diff --git a/tools/lib/increase-version.awk b/tools/lib/increase-version.awk
index 0bbdb0bc2cc7..1e735713879b 100644
--- a/tools/lib/increase-version.awk
+++ b/tools/lib/increase-version.awk
@@ -5,8 +5,9 @@
 #
 
 1 {
-    prefix = gensub(/^(.*[^0-9])([0-9]+)$/, "\\1", "1")
-    testingversion = gensub(/^(.*[^0-9])([0-9]+)$/, "\\2", "1")
+    # strip the numeric suffix, obtaining '12.4alpha'
+    prefix = gensub(/[0-9]+$/, "", "1")
+    testingversion = substr($0, length(prefix) + 1)
 
     next_testingversion = (1*testingversion)+1
     printf "%s%s\n", prefix, next_testingversion