Introduction

This is the June 25, 2012 edition of the COMMENTARY entitled, “The EDA and MCAD/MCAE Almanac – Nominal Q1 2012.” 

Recent History of Combined Commentaries

The last comprehensive report that combined financial data from both the EDA and MCAD/MCAE industries was the EDA WEEKLY initially posted in EDACafe.com and MCADcafe.com on December 12, 2011, entitled,

Next in the sequence was a “Mini-Almanac” summary report posted as a BLOG-ONLY version on April 23, 2012, which carried the masthead as follows: 

Industry Commentary

Dr. Russ Henke
The writer of the following article has posted over 100 articles on EDACafe.com since 2003, in the form of Quarterly Commentaries on the worldwide EDA. EDA IP, and MCAD/MCAE Industries as well as monthly Editorials covering vendors, products, finances and new developments. Beginning April 2012 these … More ».........

“New Commentary: EDA & MCAD/MCAE Industry Mini-Almanac – Nominal Q4 2011” 

Accordingly, the COMMENTARY contained herein will cover EDA and MCAD/MCAE vendor financials for Nominal Q1 2012, from reports issued between April 25, 2012 and May 23, 2012.

Background

Over the years since 2003, Henke Associates has issued quarterly Commentaries and WEEKLIES that dealt with high tech software vendors in the fields of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Electronics Intellectual Property (Electronics IP), and in the companion fields of mechanical computer aided design (MCAD) and mechanical computer aided engineering & analysis (MCAE).

Familiar vendor names have included Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys and others in EDA; ARM Holdings, Rambus and others in Electronics IP; and ANSYS, Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, PTC and others in MCAD/MCAE. The vast majority of these articles (now numbering well over 100) have been separately posted on either EDACafe.com or MCADCafe.com, both specialty electronic newsletters among others issued daily by International Business Systems (IBSystems) of Campbell CA. Commentaries tended to run daily for a full calendar quarter and EDA WEEKLIES ran daily for at least four weeks.

Beginning in 2011, the writer occasionally combined reports on EDA and on Electronics IP into single issues of EDA WEEKLY. Readers will recall for example the April 04, 2011 issue, entitled, “The EDA and the Electronics IP Almanac: Q4 2010.” The same EDA and Electronics IP combo also appeared on June 27, 2011 for Q1 2011 financials.

 But as readers quickly observed in the August 22, 2011 EDA WEEKLY, the G5 Electronics IP financial results for Q2 2011 held the center stage alone, although the then- recent gyrations of the worldwide economic environment also received its due in coverage. The same was true of the Q3 2011 G5 Electronics IP financial results posted November 14, 2011.

Other Combinations

More rare have been occasions when one particular article appeared in both the EDACafe.com and MCADCafe.com newsletters, such as the article on ANSYS multi-physics of July 2010. These types of occurrences were and are destined to be frequently repeated going forward as the fields of mechanical design automation & simulation merge more and more with electronics design & simulation.

 Occasionally it is also useful to combine the financial reports from EDA and MCAD/MCAE into single issues, when the stars line up schedule-wise. Such was the case here in September 2011, December 2011, and April 2012, and is of course the case here in June 2012.

This June 25, 2012 Issue

Accordingly, this issue of the COMMENTARY, which is entitled, “The EDA and MCAD/MCAE Almanac – Nominal Q1 2012,” first posted on June 25, 2012, will report in detail on the financial results for nominal Q1 2012 of the following groups of four (4) vendors each:

Selection History of Vendor Coverage Choices for EDA

For the quarterly EDA Industry Commentaries published in EDACafe.com starting in May 2003, Henke Associates chose nine (9) publicly-traded entities: Altium, Ansoft, Cadence, Magma, Mentor Graphics, Nassda, Synopsys, Synplicity and Verisity.

Subsequently, Verisity and Nassda were acquired by EDA vendors Cadence and Synopsys, respectively, and hence were dropped from independent coverage in quarterly EDA Commentaries. More recently, EDA vendor Synplicity was acquired by Synopsys, and EDA vendor Ansoft was acquired by MCAE vendor ANSYS. Consequently, both Synplicity and Ansoft no longer independently appeared in the EDA Industry reports. Finally, in May 2011, SpringSoft, Inc. replaced Altium Limited on our G5 EDA list.

Since the Synopsys acquisition of MAGMA was fully consummated during the early part of 2012, MAGMA financials are now subsumed by those of Synopsys; accordingly, MAGMA has been eliminated from our EDA list.

Finally, after being included in these pages as a charter member of the quarterly EDA Group from 2003 through 2010, Altium was replaced by SpringSoft for 2011 coverage.

Selection History of Vendor Coverage Choices for MCAD/MCAE

In the very first MCAD Industry Commentary published in May 2003 in MCADCafé.com, then-recent yearly and quarterly financial performances of a selected group of nine (9) public Mechanical Computer Aided Design (MCAD) and Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering (MCAE) vendor companies were analyzed and compared. The entities initially covered were ANSYS, Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, UGS PLM, ESI Group, Moldflow, MSC.Software, PTC and Tecnomatix.

As a result of the acquisition of Tecnomatix by UGS that closed April 1, 2005, Tecnomatix was eliminated from coverage thereafter as a separate entity. On May 7, 2007 UGS announced the close of its acquisition by Siemens AG effective May 4, 2007. Thereafter, the business went to market as UGS PLM Software (and later as Siemens PLM Software), a global division of the Siemens Automation and Drives (A&D) Group. Over the years UGS itself had bounced back and forth between being a public company and a private company under different ownerships. Regrettably, we have been able to gain very little insight into UGS' financial performance itself from public Siemens' corporate reports after the Siemens acquisition. Occasionally we will include Siemens PLM Software news items that bear on the industry as a whole. Then, on June 25, 2008, Autodesk completed its acquisition of Moldflow Corporation, so thereafter Moldflow was eliminated from separate coverage.

On July 07, 2009 MSC.Software announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement with affiliates of Symphony Technology Group (STG) under which a company controlled by STG would acquire all of MSC's outstanding shares in a one-step cash merger transaction. This acquisition of MSC.Software by STG was finally consummated on October 14, 2009. No financial results for MSC.Software were published for Q3 2009, and none since. Unless and until such data are subsequently made available, MSC.Software has been dropped from financial reporting coverage herein, although occasionally MSC.Software news items that bear on the industry as a whole will be mentioned. Readers may be interested to see the MCAD/MCAE Commentary about a late August 2011 interview with CEO Dominic Gallello of MSC.Software at this URL: