Aart J. de Geus
Analyst · Needham & Company
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Today, I'm pleased to report excellent Q2 results, very rapid progress on the integration of Magma Design Automation and raise guidance for fiscal year 2012. Let me begin with a financial summary. Our business in Q2 was strong across all metrics with revenue of $433 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.53, which includes $0.01 of dilution from Magma that was not included in our previous guidance range. For the year, we are raising our outlook based on increased visibility and confidence and the progress made on the Magma integration to a range of $2.03 to $2.07. From the perspective of our long-term financial management, you may recall that in 2010, we communicated to you a high single-digit EPS growth objective based on 5 pillars: One, organic revenue growth in core EDA of low to mid-single-digits; two, double-digit organic revenue growth in IP and systems; three, continued M&A; four, efficient allocation of resources; and five, keeping share count roughly flat at approximately 150 million shares. Clearly, we continue to deliver against these objectives and are already well on track to achieve double-digit EPS growth again this year. We will provide 2013 guidance in our December earnings release, but I will say already now that our objective is to achieve high single-digit EPS growth for next year as well. For the present quarter and year, Brian will provide more financial detail in just a minute. Before addressing the product highlights, let me comment on the current landscape. For as the economic ups and downs are readily visible in the press on a daily basis, the electronics and semiconductor industries are racing forward from a technology point of view. While electronic consumption is staying high, the battle for share among the providers is quite intense, resulting in some consolidation and accelerated push towards the 28-nanometer production of advanced chips and substantial investments into the next generations of technology. For our industry, this clearly means additional pressure as we support challenged and very competitive customers. But also, a solid landscape of renewals, add-on purchases and emphasis on value selling. We expect that going forward, customers will rely more on EDA for improved design efficiency and product differentiation, which bodes well for our sustained growth prospects. In that sense, EDA feels healthier than it has been in a number of years. These analysts are particularly positive for Synopsys. For many years, we have focused on building a set of complete solutions, ranging from system design to chip implementation to manufacturing. In addition, our time-based business model, supported by a substantial multiyear backlog, lets us continually invest in R&D and support in virtually any phase of the economic cycle. Consequently, it's not surprising that the majority of the state-of-the-art designs are done with Synopsys tools and rely on the skills of our global support teams, which brings me to the highlights for the quarter, starting with our core EDA and manufacturing offerings. One of the advanced areas in which both stress and excitement are visible on a daily basis, is in the design of processors, graphics and SSE. Clearly, our customers aim to achieve highest performance at lowest power. In this area, Synopsys shines. One example is with Samsung, who completed the first-ever production tape-out of a high-speed ARM Cortex-A15 processor relying exclusively on IC Compiler and Galaxy for physical design. Simultaneously, the acceleration to 28-nanometer saw the number of active designs and tape-outs grow 15% to 20% this quarter. The vast majority of these use our Galaxy solution. For the even more advanced 20-nanometer node, we estimate that Synopsys is being used in about 80% of designs and tape-outs. In this context, links to manufacturing become even more important. Our two-pronged strategy features integrating manufacturing elements into design tools for faster and better results and developing manufacturing tools to attack the most difficult challenges at the next advanced processes. Our Proteus mask synthesis solution, for example, continues to gain share. During the quarter, we announced that Renesas had adopted Proteus LRC for lithography verification. Also in the quarter, we had another major manufacturer adopted Proteus for 20-nanometer. In parallel to implementation, verification continues to be a crucial part of the design flow with 70% plus of advanced designs from processors to graphics to SSEs being verified using Synopsys. A particular highlight for the quarter was our success in expanding our verification IP offering. We introduced groundbreaking technical advances in this area, yielding competitive wins at several large companies. For example, last week, we announced that AMD had selected Synopsys as its verification IP partner. Let me briefly also comment on our excellent progress in integrating Magma and working with their customers. In last 90 days since we closed, we integrated all of the teams. While keeping the critical core of technologies and technical support, we're able to recognize considerable expense synergies by eliminating overlapping infrastructure positions. We are progressing swiftly to rationalize facilities and other long-term expenses as well. Focusing immediately on our joint customers, our combined teams conducted very insightful face-to-face worldwide listening tours. In parallel, our R&D teams that detailed cross-training and analysis to assess where strength could be leveraged on each product line. This week, we started to roll out customized roadmaps to our customers responsive to their stated needs. From the start, we have been very clear that we will support the former Magma tools to make sure that our customers' projects will not be jeopardized. It is also clear that in a number of areas, there are very good technologies that will integrate with other Synopsys tools, creating even better solutions and providing interesting upgrade opportunities. We see some of these capabilities becoming available as soon as year end or early next year. Since the roadmap discussions have just started, it's too early to comment on the specifics, but in general, the customer interactions are going very well. Now to IP, where Synopsys is the second largest vendor in the world leading at interface, memory and analog IP blocks. Given the high time-to-market pressure for most consumer applications, and the enormous number of sophisticated IP blocks used in the key SSE chips, the build versus buy trade-off for IP continues to evolve to the benefit of commercial solutions. Q2 is another strong business quarter for our IP, and we continue to expand our portfolio both organically and through acquisition. For example, during the quarter, we acquired 10-gigabit SERDES technology from MOSAID, further expanding our high-speed service offering. With increased attention on the advanced technology nodes, adoption of our IP blocks for advanced 28- and 20-nanometer designs is ramping steadily. We expect Synopsys' IP to continue to be a good driver of growth for us this year. In systems, our SPGA-based and virtual prototyping product line are doing well also. The ability to accelerate embedded software developments by 6 to 9 months is a compelling value proposition for project managers. Given that most prototyping systems are still built in-house today, we see increased outsourcing to commercial solutions from Synopsys as the driver of growth here as well. Bringing IP and system solutions together, last month, we introduced the Soundwave Audio Subsystem, a complete, integrated hardware and software audio IP subsystem for system-on-chip designs. This first of its kind solution is designed to save customers years of integration and verification effort and supports popular audio standards such as Dolby, SRS and DTS. Overall, be it in low power design, in complex system verification or in sophisticated IP reuse, all of our products are supported by a worldwide team of experts that our customers greatly rely on for their differentiation and success. Before I conclude, let me briefly comment on today's announcement that Chi-Foon Chan has been appointed to join me as co-CEO. Many of you know that Chi-Foon and I have been working in this matter for over a decade, and while this is formal recognition of the success we've had in co-leading the company into his present leadership position, there are no major changes in structure or responsibilities. I will continue as Chairman and CEO, being the main face to Wall Street, and Chi-Foon will continue as President and co-CEO shouldering much of the operational responsibilities for the company. I'm extremely pleased that we are recognizing Chi-Foon's hard work and talent in this way. I look forward to together conceive and drive the next phase of growth of Synopsys. In summary, we delivered excellent Q2 results and are raising yearly guidance based on both intrinsic strength in our base business and the addition of Magma. The environment for EDA and Synopsys is robust and demand for our technology is strong. We're making rapid progress in integrating Magma and expect to deliver even better technology going forward. I'll now call over to Brian Beattie.