Revenue rose 20%, net income was up 10% from a year earlier.

Ansys (NASDAQ: ANSS) today announced second quarter 2012 of $195 million, up 20% from a year ago; in constant currencies the gain was 24%. The company says total paid-up licenses increased 20%, with growth spread across all product lines and a broad array of customer industry segments. The amount represents a record for second quarter revenue at Pittsburgh-based Ansys.

During the quarter Ansys continued its share repurchase plan, acquiring 1 million shares of its stock. This is a common way for technology companies—who seldom issue dividends—to provide growth to shareholders, as a decrease in available shares generally makes the remaining ones more valuable.

Ansys stock was up 10% to 66.22 on early trading following the earnings announcement.

Revenue from licenses in the quarter (ending June 30, 2012) was $123.4 million, up 26% from a year earlier. Revenue from maintenance and services was $71.7 million, up 10.6% from 2Q11. Ansys says recurring business is now 70% of total revenue.

Revenue by regions for the quarter (based on non-GAAP reporting):

• North America:  $69.6 million, up 36% from a year ago;
• Europe: $62.2 million, up 7.4% from a year ago;
• Rest of world: $63.2 million; 18% increase from 2Q11.

Ansys CEO Jim Cashman says despite “obvious macro-economic issues affecting our customers’ buying patterns, we continued to see an increased customer reliance on engineering innovation as a priority.”

Net income for the quarter was $50.3 million, up 10.8% from a year ago.

On August 1, 2012 Ansys closed the acquisition of Esterel Technologies, a vendor of embedded systems (mechatronic) simulation software and services.

Ansys continues to reward its executives well: the quarter’s results reflect stock-based compensation charges of approximately $8 million.

Like other public engineering software companies, Ansys has revised upward its guidance for the rest of 2012. Ansys now expects third quarter revenue to be in the range of $194 million to $202 million, and full year revenue to be in the range of $801 million to $824 million.

Cash per share on June 30, 2012 was $5.92, a slight drop from $6.00 three months earlier and ending a rising trend. The cash drop will likely continue next quarter, when the Esterel acquisition goes on the books.

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L. Stephen Wolfe, P.E., a contributing analyst for Jon Peddie Research, provided research for this report.