mention on this call. So I encourage you to visit simulationworld.com to learn how ANSYS simulation is changing the way these organizations are developing, testing, and operating their next generation products. ANSYS partners were represented at Simulation World as well. Microsoft sponsored several sessions where they highlighted how users can leverage the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform to gain easy access to high-performance computing resources directly from ANSYS products. Rockwell Automation discussed the key role that simulation plays in production, automation, and digital transformation. In the PTC sessions, we learned how Creo Simulation Live and Creo Ansys Simulation are driving a sea change in product development. We also heard how ANSYS and Synopsys are bringing their integrated capabilities to cover a variety of multi-physics domains like power, timing, reliability, and thermal simulation to maximize the speed and density achievable in advanced multi-die systems while ensuring robust reliability. Turning to ESG, ANSYS recently published our annual corporate responsibility report which highlights progress across our environmental, social, and government initiatives. On Ansys.com, you can view the report and learn more about how those pillars are driving long-term growth for our stakeholders through responsible and sustainable business activities. I'm also proud that Fast Company has named Ansys to its list of the world's most innovative companies. Ansys joins a prestigious list of organizations, including Microsoft, SpaceX, Sony, and Honeywell. Fast Company has also recognized our digital twin of the human heart as one of its 2021 world-changing ideas. To summarize, Q1 was another great quarter for Ansys, resulting in us beating our guidance for revenue, operating margin, and EPS. The energy and enthusiasm seen during simulation world and the strength of our customer pipeline gives me even more confidence in the importance of simulation in the effectiveness of our pervasive simulation strategy and in our ability to meet our newly increased outlook for 2021. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Nicole. Nicole?