harry … the ASIC guy

Last night you may have watched the NBA Playoff game in which the Orlando Magic came back to defeat the heavily favored Cleveland Cavaliers. Great game!!!

Or the finale of American Idol in which Kris Allen came back to defeat the heavily favored Adam Lambert. Great show!!!

What did I do last night? I listened to the Q2 2009 Synopsys earnings call. Great conference call!!!

(OK … I’ll admit it wasn’t as exciting and nail biting as either of the other viewing options. Just think of it like this: I took on the work of listening to the call and summarizing it for you, in order to free you up to watch the game or idol. You can thank me later )

Here’s the summary. (You can read the full transcript here if you like).

Financials

On the up side, Synopsys had a good Q2, beating their revenue and earnings per share guidance slightly. On the down side, Synopsys lowered its revenue and cash flow guidance slightly for the rest of the year, allowing for potential customer bankruptcies, late payments, and reduced bookings. Customers are approaching Synopsys to “help them right now through this downturn”, i.e. to reduce their cost of software. It looks like the recession is finally catching up to them.

As I finish off this post on Thursday morning, it looks like the analysts agree. Synopsys shares are down 10%, so it seems they are getting punished for revising their forecast. 

Still, Synopsys is in very good financial health, with $877M in cash and short term investments. Their cash flow is going to go down the rest of the year, so they will eat into this fund, but they will still have plenty to selectively acquire strong technology that might add to their portfolio, as they did with the MIPs Analog Business Group.

Themes

There were 2 themes or phrases that kept recurring in the call that I am sure were points of emphasis for Aart.

First, the word “momentum” was used 6 times (by my count) during the call. Technology momentum. Customer momentum. Momentum in the company. Clearly, Synopsys is trying to portray an image of the company building up steam while the rest of the industry wallows in the recession.

Second, customers are “de-risking their supplier relationships”, i.e. looking to consolidate with an EDA vendor with strong financials who’ll still be there when the recession ends. Again, Synopsys is trying to portray itself as the safe choice for customers, hoping to woo customers away from less financially secure competitors like Cadence and Magma. This ties in with the flurry of “primary EDA vendor” relationships that Synopsys has announced recently.

The opportunity for Synopsys (and danger for the competition) is to pick up market share during this downturn and it looks like that may be happening as companies “de-risk” by going with the company with the “momentum” and a “extraordinarily strong position”. Or at least that’s the message that Synopsys is sending.

Technology

Aart did rattle off the usual laundry list of technology that he wanted to highlight, including some introduced last year (e.g. Z-route). Of note were the following:

• Multi-core technology in VCS with 2x speedup (is 2x a lot?)
• Custom Designer, which Aart called “a viable alternative to the incumbent” (ya know marketing didn’t pick the word “viable”)
• Analog IP via the MIPS Analog Business Group acquisition, especially highlighting how that complements the Custom Designer product (do I see “design kits” in the future?)
• The Lynx Design System (see my 5-part series)
• IC-Validator (smells like DRC fixing in IC Compiler - Webinar today, I’ll find out more)

__________

In summary, Synopsys had a good quarter, but they have finally acknowledged that they are not immune to the downturn and they expect to get impacted the next few quarters.

harry the ASIC guy

Rumors are flying concerning some big changes next week in EDA amongst the big players. It first got started by John Blyler on Twitter. Then Magma stock took off this week for no apparent reason. And rumors of a Cadence-Magma merger have been flying around for about a month since Rajeev denied them.

Something may happen or nothing may happen. But it’s always fun to speculate. So, what do you think would be the best merger of the top 4 EDA companies?

Vote here or feel free to leave your comments below. We’ll see who, if anyone, is right

harry the ASIC guy

It’s been a rocky month for EDA.

On July 23rd Cadence revised strongly downward its revenue forecast for the last 6 month of 2008. Cadence stock plummeted 30% the next day. As a direct result, Cadence scrapped its takeover bid for Mentor Graphics this past Friday.

On July 24th Rambus reported Q2 revenue down 10% from Q1 and down 25% from Q2′07. Their closing price that day of $14.70 culminated a decline of almost one-third over the previous month. As a result, Rambus has announced its cutting 20% of its workforce.

On August 7th, Magma pre-announced that its Q1 revenue would be 10% lower than expected. Result: $6.77 => $5.45 (-19%).

And just last week, MIPs announced a $100M write-down due to “the softening overall market for intellectual property and delays experienced in realizing expected synergies” (with the Chipidea acquisition). With it, a 15% layoff.

And so, all eyes will be on Synopsys and Mentor this Wednesday. First, Mentor will announce Q2 earnings at a 5:30 AM (PDT) conference call. (Show of hands, who is getting up early for that one). Then, Synopsys will announce Q3 earnings at a more reasonable time, 2:00 PM (PDT).

A few things that I’ll be watching for:

1. During Cadence’s earnings call, Mike Fister blamed most of their predicted revenue shortfall on their customers’ decision to postpone purchases in the face of uncertainty in their own businesses. This seems to be supported by the subsequent bad news from Magma, Rambus, and MIPs. If that is the case, expect to hear similar bad news and comments from Synopsys and Mentor.  If not, then the finger will point back to Cadence.
2. What will Mentor say about the withdrawn offer by Cadence? (Note: Mentor stock dropped 25% midday Friday after the news broke).
3. Several analysts and observers (including myself) felt that Synopsys would benefit from the uncertainty caused by the Cadence - Mentor acquisition battle. I’ll be interested to see if Synopsys’ numbers show that or if there is any anecdotal information of a big customer switching to Synopsys as a result.
4. This will be the 1st quarter since Synopsys acquired Synplicity, so look to see how that is going.  From what I hear, Synopsys plans to keep the businesses mostly separate through the end of FY08 (October).

It should be an interesting week…

harry the ASIC guy