• We provide ARR guidance on a constant currency basis, using our FY'24 Plan foreign exchange rates (rates as of September 30, 2023) for all periods. Foreign exchange rate fluctuations during Q1'24 had a $41 million favorable impact on our Q1'24 reported ARR, compared to our Q1'24 constant currency ARR. Using foreign exchange rates as of the end of Q1'24 and assuming the midpoint of our constant currency guidance ranges:
  • Q2'24 reported ARR would be higher by approximately $42 million, compared to Q2'24 constant currency ARR guidance; and
  • FY'24 reported ARR would be higher by approximately $46 million, compared to FY'24 constant currency ARR guidance.
• We expect churn to remain low.
• For cash flow, due to invoicing and payments seasonality, and consistent with the past 3 years, we expect the majority of our collections to occur in the first half of our fiscal year and for fiscal Q4 to be our lowest cash flow generation quarter.
• Compared to FY'23, at the midpoint of FY'24 ARR guidance, FY'24 GAAP operating expenses are expected to increase approximately 5% to 6%, and FY'24 non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to increase approximately 8% to 9%, primarily due to investments to drive future growth, the acquisition of ServiceMax, and foreign exchange rate fluctuations.
• FY'24 GAAP P&L results are expected to include the items below, totaling approximately $284 million to $314 million, as well as their related tax effects:
  • approximately $200 million to $230 million of stock-based compensation expense,
  • approximately $82 million of intangible asset amortization expense, and
  • approximately $2 million, net, related to acquisition and transaction-related expense and a restructuring credit.
• Our FY'24 GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are expected to be approximately 20%.
• Cash tax payments are expected to be approximately $80 million in FY'24.
• Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $20 million in FY'24.
• Cash interest payments are expected to be approximately $135 million in FY'24.
• Our long-term goal, assuming our Debt/EBITDA ratio is below 3x, is to return approximately 50% of our free cash flow to shareholders via share repurchases, while also taking into consideration the interest rate environment and strategic opportunities.
  • We expect to prioritize paying down our debt in FY'24.
  • We expect gross debt of approximately $1.7 billion at the end of FY'24.
  • We expect our fully diluted share count to increase by approximately 1 million in FY'24.

PTC's Fiscal First Quarter Conference Call

The Company will host a conference call to discuss results at 5:00 pm ET on Wednesday, January 31, 2024. To participate in the live conference call, dial (888) 330-2508 or (240) 789-2735 and provide the passcode 7328695, or log in to the webcast, available on PTC's Investor Relations website. A replay will also be available.

Important Information About Our Operating and Non-GAAP Financial Measures

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

We provide supplemental non-GAAP financial measures to our financial results. We use these non-GAAP financial measures, and we believe that they assist our investors, to make period-to-period comparisons of our operating performance because they provide a view of our operating results without items that are not, in our view, indicative of our operating results. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be construed as an alternative to GAAP results as the items excluded from the non-GAAP financial measures often have a material impact on our operating results, certain of those items are recurring, and others often recur. Management uses, and investors should consider, our non-GAAP financial measures only in conjunction with our GAAP results.

Non-GAAP operating expense, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude the effect of the following items: stock-based compensation; amortization of acquired intangible assets; acquisition and transaction-related charges included in general and administrative expenses; restructuring and other charges and credits, net; certain non-operating charges and credits; and income tax adjustments. Additional information about the items we exclude from our non-GAAP financial measures and the reasons we exclude them can be found in "Non-GAAP Financial Measures" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023.

Free Cash Flow: We provide information on free cash flow to enable investors to assess our ability to generate cash without incurring additional external financings and to evaluate our performance against our announced long-term goals and intent to return approximately 50% of our free cash flow to shareholders via stock repurchases. Free cash flow is cash provided by (used in) operations net of capital expenditures. Free cash flow is not a measure of cash available for discretionary expenditures.

Constant Currency (CC): We present CC information to provide a framework for assessing how our underlying business performed excluding the effects of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations. To present CC information, FY'24 and comparative prior period results for entities reporting in currencies other than United States dollars are converted into United States dollars using the foreign exchange rate as of September 30, 2023, rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during that period.

Operating Measures

ARR: ARR (Annual Run Rate) represents the annualized value of our portfolio of active subscription software, cloud, SaaS, and support contracts as of the end of the reporting period. We calculate ARR as follows:

• We consider a contract to be active when the product or service contractual term commences (the "start date") until the right to use the product or service ends (the "expiration date"). Even if the contract with the customer is executed before the start date, the contract will not count toward ARR until the customer right to receive the benefit of the products or services has commenced.
• For contracts that include annual values that increase over time as there are additional deliverables in subsequent periods, which we refer to as ramp contracts, we include in ARR only the annualized value of components of the contract that are considered active as of the date of the ARR calculation. We do not include the future committed increases in the contract value as of the date of the ARR calculation.
• As ARR includes only contracts that are active at the end of the reporting period, ARR does not reflect assumptions or estimates regarding future customer renewals or non-renewals.
• Active contracts are annualized by dividing the total active contract value by the contract duration in days (expiration date minus start date), then multiplying that by 365 days (or 366 days for leap years).

We believe ARR is a valuable operating measure to assess the health of a subscription business because it is aligned with the amount that we invoice the customer on an annual basis. We invoice customers annually for the current year of the contract. A customer with a one-year contract will typically be invoiced for the total value of the contract at the beginning of the contractual term, while a customer with a multi-year contract will be invoiced for each annual period at the beginning of each year of the contract.

ARR increases by the annualized value of active contracts that commence in a reporting period and decreases by the annualized value of contracts that expire in the reporting period.

As ARR is not annualized recurring revenue, it is not calculated based on recognized or unearned revenue and is not affected by variability in the timing of revenue under ASC 606, particularly for on-premises license subscriptions where a substantial portion of the total value of the contract is recognized at a point in time upon the later of when the software is made available, or the subscription term commences.

ARR should be viewed independently of recognized and unearned revenue and is not intended to be combined with, or to replace, either of those items. Investors should consider our ARR operating measure only in conjunction with our GAAP financial results.

Organic ARR: We provide an organic ARR measure to help investors understand and assess the performance of our business without the distorting effects of ARR from acquisitions in the comparative period. We do not adjust for acquisitions that have an immaterial impact on our ARR results when providing organic ARR results.