Aart J. de Geus
Analyst · Needham & Company
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Today, I'm happy to report excellent Q1 results and raised guidance for FY 2012, as well as the closing of the acquisition of Magma Design Automation, announced this morning. Let me begin with the summary of our results. Our business in Q1 was strong across the board. We met or beat every target we communicated last quarter, including revenue of $425.5 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.56. We are well on track to meeting our non-GAAP operating margin and cash flow targets for the year. As a result, we're raising our outlook for the year, independent of the Magma acquisition, to a new earnings per share guidance range of $1.97 to $2.03. Brian will provide more financial detail in just a minute. Regarding Magma Design Automation, we have much work to do as the acquisition literally closed a few hours ago. We're enthusiastic about the prospects for the joint company, as the merger will allow us to accelerate delivery of technology to customers at a time of very rapid system and silicon evolution. As we work through the detailed planning and integration, our priorities are the following: first and foremost, maintain complete focus on the continued success of our joint customers and their in-progress designs; second, immediate consultation with our joint customers, as we evolve and/or revise our technology and product roadmaps. We plan to take the next 90 days for this effort, which we'll communicate further details. And third, rationalize the 2 organizations. Our intent is to move quickly and diligently to optimally integrate the companies with the clear objectives of: one, customer success; two, technology acceleration; and three, continuity in delivering high-value solutions, while achieving economic efficiency. Rajeev Madhavan, Magma CEO, will not join Synopsys, but has graciously agreed to be available to advise us as we transition the company. We thank him for his efforts to date towards making this merger a success. Roy Jewell, Magma's President and COO, will work with Synopsys management team to ensure a successful integration. From a financial perspective and based on our initial view, we reiterate that we expect the acquisition to be modestly accretive to our 2012 non-GAAP earnings per share. Due to antitrust-related restrictions in effect until this morning, we have only just begun the detailed planning and integration process, and we expect to provide specific guidance related to the impact of the Magma acquisition when we report Q2 earnings in May. Moving to the overall market picture. Semiconductor and systems companies are very aggressively developing and producing advanced new products, particularly in the mobile, cloud infrastructure and 'Smart Everything' market segments. The great potential of these end markets has driven a renewed emphasis on technology, visible from the rapid adoption of the 28- and 20-nanometer silicon nodes, to the focus on new transistor structures such as FinFETs, all the way to system design with an increased focus on broad verification strategies and system prototyping. The EDA industry is absolutely central to enabling this wave of end market opportunities, and the fact that these are technically challenging is precisely why our industry will do well. The high level of complexity and the need for our customers to differentiate themselves are driving tremendous demand for state-of-the-art technology, product and support. All of these are fundamental assets for Synopsys, and the timely addition of the Magma strength will only augment our solutions. Which brings me to the highlights for the quarter, starting with our core EDA and manufacturing offerings. In Q1, we did very well and utilization of our complete implementation solution has continued to grow. While advanced customers are now moving their major production chips to the 28-nanometer node, much of our focus is already on helping them at 20-nanometer, where we track 30 active designs. More than 2/3 of these are being done with Synopsys tools. In addition, we're already enabling a substantial number of sub 20-nanometer designs. Clearly, from a silicon point of view, Moore's Law is alive and well, even if success requires great focus and sophisticated collaborations. An example of such collaboration is GLOBALFOUNDRIES, who exclusively used our newest IC Compiler-Advanced Geometry solution for its first major 20-nanometer chip. IC Compiler not only addresses the complicated challenges of managing power, performance and capacity, it tackles all the leading-edge physical obstacles inherent in very advanced designs. In the area of complex mixed-signal design, rapid turnaround between analog and digital is positively impacted by our recently announced integration of IC Compiler and Custom Designer. Evaluation requests are increasing, as designers see hard evidence of significant time-to-market and performance advantages. With the move to smaller geometries, the connection to manufacturing is even more critical, both for device design and yield optimization. Our key cap solution is integral to both traditional advanced designs and the new 3D transistors, or FinFETs. While being used today by nearly every leading semiconductor manufacturer, we're also seeing a number of add-on deals and new logos. Our yield optimization solution is also doing very well, particularly at 28-nanometer, as yield is now clearly affected by not only manufacturing or design, but most importantly by the interaction of the 2. This is an area where Synopsys is uniquely equipped to make a positive impact. The other ramification of smaller devices, of course, is more devices, and with it the continued high pressure on verification. In this area, too, we not only continue to see great technical progress, but we also saw good business growth in 2012. In verification, speed is essential, and our analog and digital solutions continue to lead. Our flagship VCS product is used for 70-plus percent of advanced designs, from processors to graphics to SSEs. Another positive highlight is our IP business. The trend continues unabated to outsource IP, or chip building blocks, that are very sophisticated, but may be non-differentiating for our customers. Synopsys is the leading supplier of interface, memory and analog IP blocks. With around 1,300 engineers and more than a decade of investment, we have the resources and expertise to ensure that customers can rely on the highest levels of quality, reliability and support. The quarter was strong across the board for IP. For example, USB interface sales were excellent, as the market migrates to USB3.0. We expect more than 1 billion chips containing USB3.0 to ship in the next 18 months, as the protocol supports the speed needed to tackle tasks such as downloading videos. Synopsys was the first IP vendor to demonstrate USB3.0 in 28-nanometer silicon and has been consistently at the forefront of technology development. This applies to a number of other protocols as well. We expect adoption of Synopsys IP to continue to be a significant driver of growth for us this year. At the systems level, we're making excellent strides with both software- and hardware-based rapid prototyping as well. Driven by the increase in complex IP blocks, including on-chip processors and graphics and DSPs, the verification tasks, especially as they relate to hardware-software interaction, are becoming central to product success. In that regard, our newly integrated virtual prototyping solution, Virtualizer, is showing great promise, with adoptions by key customers during the quarter. This is particularly encouraging, as the prototyping of the hardware is used to accelerate the software development. Thus, forming the basis for a multidimensional growth business in the future. On the FPGA-based side of prototyping, we saw excellent demand for our HAPS solution in Q1, as some keystone systems companies broadened the proliferation of our boards through their organizations. In summary, we're off to a very strong start for the year. We delivered better-than-expected Q1 results and are raising guidance. The customer landscape remains solid and the demand and momentum around our technology is strong across the board. With the addition of the Magma technology and technologists, we are poised to move even faster on delivering best-in-class products. I'll now turn the call over to Brian Beattie.