Mentor Graphics reports annual and fiscal Q4 results

WILSONVILLE, USA: Mentor Graphics Corp. has announced results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year ending January 31, 2011.

For the full year, the company reported revenues of $914.8 million, up 14 percent from fiscal year 2010, non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.70, a 49 percent increase, and GAAP earnings per share of $.25 compared to a GAAP loss per share of $.23 the prior year. For the fiscal fourth quarter, the company reported revenues of $307.3 million, up 30 percent from the fourth quarter of the prior year, non-GAAP earnings per share up 60 percent at $.48, and GAAP earnings per share of $.43, up 10 percent from the prior fourth quarter.

“Driven by over 40 percent year-over-year bookings growth in our core system design business, Mentor set an all-time revenue record this past year, growing the fastest of the ‘Big 3’ EDA companies,” said Walden C. Rhines, CEO and chairman of Mentor Graphics. “Mentor’s decade-long emphasis on investment in system design software has driven us to a near-50 percent market share in printed circuit board design (PCB) software and an operating margin percent for PCB software that is twice that of the overall company. We expect this momentum to continue in this fiscal year as we achieve over 9 percent growth in Mentor’s revenues and a much greater percentage growth in earnings.”

During the quarter, the company teamed up with ARM to provide an automated memory test and repair solution for ARM embedded memories and processor cores. Mentor also combined Veloce hardware emulation technology with equipment from Rohde and Schwarz, the largest test and measurement supplier in Europe, to deliver a hardwareaccelerated debug platform for wireless communication systems-on-chip.

The company collaborated with IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung to design a test chip for 32nm and 28nm IC manufacturing technologies, using the Mentor Olympus-SoC place and route system and the Calibre physical verification and design for manufacturing platform. Mentor’s leading-edge products continued to receive endorsements from customers such as Broadcom, Infineon, Siemens, Fujitsu and Cypress Semiconductor.

In December, the company announced the acquisition of assets of CodeSourcery, a leading provider of open source toolchains and services for advanced embedded systems development. CodeSourcery software enables customers to maximize the performance of hardware platforms ranging from embedded devices to supercomputers.

“Cost controls remain an intense focus at Mentor Graphics,” said Gregory K. Hinckley, president of Mentor Graphics. “We have reduced SG&A expense as a percent of revenue by five hundred basis points over the last two years, and are on track to reduce it another two hundred basis points this fiscal year. We are committed to continue to further reduce SG&A expense over the next several fiscal years.”

Outlook
For the fiscal first quarter ending April 30, 2011, the company expects revenue of about $225 million, non-GAAP earnings per share of about $.15 and GAAP earnings per share of about $.06. For the full year fiscal 2012, the company expects revenues to be approximately $1 billion, non-GAAP earnings per share of about $1.00 and GAAP earnings per share of approximately $.77.

This represents a 9 percent growth in revenue, over 40 percent growth in non-GAAP earnings per share, and a non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 15 percent.