Altium (ALU)

Shares / Stock Code

ALU

Stock Exchange / Sharemarket

ax

Altium (ALU) is an Australian-based engaged in the unified electronic product development solutions development and offering to designers and electronic engineers. It provides and supplies products used for the enhancement of the electronic devices performances like medical devices, car dashboards, space satellite and washing machine controllers. It operates mainly in Australia but also maintains offices in France, China, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US. ALU was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on the 4th of August 1999. Its average annual revenue reaches approximately AUD$33,000. Its headquarters is located in Sydney, Australia and to date; around 300 people are employed in the company. Altium operates mainly in two business segments: development and supply. Its development segment is further divided into two design levels: physical platform creation and programmable elements development.

Altium's physical platform creation involves creating a physical platform that uses off-the-shelf and discrete components that are mounted on a printed circuit board. Its development segment involves the design of the programmable elements that are then loaded on the physical design while manufacturing them or after the process. These segments enable the designs of the electronics through its four methodologies: P-CAD, Tasking, Nanoboard and Altium designer.

Altium Limited serves its main clients that include Boeing, BMW Group, Canon, Bosch, CSIRO, Cochlear, Delphi, Daimler Chrysler, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, Lockheed Martin, IBM, NASA, Motorola, NEC, National Semiconductor, Philips, Nokia, Siemens, Sony, Toshiba and Telstra.

Altium (ALU) Company History

Altium was founded by Nick Martin in 1985. It was called the Protel International and its operations mainly involved the development of computer-based software to help in the PCB or printed circuit boards design. In the middle of 1986, ALU started exporting DOS PCB design tool package through its distributors located in Europe and USA. Because of this, the product range of the company was extended to include automatic PCB component placement software, PCB autorouting and schematic capture.

In 1991, Advanced PCB, the first Windows-based PCB design system in the world was released by Altium and the next years saw the establishment of Altium as he leading EDA software developer. The need for the EDA tools presentation was identified by Altium in 1997. Included in the EDA tools were the Programmable Logic Device (PLD), schematic capture, simulation, design, autorouting and board design. It was also in 1991 when the company introduced the Protel 98.

In 1999, Altium introduced and released the Protel 99 and Protel 99 SE, a second edition that features the integration of design tools, design process and increased automation. It was also in the same year when the "Design Explorer" platform was introduced.
In 1999, Altium was successfully offered to the public and the funds that were raised from the initial public offering were used to create for the acquisitions of the Metamor, ACCEL Technologies, TASKING and Innovative CAD Software. The company entered the FPGA Design and Synthesis market in 2000 and it also entered the market for Embedded Software Development in 2001.

In 2001, the company finally changed its name to Altium Limited and re-engineered its DXP or Design Explorer platform along with the launching of the Protel DXP in 2002. In 2003, Altium formed its representative office in China and in 2004; the product lines for CircuitStudio and Altium's Nexar were launched.

In 2005, a re-seller agreement with the Transfer Distribution was signed by ALtium Limited. This agreement was for the purpose of reselling the complete range of products of the company for the digital system-on-FPGA design system, and Protel board-level design solution all through out the region of Benelux. At the end of 2005, a US office operation expansion was made by Altium. Part of this expansion was the appointment of Mr. Mike Stipe as the USA Vice President for Sales. It was also in this period when the Global Customer Care headquarters located in the US was established. A year after, in May 2006, a re-seller agreement with the Or-Kav Solutions was signed by Altium.

The Altium Designer segment of Altium was selected by the largest general aviation airplanes, Cessna Aircraft Company to aid in the electronics systems design and development of the global fleet of aircraft of Cessna in February 2007.