Bentley Systems, Incorporated (BSY)

How it makes money

Nearly all revenue now comes from subscriptions rather than one-time software licenses: 92% of 2025 revenue was subscription-based, paid on a recurring basis regardless of how much a customer actually uses the software that quarter. A small remaining share is perpetual licenses and professional services. Because engineering teams design entire projects inside Bentley's software and store years of asset data in it, subscriptions tend to renew rather than get cancelled once adopted.

Revenue by segment

An infrastructure project's design files, models and years of asset data live inside Bentley's software, and engineering teams are trained on its specific tools; moving a large, ongoing infrastructure program to a rival platform means retraining staff and migrating irreplaceable project history. The advantage is real but not absolute, since Autodesk and other established players compete directly for the same infrastructure-engineering budgets.

A large share of Bentley's customers are governments and regulated utilities funding long-lived infrastructure programs, spending that is planned years ahead and less sensitive to a single bad quarter than typical corporate IT budgets. The remaining private-sector engineering and construction demand is more cyclical, rising and falling with construction activity and interest rates that affect project financing.

Key risks

• Competition from larger rivals — Bentley competes against Autodesk and other large, well-resourced software companies in several of its core markets, including public-works and facilities design, which can pressure pricing and win rates.
• Currency exposure from global operations — A significant share of revenue and costs is denominated in currencies other than the US dollar, so exchange-rate movements can affect reported results even when underlying demand is unchanged.
• Dependence on continued subscription renewals — With subscriptions now the large majority of revenue, results depend on customers renewing rather than switching platforms or delaying software spending during a construction-sector downturn.

Bentley does not disclose concentration among individual customers; its revenue is spread across a large number of engineering firms, government agencies and utilities worldwide, with no single buyer material to overall results.