Analyst Note
| Dan Romanoff, CPA |Wide-moat Aspen hosted a virtual investor day on Feb. 12 and gave a broad-based business overview, touching on virtually all aspects of its operations. In line with our positive view on growth opportunities as capital-intensive industries advance their digital transformation strategies, management equally placed focus on the secular trends driving Aspen’s growth. While Aspen is increasingly positioned at the forefront of innovation across all of its respective end markets, we view the biggest long-term opportunities to be the increasing utilization of the Asset Performance Management suite and evolving AI capabilities in order to address trends towards sustainability and digitalization. Further, given the evolution of the capital-intensive markets served towards sustainability targets such as net-zero carbon footprints, we anticipate Aspen to increasingly be seen as an enabler of a cleaner and more energy efficient future. As Aspen continues to expand its competitive advantage through industry-first AI-integrated hybrid models that address evolving customer needs more effectively than alternatives, we maintain our $148 fair value estimate and view shares as fully valued.