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Bentley Systems, Incorporated (BSY)

Q4 2021 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 1, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

00:01 Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Bentley Systems Q4 2021 Operating Results and 2022 Outlook Webcast. I'm Carey Mann, Bentley's VP of Investor Relations. On the webcast today, we have Bentley Systems Chief Executive Officer, Greg Bentley; Chief Financial Officer, Werner Andre; Chief Operating Officer, Nicholas Cumins; and Chief Investment Officer, David Hollister. 00:23 This webcast includes forward-looking statements made as of March 1, 2022 regarding the future results of operation and financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives for future operations of Bentley Systems, Incorporated. All such statements made in or contained during this webcast, other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. 00:47 This webcast will be available for replay on Bentley Systems Investor Relations website at investors.bentley.com. After our presentation, we will conclude with Q&A. 00:58 And with that, let me introduce the CEO of Bentley Systems, Greg Bentley.

Greg Bentley

Management

01:03 Hello. Stepping back to reflect on our first full-year as a public company. It feels to me that our Bentley is now running on more cylinders than ever. Back from intermittent pandemic disruptions to where not only BSY, but also our users and accounts have reinstated, they have also redefined business as usual. In fact, with confidence that after the pandemic, it's interest to going digital and infrastructure engineering will remain permanent, as needed in our actual commitments to infrastructure renewal and resilience require increasing our accounts workloads, at the same time that they face limits in increasing their workforce capacity. 01:43 With the emerging opportunities for infrastructure digital twins having been kick-started by the pandemic imperative for going digital to substitute for work on site, while at BSY, we have, since going public, significantly improved our go-to-market execution, both within existing enterprise accounts and to reach new SMB prospects. And finally, as we have completed platform extension scale acquisitions to fully address the world's unprecedented consensus, ESDG priorities for mobility, environment and grids. 02:19 Our tone of business discussions to-date have centered around the contrasting color tones between the still cyclically curtailed capital projects in the industrial resources infrastructure sector on one hand, and the relatively impervious momentum in our mainstay public works utilities infrastructure sector on the other hand. Particularly, as we have so much to cover today, it fortunately simply suffices this quarter to report that nothing has changed appreciably by sector. The EPC firms application usage has not yet turned upward, but has ceased to get any worse as they are essentially all on our E365 daily consumption program. They and we will benefit as soon higher energy prices spark net new CapEx starts, including for renewables and storage. 03:09 Starting with operating results reporting…

Nicholas Cumins

Management

14:59 Thank you, Greg. We have data to product portfolio overview in the 10-K report to reflect the important product advancements we made in 2021. We continue to build on that foundation and extend the comprehensiveness of our product portfolio. In particular, engineering applications with our modeling and simulation products for engineering practitioners; enterprise systems for engineering collaboration, construction and asset performance supporting digital workflows across the entire infrastructure lifecycle; geo-professional applications with the combination of Seequent, original Bentley geotechnical products and sub-Seequent acquisitions for the subsurface; industry solutions with industry-specific capabilities to advance infrastructure for mobility, environment and grids. And at the center of our portfolio, iTwin, our infrastructure digital twin platform powering an increasing number of Bentley and third-party products. 15:55 I would like to highlight the performance of SYNCHRO in Q4 and throughout 2021. SYNCHRO is our construction management solution, which we have extended to be uniquely suited for heavy civil projects. As you might recall from Greg's comments during the Q3 operating results, with SYNCHRO we are taking a distinct approach to construction, where some of our peers are focusing on automating 2D workflows, our focus for SYNCHRO is on helping the industry advance to 4D by leveraging digital twins. The industry has validated our approach with accelerated growth in 2021 across the spectrum of construction organizations including SMB. SYNCHRO has been adopted so far by 58 of the ENR Global 100 top contractors and by 77 of the top 100 contractors outside of China. 16:48 Now, let me take a moment to explain what we mean by 4D. SYNCHRO powered by iTwin allows construction teams to create a 4D construction model by leveraging 3D models from the design phase and adding time, the fourth dimension. It is used for construction planning and scheduling to communicate…

Greg Bentley

Management

22:14 Many thanks, Nicolas. And now on to corporate development where I would also like to step back for the big picture. First, priorities we all share and need to track of our environment, social and governance goals. Our new state-of-the-art website here brings together everything you would like to know in one place. But our ESG website emphasizes that at BSY we are almost uniquely able and motivated to go beyond what's conventionally reported. Our greater contribution is to empower infrastructure engineering through going digital to profoundly advance the UN sustainable development goals, which we also all share. 22:58 My way of keeping this in front of mind for BSY colleagues is to instead think in terms of ESDG. Infrastructure engineering is literally the limiting factor in achieving, especially the SDG’s highlighted here. So at BSY we can assess our corporate development in relation to three ESDG priorities: our business, our investments, and our current initiatives closely aligned with the advancement through going digital with the world’s mobility, environment and grids infrastructure by our users. 23:37 So the most effective way to understand our ESDG handprint is to review our infrastructure year book, which annually presents our users' nominations for going digital awards. The finalists and winners judged by international expert juries and our own Founders Honorees. The physical 2021 year books will be with you shortly, but here online you can now search, for instance, by each of these ESDG priorities and interactively view these multimedia case studies. 24:10 The mobility priority has been our sweet spot, representing the largest proportion of BSY revenues for roads and bridges, rail and transit and municipal engineering. But also within the green CapEx funding needs that we have referenced in this way, since last quarter, mobility is also the largest priority…

David Hollister

Management

33:40 Thank you, Greg. I do plan to shine a spotlight on our recent Power Line Systems transaction and our immediate priorities for PLS. As I lead into that, let me quickly orient you to our BSY investments group and how we complement our core software business. Firstly, we continue to be quite active with our acquisition activities, often those acquisition activities surface or onboard businesses that are ripe to be initially incubated and/or accelerated outside of our core software business or is a complement to our core software business, and we call these acceleration initiatives. 34:14 Our BSY Investment Group also oversees iTwin Ventures, our corporate venture capital fund focused on stimulating an ecosystem of infrastructure digital twin applications. We also believe the digital twin adoption can be better enabled by an ecosystem of digital integrators and through our own Cohesive Group and our digital construction works, Digital Integrators. 34:36 I will go a little deeper starting with acquisitions where I show here the chronology of a busy last 12-months in terms of acquisition activity. Our programmatic operating cadence of build versus buy yielded a robust pipeline of opportunities, and continues to do so. We successfully closed 14 acquisitions during this period. Of which, 12 of them were of the programmatic nature, the smaller tuck-in deals that are a part of the operational rhythm I have described. And it was also a year where we successfully closed on two particularly noteworthy acquisitions, which for us represent a new platform and/or are the uniquely large scale has to be differentiated from our normal programmatic acquisition activities. Specifically that would, of course be Seequent, which continues to perform very well, as you heard from Nicholas and will hear from Werner, and Power Line Systems as Greg just discussed. 35:29 You will…

Werner Andre

Management

40:41 Thank you, David. I will start with our revenue performance. Our fourth quarter revenues of $267.7 million grew 21.9% over the same quarter last year. Most of that growth comes from subscriptions, which grew 25.2% over the prior year. We attribute the acquisition of Seequent to represent just under 13%; foreign currency headwinds offset just under 2% and therefore our business performance comprises just over 14% of growth on a constant currency basis. 41:09 Our perpetual license revenues are down again by $2 million for the quarter relative to the prior year and represent approximately 7% of total revenues. Our professional services revenues are 9% of our total revenues and increased $5 million over the same quarter last year, representing a growth of 25%. The continued growth in our services business is attributed to our investments into the Cohesive Digital Integrator businesses, which David just discussed. 41:38 Full-year revenues are $965 million and improved 20.4% over the prior year. Similarly, subscription revenues improved by 19.7% over the prior year with about 2% coming from currency tailwinds, 6% from Seequent, and just under 12% from business performance. Perpetual licenses are down $4.3 million for the full-year, reflecting preferences for subscriptions and professional services are up about 53% for the full-year, reflective of Cohesive. 42:08 Moving onto recurring revenue performance, our last 12-month recurring revenues increased by 19.7%. The mid-year onboarding of Seequent contributed about 6 percentage points of this improvement. Our deep and long-standing relationships with our accounts are again proven with our 98% account retention rate and with our constant currency recurring revenues net retention rate now increasing to 109%. Our ARR is up 26% over the same point in time last year. As mentioned in prior quarters, Seequent on-boarded 13% of that growth and since this is a…

Greg Bentley

Management

51:52 Hey, Carey, are you going to organize the Q&A? Carey, you might be muted.

A - Carey Mann

Management

52:00 I needed to get unmuted. Sorry about that. We will begin with Jason Celino from KeyBanc.

Jason Celino

Management

52:16 Greg, can you hear me?

Greg Bentley

Management

52:18 Yes.

Jason Celino

Management

52:20 Perfect. I can't see again my video on, I guess that's okay. So Greg, now the comments on SMB, very nice to see continuing all throughout the year, but what modules are you seeing the most uplift in? Is at this point are you saying these SMB customers supplementing their design and modeling processes with Bentley? Or are they replacing their existing solutions?

Greg Bentley

Management

52:47 Well, I think the majority of it would be replacing existing solutions. Many of them have not been aware of us. We are reaching them with social media marketing and so forth. But there is a significant minority where they are starting with specialized products, the more expensive products that, again, they find us through querying and we convert those sales. But I think the majority of it is competitive game.

Jason Celino

Management

53:22 Okay. Interesting, you know, and then maybe one quick on PLS. The acquisition before you guys bought them, it was running at EBITDA margins of doubled that of Bentley, but based on kind of the guidance outlook, it looks like Bentley is reinvesting that difference into the PLS organization, so does the 2022 revenue and ARR guidance just assume PLS continues to grow at the historical level? And then I guess, could we see upside with the investments and ramp up?

Greg Bentley

Management

53:56 Well, we expect to grow faster, which is the reason to spend relatively more, of course, it was in private equity ownership, which seem to act as if it wanted to maximize current period profitability, but that's not how we do things. We want to benefit the future as much as we can. So what we want to get the next several years of development plans on PLS part done as soon as -- in one year and especially to globalize the offering and bring together this grid integration. So we are just salivating in all these directions, because there's never been a more auspicious market opportunity then now for transmission grid and integrated grid. So this is the reason we are operating at not business as usual, but within our acceleration group where we can put all this impetus together and spend more and accomplish more than in the past they were on. So it's not business as usual for us, but we’re business as usual for PLS and the integrated group now including SPIDA and our Tower business together. Do you want to add more on that David Hollister?

David Hollister

Management

55:12 No, we are indeed investing some of that margin windfall, if you will, Jason and we expect gross returns as a result.

Jason Celino

Management

55:26 Okay. Perfect. I will get back in queue. Thank you.

Carey Mann

Management

55:29 Yes, we’ll next go to Matthew Broome from Mizuho.

Matthew Broome

Management

55:37 Okay. Great. Hope you can all hear me? Hi, everyone.

Greg Bentley

Management

55:39 Yeah. Hi.

Matthew Broome

Management

55:41 Hi. So it's great to see your LTM net retention rate recover from the pandemic from your presentation, it sounds like you expected to track ARR growth above even where it is right now. So how sustainable is net revenue retention above that sort of 108% to 110% range?

Greg Bentley

Management

56:04 Well, we had been tracking this chart that we showed you sort of internally and we believe there was kind of a mathematical relationship there, which we think is borne out now and we are sharing, all of those numbers are numbers you have seen before. But putting them together in that way sort of suggests the way it works. It can get as high in ARR as ARR growth, because the ARR growth includes the new name ARR growth, which runs about 2% of our ARR per year. But can it grow faster? 56:38 Well, application mix accretion is a reason to think that it can. We haven't talked about inflation, maybe this year it is a percent or two more when we are sort of not normalize to think those in those terms, but E365 we believe fundamentally in substance is the way to maximize the net retention, the accretion, the introduction of more usage and more specialized applications that our accounts want and need. They want and need it now, because they need to get more work done without being able to hire more people and going digital is the answer for that and the E365 program is how we introduce these success blueprints that they have more appetite for than ever right now.

Matthew Broome

Management

57:27 Right. Actually -- and just on that E365 sort of topic. The significant majority of your enterprise licensing is now E365. Do you still expect meaningful sort of ELS combustions or will it be much harder getting the remaining enterprise customers to convert?

Greg Bentley

Management

57:46 Well, what I showed there on the chart was the accounts that spend over 100,000 per year for us, so that would be other than our definition of SMB. I realize that's emphasis on the end, when you get up to 100,000 per year. But the portion, the largest portion in fact of our ARR at present are these 100,000 per year plus accounts, we count them as enterprise accounts that are not yet on E365. And many of them were never on ELS. ELS was kind of an in-between program and we will be introducing E365 to those accounts for many years to come we think.

Matthew Broome

Management

58:26 Okay, great. And I am sorry, if I could just squeeze one last one in. Just in terms of SYNCHRO, really interesting to see the strong new business growth there, particularly given the construction industry headwinds. And clearly, it does look like there is a lot of demand for that 4D modeling that you were talking about. How large do you see this market opportunity and to what extent I guess this construction management software focus for investment for Bentley going forward? That's it for me.

Greg Bentley

Management

58:53 Well, I would emphasize that we are not -- we are not targeting all of construction, but that portion, which is amenable to go to 4D. I guess I will ask Nicolas for further commentary.

Nicholas Cumins

Management

59:07 Exactly, Greg. So our focus is on heavy civil, we are not going after any construction industry out there. And our focus is actually to skate where the truck is going, right? We are a relatively new entrants in that market and we are going after accounts, firms that are willing to embrace 3D and are willing to add this fourth dimension with scheduling now. So it's just a net new growth opportunity for us.

Greg Bentley

Management

59:37 If I can say the example of the New York DOT that Nicholas showed is really promising for us, because this is a DOT, let’s say we are never going to get our work done with traditional 2D plan sets, let’s leap frog all the way to 4D and work on making the 3D package the legal construction document. It's a very big step, but we hope the IIJA, the Jobs Act will help institutionalize this greater ambition of which the New York DOT is an example. And that involve SYNCHRO. So the plan is, we’d say, construction hearing include that how we are going to build it and how you design it.

Matthew Broome

Management

60:21 Great. Thanks very much and nice quarter.

Carey Mann

Management

60:24 We will now go to Matt Hedberg from RBC.

Matthew Hedberg

Management

60:28 Hey guys. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, and congrats from me as well on a strong closed year. You guys spent a lot of time on the presentation talking about digital twin. And I know we have talked about digital twin really since you are predating your IPO. Is there any help you can give us on sizing that business? I believe exiting 2020 you talked about an 8-figure run rate, any additional update on sizing or relative growth of digital twin?

Greg Bentley

Management

60:56 Well, my quick answer is, ultimately it's a multiple of what we do now, because it uses the civil and structural engineers simulation and modeling throughout the lifecycle of assets. And I’ll will just give one example and then I’m going to turn it over to Nicholas to get to your connotation -- quantification you are interested in. But an example is transmission grid and PLS opportunities and some of you will have seen the 60-minute segment last weekend showing how unreliable is our -- energy grid, it's older all the time. The FERC is now requiring and since December of 2021 dynamic rating of the capacity of the grid that says, well, we can use it safely at higher temperatures and so forth. But we have to understand better what we have and what its capacity is, we can't take that for granted the way it was built. 62:01 And so that's an opportunity for digital twins for existing transmission structures and lines, PLS has been used in many cases to design a lot of the -- for instance, that we are talking now about the US transmission grid, but now the opportunity to become the living 4D digital twins to help it remain resilience, address the vulnerabilities and so forth is just a multiple of the opportunity that was involved in designing and to start with, if you can see overall -- instead of one year of work its 50 years of work. 62:37 Nicholas, can you help with the quantification?

Nicholas Cumins

Management

62:39 Yeah, I will say the quantification is huge because it is fundamental to the evolution of the industry. We -- the whole industry is moving towards digital twins, you cannot really think about it as a tangent or as a specific product line. All of our products actually are going to move in the context of digital twins. So thinking about how we are monetizing our digital twin solution right now at the heart of our strategy is the iTwin platform, our platform for infrastructure digital twins, it is supporting both Bentley products and non-Bentley products. So can we think about the monetization of that platform through these two channels, so to speak? 63:19 So for the Bentley products, we are not breaking out our revenue by the specific brand, but we doubled the revenue from all the Bentley products that are powered by ITwin, including SYNCHRO, which I mentioned including, OpenTower iQ that David mentioned as well in the context of grid. And then from a third-party standpoints we -- our focus is very much on adoption rather than revenue acceleration at this point in time. Obviously, I mean, it's relatively new as a platform, as a service, we launched it about a year ago, but a little bit more, but we basically multiply the number of partners actively developing on that platform by 10 over one year, right? So we see a lot of traction here from an adoption standpoint. And over time, this will translate into monetization through the product, the applications, the solutions that the partners are creating on that platform.

Matthew Hedberg

Management

64:11 Got it. That makes a ton of sense then. And then Warner, maybe a financial one for you. Obviously you have got the Seequent anniversarying and you have got Power Line contributing to revenue this year. And I think we can kind of understand how those kind of 2 things impact top line, but when we think about margin expansion, you are guiding to about a basis point of expansion, which is really good to see, despite all the investments. Is there anything that we should think about in terms of -- are those more front-end weighted, maybe the -- question if I could just like full linearity of op margin improvement is when we will start there, anything to think about there?

Greg Bentley

Management

64:42 I will just throw in because I am an old finance guy, a 100 basis points, not 1 basis points.

Matthew Hedberg

Management

64:48 100 basis points. Sorry, yeah.

Werner Andre

Management

64:51 Yeah. So, I think the consensus that's out there is pretty much in line right now how revenues and margin will allocate. So we have a very strong Q4 as we historically had, that doesn't change with Seequent. With Seequent, it's maybe more the first three quarters and more like evened out, if you will. On the revenue allocation, I would say like, the way you guys have it right now that's pretty good, it’s like Q4 being a little bit strong and margin is relatively in line as we go through the year. Maybe to add that towards the end of the year like expenses are a little bit increased as we have talked before. We had certain events that happened in Q4, like our year infrastructure, certain incentives are more like back-loaded towards the end of the year and then -- our metrics, kind of, increased starting April 1. So, I would say like, it's fairly even throughout for the year, probably like with Q1 the EBITDA margin slightly higher than what you see towards the end of the year.

Matthew Hedberg

Management

66:03 Got it. Thanks a lot. Well done guys.

Carey Mann

Management

66:06 We will next go to Baird, Joe Vruwink.

Joe Vruwink

Management

66:14 Great. Hi, everyone. I would like to get your latest thoughts on infrastructure stimulus, both here and abroad. It seems the funds have started to flow, so local agencies have it, projects are being committed, what's your latest thought on your customers being in a position to see an uplift in their business activity from the stimulus that's passed? 66:39 And then are you also seeing that more directly tie into uplift in demand for your products, so that you can kind of connect one-to-one if the second half, let’s say, more firms are going to be receiving their funding, their project activity that might actually manifest in acceleration for Bentley?

Greg Bentley

Management

67:01 When you ask about the engineering firms and their business activity going up, certainly their business development activity is going up, because they -- if we just take the example in mobility, more contracts are in some stage of letting, and obviously, the engineering firms track that carefully. I would say in terms of our business, they are interested in programs like E365 that are going to help them improve their productivity, so that they can take on more work without taking on more people. But most of that new work is ahead. Now there are some who are working with owners to submit applications for funding, the applications for the grant programs there could be a bottleneck in the federal agencies being able to evaluate and approve the applications. There is considerable worry about that, but I think headway is being made. 68:05 As to maybe some of the most significant aspect, so if I use again the example of the transmission grid, the getting past, if you like, the grid lock in permitting. And the IIJA contains very interesting, you could call, no cost program that speeds up permitting, which could take forever for otherwise for expanding transmission capacity and the expectation of the new work that will be front-ended by removing the decade that otherwise took to get permits is an aspect in that's going to turn out to be god-send, I think, especially in the integrated grid aspect of our business opportunity now. So it's not just the allocations of the money, but some improvements. 69:04 And another one in mobility would be the example of starting to use 3D construction documents for 4D processes, that will have everyone's attention. There was a terrific article in Engineering News-Record this month about that, that will help increase demand for our solutions.

Joe Vruwink

Management

69:22 So just related to those, when you think about exiting this past year with a 13% organic ARR growth rates, the guidance for next year it starts at 12% to 14%, or 11.5%, 13.5% obviously the base for comparisons are more difficult one. But do you think it's possible that given some of the things you have mentioned so far, continued success with SMB application accretion and the infrastructure stimulus layered on top that there is a potential to actually accelerate further from this band you have now been in?

Greg Bentley

Management

70:03 I think we are accelerating, and things sort of couldn't feel better in terms of these three directions of mobility and environment, which is growing tremendously in a month. We think our mining is cyclical. The cycle we are in, I think is going to last until the economy is decarbonized in the world. And then the grid opportunity that I mentioned, they all feel like they can accelerate. Now, it must be said, the world is on edge at the moment following a pandemic with a brutal war. So we are sort of inclined to be circumspect and improve it throughout the year here. But certainly, we couldn't be more excited by how we can help infrastructure engineering here in 2022.

Joe Vruwink

Management

70:55 Thank you very much.

Carey Mann

Management

70:57 We will next go to Sophie Li from Berenberg, please.

Sophie Lee

Management

71:05 Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I just have 1 question, maybe for Greg, especially on the E365. Can you tell us more about the oil and gas recovery? And what kind of -- what inning of the recovery are we in? And with the oil prices as high as they are today, are you expecting any incremental demand in FY ‘22 from that segment?

Greg Bentley

Management

71:31 I wouldn't go so far as to say expecting it, but believing logically that it should occur. I can't tell you where we are in the recovery, I think we are at the bottom or at the end of the trough based on usage, and its capital projects that are down there, the industry needs to sweat the operations of existing assets on the OpEx side. And I expect the question about Russia, we mentioned Russia during the past year as one of the first to benefit from higher oil prices and spend on civil infrastructure that was some new business growth that we commented upon. 72:20 Overall, our exposure Russia is on the order with Ukraine of about 1% of our revenues. So there's not a lot at risk and we already are subject to some sanctions and now some new sanctions as to Russia, but it seems logical to me that there will need to be new investment in industrial capacity, and E365 is the program they are all on. So as soon as they are more busy, we won't have to wait a year as we once would have done in the previous commercial program to benefit from that, and I hope it will be 2022. I think they believe it will be 2022.

Sophie Lee

Management

73:04 That's very helpful. Thank you.

Carey Mann

Management

73:06 Well, let's go to Kash Rangan from Goldman.

Kash Rangan

Management

73:11 Hey, Greg. Congratulations on finishing up the fiscal year. Curious to get your thoughts driven by factors such as ESG decarbonizing the planet, it looks like civil infrastructure part of the market is going to outpace commercial, that the commercial did probably better than civil in the last 10-years, we have low cost capital, very low rates, building boom, et cetera. What are your thoughts, are we right with this hypothesis that we could see a reversal of stats that civil -- it's time for civil to really outpace commercial firstly. And secondly, intrigued by your thoughts on the SMB SAM, will -- as you pursue that opportunity are we able to do it with no incremental impact of margins or do you think actually in the flip side, margins could go higher because you could tap into a channel such as resellers that could provide you more leverage than the 100% direct model in the past? Thank you so much.

Greg Bentley

Operator

74:09 Let me start with SMB as that is fresh in mind. We do want to new channel, we want a digital experienced channel, we want it to be direct and no touch and we are engineer software developers, we are salivating to get underway with that in 2022. We sort of had to slow down to get Sarbanes Oxley documentation and certification of the way we do things now, but we are definitely going all digital for the SMB opportunity going forward. 74:44 Now, that will be a bunch of spending on our part, it's a lot of where we are allocating margin that otherwise would have for the bottom line for 2022. But ultimately bigger SMB penetration, getting our share in SMB and it's taking share from our competitor there will improve our margins, because we don't need to spend a thing on product development for that purpose. 75:11 Let me go back to your first question, it's definitely the case that civil will overtake the commercial and facility sector in growth rate. The commercial and facility sector is -- they are going to suffer from the digestion of how people work now and we are changing our infrastructure empowered workforce plan and we’ll use smaller facilities, but be design intensive in how we make them bring our colleagues together for collaboration, understanding that they can do much of their work remotely, but their collaboration we can do it facility. So that's going on in the world over and I don't -- I think, that's for sure that what you predict there.

Kash Rangan

Management

75:57 Thank you so much.

Carey Mann

Management

75:59 We have time for one more question, Michael Funk from Bank of America.

Greg Bentley

Operator

76:12 Michael, you might be on mute.

Michael Funk

Analyst

76:15 Yeah, I am unmuted now. Yeah, thank you for fitting me in. I really appreciate it. So thinking back to PLS, I think part of the justification or benefit with herbal lane, Bentley sales force and sales motion. I know, it's early days, but any thoughts there on potentially driving the upside to revenue growth and the synergies? 76:39 And then second, just thinking about wireless specifically in that industry, still hearing a lot about increase in site development, so wondering where you think we are in that cycle?

Greg Bentley

Operator

76:52 Well, I am going to ask Nicholas to talk about the industry solutions aspect. The PLS has done well in dealing with the transmission engineers, they are tend to be aware of PLS and at least this part of the world, there's a lot of the world left. But at the enterprise side, the digital twin opportunity is where our industry solutions will help most. And the 5G location, if that's what you are asking about, is a really fascinating opportunity that we call Grid Integration, we are probably -- we will talk about that in the subsequent quarter for an update on that. Nicholas, on the sales synergies?

Nicholas Cumins

Management

77:41 Yeah. In general, we are strengthening the industry as I mentioned in our growth markets. One of the key growth industries for us is electric utilities. Now, if you remember as we presented PLS, we said that there go to market investments were relatively little, there is a big part of the business which is through channels. You could argue Bentleys is going to become the overall Group, the biggest channel for the PLS software, right? So we see synergies across the accounts, the traditional PLS accounts with the traditional Bentley account here in North America. But we see, of course, a huge potential for PLS outside of North America, that's something that they wanted to do on their own. And that's something that we will be able to accelerate now that PLS is part of Bentley.

Michael Funk

Analyst

78:28 And I guess it's fair to a similar thing at your guidance a restored PLS result is really not much of that synergy baked into your guide for this year, is that fair?

Werner Andre

Management

78:37 So I would say that we expected $30 million of subscription revenue for 2022. Again, we closed a month after we thought so -- that $30 million reflects PLS's historical growth, which was a bit faster than Bentley Systems. So it's not a layup, but internally we are obviously aiming higher than $30 million. But the guidance we have out there reflects the $30 million pro-rated for not having January revenues.

Michael Funk

Analyst

79:15 Great. Thank you. Look forward to hearing more on 5G as well. Thank you.

Carey Mann

Management

79:18 Well, we will have to leave it there. Thank you, everybody, and we will see you next quarter. Cheers.

Greg Bentley

Operator

79:23 Thank you.