The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Encourage Investment in This Hot Tech Sector

The COVID-19 pandemic has obviously affected end demand for industrial companies, but it's also had a major effect on their internal operations. Plants have had to be shut down, key personnel have had difficulty getting to work, and supply chain disruptions have affected the sourcing of critical products. Simply put, there's even more emphasis now on ensuring the efficient running of a factory or a logistics operation. Here's how and why that's great news for industrial software companies.

The shift toward digitizing factories was already in place entering into 2020, with leading industrial software vendors like Dassault Systemes (OTC: DASTY), PTC (NASDAQ: PTC), Autodesk, and the software arm of Siemens (OTC: SIEGY) all reporting good growth as 2020 began. Incidentally, the three pure software plays have all outperformed the S&P 500 this year, and are significantly ahead of the industrial sector that they sell into.