Cadence Design Systems Q3 2021 Earnings Report

Cadence Design Systems EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.80
• Consensus EPS: $0.75
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.05
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.58

Cadence Design Systems Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $750.90 million
• Expected Revenue: $741.84 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$9.06 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +12.60%

Cadence Design Systems Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2021
• Date: 10/24/2021
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Sunday, October 24, 2021
• Conference Call Time: 8:00PM ET

Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ:CDNS) (NASDAQ: CDNS) is a global provider of electronic design automation (EDA) software, hardware and intellectual property used to design and verify advanced semiconductor chips, systems-on-chip (SoCs), printed circuit boards (PCBs) and packaging. Headquartered in San Jose, California and founded in 1988, Cadence serves semiconductor companies, original equipment manufacturers and system designers across the globe, helping customers accelerate design cycles and manage the complexity of modern integrated systems.

The company's offerings span software tools for digital, custom/analog and mixed-signal design, verification and signoff, as well as solutions for system-level modeling, thermal and signal integrity analysis, and PCB and package design. In addition to software, Cadence supplies hardware platforms for prototyping and verification, pre‑designed IP blocks and reference flows that customers integrate into chip and system development projects. Cadence also provides cloud-enabled design flows and technical services that support deployment, optimization and training.

Cadence's customer base is broad, covering markets such as consumer electronics, communications, data center, automotive and industrial applications, and it operates internationally to support multinational semiconductor and electronics companies. The company complements its product portfolio with professional services, design IP licensing and ecosystem partnerships intended to shorten development timelines and reduce risk for complex designs.

Cadence is led by CEO Anirudh Devgan and a management team focused on innovation in EDA and system design tools, with an emphasis on enabling advanced node semiconductor design, heterogeneous integration and cloud-based design methodologies. The company positions itself as a technology partner for customers navigating the increasing system complexity of modern electronics.

Cadence Design Systems Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Cadence delivered Q3 revenue of $751 million with a 35.7% non-GAAP operating margin, and raised its full-year 2021 outlook to ~11% revenue growth and a 37% non-GAAP operating margin.
• The company launched 13 new products this year—including Integrity 3DIC, Tensilica AI, Midas Safety and the Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio—which contributed to 18% digital and 13% verification revenue growth.
• Verification hardware demand outpaced build capacity as Palladium Z2 and Protium X2 orders surged, while Accellium ML delivered up to 5× faster regression in verification software.
• System Design & Analysis grew 17% year-over-year, driven by Integrity 3DIC adoption, Clarity electromagnetic simulation wins at hyperscalers and new CFD engagements in automotive and aerospace.
• Leadership transition announced: Lip Bu Tan will become Executive Chairman on December 15, with Anurag Devgan succeeding him as President and CEO.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Jamyria, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cadence third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Alan Lindstrom, Senior Group Director of Investor Relations for Cadence. Please go ahead.

[Alan Lindstrom, Senior Group Director of Investor Relations at Cadence]

Thank you, Jamyria. I would like to welcome everyone to our third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Lip-Bu Tan, Chief Executive Officer, Anirudh Devgan, President, and John Wall, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The webcast of this call is available through our website, cadence.com, and will be archived through December 17th, 2021. A copy of today's prepared remarks will also be available on our website at the conclusion of the call today. Please note that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about our business outlook, product development, business strategy and plans, industry and regulatory trends, market size, opportunities, and positioning. Due to known and unknown risks and actual uncertainties, results may differ materially from those projected or implied in today's discussion.

[Alan Lindstrom, Senior Group Director of Investor Relations at Cadence]

For information on factors that could cause a difference in our results, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These include Cadence's most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, and the cautionary comments regarding forward-looking statements in today's earnings press release. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. All such statements are based on estimates and information available to us at this time, and Cadence disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. In addition to financial results prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, we will also present certain non-GAAP financial measures today. Cadence management believes that in addition to using GAAP results in evaluating our business, it can also be useful to review results using certain non-GAAP financial measures.

[Alan Lindstrom, Senior Group Director of Investor Relations at Cadence]

These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP results. These non-GAAP financial measures are not based on any standardized methodology prescribed by GAAP and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures from other companies. Investors and potential investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures with their most direct comparable GAAP financial results in today's earnings press release. Copies of today's earnings press release dated October 25, 2021, for the quarter ended October 2, 2021, related financial tables, and the CFO commentary are also available on our website. For the Q&A session today, we would ask that you observe a limit of one question and one follow-up. You may re-queue if you would like to ask additional questions and time permits. Now I'll turn the call to Lip-Bu.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Cadence delivered strong financial results for the third quarter, driven by accelerating customer demand for our innovative solutions and continued strong execution by the team. Driven by the broad-based strength of our business, we are raising our financial outlook for the third time this year and are expecting about 11% revenue growth and 37% non-GAAP operating margin for 2021. John will provide the details in a moment for both our Q3 results and the updated outlook for the year. The data-driven era is being fueled by generation trends, by 5G, hyperscale computing, autonomous driving, and industrial IoT that are accelerating the digital transformation of several industries. This requires continued innovation in key areas such as compute, connectivity, storage, and data analysis, which is in turn driving secular semiconductor growth and design activity across a wide range of end markets.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

Before I ask Anirudh to go through the business and product highlights for the quarter, I would like to remind you that I will be transitioning to the role of Executive Chairman on December 15th, with Anirudh becoming our President and CEO at that time. It has truly been an honor leading Cadence for the past 13 years. I'm very proud of the team's accomplishments and grateful for the confidence and trust that our customers and shareholders have placed in us. Cadence is extremely well-positioned, and as I hand the baton over to Anirudh, I can think of no other better to lead the company through the next phase of growth, and I am eagerly looking forward to him taking Cadence to new heights. While I will remain engaged with shareholders, this will be my last earnings call.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

Thank you very much for your continued support, and I will now turn the call over to Anirudh.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Thank you, Lip-Bu. Our intelligent system design strategy leverages our strong computational software expertise as we expand beyond EDA into new markets. We are uniquely positioned to capture the exciting opportunity that Lip-Bu talked about. As we execute to our strategy, we are especially pleased to see our EDA, IP, and system solutions being increasingly adopted by a growing number of system companies. For instance, Tesla utilized a broad set of Cadence EDA software solutions and hardware platforms to enable the successful delivery of their innovative Dojo system. Delighting customers and accelerating growth requires a relentless commitment to innovation. This quarter, we launched the Integrity 3D-IC Platform, Tensilica AI Platform, Midas Safety Platform, and the Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio. We have now introduced 13 significant innovative products this year across all of our business groups. These will be key drivers of our future growth.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Let me share some of the business highlights, starting with digital and sign-off, which had another strong quarter with 18% year-over-year revenue growth. Our digital full flow, delivering industry's leading quality of results at the most advanced nodes, continued to proliferate with market-shaping customers and was adopted by 13 new customers. We are very pleased with the growing momentum of our transformative Cadence Cerebrus solution that incorporates unique reinforcement learning AI/ML technology to deliver significant PPA, power, performance, and area, and productivity gains. In addition to Samsung and Renesas' endorsement at the time of launch, several market-shaping customers have added Cadence Cerebrus to their production flows and are realizing great benefits. As an example, a global mobile semiconductor company used Cadence Cerebrus on their manually tuned CPU design to reduce total power by almost 10% and improve timing by over 25% automatically in only eight days.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Additionally, Cadence Cerebrus enabled a marquee mobile system company to reduce the power consumption of their 4 nm design by over 25% and get over 10x improvement in productivity. We continued growing our business with hyperscaler customers, including a broad expansion of our EDA software with a marquee hyperscaler that included a significant commitment to our digital product. Next, I will talk about our verification business, which had a strong quarter with 13% year-over-year revenue growth. Growing system design complexity and need to get first-time right silicon continues to drive strong demand for our verification suite, which provides a comprehensive solution across IP, SoC, and system verification, hardware-software regression, and early software development. This momentum is especially noticeable in our hardware business, where customers are deploying a significant additional capacity as they reap the performance, quality, and productivity benefits of our industry-leading hardware platforms.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Accelerating adoption of our new dynamic duo, the Palladium Z2 and Protium X2, led by hyperscaler and global marquee customers, drove the majority of hardware orders in this quarter. In verification software, Xcelium ML, our machine learning optimized logic simulator delivered up to 5x faster regression, was adopted by marquee customers in North America and Asia. We launched the Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio, a new platform that accelerates the creation of hybrid and virtual prototypes of complex systems, enabling early software bring-up. Helium was endorsed by NVIDIA and several other engagements with leading customers are underway. We also announced the Midas Safety Platform, which is part of the comprehensive Cadence safety solution, featuring integrated digital and analog safety flows and engines for faster certification of safety-critical automotive design.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Moving on to system design and analysis, I'm particularly pleased that this segment, which is driving our market expansion beyond EDA, continues to deliver strong double-digit growth, increasing revenue by 17% year-over-year, as we grow our footprint in several verticals, including aerospace and defense and 5G communication. With 5G and AI/ML applications pushing silicon vertical limits and transistor scaling slowing down, there is an accelerated move to disaggregate SoC into a heterogeneous set of discrete dies that can be integrated together with sophisticated packaging technology. Leveraging over two decades of pioneering packaging expertise, we are very excited to have launched Integrity 3D-IC, the industry's first and only comprehensive platform that ties together our best-in-class system planning, implementation, and thermal timing and power analysis technology, along with a multi-technology database, all in a unified cockpit.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

This third-generation 3D-IC solution enables designers to achieve system-driven PPA with reduced design complexity and faster time to market. We are engaged with several leading semi and system houses, foundries, and packaging companies. Our organically developed system analysis products continued to make good headway. With Clarity, our electromagnetic 3D simulator, displacing the incumbent solution and becoming plan of record at a marquee hyperscaler. Celsius, our electro-thermal 3D simulator, was deployed at a global marquee system customer. Our recently acquired CFD solutions also delivered strong results, winning new business with several automotive and aerospace and defense customers. Now, before I turn it over to John, I want to say a few words about the upcoming CEO transition on December 15th.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

On behalf of the Cadence board and our employees, I want to thank Lip-Bu for his outstanding leadership and his numerous illustrious accomplishments over the past 13 years that have made a lasting impact on our industry and on Cadence. With his laser focus on creating a highly innovative and results-based culture, he drove a cultural transformation at Cadence that was rooted in customer and shareholder success, leading to trusted partnership with leading customers and delivering shareholder return of over 3,500%. I'm especially grateful to Lip-Bu for his mentorship and guidance and look forward to continuing our partnership in our new roles as, along with our talented team, we relentlessly drive to deliver strong business results and delight our customer and shareholders. Now, I will turn it over to John to go through the Q3 results and present our Q4 and updated 2021 outlook.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Thank you, Anirudh, and thank you, Lip-Bu. They say values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave them all over everything you do. Your impact on Cadence has been significant and will last for many, many years to come. It's been a truly remarkable run over the past 13 years, and I feel blessed to have had the chance to work so closely with you. I've also heard it said that legacy is not something you do for yourself, but it's something you leave for the benefit of the next generation. On behalf of all Cadence stakeholders, I'd like to thank you both for conducting such a smooth CEO transition. We haven't missed a beat. Focused execution by the entire Cadence team, combined with broad-based strength across our product portfolio and customer base, drove another strong quarter of top and bottom-line results.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

We exceeded our expectations for all key financial metrics, and we are raising our financial outlook for the year. Now let's go through the key results for the third quarter, beginning with the P&L. Total revenue was $751 million. Non-GAAP operating margin was 35.7%. GAAP EPS was $0.63, and non-GAAP EPS was $0.80. For the balance sheet and cash flow, cash totaled $1.014 billion at quarter end, while the principal value of debt outstanding was $350 million. Operating cash flow was $296 million. DSOs were 40 days, and we repurchased $110 million of Cadence shares during the quarter. Next, let's turn to our updated outlook. Our outlook continues to assume that there will be no changes to the export limitations that exist today.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

For fiscal 2021, we now expect revenue in the range of $2.96 billion-$2.98 billion, non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 37%. GAAP EPS in the range of $2.36-$2.40. Non-GAAP EPS in the range of $3.24-$3.28. Operating cash flow in the range of $975 million-$1.025 billion. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $745 million-$765 million. Non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 35%. GAAP EPS in the range of $0.49-$0.53. Non-GAAP EPS in the range of $0.76-$0.80. We expect to repurchase $110 million of Cadence stock in Q4. Our CFO commentary, which is available on our website, includes our outlook for additional items, as well as further analysis and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

In closing, I am pleased that revenue growth continues to accelerate with our three-year revenue CAGR now approximately 11.5% at the midpoint of guidance. We're expecting approximately $1 billion of operating cash flow for 2021 at the midpoint. We are on track to deliver over 50% incremental operating margin for the year. As always, I want to thank our customers, partners, and of course, our employees for their continued support. With that, operator, we'll now take questions.

[Operator]

At this time, I would like to remind everyone who wants to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad now. As a reminder, please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. We will pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question will come from the line of Joe Vruwink with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

[Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird]

Great. Hi everyone. Let me just start by extending my best to Lip-Bu. Maybe I'll begin with the next generation hardware with emulation and prototyping. I'm wondering, was component availability at all a factor in either meeting demand in the quarter, or does component availability factor in at all to the forward outlook, either in a good way, catching up on maybe things that slipped this quarter or considering maybe some demand getting extended into next year?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Hi, Joe. This is John. Thanks for the question. Yes, we're delighted with the demand for our hardware verification systems, and we're building the systems as quick as we can to meet that demand. Yeah, we're very, very pleased with the customer reaction, and like I said, building the systems as quickly as we can. I would say it's fair to say that demand is outstripping supply right now, but we're building as fast as we can, and you can see it in the inventory number. The inventory's slightly up.

[Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird]

Okay. That's helpful. Then maybe more of a product or strategy question. When thinking about 3D-ICs and the co-design that needs to happen between package and chips being stacked, is it as simple when you think about the opportunity for Cadence, as simple as customers adopting the new Integrity Platform, or is it maybe broader than that and this trend across the industry actually happens to impact and benefit multiple areas of the Cadence product portfolio?

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Yes, that's a great question. Let me take that. This is Anirudh. We believe that 3D-IC is the future, right? The road to the future goes through 3D-IC for multiple reasons, which you know. Putting multiple chips on a package, ability to mix technologies, ability to do bigger and bigger systems. I do believe that Cadence is uniquely positioned for that, and it affects multiple technologies. Some of it is because of our history. We have had a leading platform in packaging for a while with Allegro, and a leading platform in analog with Virtuoso for a while. Then over the last five years, we have done very well in digital.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

If you remember, over the last two, three years, we have done a lot of investment in system analysis, like Clarity and Celsius are also critical for 3D-IC, given that thermal is a big challenge when you put these things together. I believe Cadence is uniquely positioned, and with Integrity, we put this all together. It's not just Integrity, it draws into the other parts of Cadence, like I mentioned. As a comparison, when as we work with customers and leading foundries to do something similar in other products, it's not even one company can bring, you need three or four companies to do the same thing. Whereas if you come to Cadence, we have a comprehensive solution across multiple segments. I think as 3D-IC takes more momentum going forward, I believe we are well-positioned.

[Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird]

That's great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Jason Celino from KeyBanc. Please proceed with your question.

[Jason Celino, Analyst at KeyBanc]

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Lip-Bu, it's been an absolute pleasure. Glad to have you on for one more earnings call. My question, with the supply chain shortages, we've seen several different automakers like Hyundai and Volkswagen announce intentions to design some of their own semiconductors. We know that these design cycles are quite long, and it's a multi-year investment. How do we think about this as maybe an incremental dollar opportunity versus just market shift from customers taking some of those workloads in-house?

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

Jason, first of all, thank you so much for the kind words. In terms of the global supply chain, we're monitoring the semiconductor global supply chain very carefully. So far, we don't see any slowdown in our design activity across our customer base. As you know, our product is very much focused on the R&D engineering, designing their chip system. This is a multi-year approach. I mentioned earlier the generations drivers have been really driving a lot of increase in the design activity. To answer your question in terms of automotive life cycle, yes, you are absolutely correct. It's a multiple year increment. Lately, because of more and more electronics in the automotive, we see a lot of design activity like autonomous driving.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

I think Anirudh mentioned about the Tesla in terms of driving their AI chips and using our broad-based Cadence tool. That's one good example, and many more coming. I think clearly we're excited about the automotive platform that will create opportunity in the multi-years to come.

[Jason Celino, Analyst at KeyBanc]

Okay. Thanks for that. That was helpful. Maybe my quick follow-up is, I think the automotive customers have been maybe the more vocal, but are you seeing these type of trends in other industries as well in terms of the, with that? Thank you.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

I think it's a very interesting, challenging opportunity time in this whole supply chain. Clearly, for the automotive industry, it's starting to become very realized that the whole visibility to the supply chain and become very important for them. In different automotive companies, they experience different challenges in the supply chain, and we are here to help them in terms of the design, automation, and the whole system level, complexity of design and then time to market. We try to be available and be helpful to them as a design partner and also support them throughout this period. I think you're going to see more and more opportunity, and the automotive is a big platform for us.

[Jason Celino, Analyst at KeyBanc]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jackson Ader from JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

[Jackson Ader, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Great. Good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll just quickly echo all the kind words that have already been said about Lip-Bu. Yeah, congratulations, and looking forward to continuing the relationship. Anirudh, you mentioned that in the last few years, digital tools have been driving a lot of growth, and I think you also mentioned that a hyperscaler this past quarter significantly increased their digital footprint. I'm just curious, what tools, or at least what parts of the digital design flow, just from a high level of synthesis, place and route, what have you, are actually driving the increased uptick maybe in the last 12-18 months in digital?

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Yes. Thanks, Jackson, for the question. I think as you know, like at lower nodes, we have always believed that the integration of the whole digital full flow is critical. That synthesis, place and route, and sign-off. What we are pleased to see, especially in the last, let's say, 12 months, is wider deployment of our digital full flow. If we went back a few years ago, the engagement would start with Innovus, and that was the leading kind of product that we would do well in. Now I think the overall market has accepted our full flow, and we see more and more signs of that. That includes synthesis and sign-off along with Innovus. That is becoming more the norm than anything else.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

To answer your question, not only Innovus does well, but now synthesis and sign-off, which is Genus and Tempus and Voltus. We are pretty happy with the proliferation. I think that's the trend here to stay. Yes.

[Jackson Ader, Analyst at JPMorgan]

All right. Awesome. Thank you. Quick follow-up, John, what is going on with backlog and the implied bookings? It's really swung around a bunch this year. Just curious if there were any duration impacts or what we should be reading into in terms of the implied bookings number this quarter.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Yes. Jackson, thanks for the question. I wouldn't read too much into it. It's like the timing of contract renewals. We had a similar phenomenon in Q1. We would expect to end the year with a higher backlog in RPO than we started the year. That's reflected as well if you have a look at the margin guidance for Q4. Margin guidance for Q4 is slightly down on what we achieved in Q3 because of the impact of some hiring and an expectation for higher sales commission costs in Q4 because we expect a lot of bookings to come through in Q4.

[Jackson Ader, Analyst at JPMorgan]

All right. Awesome. Thank you.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

No worries.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Pradeep Ramani from UBS. Please proceed with your question.

[Pradeep Ramani, Analyst at UBS]

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to get some more insight on the verification piece. It seems like the verification for September flattish to down a little bit versus June, yet hardware seems to be doing well. Are we to sort of interpret that it's more on the software side that you're seeing maybe a little less growth than what might have been anticipated, or are you being constrained on the hardware side? I just want to get a sense about the ramp on the hardware side as well.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Hi, Pradeep, this is John. We're absolutely delighted with the customer reaction to our new hardware systems, and we're building and installing inventory as fast as we can to meet their demand. I'd remind you that Cadence is part of the design cycle, so it hasn't really impacted us too much with our customers. In relation to your comments on growth, we raised guidance for the year. We're very happy with growth. We're seeing accelerating growth. When you look at the three-year CAGRs, and I've called them out on the CFO commentary, it's rounding up to 12%. Now it's approximately 11.5%, and that seems to continue to increase year after year. That's reflecting strong demand across all lines of business.

[Pradeep Ramani, Analyst at UBS]

Okay. For my follow-up on the digital IP piece, it has been very strong. Are you seeing increasing competitor displacement or is it more of a market being strong? Can you speak to maybe qualitatively on how you're sort of viewing digital IP going forward as well?

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Well, it continues to do well, like you saw. I think it's a combination of things. The market is definitely growing because of all this design activity, as you can see in these multiple domains. The market is growing. We believe that we are also taking market share. I would say it's a combination of both these things driving our digital growth.

[Pradeep Ramani, Analyst at UBS]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Jay Vleeschhouwer with Griffin Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Jay Vleeschhouwer, Analyst at Griffin Securities]

Thank you. Good evening. Anirudh, both of my questions are for you. First, on a personal note, Lip-Bu, it's been a pleasure working with you for the last 13 years, and certainly look forward to continuing the dialogue with Anirudh. First question, Anirudh, at the CadenceLIVE Europe conference a week or so ago, Cadence said in one of your presentations that Allegro had recently undergone a quote, "major overhaul," which we certainly saw with Allegro X. The question is, what's next in terms of anything you might be working on for an additional major overhaul? We do see this periodically in EDA.

[Jay Vleeschhouwer, Analyst at Griffin Securities]

For example, Synopsys a few years ago significantly ramped up its internal investments in synthesis, and they launched their new version of DC, and I'm wondering, based on what seemed to be your internal investment patterns, if you're undergoing a rejuvenation or reinvestment cycle for your synthesis or what else you might be able to talk about in terms of any major overhauls. Secondly, with regard to the ingredients you need to succeed with the computational software strategy, there was an interesting announcement two weeks ago of a relationship between Synopsys and Dassault, and I'm wondering if you see your having to partner more for both technical and channel expansion reasons to succeed in computational software.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Yeah, Jay, those are both great questions. I think in terms of, you said new products or revamp of existing products. We are continuously looking at that all the time. We want to make sure all our products are doing well. As you can see this year, we have launched 13 new products. Several of them are improvement of existing products like Allegro X or Sigrity X. I think this is a continuous process. As you know, we have a very high investment in R&D compared to our peers. We are constantly looking at that, and you will see more things come out, of course, as we go forward. On the second one, we are confident in our computational software strategy, and it's delivering good results. I think we have a lot of organic ability to innovate, which we demonstrated with Clarity and Celsius.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

At the same time, we are definitely looking at new partnerships that make sense. Like you said, both on the product side and on the go-to-market side. I think we will talk about them when they're ready. Cadence always has a culture of partnering. We partner, for example, with MATLAB. That was a great partnership at the system level. We partnered with National Instruments when we bought AWR from them. We have partnership with Green Hills. We are always looking for win-win partnerships, and that continues to be the case going forward.

[Jay Vleeschhouwer, Analyst at Griffin Securities]

Yeah. All right. Thanks, Anirudh.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Gal Munda from Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

[Gal Munda, Analyst at Berenberg]

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Just this first one in terms of the strong marginal performance again, and then kind of thinking about for the rest of the year, maybe John, to you. You mentioned that a little bit's got to do with the timing, a little bit's got to do with investment. If we're thinking about a kind of sustainability of the margin performance, how much is a kind of inability or maybe not being able to hire and invest as much as you'd like right now versus just the top line really driving the additional scale that you're seeing, if that makes sense?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Yeah. Great question, Gal, and we're back on track with hiring. I think our hiring performance has been really good, and we're delighted to be recognized on so many of these top 100 places to work around the world. That's certainly helping us with our hiring activity. On the margin side, it's really outperforming from the revenue side on right across all our lines of business. We thought IP would have a soft middle to the year and it would recover toward the end of the year, started recovering a bit earlier, but they had a strong finish to Q3, and we're expecting good things for them in Q4. On the hardware side, again, demand, customer reaction has been tremendous and demand is really strong there. On the software side, all lines of business are performing really, really well.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Like you say, if you look over a contract cycle over a three-year CAGR basis, that we're continuing to see accelerated revenue growth. On the operating leverage side, we're delighted with the operating margin performance. Second half of the year includes some double up on expenses. We did an early retirement program. I think the overall business is pretty much, if you take out the one-time things, we're operating pretty much at the guide we've given for the year, which is about 37%.

[Gal Munda, Analyst at Berenberg]

Got you. To follow up, just on the top line again, we touched a little bit on the supply chain issues in the semis. When you move kind of through the year, you said it's incrementally affecting the business on the royalties. Now we're talking about the hardware demand being stronger than kind of the ability to supply. Is there a way to kind of quantify that from your perspective in order to kind of understand the magnitude of the impact that kind of demand is there, but we're kind of limited by the supply side?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Yeah. It's a very small impact to us. Like I say, the majority of our revenue comes from part of the design cycle. The chip capacity constraints that you're referring to has really impacted the production side of the cycle, that's where it touches us in terms of royalty revenue. I think last year, royalty revenue for Cadence was around $50 million. This year, it'll be slightly lower than $50 million. We'd expect that to recover again next year.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Yeah. The impact is pretty small. The same on the hardware side, we're happy with our supply chain, and you see inventory growing a little bit. We talked a couple of years ago about moving from just in time to just in case, in terms of our inventory management. We carry a lot of inventory, so I think we're well-protected, certainly for the next few quarters on the supply chain side. Yeah, we're very happy with where we're positioned right now.

[Gal Munda, Analyst at Berenberg]

Right. Just to clarify on the royalties, nothing has changed over the last couple of quarters once you kind of said that the impact is being slightly down from last year. That's kind of consistent to what you're saying.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

That's right. Our IP business is a mix of licensing and royalty business. Any chip capacity constraints from last year could feed into unit production this year, and royalties are slightly down, but it's very, very small in terms of the impact to Cadence on our overall numbers.

[Gal Munda, Analyst at Berenberg]

Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Gary Mobley from Wells Fargo Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Gary Mobley, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Hey, guys. For different reasons, let me extend my congratulations for the next chapter for Anirudh and Lip-Bu. I wanted to start out by asking about the X2, Z2 products and the step function increase in processing power that these new tools facilitate. The way I understand it allows customers to not only bring up hardware, but also in parallel, bring up software. My question is: Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of how this increases the potential dollar opportunity with each customer engagement or how it improves your sort of available market with this new software bring-up capability? Thank you. And I have a follow-up.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Yes, Gary, that's a great question, and you're absolutely right. The reason for doing also Protium X2 with having the same front end as Palladium is to expand our reach to more and more software bring-up. This quarter, when we launch Helium, that's for the same reason. Not only we can run RTL, but with Helium, we can run hybrid models, higher-level models with RTL. All this is for software bring-up. Historically, I think Cadence has done well in RTL bring-up with Palladium, but not as well. The market is growing more in the software bring-up, and now we are doing pretty well with the combination of Palladium and Protium and Helium for software bring-up.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

I think in terms of the market, of course, it's difficult to quantify, but at a high level, I think the market opportunity is maybe 1.5x-2x larger once you combine the software and the hardware bring-up together. Of course, it takes several years to fully realize all this, but I think the market opportunity for Cadence with Protium, Palladium, and Helium is much expanded because of the software bring-up opportunity.

[Gary Mobley, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

All right. Appreciate that, Anirudh. Perhaps this is for John, but I wanted to ask about the navigating the China export restrictions, and maybe if you can give us a sense of whether it's any more difficult or any easier to obtain licenses to service those customers based in China, and then maybe give us a sense of what the various puts and takes are there for China revenue growth or lack thereof as we sit here in the second half of fiscal year 2021.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Gary. Good question. When I look at China revenue, I think it's probably easier to look at China over a two-year period because last year, with the pandemic impact and the 53rd week impacting Q4, I think if you look at where we're on track for 2021, it's probably 30% CAGR in terms of growth in China since 2019. We're working our way through all the export controls and everything and all the compliance that's required. We have, and we will continue to comply with all export control regulations. The situation is fluid and we have to continuously monitor it. Our outlook assumes everything that exists today remains in place today. We haven't predicted any changes. Of course, if there are changes, we would have to take another look at our outlook.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Essentially, for the sake of guidance, we just assume that all export limitations that exist today for certain customers will remain in place for the remainder of the year. For 2022, we'll update you all on 2022 when we give you our year-end results in February.

[Gary Mobley, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Thanks, John.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Tom Diffely from D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

[Tom Diffely, Analyst at D.A. Davidson]

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Lip-Bu, I guess I've only been around for the last 12 years. Since then, the stock's gone from $6 to $167, so obviously very impressive, but I look forward to Anirudh taking it to $4,000 over the next 12, 13 years. I guess a question on the supply chain from maybe a little different angle. What are you seeing in terms of capacity at the foundries? Just curious if you're taking steps to diversify foundry activity from either geographic or company-specific reasons.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

That's a good question. I think like Lip-Bu and John mentioned, we are more on the design side, so we are trying to make sure that we can serve all our customers as they continue to do all these designs. In that process, we work with all the foundries, all the major foundries, of course, in the U.S. and Asia and different parts of the world. We have a pretty healthy relationship with all the major ones, and we are encouraged to see more investment in the U.S. With our overall position, Tom, we are pretty active with all the major foundries, and we hope to continue that.

[Tom Diffely, Analyst at D.A. Davidson]

I was wondering more on just the manufacturing of your chips that you design and build and put in your Palladiums and what have you.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Okay. I got it. Yeah. I think the current set of Palladium chips, Palladium is a big system, so it has a lot of chips that goes into it. Some of them we buy, and some of them we make ourselves. The ones we make ourselves are made by TSMC. It's one of the leading foundries, and we continue to work with them. We are designing new systems, the next generation of Z2 and all, and we always look at all the foundries. Overall, we are very happy with our foundry partners for the Palladium Z2 system.

[Tom Diffely, Analyst at D.A. Davidson]

Okay. Great. I'm curious, are you seeing an impact from COVID in any of the kind of many regions that you participate in around the world from just more of a manpower point of view?

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

I think it's fair to say that the impact was more like a few months ago. We still have impact, and we are still mostly, of course, working from home in several parts of the world. We're slowly opening some offices. In terms of we had a big impact in India a few months ago, I think that has thankfully improved. It's become more of the norm now, and we just continue to work through it. No new things, I think, in the last three months. Our return to work was delayed a little bit because of Delta, so we hope to take that up early next year. Other than that, we are working through all the COVID issues.

[Tom Diffely, Analyst at D.A. Davidson]

Great. Okay. Thank you, Anirudh.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Thank you, Tom.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of John Pitzer with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

[John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question, and I'll add my thanks and congratulations to Lip-Bu. My first question, John and Anirudh, is really on that three-year CAGR acceleration. John, I know we've got to wait another 90 days before you give us a full outlook for calendar year 2022, but it's impressive that you guys have seen this acceleration over the last two years in the midst of sort of a global pandemic. If you look at street consensus numbers for next year, they've got growth that goes back to that high single digits, yet you talked earlier about demand outstripping supply.

[John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Just wondering if you think these double-digit CAGRs are sort of here to stay, and if so, to what extent is this sort of the fruits of your labor in some of your SAM expansion efforts versus some of the dynamics of the core business?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

John, that's a great question. I think the nature of our revenue model is such that I wouldn't expect any dramatic changes in our three-year revenue CAGRs because 85%-90% of the revenue is recurring in nature. So, when we calculate three-year CAGRs by the end of 2022, we'll be including 2020 and 2021 in that, and so you shouldn't really have a dramatic change. I think if you have a look at the CFO commentary, you'll see the kind of step function that we've seen over the last few years. It's been slowly accelerating, but it's pleasing to see that it continues to accelerate, and that we're just up over 11.5% now, so rounding up to 12% this year. Yeah, very pleased with the way the business is going. Again, we will refrain on talking anymore about 2022.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

We need another 90 days just to get through Q4 for that. Yeah, very, very pleased with the way it's going, and because of the recurring revenue nature of so much of our business, I wouldn't expect the three-year CAGR to change very much.

[John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse]

That's helpful. Anirudh, I'd love to get your thoughts. Clearly the U.S. and Europe have, I guess, rediscovered how strategically important the semiconductor business is, and you're seeing sort of this push to regionalization of supply. It's not just about manufacturing. I think that world governments are going to incentivize sort of IP domestically as well. I'm kind of curious if you guys have kind of thought through, or could help us think through, what you think the impact to your business will be from things like the CHIPS Act and similar legislation that's trying to make its way through the EU right now.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Yeah, that's a great point, and we are eagerly awaiting all the details. As you know, in the CHIPS Act, there is funding for manufacturing, but there's also funding for R&D, and then as you said, it's not just the hardware or the manufacturing equipment, it's also the IP and the software that enables all these things. I think we are optimistic about all this investment in different parts of the world. I think the details, as you know, still have to be sorted out. Overall, we have a strong portfolio in multiple geographies, so as there is more investment in U.S. and Europe, I think that is systemically positive.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Yeah. John, that's a great indication. Oh, sorry.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Yes, go ahead, John.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

That's a great indication of all the design activity that's going on. We're seeing strong secular demand, across all these generational drivers. We have a great strategy, great portfolio, and solid execution. Everything you mentioned kind of just indicates more design activity globally, and that's good for Cadence.

[John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Charles Shi from Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

[Charles Shi, Analyst at Needham & Company]

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I want to go back to your prepared remarks. You mentioned about Integrity 3D-IC being the industry's first and only comprehensive platform for 3D-IC. A few days ago, your competitor put out the press release. They said their product is a complete end-to-end solution. I just wonder, how do I kind of reconcile the two different comments, around these two competing products? In addition, your competitor, Synopsys, they announced a strategic collaboration with TSMC, yet folks obviously did not see a similar press release coming from you guys right ahead of TSMC opening the innovation platform forum, which will start tomorrow. kind of wonder how you're positioning and what's the progress of Integrity 3D versus your competing platform. Thank you.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

Thank you. That's a good question. In terms of Integrity, like I said in my remarks, I think we are pretty confident of our position. A lot of these 3D-IC things, it's not one thing, it's a combination of a lot of things. For example, some 3D-IC systems are more package-based. Some are more package technology-based. Some of them are more interposer-based, which is a more digital technology. All in all, Cadence is the most unique platform. We have leadership in packaging with Allegro, with analog and Virtuoso, with digital in Innovus, and all the analysis tools with Clarity and Celsius, and they're all integrated and best-of-class solutions. Okay. We are pretty confident of our position and the response we are getting.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

To your question with TSMC, TSMC is a great partner of Cadence, and we are working with them on a variety of things, including Integrity 3D-IC. I see, to give you example, one of the leading mobile customers did a 3D-IC solution with us and TSMC, and one of the key things there was the thermal profile, and they used Celsius to do silicon validation, that Celsius is accurate for 3D-IC temperature simulation. I think 3D-IC is going to be big, and it requires multiple products and multiple implementation flows, and we are pretty confident in our position.

[Charles Shi, Analyst at Needham & Company]

Thank you, Anirudh. Maybe a second question, not sure if this has been asked before, since I recently just started following you guys. I want to ask a question about Intel. The Intel IDM 2.0 strategy. I know you probably don't want to be too customer specific, but that turnaround effort by Intel is too material to ignore, in my opinion. Any thoughts on how Cadence can do to support Intel's grand turnaround efforts over the coming years? If you don't want to comment Cadence specific, maybe give us some color at the industry level. Thank you.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

Yes, thank you for the question. I think Intel, we are glad to do more with Intel. Actually, they have the Intel Foundry announcement and also some new programs, like RAMP-C with the government. I'll just quote you what is already public by Randhir, who's the Head of Intel Foundry. He said, "Along with our customers and ecosystem partners, including IBM, Cadence, Synopsys, and others, we will bolster the domestic semiconductor supply chain." This is an official comment from Intel, and I think we let them speak for their strategy, but we are glad to do more with Intel. Thank you.

[Charles Shi, Analyst at Needham & Company]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our final question will come from the line of Vivek Arya from Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thanks for taking my question and congrats and best wishes to Lip-Bu and Anirudh from my side as well. For my first one, on your NUMECA and Pointwise acquisition, and just kind of the general expansion into system analysis and CFD, could you give us a sense, how big is it today? How big can it be over the next one, two years? Importantly, when does that start becoming accretive, right, to the 11.5% kind of growth model that you have?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Yeah, we're very pleased.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

I think.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Go on. Sorry, Anirudh.

[Anirudh Devgan, President at Cadence]

No, go ahead, John. Yeah.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

I was just saying we're very pleased with the M&A integration for NUMECA and Pointwise. They're not hugely significant from a revenue standpoint right now. We would expect them to be accretive next year.

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. Maybe as a follow-up, I think, John, you mentioned some higher costs in Q4. Are they one-off costs or do they become kind of the baseline as we start thinking about OpEx for next year?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Great question. I expect slightly higher costs in Q4 versus Q3, partly due to, we did a bit of catch-up in hiring in Q3, and of course, anyone we hired in the second half of Q3 will have a full quarter of their expense in Q4, where you didn't have a full quarter of expense in Q3. There's a slight uptick for that. Secondly, I expect a little bit more on commission costs because we expect bookings to be stronger in Q4, because I would anticipate that we will finish the year with a stronger RPO than we started the year. Expecting a good bookings quarter in Q4, which will add a little bit of commissions expense. Also we have slightly higher T&E investment in the forecast.

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

That continues into Q1? I know you're not giving Q1 guidance. All else being equal, does that become kind of the baseline for going into Q1?

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

I feel very good about the continuing operating leverage. I don't think there's any near-term ceiling on operating leverage. You'll see that we're up to 37% now, but it's the fifth year in a row that we've delivered more than 50% incremental margins. Every dollar of revenue growth from 2017 until now, we're dropping through more than $0.50 of that revenue growth through to operating income. As long as we're delivering incremental margins of over 50%, operating leverage should continue to rise.

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. Thanks very much.

[John Wall, SVP and CFO at Cadence]

Thanks.

[Operator]

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn it back over to Lip-Bu Tan for closing remarks.

[Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence]

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. It is an exciting time for Cadence with the growing market opportunities and strong business momentum. Our intelligent system design strategy is playing out very nicely as we benefit from new opportunities in design excellence, system innovation, and pervasive intelligence, an expanded total addressable market. We are proud of the innovative and inclusive culture that we've built at Cadence, are grateful for the recognitions that we received over the years, including most recently being named as one of the World's Best Workplaces for the sixth time by Fortune and a great place to work, as well as being named to Newsweek list of Most Loved Workplaces for 2021. Lastly, on behalf of our employees and our board of directors, we thank our customers and partners for their continued trust and confidence during this unprecedented times.

[Operator]

Thank you for participating in today's Cadence third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Anirudh Devgan, President
• John Wall, SVP and CFO

Analysts

• Alan Lindstrom, Senior Group Director of Investor Relations at Cadence
• Charles Shi, Analyst at Needham & Company
• Gal Munda, Analyst at Berenberg
• Gary Mobley, Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities
• Jackson Ader, Analyst at JPMorgan
• Jason Celino, Analyst at KeyBanc
• Jay Vleeschhouwer, Analyst at Griffin Securities
• Joe Vruwink, Analyst at Baird
• John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse
• Lip-Bu Tan, CEO at Cadence
• Pradeep Ramani, Analyst at UBS
• Tom Diffely, Analyst at D.A. Davidson
• Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America