益華電腦 (CDNS) 2018 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon.

My name is Jesse, and I'll be your conference operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cadence First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call.

(Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Alan Lindstrom, Senior Group Director of Investor Relations for Cadence.

Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jesse, and I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter 2018 earnings conference call.

I am joined by Lip-Bu Tan, CEO; and John Wall, Senior Vice President and CFO.

The webcast of this call is available through our website, cadence.com, and will be archived through June 15, 2018.

A copy of today's prepared remarks will also be available on our website at the conclusion of today's call.

Please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements and that actual results may differ materially from those expectations.

For information on the 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, including the company's future filings, and the cautionary comments regarding forward-looking statements in the earnings press release we issued today.

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.

Investors and potential investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures with their most direct comparable GAAP financial measures.

The reconciliations are available at the Investor Relations section of cadence.com.

Copies of today's press release dated April 23, 2018, for the quarter ended March 31, 2018, related financial tables and the CFO commentary are also available on our website.

Finally, note that our 10-Q will be filed later this week.

Now I'll turn the call over to Lip-Bu.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for joining us today.

I'm very pleased to report that Cadence achieved excellent operating results for the Q -- the first quarter.

Based on the strength of our Q1 business and continuing momentum, we are raising our guidance for the year.

John will provide details in a moment.

The data-driven economy is being propelled by key technology waves of mobile, cloud/data center, edge computing, automotive, and most significantly, machine learning.

These technologies create massive amounts of data which need to be processed, analyzed, transmitted and stored.

These require power-efficient processing, high-bandwidth transmission and high-density storage which, in turn, are driving an increase in design activity and broad-based demand for our innovative system design enablement solution.

Now I will review some of the highlights from Q1.

Our system design enablement strategy enables us to increase our footprint with system companies and tailor our solution for vertical market segments.

One of these vertical segments is aerospace and defense where in Q1, we expanded our business with large orders from these companies.

Turning to products.

Our digital and signoff business continued its strong market momentum in Q1.

We collaborated with Imec, an international research and innovation hub, on the industry-first 3-nanometer cache chip tapeout using Cadence Innovus Implementation Systems and Genus Synthesis Solution.

We continue to proliferate our digital solutions within market-shaping customers.

And we broadened adoptions among other customers, including a major defense contractor that would use our digital flow for in-house chip design.

Both a leading networking company and a top communication processor company adopted our digital flow for 7-nanometer designs, continuing our momentum at the most advanced process node.

We achieved strong performance with our system design and verification solutions in Q1.

The Cadence verification suite marked a strong quarter as the business grew over 20% year-over-year.

Palladium added 5 new customers, and we booked 17 repeat orders.

And Protium S1, targeting the prototyping market, continued to ramp as customers realized faster design bring-up due to common front end with our Palladium Z1 platform.

During the quarter, we added 4 new Protium customers and booked 5 repeat orders.

Our hardware products nicely complement the software solutions in our verification suite: Xcelium for parallel simulation and JasperGold for formal verification.

30 additional customers adopted Xcelium in Q1.

Our custom and analog design business continued to do extremely well, and we lead the market with our flagship Virtuoso product line.

We introduced major enhancements to our Virtuoso custom IC design platform that improves electronic system and IC design productivity.

A new set of innovative methodologies and technologies, including support for 5-nanometer nodes lead to more than a 3x reduction in FinFET layout effort.

One of our automotive customers, Bosch, endorsed the new system, saying that their long-term collaboration with Cadence has led to crucial innovation in both electrical-aware and a new electrical-driven layout design.

Customers, including defense contractors, analog semiconductor companies and mobile chip makers, are adopting our Virtuoso system design platform, especially for products using heterogeneous multi-die integration.

Our IP business, with its refined strategy and augmented road map, is well positioned to take advantage of continuing outsourcing trends.

Momentum for our flagship DDR and PCIe products continued with significant wins, especially for 7-nanometer designs.

We announced a new Tensilica Vision Q6, our latest processor for embedded vision and on-device AI applications built on a new faster processor architecture.

The Vision Q6 builds upon our highly successful Vision P6 that is used in many leading application processors, including Kirin 970 SoC from HiSilicon.

Finally, I want to talk about the culture we are building at Cadence that underlines all our success.

We are committed to driving an innovative and incisive culture that embrace the diversity of our global workforce.

The strength of our culture is highlighted by the recognition we received from Fortune.

We earned the #38 spot on the list of Fortune's Top 100 Best Companies to Work For and are proud to make the list for the fourth year in a row.

Our commitment to innovation can be seen in more than 20 significant new products the Cadence team has developed in the past 3 years.

We are also focused on supporting our global communities and have been recognized by the Fortune as a Best Workplace for Giving Back.

When I joined the company, one of my top priorities had been building a culture that differentiate Cadence.

We can be proud of what we have accomplished.

I am encouraged by the progress we are making, and we will continue to make our culture central to our business strategy.

Before turning it over to John, let me quickly summarize my comments.

We drove excellent results through consistent execution and broad-based proliferation and adoption of our solutions to meet the needs of the data-driven economy.

We are raising our guidance for the year on the strength of our business.

Our growing aerospace and defense business had a strong quarter.

We continued to grow adoption of our digital flow for 7-nanometer designs, and we introduced a major upgrade of our flagship Virtuoso platform product line for custom/analog designs and a new higher-performance Tensilica processor for vision and AI applications.

With that, I would now turn the call over to John to review the financial results and provide our updated outlook.

Thanks, Lip-Bu, and good afternoon, everyone.

I'm very pleased to report we exceeded all of our key operating metrics in Q1.

As a result of strong execution across our business, we are increasing our outlook for fiscal 2018.

Before we get into Q1 results, I'd like to remind you that Cadence has now adopted the new revenue accounting standard known as ASC Topic 606 for fiscal 2018.

These new rules, as we often refer to them, are now GAAP for Cadence.

The numbers I present for our first quarter are based on these new rules, unless otherwise stated.

Please also keep in mind that the numbers for 2018 under the new rules are not directly comparable to those of 2017, which were reported under ASC Topic 605, or for ease of reference, the old rules.

Cadence used a modified retrospective transition method on adoption of the new rules.

Under this transition method, rather than recast prior periods, we are required to dual report our 2018 results.

So alongside our new GAAP rules, we will also provide you today our first quarter results for 2018 as reported under the old rules.

These results under the old rules are directly comparable to 2017.

Having covered that, let's go through the key results for the first quarter, starting with the P&L.

As reported under the new rules, total revenue was $517 million, non-GAAP operating margin was 27.8%, GAAP EPS was $0.26 and non-GAAP EPS was $0.40.

Under the old rules, for direct comparison against our Q1 2017 results, total revenue was $525 million, non-GAAP operating margin was 29.5%, GAAP EPS was $0.30 and non-GAAP EPS was $0.44.

Please note that approximately $0.04 of the year-over-year improvement in our non-GAAP EPS is directly attributable to the reduction in our effective tax rate resulting from the recent U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Please also note that $6 million of the $8 million difference in revenue for Q1 between new rules and old rules is attributable to changes in revenue recognition for IP.

Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flow.

Cash and short-term investments were $752 million at quarter-end, of which approximately 30% was onshore.

Debt outstanding at quarter-end was $695 million.

Operating cash flow was $158 million.

During Q1, we used $50 million for share repurchases and $40 million to pay down borrowings under our revolving credit facility.

As reported, DSOs were 41 days.

Under the old rules, DSOs were 38 days.

I will now provide our updated guidance.

On the heels of strong execution in our first quarter and continuing momentum for our business, we are raising our outlook for the year.

We now expect revenue growth of approximately 8% for 2018 on an apples-to-apples basis under the old rules.

For Q2, we expect the following results: revenue in the range of $510 million to $520 million, non-GAAP operating margin in the range of 27% to 28%, GAAP EPS in the range of $0.20 to $0.22, non-GAAP EPS in the range of $0.39 to $0.41 and DSOs of approximately 40 days.

Our updated guidance for fiscal 2018 is: revenue in the range of $2.055 billion to $2.085 billion, non-GAAP operating margin in the range of 27% to 28%, GAAP EPS in the range of $0.86 to $0.94, non-GAAP EPS in the range of $1.57 to $1.65.

We are increasing operating cash flow to a range of $510 million to $$550 million, an increase of $25 million at the midpoint, and we expect to continue to repurchase Cadence common stock at the rate of $50 million per quarter during 2018.

Please note that we expect -- revenue under the old rules will be approximately $30 million higher than under the new rules, with $20 million of that difference attributable to changes in revenue recognition for IP.

There is no impact to our cash flows or to how we operate our business.

As a result, our implied 2018 guidance at the midpoint under the new rules -- or under the old rules is now revenue of approximately $2.1 billion, representing growth of 8% compared to the previous estimate of 7%; non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 28.6%; GAAP EPS of $1.01; and non-GAAP EPS of $1.70.

This quarter, I especially urge you to read through our CFO commentary, which was included with our 8-K filing today and is available on our website.

There, you will find additional information and comparisons and reconciliations for the new and old revenue accounting rules, and you can see how all of our lines of business performed throughout the first quarter of 2018.

Functional verification had a particularly strong quarter with great momentum across the entire verification suite.

We continue to see strength across all lines of our core software business and our IP business is performing in line with my expectation that it will prove to be the fastest-growing part of our business for 2018 on an apples-to-apples basis.

To sum up today's call, I want to highlight that I am pleased with our performance across all lines of business.

I'd like to thank the extended Cadence team for their financial discipline and for their drive and passion to make our customers successful and for the very large part they have all played in raising our revenue growth projections to 8% for the year.

The hard work is starting to pay off.

With that, operator, we'll now take questions.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Gary Mobley with Benchmark.

I want to start with a question about capital allocation.

You mentioned that you raised your cash flow outlook for the year.

You have 10 percentage points more of your cash in the U.S. now versus at the end of the year.

I'm just curious why you're not getting more aggressive on your share buyback.

And with respect to capital allocation, how would you characterize the M&A environment out there with respect to valuation expectations from some of the targets and whatnot?

That's a good question, Gary.

I'll take the first part, and then I'll ask Lip-Bu to take the second part on M&A.

But board and management at Cadence are laser-focused on creating shareholder value.

And as you know, we regularly review capital structure and capital allocation to balance investment needs, risk, liquidity and capital return.

Also, as we said in the last call, in the first half of this year, we plan to review our overall tax position in light of the new tax act, including our options for the use of repatriated cash.

But -- so that's all in focus right now.

Yes, on the M&A front, Gary, I think the board and the management are laser-focused on creating shareholder value, strategic-driven and disciplined approach.

And our M&A philosophy has always been very disciplined and -- to tie into our EDA SDE strategy and also focused on customers with differentiating technology products and then attracting the best talent in terms of managerial or technical talents and also able to provide a compelling return on investment and acquisition.

We review it with our board, with our management, hold ourselves accountable for all the key acquisitions.

And so that had been our discipline for doing that.

So I think we're going to continue, laser-focused on our internal development and using M&A to supplement our organic growth.

Okay.

I had a question about the mix between systems companies and merchant IC companies.

I know you probably get asked the question a lot, and I don't know if you have an exact figure you can state from your Q1 results, but what do you estimate your mix between systems companies and merchant IC companies was for the first quarter?

And I guess even more specific, what would you guesstimate your non-IC design revenue contribution in Q1?

So Gary, I can tell you that we haven't drilled into the mix for Q1.

But the last time we measured the mix, it was around 40% system companies.

I know that hasn't changed in a while, but that's because we've seen growth from both the systems business and also our semiconductor business.

Gary, if I can add, is our system and IC business are doing well.

And we, first of all, focus on our tool in IP supporting our IC customers and then, meanwhile, approach the system design enablement to tailor some of our solution in IP to meet the customer in the systems side in terms of driving some of the success, especially in the PCB and the system integrity analysis side.

And then now, we're starting to really pursuing the automotive, and then we have great success this quarter and last quarter.

Same thing with aerospace and defense that we highlight this quarter, that we received multiple large orders from several of these defense and contractor and aerospace companies.

We are delighted some of these vertical markets we are pursuing.

And same thing with automotive.

And the last quarter, we highlight a very strategic relationship with a market-shaping automotive maker in terms of software and hardware IP service solutions.

And then the other part, we also signed last year in the beginning, a large design IP with a major semiconductor customer, automotive customer.

And then the other part, we're also very pursuing the cloud/data center, the optimization and -- in terms of driving some of the success and solution for them.

Clearly, nusemi is a great acquisition for us so that we can really provide that ultrahigh-speed connectivity for them.

Your next question comes from Monika Garg with KeyBanc.

First on the IP, so if I just look -- I know ASC 606, IP is kind of down $10 million year-over-year.

Could you maybe give us an idea how much of it is just due to accounting ASC 606?

And what would happen in the revenue otherwise?

Monika, thanks for the question.

Yes, in Q1 of 2017, if you remember, as part of our transition to the new revenue accounting standard, we recognized an extra quarter of royalties.

That added about $5 million to IP revenue back in Q1 2017, so you have to allow for that when you're considering growth.

Also, IP revenue recognition was impacted most by the 606 revenue transition.

$6 million of the $8 million difference between 605 and 606 revenue for Q1 was related to IP.

So on an apples-to-apples basis, IP was actually up year-over-year, but -- and I made a point in my script to call out the fact that I still expect that to be the fastest-growing part of our business for 2018.

And that's despite the fact that in our 10-K, we highlighted that the acquisitions that we did in 2017 are not expected to generate significant revenue in 2018.

And then, Monika, I think just to add on, clearly, this -- we're excited about the IP business and the outsourcing trend is continue.

And clearly, we have some of the most differentiating IP under this new, refined, augmented strategy and then focus on the most advanced nodes.

And then the other part is some of the -- Tensilica, we highlight this new -- the Q6, and then also the nusemi acquisition for the high-speed SerDes, and then also the DDR and PCIe.

So we have a very good portfolio to drive some of the success for our system and semiconductor customers.

Lip-Bu, then as a follow-up, I think you talked in your comments about Tensilica processor for vision and AI.

Maybe could you give details on interest you are seeing from customers regarding this product?

Yes, we just announced recently.

And so far, the response from customer is very positive because clearly, this is based upon the success of the Vision P6.

They are very widely, broadly adopted for the application processor.

And meanwhile, this is a higher performance, and also, we are quietly building up our software capability, the algorithm capability and that we can provide the overall solution for not just for vision, not just for audio, and then now we can really -- driving some of the embedded vision and on then on device, artificial intelligence application that will be broadly -- hopefully will be broadly adopted.

Got it.

Just the last one, after the muted performance in emulation last year, of course, given a very strong performance in '16, Q1 was very -- seems very strong in functional verification.

Maybe could you provide more details?

Sure.

So I think as I highlighted, that clearly, we are very pleased with our system verification suite.

And that grew 20% year-over-year.

And with that, clearly, our hardware business, as John highlighted, we have a strong backlog from last year.

And then Q1, also a very strong quarter both for Palladium and Protium.

We highlight the 5 new customers and then 17 repeat orders for Palladium.

And then for Protium, that is a prototyping, we are also very delighted with 4 new Protium S1 customers and 5 repeat orders.

And then Xcelium, if you recall, is the integration of Rocketick and Incisive and then we completely integrate together.

We are delighted this quarter, we have 30, 3-0, new customers adopting it.

So we overall -- I think verification is critical for all the complex design.

I think we have an entire suite from hardware and software able to provide to customers the most compelling.

And also clearly, customers see the benefit of the quicker design using the same front end as the Palladium Z1.

That is very attractive for them.

Your next question comes from the line of Jay Vleeschhouwer with Griffin Securities.

For John first, a couple of questions, and then finish up with Lip-Bu on the end market.

John, were there any unusual increments to upfront or perpetual revenues in the quarter besides hardware which, obviously, did quite well?

And it looks like, just doing a quick inference, that you might even have had a record quarter for emulation.

But you mentioned A&D a number of times and strength from that end market.

And historically, in EDA, aerospace and defense has tended to prefer upfront licenses, unless that's changed.

So perhaps you could comment on any increments of that kind in the quarter from upfront licensing.

And then for Lip-Bu, you highlighted some advances in sub-10-nanometer.

And I'm wondering if the deal -- sorry, the flows of -- from prior contracts carry forward into sub-10-nanometer.

In other words, were the implementations done for 14 and 20 and so forth extensible down to under 10?

Or are we going to see a whole new round of selections for 7 and below that you're going to have to compete for?

Jay, I'll take the first part of your question, but I was certainly pleased with the performance of all our lines of business in Q1.

Approximately 90% of our revenue is recognized over time, and that was no different for Q1, so there was nothing unusual.

The -- and as you know, with our ratable model, the strong Q1 tends to have a bigger impact on the entire year, but -- so you'll see that the Q1 -- the strength in Q1 has carried through into strong guidance for the year.

But -- and we continue to see strength in our custom IC and digital software business, too.

But I'll pass it over to Lip-Bu.

Yes.

So I think, Jay, a couple of points.

And one, I think I highlighted with Imec collaborations, we announced the 3-nanometer quadruple patterning test chip and successfully taped out.

We are very pleased with that.

And then clearly, our volume business is in the 14-, 16-nanometer in terms of from a customer point of view, but we're moving very rapidly into the 7- and 5-nanometer.

A lot of our design activities, a lot of our IP engagement is in the 7- and 5-nanometer.

And so far, like every new process node, there's opportunity for us to help our customer to win in the marketplace so that it can proliferate.

And so clearly, we are excited about the opportunity in front.

The tool with the distributed -- the processing and then the [massively] parallel, that have been our advantage, and right now, we're using machine learning, deep learning, to even drive further advantage in terms of PPA run time and also some of the verification, we are applying our machine learning, deep learning capability into our tool.

At the end of the day, it's supporting our customer to faster to design and verify so that they can go for production and win in the marketplace.

Just to finish up with John, could you talk about your philosophy on pricing?

Specifically, as part of your management of what you call deal-quality metrics, are you looking at pricing or let's -- to be more specific, suboptimal pricing, in the case of any specific customers, more at the account level?

Or are you thinking in terms of pricing more broadly in terms of how you might apply price increases or less discounting and so forth?

Jay, yes, we're very disciplined and value-driven and very focused on pricing here at Cadence.

But EDA is a competitive business and pricing can vary from sector to sector and product to product.

But we believe the best way to derive value from our products is to collaborate deeply with customers and deliver innovative and clearly differentiated solutions that make our customers successful.

Your next question comes from Farhan Ahmad with Crédit Suisse.

Can you just talk about the division and guidance for the year from last quarter to this quarter?

What are the specific parts of the business that you think are stronger now compared to 3 months ago?

Farhan, this is John.

Yes, strength in the quarter was broad-based.

Functional verification had a particularly strong quarter with great momentum across the entire verification suite, as Lip-Bu mentioned earlier.

But we continue to see strength as well in our custom IC and digital software business.

And our IP performance -- our IP business performing in line with our expectation, that it's going to be the fastest-growing part of Cadence on an apples-to-apples basis.

So it's pretty broad-based.

Sorry, I meant for the year, not just for the quarter.

Similarly, it's pretty broad-based across the year.

We expect -- I think we said last quarter that we expect all of our businesses to grow this year.

Got it.

And then in emulation, Mentor Graphics recently claimed that they have taken leadership and market position in emulation.

Can you just talk about the competitive dynamics in the -- within the emulation market?

And how are we in terms of the product introduction cycle?

Yes, so Farhan, this is Lip-Bu.

And clearly, the hardware business, we are very pleased with our performance and in terms of Z1 and also our Protium S1, this is a prototyping side.

And clearly, in the verification, this is very important for the verifying of their design.

And we are excited, our hardware and software really complement the full suite to really providing our customer.

So I think overall, we are very excited about what we have, and we've made great progress, 20% year-to-year growth.

And we respect our competitors and -- in what they are doing, and so we continue to compete in the marketplace.

Got it.

And then one last question, on the OpEx linearity through the year, can you just talk about how we should model OpEx for the year?

Right.

So with the transition to the new revenue rules, if you're using the 606 numbers, that you'd expect the commission expense to be more flat throughout the year.

But -- so I think that will probably take away some of the expense profile.

It should be reasonably flat throughout the year.

Your next question comes from Rich Valera with Needham & Company.

Would just like to follow up on the emulation question.

It seems like it's a pretty dramatic turnaround that the whole category of verification was down about 5% year-over-year last year, I believe you said in your last call.

And presumably, hardware was down meaningfully more than that given the relative stability of software.

And now it seems like hardware is probably up quite sharply in the first quarter.

So just wondering if you can give any color on what might account for that dramatic turnaround year versus year.

Was it simply a matter of just really difficult comparisons in '17 off the real strong '16?

Or was there anything else you could point to in the product or the marketplace for that pretty dramatic turnaround?

Yes, this is Lip-Bu, Rich, and thanks for the questions.

And as I mentioned multiple times, hardware is a very lumpy business.

And we have -- last year, I think the first half had a little bit soft start, but we have finished very strong in Q4, and that momentum carried us in the Q1.

As I mentioned, we have in hardware, Palladium Z1, we have 5 new customers and 17 repeat customers and orders.

And then the Protium, we have 4 new Protium customers and 5 repeat customers.

And so overall, I think it's not just the hardware.

And also, our software, Xcelium, we have 30 new customers in this quarter.

Finally, we put it together with the Rocketick integrations and for the parallel simulation.

And then the other part is the formal verification for JasperGold.

So overall, I think it's -- like John mentioned, across the board, the whole verification is strong, and we are very delighted to provide that entire verification suite for our customers.

Got it.

And then you specifically, in 4Q, called out, I think, real strong bookings, real strong hardware bookings.

And clearly, that's translated into a nice Q1.

Anything you'd say specifically about bookings?

I know you've said numbers of customers, new customers and repeat customers.

But would you say that you had another strong bookings quarter for the hardware business in Q1?

I would say that -- and again, we don't talk about bookings on a quarterly basis.

And hardware is a very important component of our entire portfolio.

We typically view it as a complete verification suite.

But I would say that we've been very disciplined and value-driven on pricing to ensure that we get the value that we believe the hardware is worth.

Great.

And then just one more, if I could, on digital.

I don't know if you said specifically how fast digital grew, it looks like it was kind of a double-digit number.

But did you say that specific number, John?

No.

It was 9%.

9%, okay.

So -- yes, I know that was double-digit last year.

Would you be willing to hazard whether you think that might be a double-digit growth business again this year or not willing to go there at this point?

No, we're generally not going to guide or comment on individual product line growth rates for 2018 other than to say that we thought IP was likely to be the fastest-growing group.

Yes, if I can add, it's just we are excited about our digital flow.

And as I mentioned, a couple of very successful ones we have, the leading networking company adopting us and then the top provider of the communication processor adopting us on the 7-nanometer.

Last quarter, we highlight a premier hyperscale and moving into the 7-nanometer, they're using our entire suite.

And overall, I think it's just continue the proliferation with the market-shaping customers and that we continue to expand that footprint, just stay tuned.

The next question comes from Tom Diffely with D.A. Davidson.

Another question on the IP front.

So it sounds like 606 has about a 10% impact to IP this year.

Wondering, does that reverse next year?

Are there additional one-timers in the out-year that would impact that as well?

So last quarter, we talked about the -- our expectation for the difference in total revenue between the 2 sets of rules was $40 million.

We thought in 2019 that, that would drop into about $25 million in 2019.

But now we think it's $30 million and a similar proportion for the out-years.

And I think, if you look at IP, we think $20 million of the $30 million is IP for this year, haven't drilled into the impact in 2019.

But all we're saying is that we expect the impact between 606 and 605 is slightly smaller than we thought it would have been last quarter.

Okay, you said that same ratio roughly holds then for the out-year as well?

I think so, yes.

Okay.

And the same ratio of IP as a percentage?

That's a good guess.

Okay.

So I guess when you look at the new kind of refined IP strategy in the markets that you're serving now versus before, are you -- do you believe you're growing in line with the double-digit market growth?

Or are you growing slower or faster than that at this point?

We're not giving specific...

Yes, I think clearly -- as we mentioned, that is refined strategy and augmented road map, just want to highlight to you, we are pursuing more scalable and more profitable focus.

And we are focusing on the most advanced nodes, and we are focused on customer success and we are focused on the star IP, like the Tensilica, like the nusemi ultrahigh-speed SerDes, so we're going to continue to build on that.

The high differentiating IP, they are the most leading edge, and then we really focus on scalability.

We don't do that kind of one-off type of things and really focus on the quality.

Okay.

And then just looking broader at the IP market, what is the penetration of outsourced or merchant IP?

And what percentage is still done in-house?

And where do you think that percentage goes over time?

Yes, I think as I mentioned, the outsourcing trend continues.

I think clearly, from the -- our customer point of view, unless they really need to have that IP to differentiate their product offering, some of the industry standards and as long as reliable -- that's why we want to position ourselves as a reliable, trusted, high-quality IP provider.

I think over time, there's a lot of room for growth.

And we are excited.

That's why John mentioned this will be our highest percentage of growth in terms of our product line, and we are excited about this IP, and especially applying to some of the key verticals, either that hyperscale data center, the distributed data center, vertical data center, the automotive, and then in terms of the mil/aero related area, there's a lot of very unique IP that, over time, we can build and acquire to do that.

Okay.

So at this point, do you think we're at the halfway point then from an outsourcing trend line?

Yes, I can't put out where we are.

All I can say is, like the baseball terminology, still in the early round.

Your next question comes from the line of Sterling Auty with JPMorgan.

Just want to follow up on that line of questioning on IP.

And I apologize if you said it earlier, I'm bouncing between calls.

But I get lots of questions around the autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, et cetera, what is the core IP that you've built at this point?

And what kind of demand traction are you seeing for those elements within the IP franchise?

Yes, so I think, Sterling, first of all, we are focusing on some of this, we call it, high-speed connectivity side and either the USB or PCIe or high-speed SerDes, addressing some of the data storage-related requirement, and then using the Tensilica to drive some of the AI, autonomous driving and how to work with the vision sensor-related.

So I think we have 2 parts.

One is providing our tools and IP to help our customers to design some of these ADAS and then some of this requirement for autonomous driving.

And like last quarter, we highlight the premier automotive maker adopting some of our key IP for doing that.

And then the other part is really addressing some of the AI on the vision, audio and then on this on-device AI application and beyond.

And so there's a lot.

AI, machine learning is so broad.

You can move into -- beside the data center, beside the mobile, automotive -- autonomous driving, and even some of the medical genomic sequencing, that's a lot.

It's fascinating, and we are just touching the surface.

And so there's a lot of room to grow there.

And on those types of opportunities, has anything changed in terms of the mix of contract structure you're getting in terms of upfront versus annual subscription versus kind of a perpetual payment for that capability?

No, not much.

I think pretty much the same and there are requirement for their design.

And so clearly, there's a lot of opportunity, as I mentioned earlier.

I just want to add on to it, the whole silicon photonics, the whole quantum computing and with AI, and so there's a lot of new compute architectures that come out on the hardware and software, and we are fascinatingly exciting they're going to drive the semiconductor development growth.

We see the design activity increase a lot for us.

That's great.

One last question, we talked about digital and your growth and kind of the improvement in that space.

We don't talk as much about the analog side where you guys have been so dominant through the years.

Have you seen anything change on the competitive landscape in the analog franchise?

Not a lot.

Clearly, we doubled, tripled down on our leadership.

And then that's why we highlight this Virtuoso custom IC new platform.

It's a significant major enhancement that's able to drive all the way down to 5-nanometer process nodes and then with our leading partners in the foundry.

And also, I think we drive some of the new innovative methodology and technology that drive more than 3x reduction in FinFET layout effort.

That is huge.

In terms of customers, love it.

And then we just highlight one of the customers, Bosch, and they see tremendous value for that.

And we also see defense contractors, analog semiconductor company, mobile chip makers rapidly adopting our Virtuoso new tool that we just announced, and the response has been overwhelming.

Your last question comes from the line of Mitch Steves with RBC Capital Markets.

So I wanted to touch really quick on the systems side.

So I know you guys can't disclose customers, but is there any way to maybe give us some information on how they spend?

Meaning that when a systems company spins out to kind of create their own chips, do they spend any differently than the kind of the standard semiconductor customer?

In general, pretty much the same.

They all want to design the silicon or their system.

And then we have a very unique position.

Beside our tool, we have IP and we also have the PCB side and the system simulation, especially the power, are critical for them.

And then the only difference on the system guy and time to market is more critical for them.

Because they want to win in the marketplace, first-mover advantage is critical for their success, and they are more focused on the time to market and also they are focused more on the quality of the products.

And clearly, they appreciate the value that we provide.

And so I think we are delighted to work with them.

Our job is basically make sure that our tool and IP may help them to design the most complex chip, the most complex system they have.

And in some way, we partner with some of our partners, like MathWorks.

And we are delighted to work with them.

Clearly, with our PC -- PSpice and with the tool, we make a more integrated solution from the system-level design all the way to the chipboard implementation.

That is really a [welcome] from an automotive and some of the new aerospace, and we are delighted.

And so -- and we also, last quarter, we did an acquisition, on SFM, and really driving the ECAD-MCAD library creation.

And this whole mechatronics is really taking off.

So we are excited about all this opportunity in front of us.

Got it.

And then just one small one.

A couple of years ago, you guys had talked about systems essentially increasing as a percentage of revenue, but it sounds like that's stayed the same.

So maybe I guess what happened over the last couple of years that essentially caused that to be essentially the same versus the original expectation of growing as a percentage of revenue?

Yes, so far, I think overall, our revenue growing and so our semi growing and our system also growing very fast.

And so we are delighted.

I think both engines are growing nicely.

And then John, you may want to highlight.

Yes, just to highlight, that we haven't updated the analysis on the mix for Q1.

But at the end of last year, the mix was still around 40% for system companies.

And it's exactly as Lip-Bu highlighted, that both systems -- the growth that we're seeing across system companies and the semiconductor business is pretty much the same.

That is all the questions that we have for today.

Lip-Bu Tan, I turn the call back to you.

In closing, through continuous innovation and execution, we are well positioned with our system design enablement strategy to further proliferate our solution with a broad base of customers, and we are proud of the innovative and inclusive culture that we are building at Cadence.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our shareholders, customer and partners, Board of Directors and hard-working global employees for their continued support.

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

Thank you for participating in today's Cadence first quarter 2018 earnings conference call.

This concludes today's call.

You may now disconnect.