Aspen Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AZPN) shares were down -5.06% on Friday when approximately 1.63M shares were traded, against the average daily trading volume of 593,328.00. Analysts at Credit Agricole recently upgraded the stock to Underperform from Buy. Aspen Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AZPN) has a consensus Hold rating, according to Zacks Investment Research. 2 analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, 1 have assigned a hold rating, Zero says it’s a buy, and 2 have assigned a strong buy rating to the company.

The 52-week price range is $29.25-$56.64 and the company has a market capitalization of $4.11 billion.

Aspen Technology, Inc. (AZPN) on January 27, 2017 announced financial results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2017, ended December 31, 2016.

Antonio Pietri, President and Chief Executive Officer of AspenTech, said “AspenTech reported second quarter fiscal 2017 financial results that exceeded expectations from both a financial and operational perspective. We also achieved a major milestone in our Asset Optimization strategy with the release of the new aspenONE Asset Performance Management (APM) suite. We are pleased with the positive feedback and strong interest we have received from early customers, and believe this new suite represents a significant opportunity and important growth driver for our business.”

Pietri continued, “We also see strong early demand for our recently acquired Mtell product, whose machine learning-based functionality enables prescriptive analytics for maximizing asset availability. We expect the Mtell product together with our Fidelis Reliability and Aspen Asset Analytics solutions to serve as core components of our asset performance management offerings going forward. We believe our expanding product portfolio will add to the long-term value we deliver to our shareholders.”

Second Quarter Fiscal 2017 Business Highlights

  • Annual spend, which the company defines as the annualized value of all term license and maintenance contracts at the end of the quarter, was approximately $450 million at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2017, which increased 4.6% compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2016 and 0.9% sequentially.
  • GAAP operating margin was 46.7%, compared to 47.3% in the second quarter of fiscal 2016. Non-GAAP operating margin was 50.8%, compared to 51.1% in the second quarter of fiscal 2016.
  • AspenTech repurchased 1.3 million shares of its common stock for $70.0 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2017.