Cadence Design Systems Inc

NASDAQ:CDNS

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Start to 2024 with Record Bookings and Updated Financial Outlook

Cadence began 2024 robustly, exceeding its guidance and booking record backlog of $6 billion. Revenue for Q1 was $1.009 billion with a GAAP operating margin of 24.8%. New AI-driven product launches, like Palladium Z3 and Protium X3, highlight its innovative edge. The financial outlook for 2024 anticipates revenue between $4.56 billion and $4.62 billion, with a GAAP operating margin of 31% to 32%. EPS is expected to range from $4.04 to $4.14. For Q2, revenue is projected to be between $1.03 billion and $1.05 billion.

Introduction

Cadence had a robust start to 2024, outperforming expectations on key financial metrics and bringing in record bookings and backlog for Q1. The company successfully launched new products and expanded its market presence, positioning itself for continued growth throughout the year.

Financial Highlights

Cadence reported total revenue of $1.009 billion for Q1. The GAAP operating margin stood at 24.8%, and the non-GAAP operating margin was 37.8%. GAAP EPS was $0.91, and non-GAAP EPS was $1.17. These strong metrics were reflected in the balance sheet, with a quarter-end cash balance of $1.012 billion against $650 million in debt and operating cash flow of $253 million.

Revenue Guidance

Looking ahead, Cadence raised its revenue outlook for 2024, projecting between $4.56 billion and $4.62 billion, translating to year-over-year growth. GAAP operating margins are expected to be in the range of 31-32%, while non-GAAP operating margins are forecasted to be between 42-43%. The company aims for GAAP EPS between $4.04 and $4.14, and non-GAAP EPS between $5.88 and $5.98【4:0†source】【4:1†source】.

Strategic Partnerships and Product Launches

The company continues to form strategic partnerships, notably with Intel for advanced node design software and IP solutions, and with IBM and GlobalFoundries to expand their EDA and system solutions. Cadence also launched several new products, including the third-generation Dynamic Duo—Palladium Z3 emulation and Protium X3 prototyping platforms—which offer significant performance improvements and have already been deployed by major customers like NVIDIA and Arm. Additionally, the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform was introduced to improve data center energy efficiency by leveraging AI and high-performance computing technologies【4:3†source】【4:5†source】.

Market Trends and Innovations

AI is reshaping chip and system development processes significantly. Cadence focuses on harnessing this trend with its comprehensive AI-enhanced design solutions. The company's AI-driven Gen AI solution improves productivity and time-to-market for customers. The Cadence.ai portfolio has been crucial in building the company's momentum, especially in the verification and digital IC business areas. Customer endorsements from major tech firms highlight the competitive edge provided by these advancements【4:4†source】【4:5†source】.

Forward-looking Projections

Cadence anticipates growth momentum shifting more towards the second half of 2024, driven by the new hardware systems and the pending BETA CAE acquisition. The expected revenue for Q2 is projected to be between $1.03 billion and $1.05 billion, with GAAP EPS ranging from $0.73 to $0.77 and non-GAAP EPS from $1.20 to $1.24. Hardware revenue is expected to be somewhat delayed due to the need to build inventory for newly launched systems【4:0†source】【4:5†source】.

Final Remarks

In summary, the outlook for Cadence in 2024 is extremely positive. The company is well-positioned to capitalize on opportunities within hyperscale computing, autonomous driving, and 5G markets, all bolstered by the AI super cycle. Ongoing innovation, strategic partnerships, and a strong balance sheet provide a solid foundation for growth. Cadence remains committed to leveraging its intelligent system design strategy to maintain its market leadership and deliver value to customers and shareholders【4:6†source】.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cadence First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Richard Gu, Vice President of Investor Relations for Cadence. Please go ahead.

[Richard Gu, executive]

Thank you, operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to our first quarter of 2024 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Anirudh Devgan, President and Chief Executive Officer; and John Wall, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The webcast of this call and a copy of today's prepared remarks will be available on our website, cadence.com.

Today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements, including our outlook on future business and operating results. Due to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied in today's discussion. For information on factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q, CFO Commentary and today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements during this call are based on estimates and information available to us as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update them.

In addition, we'll present certain non-GAAP measures, which should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP results. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures are included in today's earnings release. For the Q&A session today, we would ask that you observe a limit of 1 question and 1 follow-up. Now I'll turn the call over to Anirudh.

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Thank you, Richard. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that Cadence had a strong start to the year, delivering solid results for the first quarter of 2024. We came in at the upper end of our guidance range on all key financial metrics and are raising our financial outlook for the year.

We exited Q1 with a better-than-expected record backlog of $6 billion, which sets us up nicely for the year and beyond. John will provide more details in a moment. Long-term trends of hyperscale computing, autonomous driving and 5G, all turbocharged by AI super cycle are fueling strong broad-based design activity. We continue to execute our long-standing intelligent system design strategy as we systematically build out our portfolio to deliver differentiated end-to-end solutions to our growing customer base.

Technology leadership is foundational to Cadence. And we are excited by the momentum of our product advancement over the last few years and the promise of our newly unveiled products. Generative AI is reshaping the entire chip and system development process. And our [ Cadence.ai ] portfolio provides customers with the most comprehensive and impactful solutions for chip-to-systems intelligent design acceleration.

Built upon AI-enhanced core design engine, our Gen AI solution boosted by foundational LLM copilot are delivering unparalleled productivity, quality of results and time-to-market benefits for our customers. Last week, at CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley, several customers, including Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Juniper and ARM shared their remarkable successes with solutions in our Cadence.AI portfolio.

Last week, we launched our third-generation Dynamic Duo, the Palladium Z3 emulation and Protium X3 prototyping platform to address the insatiable demand for higher performance and increased capacity hardware-accelerated verification solutions. Building upon the successes of the industry-leading Z2 X2 systems, this new platform set a new standard of excellence, delivering more than twice the capacity and 50% higher performance per rack than the previous generation.

Palladium Z3 is powered by our next-generation custom processor and was designed with Cadence AI tools and IP. The Z3 system is future-proof with its massive $48 billion gate capacity, enabling emulation of the industry's largest design for the next several generations. The Z3 X3 systems have been deployed at select customers and were endorsed by NVIDIA, Arm and AMD at launch. We also introduced the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform, which virtualizes the entire data center and uses AI, high-performance computing and physics-based simulation to significantly improve data center energy efficiency by up to 30%.

Additionally, Cadence's cloud-native molecular design platform, Orion will be supercharged with NVIDIA's BioNeMo and NVIDIA microservices for drug discovery to broaden therapeutic design capabilities and shorten time to trusted results. In Q1, we expanded our footprint at several top-tier customers and furthered our relationship with key ecosystem partners. We deepened our partnership with IBM across our core EDA and systems portfolio, including a broad proliferation of our digital analog and verification software and expansion of our 3D IC packaging and system analysis solutions.

We strengthened our collaboration with GlobalFoundries through a significant expansion of our EDA and system solutions. That will enable GF to develop key digital analog RF wave and silicon photonics design for aerospace and defense, IoT and automotive end markets. We announced a collaboration with Arm to develop a chiplet-based reference design and software development platform to accelerate software-defined vehicle innovation.

We also further extended our strategic partnership with Dassault Systemes, integrating our AI-driven PCB solutions with Dassault's 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio, enabling up to a 5x reduction in design turnaround time for SolidWorks customers. Now let's talk about our key highlights for Q1. Increasing system complexity and growing hyper convergence between the electrical, mechanical and physical domain is driving the need for tightly integrated core design and analysis solutions.

Our system design and analysis business delivered steady growth as our AI-driven design optimization platforms integrated with our physics-based analysis solutions continue delivering superior results across multiple end markets. Over the past 6 years, we have methodically built out our system analysis portfolio. And with the signing of the definitive agreement to acquire BETA CAE are now extending it to structural analysis, thereby unlocking a multibillion dollar TAM opportunity.

BETA CAE's leading solutions have a particularly strong footprint in the automotive and aerospace verticals, including at customers such as Stellantis, General Motors, Renault and Lockheed Martin. Our Millennium Supercomputing platform, delivering phenomenal performance and scalability for high fidelity simulation is ramping up nicely. In Q1, a leading automaker expanded its production deployment of Millennium to multiple groups after a successful early access program, in which it realized tremendous performance benefits.

Allegro X continued its momentum and is now deployed at well over 300 customers, while Allegro X AI, the industry's first fully automated PCB design engine is enabling customers to realize significant 4x to 10x productivity gain. Samsung used Celsius Studios to uncover early design and analysis insight to precise and rapid thermal simulation for 2.5D and 3D packages attaining up to a 30% improvement in product development time. And a leading Asian mobile chip company use Optimality Intelligence System Explorer AI technology and Clarity 3D Solver obtaining more than 20x design productivity improvement.

Ever increasing complexities in the system verification and software bring up continue to propel the demand of our functional verification products with hardware-accelerated verification now a must-have part of the customer design flow. On the heels of a record year, our hardware products continue to proliferate at existing customers while also gaining some notable competitive wins, including at a leading networking company and at a major automotive semiconductor supplier.

Demand for hardware was broad-based with the particular strength seen at hyperscalers and over 85% of the orders during the quarter included both platforms. Our Verisium platform that leverages Big Data and AI to optimize verification workloads, boost coverage and accelerate root cause analysis of bugs saw accelerating customer adoption. At CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley, Qualcomm said that they use Verisium stim AI to increase total design coverage automatically while getting up to a 20x reduction in verification workload run time.

Our digital IC business had another solid quarter as our digital full flow continued to proliferate at the most advanced nodes. We had strong growth at hyperscalers, and over 50 customers have deployed our digital solutions on 3-nanometer and below design. Cadence Cerebrus, which leverages Gen AI to intelligently optimize the digital full flow in a fully automatic manner now has been used in well over 350 tapeouts. Delivering best-in-class PPA and productivity benefits. It's fast becoming integral part of the design flow at marquee customers, as well as in [indiscernible] flows for new process nodes at multiple foundries.

In custom IC business, Virtuoso Studio, delivering AI-powered layout automation and optimization continued [ ramble ] strongly, and 18 of the top 20 semi have migrated to this new release in its first year. Our IP business continued to benefit from market opportunities offered by AI and multi chiplet-based architecture. We are seeing strong momentum in interface IPs that are essential to AI use cases, especially HBM, DDR, UCIe and PCIe at leading edge nodes.

In Q1, we partnered with Intel foundry to provide design software and leading IP solutions at multiple Intel advanced nodes. Our Tensilica business reached a major milestone of 200 software partners in the [ HiFi ] ecosystem, the de facto standard for automotive infotainment and home entertainment. And we extended our partnership with one of the top hyperscalers in its custom silicon SoC design with our Xtensa NX controller.

In summary, I'm pleased with our Q1 results and the continuing momentum of our business. Piling chip and system design complexity and the tremendous potential of AI-driven automation offer massive opportunities for our computational software to help customers realize these benefits. In addition to our strong business results, I am proud of our high-performance inclusive culture and thrilled that Cadence was named by Fortune and Great Place to Work as one of the 2024's 100 Best Companies to Work For, ranking #9. Now I will turn it over to John to provide more details on the Q1 results and our updated 2024 outlook.

[John Wall, executive]

Thanks, Anirudh, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to report that Cadence delivered strong results for the first quarter of 2024. First quarter bookings were a record for Q1, and we achieved record Q1 backlog of approximately $6 billion. A good start to the year, coupled with some impressive new product launches, sets us up for strong growth momentum in the second half of 2024.

Here are some of the financial highlights from the first quarter, starting with the P&L. Total revenue was [ $1.009 ] billion. GAAP operating margin was 24.8%, and non-GAAP operating margin was 37.8%. GAAP EPS was $0.91 and non-GAAP EPS was $1.17. Next, turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. Cash balance at quarter end was [ $1.012 billion ], While the principal value of debt outstanding was $650 million. Operating cash flow was $253 million. DSOs were 36 days, and we used $125 million to repurchase Cadence shares in Q1. Before I provide our updated outlook, I'd like to share some assumptions that are embedded in our outlook.

Given the recent launch of our new hardware systems, we expect the shape of hardware revenue in 2024 to weigh more towards the second half as our team works to build inventory of the new system. Our updated outlook does not include the impact of our pending BETA CAE acquisition, and it contains the usual assumption that export control regulations that exist today remain substantially similar for the remainder of the year. Our updated outlook for fiscal 2024 is revenue in the range of $4.56 billion to $4.62 billion. GAAP operating margin in the range of 31% to 32%. Non-GAAP operating margin in the range of 42% to 43%. GAAP EPS in the range of $4.04 to $4.14. Non-GAAP EPS in the range of $5.88 to $5.98.

Operating cash flow in the range of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion. And we expect to use at least 50% of our annual free cash flow to repurchase Cadence shares. With that in mind, for Q2, we expect revenue in the range of $1.03 billion to $1.05 billion. GAAP operating margin in the range of 26.5% to 27.5%, non-GAAP operating margin in the range of 38.5% to 39.5%. GAAP EPS in the range of $0.73 to $0.77, non-GAAP EPS in the range of $1.20 to $1.24. And as usual, we published a CFO commentary document on our Investor Relations website, which includes our outlook for additional items as well as further analysis and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations. In summary, Cadence continues to lead with innovation and is on track for a strong 2024 as we execute to our intelligent system design strategy. I'd like to close by thanking our customers, partners and our employees for their continued support.

And with that, operator, we will now take questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink with Baird.

[Joseph Vruwink, analyst]

Maybe just to start with your outlook for the year. Can you perhaps provide maybe your second half assumption before this quarter versus where it stands today in terms of just recalibrating around delivery schedules. And maybe a good way to frame it. I think in the past, you gave a share of this year's revenue that was going to come from upfront products. Is that still the right range, but if it is the right range, you can obviously see more is going to end up landing in the second half. And so that kind of [ fits ] to your original views? Or how is that, I guess, skewed relative to what might have been the expectation a quarter ago?

[John Wall, executive]

It's a great question, Joe. And I think you've hit on the main point there. But upfront revenue driving a lot of the quarter-over-quarter trends this year. But when I look at last year, you recall that we had a large backlog of hardware orders, and we dedicated 100% of the hardware production in Q1 to deliver that hardware in Q1 2023. As a result, in Q1 2023, 20% of our Q1 '23 revenue was from upfront revenue sources. But in contrast, Q1 this year, it's only 10% of the total revenue for this Q1 is coming from upfront revenue.

But again last year and to reflect on where we thought we were this time last quarter, but we still expect that upfront revenue will probably be 15% to 20%, I mean, in and around the midpoint there is 17.5% and expectation for upfront revenue this year and a midpoint of, say, 82.5% for recurring revenue. That's still the same as what we thought this time last quarter. But that contrast with last year was, I think, 16% of our revenue was up front last year.

And to put dollar terms on it, last year, $650 million of our revenue was upfront. This year, we're expecting roughly $800 million to be upfront. The first half versus first half last year, we had 350 in the first half and 300 in the second half because we had prioritized all those shipments in hardware and that skewed the numbers towards the first half last year, so 350 and 300, ending with the 650 of upfront revenue last year. This year, it looks more like 250 and 550 at the back end. But I know that's largely as a result of we had a record backlog, our record bookings quarter in Q1. We've got substantial backlog in IP that we're scaling up to deliver. A lot of that revenue falls into the second half.

And also, we launched these new hardware systems last week hardware revenue is expected to be more second half weighted now because based on what we've heard, and I'll let Anirudh chime in here on the technical aspects of the new hardware systems, but we expect them to be so popular, but a lot of demand will shift to those new hardware systems, and we'll have to ramp up production to be able to deliver that demand. So it shifts some of the upfront revenue to the second half. So I think upfront revenue is really driving a lot of the skewed metrics. Anirudh, do you want to talk about Z3?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes, absolutely. So we are very proud of the new systems we launched. As you know, we are a leader in hardware-based emulations with Z2 X2. And last time we launched them was in 2021. So that was like a 6-year cycle, Z1 X1 was 2015, and then Z2 X2 was '21. So what I'm particularly pleased about is we have a major, major refresh. It's a game-changing product, but it was also developed in only 3 years. So in 2024, we have a new refresh. And it's a significant leap in terms of capacity. And even last week at our CadenceLIVE conference, NVIDIA and Jensen talked about how they use Z2 to design their latest chip like Blackwell, and it's also used by all the major silicon companies and system companies to design their chips.

But what is truly exciting about Z3 and X3 is this a big leap it's like Z3 is 4x, 5x more capacity than Z2, is a much higher performance. So it sets us up nicely for the next several years to be able to design the several generations of the world's largest chips, okay? So that's the right thing to do. The reason we can do it in 3 years versus 6 years is we use our own design internally in Cadence for TSMC advanced node. So we're using all our latest tools or the latest AI tools.

We are using all our IP. There's a very good validation of our own capabilities that we can accelerate our design process, but really sets up hardware verification on overall verification flow for using the new systems. Now as a result, normally, there is a transition period when you have a new system, and we went through that twice already in the last 10 years and the customers naturally will go to the new systems and then we build them over next 1 or 2 quarters. But that is the right thing to do for the business long term.

It's good to accelerate the because these AI chips are getting bigger and bigger, right? So the demand for emulation is getting bigger and bigger, and I can give you more stats later. So we felt that it was important to accelerate the development of the next-generation system to get ready for this coming AI wave for next several years, and we are very well positioned. As a result, it does have some impact on quarter-to-quarter, but that's well well worth it in the long run.

[Joseph Vruwink, analyst]

That's all very helpful. Second question, I wanted to ask how some of the things you just spoke of, but also AI start to change the frequency of customers engaging with you how they approach renewals. So you brought up how the [indiscernible] platforms the velocity there has improved from first generation to next 6 years, now we're down to a 3-year new product cycle. When I listen to your customers last week talk about AI, they're not just generating ML models that can be reused, but then, of course, each run becomes better if you're incorporating prior feedback.

So it would just seem like AI itself not only creates stickiness, but there would be an incentive to deploy it maybe more broadly than a customer traditionally would think about deploying new products. Does that mean the average run rate of a renewal ends up becoming much bigger, and we'll start to see that flow in the backlog?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes, that's the correct observation. As you know, what we have said before, AI has a lot of profound impact to Cadence, a lot of benefit to our customers. So there are 3 main areas. One is the build-out of the AI infrastructure, whether it's NVDIA or AMD or all the hyperscalers and we are fortunate to be working with all the leading AI companies. So that's the first part. And in that part, as they design bigger and bigger chips, because the big thing in AI systems is [indiscernible], so they need to be bigger and bigger chips. So the tools have to be more efficient. The hardware platform have to support that and that's why the new systems.

Now the second part of AI is applying AI to our own products, which is the Cadence.AI portfolio. And like you mentioned last week, we had several customers talking about success with that portfolio, including Intel, like I mentioned, Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Juniper, Arm. And the results are significant. So we are no longer in kind of a trial phase of whether these things will work. Now we're getting pretty significant improvements. Like we mentioned, MediaTek got like 6% power improvement. One of the hyperscale companies got 8% to 10% power improvement.

These are significant numbers. So it is leading to deployment of our AI portfolio. And I think we mentioned like the AI run rate on a trailing 12-month basis is up 3x. Okay. And I think design process already was well automated. EDA has a history of automating design over the last 30 years. So AI is in a unique position because you need the base process to be somewhat automated to apply AI. So we were already well automated, and now AI can take you to the next level of automation.

So that's the second part of AI, which I'm pretty pleased about is applying to our own product. And then the third part of AI proliferation is new markets that open up, which things like data center design, with the reality that we announced or Millennium, which is designing systems with acceleration or digital biology. Those are like a little -- they take a little longer to ramp up, but we have these 3 kind of impact of AI. The first being direct design of AI chips and systems; second, applying AI to our own products; and third, being new applications of AI.

[Operator]

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

[Yu Shi, analyst]

I just wanted to ask about the China revenue in Q1, it looks pretty light. I just wonder whether that's part of the reason that's weighing on your Q2. I understand you mentioned that you're going to second gen to third gen hardware transition right now, maybe that's another factor. But from graphical standpoint, what's the outlook for China for the rest of the year and specifically Q2?

[John Wall, executive]

charles, that's a great observation. If you recall this time last year, we were talking about a very strong Q1 for China for functional verification and for upfront revenue. I think those 3 things are often linked. But you contracted with this year, China is down at 12%, upfront revenue is lower at 10% compared to 20% and functional verification, of course, is lapping those really tough comps when we dedicated the 100% production to deliveries.

I think when you look at China, we're blessed that we have the geographical diversification that we have across our business. What we're seeing in China is strong design activity. And while the percentage of revenue dropped to 12%, it pretty much goes in line with a lower hardware, lower functional verification, lower upfront revenue quarter would generally lead to a lower China percentage quarter. But we have good diversification. And while China is coming down, we could see other Asia increasing and our customer base is really mobile that the geographical mix of revenue is based on consumption and where the products are used. But as we do more upfront revenue in the second half, we'd expect the China percentage to increase.

[Yu Shi, analyst]

I want to ask another question about the upcoming ramp of the third-generation hardware. What exactly is the nature of the demand. Is that the replacement demand like your customers replacing your Z2 X2 with the Z3 X3 or expect a lot more great deal of customers adopting Z3 X3? And more importantly, I think you mentioned about 4x to 5x capacity increase that they can design a larger, much larger chips with a lot more transistors. How much of an ASP uplift you are expecting from the Z3 X3 versus Z2 X2?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes, Charles, all good observation. So let me try to answer that one by one. So I mean in terms of your last point, normally, if the system has more capacity like this one has, it can do more. So it produces -- it gives more value to our customers. So we are able to get more value back. So typically, newer systems are better that way for us and better for the customer. Okay. And to give you an example, these things are pretty complicated.

So let's take Z3, for example. So Z3 itself, we designed this advanced TSMC chip ourselves. And this is one of the biggest ships that TSMC makes. And [ one rack ] will have like more than 100 of these chips and then we can connect like up to 16 racks together. So if you do that, you have thousands of [ full radical ] chips emulating that's -- and these are all liquid cooled, connected by optical and InfiniBand interconnect. So this is like a truly a multi-rack supercomputer. And what it can do is just emulate very, very large systems, very, very efficient. So even like Z2 like NVIDIA talked about it last week, even Blackwell, which is the biggest chip in the world right now with 200 billion transistors was emulated on fewer racks of Z2, okay? So now with 16 rack of Z3, we can emulate chips, which are like 5x bigger than Blackwell, which is already the biggest chips in the world, right?

So that gives a lot of runway for our customers because with AI, the key thing is that the capacity of the chip needs to keep going up, not just a single ship, look at Blackwell, they have 2 full radical chips on a a package. So as you know, you will see more and more, not just big chips on a single node, but multiple chips in a package for this workload and also 3D stacking of those chips. So what this allows is not just emulating a single large chip but multiple chips, which is super critical for AI, okay? So I think this is what I feel that this puts us in a very good position for all this AI boom that is happening, not just with our partners like NVIDIA and AMD, but also all the hyperscaler companies, okay?

And so that will be the primary demand as more capacity chips require more hardware, okay? And then X3 will go for that with software prototyping, which is used on FPGA. And then we have some unique workload capabilities apart from size of these big systems the capacity being much better in performance. There are new features for low power for analog emulation that helps in the mobile market. So we talked about Samsung working with us, especially on this 4-state emulation, which is a new capability in emulation over the last 10 years.

So it's a combination of new customers, it's a combination of competitive wins, but also continuing to lead in terms of the biggest ships in the world which are required for AI processing now and years from now. I think the size of these chips, as you know, is only going to get bigger in the next few years. And we feel that Z3 X3 is already set up for that.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from the line of Lee Simpson with Morgan Stanley.

[Lee Simpson, analyst]

Great. And just wanted to go back to what you said last quarter, if I could. It did seem as though you were saying that there was an element of exclusivity around your partnership with Arm -- your EDA partnership around ARM total design. I wondered how that was developing, if indeed, you're collaborating to accelerate the development of custom SoC using Neoverse. It looks as though it's pulled in quite a lot of work or continues to pull in quite a lot of work around functional verification.

And I guess as we look at now third generation tool sets for Palladium and Protium, leaving aside some of the rack scale development that we're seeing out there, whether or not Arm's total design, I guess, development work is pulling in or is likely to pull in some of that second half business. And that means not just hyperscalers, but perhaps in AI PCs and beyond?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes. Thank you for the question. I mean we are proud to have a very strong partnership with Arm and with our joint customers, Arm and Cadence customers. I think we have had a very strong partnership over the last 10 years, I would like to say. And it's getting better and better. And yes, we talked about our new partnership on total compute. Also, I think this quarter, we talked about our partnership with HARMAN Automotive because what is interesting to see, which, of course, you know this already, but Arm continues to do well in mobile but also now in kind of HPC server and automotive end markets. .

So we are pleased with that partnership, and they are also doing more subsystems and higher order development, and that requires more partnership with Cadence in terms of the back end, Innovus and Digital Flow and also verification with hardware platforms and other verification tools.

[Lee Simpson, analyst]

Great. Maybe just a quick follow-up. We've seen quite a bit of M&A activity from yourselves of late, including the IP House acquisition of Invecas. You've had Rambus bought, you've now acquired BETA in the computer-aided emulation space for the car. There's been quite a lot of speculation in the market about the possibility of a transformative deal being done. I guess, given that we have you on the mic here, maybe if we can get a sense from yourself, what would be the sort of thing that a business like Cadence could look for?

Would you look for a high value in a contiguous vertical to what you've already addressed, let's say, in automotive? Or would it be something more waterfront, a business that spans several verticals maybe being more relevant across the industrial software space. Could that be the sort of ambitions that Cadence would have given the silicon-to-systems opportunities that are emerging?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Well, thank you for the question. And a lot of times, there are a lot of reports, and we normally don't comment on these reports and people get very creative on these reporting. But what I would like to say is that our strategy hasn't changed, okay? It's the same strategy from 2018. First of all, I want to make sure you know that we are focused in our core business, which is EDA and IP. And yes, I launched this whole initiative on systems and it's super critical, silicon to systems. But what is one thing that I even mentioned last time, what is different from 2018 to now is that EDA and IP is much more valuable to the industry.

Our core business itself has become much more valuable because of AI, okay? So our first focus is in our core business. So we are leading in our core business. Our first focus is on organic development, okay? That's what we like. We always say that's the best way forward now. Along with that, we have done, like you mentioned, some opportunistic M&A, which is usually, I would like to say, is the tuck-in M&A in the past. And that adds to our portfolio.

It helped us in system analysis. We also did it in IP because I'm very optimistic about IP growth this year. And we talked about our new partnership with Intel foundry in Q1. Also, we acquired Rambus IP assets, which are HBM and HBM is, of course, a critical technology in AI and we are seeing a lot of growth in HBM this year. Now it's -- we have booked that business, the deliveries will happen towards the second half of the year, as John was saying earlier so that's thing. Now in terms of BETA, it made sense because it is a very good technology. It's the right size for us, and we are focused on finishing that acquisition and also integrating that, that will take some time. So that's our primary focus in terms of M&A.

And it's a very good technology. They have a very good footprint in automotive and aerospace verticals. So just to clarify, we have the same strategy from '18, and that's doing working as well as primarily organic with very synergistic computational software mostly tuck-in acquisitions.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Ruben Roy with Stifel.

[Ruben Roy, analyst]

Anirudh, I had a follow-up on the Z3 X3 commentary that you had. And One of the things I was thinking about, especially as you talk about the InfiniBand low latency network across the multiple racks of Z3, you had mentioned that you're up to 85% attach rate of both systems with Z2 X2, I would imagine that would continue to go up. And if you can comment on if the new systems incorporate InfiniBand across Z3 and X3? And if so, do you expect that to be sort of a selling point for your customers that are designing these big chips, which, in many cases, these days have software development attached to the design process. Do you think that the attach rates continue to move higher for both systems?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes, absolutely. I think I started this in, I forgot, '16, I think Dynamic Duo or '15 and '16, which which is -- we have a custom processor for Palladium, and we use FPGA for Protium, okay? So this is what we call Dynamic Duo because then Palladium is best-in-class for chip verification and RTL design, and Protium is best-in-class for software bring up, okay, and with the common front end. So as a result, over the years, this has become the right approach, okay? And our customers are fully embracing both these systems as they invariably do both chip development and software development.

I mean perfect example is, of course, our long-term development partner, NVIDIA. I mean NVIDIA is no longer doing just chip development. They have a massive software stack, and that's true for all the hyperscalers. So we see that trend continuing. And now we do use NVIDIA's products like InfiniBand in our systems on Z3 to your question, which is because Z3 is a very unique architecture. So it requires very, very high-speed interconnect. So it's almost like a supercomputer. So then it requires optical and InfiniBand in Z3, we are using AMD FPGAs, which are fabulous, but it does not require that tight interconnect speed. p

So InfiniBand is more used in Z3 versus X3. But X3 is a great system, too. We're using the latest AMD FPGAs. It has 8x higher capacity than X2 and all kinds of innovation on the software side as well. So we are very pleased. I'm very confident that we have true leadership in these hardware platforms, both palladium and Protium. And we're also pleased, like I said earlier, that we are able to refresh it much sooner than the market expected, given our track record, and then we are seeing a lot of demand for both of these systems together going forward.

[Ruben Roy, analyst]

That's helpful. And then a follow-up for John. Anirudh mentioned HBM IP business booked and shipping in second half. I was wondering if you can kind of give us a bigger picture update on how you're viewing IP in general in terms of bookings relative to sort of ramps of those IP sales? Is it sort of the entire segment sort of a second half, should we think about the second half ramping at a heavier weight than first half? Or any update there would be helpful.

[John Wall, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Ruben. I mean Q1 IP performance and bookings were ahead of our expectations and everything remains on track there for a very strong growth year for 2024 for the IP business. Of course, the timing of revenue recognition depends on the timing of deliveries. But we had a tremendous bookings quarter in Q1, and we're preparing to scale for a number of deliveries of IP in the second half. But we expect the IP to have a very strong year this year. We're pleased with the overall business momentum, but we need to scale up some head count to prepare to deliver on some of the larger backlog orders.

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes. One thing I want to highlight. I think you may have seen this. I just want to highlight our partnership with Intel [ and IFS ] that was concluded in Q1. And so it's really good to see IND and Intel investing more in the foundry business and also working more closely with us. So that's also a key contributor to IP. But like John said, we have to hire the people, do the -- we need to put our portfolio to the Intel process, okay? And that takes some time. So that's more will come towards the end of the year and next year. But we are pleased with that new partnership on IP Okay.

[Operator]

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

[Jay Vleeschhouwer, analyst]

John, first and Anirudh. So for John, thinking back to a recent conversation we had, could you comment as a measure of EDA market health or dynamics, what you're seeing or expecting in terms of intra contract new or expansion business. This is an ongoing phenomenon in EDA. Maybe talk about what you're seeing in that kind of business beyond the customary renewals schedule? And then relatedly, how are you thinking about pricing for this year, given that EDA generally has substantially better pricing capacity than you might have had in years past? And then my follow-up for Anirudh.

[John Wall, executive]

Sure. Thanks, Jay. Great question. Yes, I think what you're getting at there is what we would call add-ons. Typically, we have the very predictable software renewal business. And you'll see in the recurring revenue part of our business, I think we're at double-digit revenue growth. But over the past few years, I think that's been at low teens. But we're seeing that a number of customers that have adopted AI tools are maybe not coming back and purchasing add-ons as frequently.

But right now, we're focused on proliferating those AI tools into account. I think there's an opportunity to increase pricing there, but maybe now is not the right time. I think we have such strong momentum on the upfront revenue business. We're preparing for scale into the second half there, but we'll have plenty of revenue growth in the second half of the year. We can continue to focus on proliferating our AI tools and technology into accounts. And pricing is something certainly we can focus on more intently in future years. But right now, the focus is on proliferation. Anirudh, do you have anything to add to that?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

No.

[Jay Vleeschhouwer, analyst]

Okay. Anirudh, thinking back to your conference last week, particularly the Gen AI track. It was interesting, of course, to hear the adoption presentations by Renesas, Intel and so forth. But what seemed to be taking place is a heavy focus on Cerebrus, which makes sense. It's the one longest end market. So perhaps, you could talk about how you're thinking about the adoption curve for the other brands aside from Cerebrus? And are there any critical parts of the design flow that might not necessarily be amenable to AI enablement. We hear a lot about implementation, analog, verification, but we don't hear a lot about AI as being applicable to synthesis, for example. So maybe talk about those areas where it makes a lot of sense and knows where perhaps it will remain more or less conventional technology.

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Jay, for the question. So as you know, we have 5 major AI platforms with Cerebrus and digital implementation being the one that has been out the longest and Cerebrus is doing quite well, like you noted, and we also commented on more than 350 tapeouts, a lot of PPA improvement. But all the other ones are doing well, too. Sometimes we have like too many products, we don't talk enough about the others, but like verification, like Verisium is doing quite well. And I mentioned Qualcomm last week talked about pretty impressive results because verification, as you know, is an exponential problem because as the chips get bigger, the verification task gets exponentially bigger.

So the benefit of AI can be significant in verification. So I think you will see that in the next few quarters and years that verification will be as important as implementation in terms of benefits of AI, okay? And then the other area I would like to highlight is PCB and Allegro and packaging because that area hasn't seen that much automation. And Allegro is a leading platform for packaging and PCB, but really proud of Allegro X AI. And we talked about several customers, including Intel last week talked about 4x to 10x improvement using X AI in PCB. So apart from digital, I think the next 2 ones, I feel, are verification and Allegro and PCB and then the areas that haven't done as well, I mean, is more not in design optimization is like design generation.

And I think there, this LLM-based models do provide a lot of promise. So historically, we haven't done as much design generation, this is like almost pre-RTL, right, going from spec to RTL. That's truly the creative part of the design process. And then once you have RTL, it's more optimization part in digital and verification. So I think that's where we have to see, but some initial results, which we haven't talked but I think mentioned last week. But we work with a -- but we have to see it still in early stages, but we work with 1 or 2 customers in which we took like a 40, 50-page spec document, this English document and able to automatically generate RTL from it, okay? And the RTL quality is pretty good. So again, we have to see how that goes, but that requires these really advanced LLM capabilities. So that's something to be seen. But if that works well, that could be another kind of very interesting kind of application of Gen AI.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Gary Mobley with Wells Fargo Securities.

[Gary Mobley, analyst]

John, I appreciate the fact that China revenue in the first quarter was down against a tough year-ago comp on the hardware verification side as you work on backlog. And I assume that you still expect China to be dilutive to overall company growth in the fiscal year. Could you speak to whether or not you're starting to see U.S. export controls begin to impact your ability to do business there, whether that be a function of restrictions around gate all around or certain China customers added to the entity list.

[John Wall, executive]

Gary, thanks for the question. And just to clarify, I think last quarter, I said I expected China revenue to be flat to down this year. I think we still expect that. And that's because last year was such a strong year, and there was a lot of -- there was kind of an oversized portion of that hardware catch-up that we had that was delivered to China. So I think it skewed the China number higher last year. So we're lapping pretty tough comps. Design activity in China remains very strong, though. We have a lot of diversification. There's strength in other parts of the world. that we're very comfortable with the 2024 outlook and we factored all the impact of geopolitical risk in there to the best we can and try to derisk China as much as we can in our guide.

[Gary Mobley, analyst]

Okay. The follow-up, I want to ask about bookings trends for the balance of the year. You obviously highlighted better than seasonal Q1 booking trends. How would you expect the bookings to play out for the balance of the year? And to what extent will Z3 and X3 factor into that for the balance of the year?

[John Wall, executive]

Yes. I mean it's hard to predict in terms of Z3 and X3 that we definitely need another quarter to see that. I expect we expect strong demand and we expect strong revenue growth into the -- that we're preparing for scale into the second half on the hardware side, but we need to at least another quarter of demand. And normally, with hardware, I don't like taking up the year for hardware until I see the pipeline in the summer. So we're trying to be conservative there. But generally, on the hardware side, yes, we're basically preparing for scale. We'll build those systems as quickly as possible. We expect strong demand there.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Celino with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

[Jason Celino, analyst]

And Andrew, congrats to your R&D team. Impressed that they reduced the cycle there, all while designing [indiscernible] box, too, right? Maybe first, just how many of the -- for the Z3 X3, does it become available in Q3? I guess when can customers start putting orders in for that?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes. First of all, thanks. And yes, they become available now, okay? And it will ramp Q3 and then Q4. But we already have them running at several early customers. So I mean normally when we announce something, as you know, like and one of our lead partners, they have been running for 3 months already and very stable. But in general, it will be more Q3 and then Q4 in terms of -- because normally, in any system, there is like a 3- to 6-month kind of overlap. So we will still sell Z2 X2 and then move to Z3 X3. So that's a natural part. And that's also contributing to this quarter-by-quarter variation a little bit, but it will ramp. And Q3 will be bigger and then Q4 should be bigger than that .

[John Wall, executive]

Yes, we try to derisk the guide with the assumption that there's going to be strong demand for the newer systems. But it will give us the opportunity to put some of the older systems into the cloud because we have a large underserved community that want to use our emulation capacity, but we haven't had a lot of capacity to share with them through our cloud offering. To the extent we do that, that will lead to [ ratable ] revenue, though, because I think when it's used in the cloud, you get revenue over time, whereas when we deliver and they use it on-prem, we take revenue upfront Yes.

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

But the demand it takes like 1 to 2 quarters to ramp. .

[Jason Celino, analyst]

Okay. Because that's kind of what I was going to ask next is I think last time in 2021, you had like a 6-month period where you're selling both. And I think you were trying to clear inventory for the Z1 and X1. It doesn't sound like you'll be trying to do that again. Because when I think about this Q2 air pocket, is it a function of customers waiting for Z3 X3? Or is it a function of they might not want to buy the older version?

[John Wall, executive]

Well, the guide -- we've derisk guide on the assumption that many customers might wait. But we intend to sell them side by side. But to the extent the customers wait, it will shift some hardware revenue into the second half of the year. And we've anticipated that. So that's within the guide. To the extent the customers continue to buy Z2, and we're not putting those into the cloud, but selling those outright as well. Well, then that will change the profile of the shape of revenue. But we expect that this new system, the strength of this new system will trigger a lot of demand for it.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya with Bank of America Securities.

[Vivek Arya, analyst]

I think you mentioned second half growth will be driven a lot more by hardware. Do you think you will see all the benefit of the hardware refresh within this year? Will it be done? Will it continue into '25. I guess my bigger question really is that if I exclude the upfront benefit from last year and this year, your recurring business is expected to grow about 10%.

And I'm curious, Anirudh, is that in line with the kind of recurring revenue growth you are expecting or we should be expecting going forward, right along with periodic hardware refreshes -- or is that not the right way to interpret your core recurring part of your business?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Very good question. first of all, in nonrecurring, it's not just hardware, but it's also IP in terms of the second half because like we mentioned, we have new IP business driven by and also by Intel IFS. So that is also back-end loaded along with hardware. And then hardware, hardware normally, when we launch a new system, it takes 1 or 2 years for it to fully. So even though we are not commenting about next year, I'd be surprised if this time, it's only a 6-month impact.

So I expect like these things is built for to be used in design for next 5, 7 years. So the impact will be also not just this year but following years. And in terms of recurring revenue, I think the best way like we have said is to look at a 3-year CAGR basis because there could be some fluctuation in all. And overall, we are pleased with the recurring revenue growth and and we go from there.

[John Wall, executive]

Yes. And Vivek, if I could, I'd like to kind of take -- carry in some of Gary's question earlier that I don't think I addressed because he was asking about the the bookings profile for the year. Q2 for software renewals, I think, is our lightest software renewals quarter for the year. But I think we explained last quarter that we expect the weighting of bookings first half to second half to be about 40-60 this year. But the recurring revenue right now in the guide is about double digits, [ above ] 10%. And in the past, it's been about 13%. Now we're not really anticipating a huge number of add-ons, but to grow that above 10%. To the extent that, that comes through, it will be upside to the guide. But what we try to do when we do the guide is derisk for the risks that we can see.

[Vivek Arya, analyst]

Okay. For my follow-up question on incremental EBIT margin. Do you think this greater mix of hardware is impacting the incremental EBIT margin. I think if I calculate it correctly, the new guidance is still below the 50% incremental, right, or right about, which is lower than what you have had the last 2, 3 years. Is that the right interpretation? And what can change that?

[John Wall, executive]

Yes, Vivek, I think what you're referring to really is that, I mean, for what, 7 years in a row now, we think we've been achieving over 50% incremental margins. It's a matter of pride here, We try to achieve that every year, but we'll certainly be trying to achieve that this year. I think we're in the high 40s. It's probably about 47% when you look at this guide right now. I think one of the biggest challenges with something like that is you know, we do small tuck-in M&A, but I don't want to go over [indiscernible] Lee Simpson, but organic is delicious here. At Cadence, we focus on innovation and growing with organically driven products and then with small tuck-in M&A. But to the extent that we do some larger M&A and of course, we have BETA CAE which apparently is the gold standard in structural simulation. So that's a big acquisition for us.

But now I think the size of that probably still qualifies as a small tuck-in. But when you do something like that, that those M&A transactions typically are headwinds to that incremental margin calculation in the short term, they will be beneficial in the long term. But in the short term, M&A can be dilutive pretty much in the first year and then becomes accretive later. When we look at our incremental margin. That's a headwind. But we try to overcome that headwind because normally, all we do with these small tuck-in M&As So I haven't given up on 50% incremental margin for this year. It's a challenge, but we'll do our best to achieve this.

[Operator]

Your final question will come from the line of Harlan Sur with JPMorgan.

[Harlan Sur, analyst]

After a strong 2023 is starting the year relatively flattish and down about 5% to 6% sequentially. I think it feels like it's an unusual starting point for SDA, especially given all of the drivers you guys have articulated. Is SDA expected to also be more second half loaded? And do you expect SDA, this is ex BETA CAE, but do you expect SDA to grow in line or faster than your overall corporate growth target for the full year?

[John Wall, executive]

Yes, Harlan. That's a great question. And thanks for highlighting that because I had that on my list of things to to say, I think there's something funny going on with the rounding on when you kind of apply the growth rates for SDA for Q1 over Q1, the actual growth rate is probably high single digits Q1-over-Q1. I know that's lapping tough comps against Q1 '23. I think if you look on a 2-year CAGR basis, I think it's up about 17% per annum on a 2-year CAGR basis for SDA. But we're expecting strong SDA A growth again this year, and it will be higher than the Cadence average. That's our expectation.

[Harlan Sur, analyst]

Great. And then, Anirudh lots of new accelerated compute AI SoC announcements just even over the past few weeks where we saw flagship Blackwell GPU announcement by one of your big customers NVIDA. But we've actually seen even more announcements by your cloud and hyperscale customers bringing their own custom AI [ ASIC ] to the market with Google with TPU V5, Google with their Arm-based CPU ASIC; Meta unveiled their Gen 2 TPU AI classes of chips as well. And in addition to that, like their road maps seem to be accelerating. So can you give us an update on your systems and hyperscale customers? I mean are you seeing the design activity accelerating within this customer base? And is the contribution mix from these customers rising above that sort of roughly 45% level going forward?

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Yes, Harlan, that's a very good observation. And the pace of AI innovation like is increasing and not just in the big semi companies, but of course, in these system companies. And I think several announcements did come out, right, including, I think now Meta is public that Meta is designing a lot of silicon for AI. And of course, Google, Microsoft, Amazon. So all the big, really hyperscaler companies, along with NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, all the other kind of Samsung had AI phone this year.

So I mean, there is a lot of acceleration both on the semi side and on the system side. And we are involved with all the major players there, and we're glad to provide our solutions. And I do think -- and this is the other thesis we have talked about for years now, right, 5, 7 years that the system companies will do silicon because of a lot of reasons for customization, for schedule and supply chain control for cost benefits, if there is enough scale. And I think the workload of AI, like if you look at I think some of the big hyperscaler and social media companies, they're talking about using like 20,000, 24,000 GPUs to train these new models. I mean this is immense amount.

And then the size of the model and the number of models increased, so that could go to a much, much higher number than right now. that is required to train these models and of course, to do inference on these models. So I think we are still in the early innings in terms of system companies developing their own chips and at the same time, working with the semi companies. So I expect that to grow and those that our business with the system companies doing silicon, I would like to say is growing faster than Cadence average. But the good thing is the semi guys are also doing a lot of business. So I don't know if that 45% will -- because that's a combination of a lot of companies. But overall, the AI and hyperscalers, they are doing a lot more than so are the big semi company.

[Operator]

I'll now turn it back over to Anirudh Devgan for closing remarks.

[Anirudh Devgan, executive]

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. It's an exciting time for Cadence as our broad portfolio and product leadership highly positions us to maximize the growing opportunities in the semiconductor and systems industry. And on behalf of our employees and our Board of Directors, we thank our customers, partners and investors for their continued trust and confidence in Cadence.

[Operator]

Thank you for participating in today's Cadence First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. This concludes today's call, and you may now disconnect.