After 13 years running Boston software firm PTC, chief executive Jim Heppelmann is retiring and becoming chair of the board. Neil Barua, president of PTC’s lifecycle management business, will take over as CEO in February, the company announced Wednesday.
Barua joined PTC in January when the company acquired ServiceMax, the maintenance software firm he had been running for four years, for $1.5 billion. Barua, 46, previously was the CEO of IPC Systems, a New Jersey IT company focused on the finance industry, and worked at private equity firm Silver Lake.
PTC has added new features for augmented reality and generative AI capabilities to its software, and Barua said those areas will continue to be a focus. “We’re really deeply looking into AI and already deploying it,” he said in an interview. “And over the next number of years — decades — this company will continue to evolve.”
Meanwhile, Apple unveiled its new virtual and augmented reality headset, the Vision Pro, in June and the keynote demonstrations included PTC’s logo. That was “a big deal in terms of our prominence within AR and some of the things that we can do in the industry,” Barua said.
With PTC’s stock close to an all-time high and his Northern California ranch beckoning, Heppelmann, 58, said this was the right time for him to retire.
“The company is in great health, our growth rate is high and profitability is high,” he said. “Everything’s working well. It’s just time to move on to the next chapter of my life.”
PTC wasn’t in such great shape when Heppelmann took the top job in 2010, as the company felt the impact of the Great Recession. The company’s 2009 revenue was $938 million, shrinking 12 percent from 2008, and net income plunged 60 percent to $32 million.
Through a series of acquisitions, Heppelmann expanded PTC’s focus from design and engineering software to a broader slate of offerings that assisted customers with manufacturing, data collection, and maintenance. Along with much of the software market, he also shifted PTC from selling its products for set prices to a subscription model and eventually relying on the cloud to deliver apps. And he got PTC out of the business of helping customers set up software, instead building a network of third-party integrators.
In 2019, he moved PTC from its longtime Needham headquarters to a new building in the Seaport that bears the company’s logo. That location has allowed the company to offer an unusual employee perk: PTC rents dock space for workers who want to commute by boat.
Revenue rose 7 percent to $1.9 billion for the year ending on Sept. 30, 2022, and operating income increased 17 percent to $447 million. (Net income declined 34 percent to $313 million due to changes in investments, divestitures, and taxes.)
PTC’s stock price has risen 638 percent during Heppelmann’s tenure, impressive but trailing the 676 percent increase in the Nasdaq 100 index, according to data from Yahoo Finance. The company employed 6,709 people at the end of its most recent fiscal year, up from 5,317 in 2010.
Barua, unlike the new bosses at some prominent local tech companies such as ezCater and HubSpot, said he plans to move to Boston with his family to oversee PTC locally.
Heppelmann originally also joined PTC thanks to an acquisition. In 1998, PTC acquired his software startup, Windchill Technology.
“I’ve been here for 25 years, about half that time as CEO,” he said. “I’m at a point in my life where I’ve been doing this for a very long time.”
Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.