What Happened?
Shares of infrastructure engineering software company Bentley Systems (NASDAQ: BSY) jumped 12.8% in the morning session after the company reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter 2025 results and provided a robust financial outlook for 2026. The company announced its fourth-quarter revenue grew 11.9% year-over-year to $391.6 million, exceeding market expectations, while its non-GAAP profit of $0.27 per share was in line with analysts' consensus estimates. Looking ahead, Bentley Systems initiated its full-year 2026 revenue guidance in the range of $1.685 billion to $1.715 billion. The midpoint of this forecast was notably above what analysts had projected. The company also reported a substantial increase in its free cash flow margin, which was 13 percentage points higher than the same period last year.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
Bentley Systems’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 6 moves greater than 5% over the last year. Moves this big are rare for Bentley Systems and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 9 days ago when the stock dropped 2.5% on the news that investor fears over artificial intelligence disrupting the software industry sparked a broad sell-off. The anxiety stemmed from the rapid adoption of new 'agentic AI' tools, which some investors believed could dismantle traditional Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business models. This 'AI Panic' led to indiscriminate selling across the sector. The market move reflected growing concerns about the downside of the AI boom for established software companies.
Bentley Systems is down 5.6% since the beginning of the year, and at $36.02 per share, it is trading 38.7% below its 52-week high of $58.72 from July 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Bentley Systems’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $811.90.
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