Earnings Call Transcript - CDNS Q1 2022

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Erica, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cadence First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Richard Gu, Vice President of Investor Relations for Cadence. Please go ahead.

Richard Gu, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, Operator. I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter of fiscal year 2022 earnings conference call. I am 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 Form 10-K and 10-Q, 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 will present certain non-GAAP measures, which should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP results. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today’s earnings release. Today’s earnings release for the first quarter of fiscal 2022, related financial tables, and CFO commentary are also available. For the Q&A session today, we would ask that you observe a limit of one question and one follow-up. You may re-queue if you would like to ask additional questions, and time permits. Now, I will turn the call over to Anirudh.

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I am pleased to report that Cadence delivered exceptional results for the first quarter of 2022, with broad-based demand for our innovative solutions driving solid double-digit growth across all business groups. In view of the strong start to the year and the continuing momentum of our business, we are raising our financial outlook for the year. John will provide more details on that in a moment. Generational trends such as hyperscale computing, 5G, autonomous driving, and AI/ML are creating an explosion of data that in turn is driving the need for next-generation compute, connectivity, storage, and data analytics solutions. Along with the accelerating digital transformation of multiple end markets, these trends continue to fuel robust design activity, creating rich market opportunities for our differentiated end-to-end EDA, IP, and system solutions. Now let’s talk about our key highlights for Q1. A key element of our approach has been to closely collaborate with our ecosystem partners and focus on market-shaping customers. We are very excited to have built upon our successful engagements with a marquee U.S. semiconductor company, and in Q1 signed one of the largest contracts in company history, to enable the broad proliferation of our EDA, hardware, and systems solutions. Additionally, in Q1, we expanded our longstanding partnership with Arm, who is using a comprehensive set of Cadence’s EDA solutions and Cadence who is using Arm’s latest IP, to jointly provide implementation reference flows and optimized processor IP to accelerate customer innovation. Rapidly increasing challenges in system verification and software bring-up continued to be a strong pull for our verification business, which delivered 30% year-over-year revenue growth. On the heels of a record year, our hardware business had its biggest quarter by far, with unabating demand for our best-in-class Palladium Z2 and Protium X2 hardware platforms. With 10 new customers and over 50 repeat customers, more than half the orders during the quarter included both platforms. Demand for hardware was broad-based, with particular strength seen in the hyperscale, 5G/communications, and AI/ML segments. Our digital and signoff business had another strong quarter, with 23% year-over-year revenue growth. Deployment of our digital full flow, delivering industry-leading quality of results at the most advanced nodes, continued to accelerate with more than 15 new wins in Q1. Our innovative Cadence Cerebrus solution uses unique reinforcement learning ML technologies to explore the entire design space and intelligently optimize the digital full flow in a fully automated manner. Several market-shaping customers have successfully deployed Cadence Cerebrus and realized remarkable productivity and power, performance, and area benefits, including a marquee Asia-Pacific systems company that used Cadence Cerebrus to achieve 5X engineering productivity and nearly 10% power gains on a critical advanced node subsystem. A leading Asia-Pacific hyperscaler used Cadence Cerebrus with our digital full flow to tape out a chip with nearly 2 billion instances, reducing power by 5% compared to the alternative flow. Our System Design & Analysis business, which is driving our expansion beyond EDA, continued its strong momentum in Q1, delivering 22% year-over-year revenue growth. There is growing interest in our Integrity 3D-IC solution, the industry’s most advanced multi-die platform, with tightly integrated system planning, implementation, and analysis technologies. A large U.S. data infrastructure company successfully deployed Integrity to tape out their 2.5D IC, and Lightelligence used Integrity 3D-IC, Virtuoso, and Innovus in the development of their fully integrated optical computer system. In System Analysis, we continued executing to our strategy of building out our multiphysics platform, offering best-in-class engines delivering superior results compared to legacy solutions. We are pleased with the new wins and growing repeat orders for our organic Clarity and Celsius products, as well as our recently acquired CFD technologies. Over the past year, our CFD solutions have continued to proliferate, especially in the aerospace and defense arena with market-shaping customers such as Lockheed Martin. In Q1, Juniper Networks renewed their commitment to Cadence technology, including comprehensive access to our systems portfolio across PCB, packaging, and System Analysis solutions. Last week we introduced Fidelity CFD, a comprehensive CFD platform that includes enhanced meshing technologies and a next-generation massively parallel high-order solver that dramatically improves the performance and accuracy of complex CFD applications across multiple vertical end markets. Fidelity CFD’s software meshing capabilities have been chosen by Toyota Motor Europe as their standard workflow for CFD preprocessing, and the winning America’s Cup Team New Zealand relies on Fidelity Marine solver for their hull hydrodynamic modeling. Lastly, in addition to our outstanding business results, I am also proud of our high-performance inclusive culture and thrilled that we have been selected by Fortune and Great Place to Work as one of the 2022 100 Best Companies to Work For, for the eighth consecutive year. Now I will turn it over to John to provide more details on the Q1 results and our updated 2022 outlook.

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Thanks Anirudh, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased with the results we achieved for the first quarter of 2022, driven by broad-based strength across our technology portfolio and record demand for our leading hardware products. We continue to execute to our Intelligent System Design strategy, making further significant strides with our innovation roadmap, and most importantly, we continue to delight our customers. Here are some of the financial highlights from the first quarter. Total revenue was $902 million, GAAP operating margin was 35%, and non-GAAP operating margin was 44%. GAAP EPS was $0.85, and non-GAAP EPS was $1.17. Cash balance was $1.135 billion, operating cash flow was $337 million, and we repurchased $250 million of Cadence shares. Before I provide our updated outlook for fiscal 2022, I’d like to highlight that it contains our usual assumption that the export limitations that exist today remain in place for the remainder of the year. With that in mind, our updated outlook for fiscal 2022 is revenue in the range of $3.395 billion to $3.435 billion, GAAP operating margin in the range of 28.5% to 30%, non-GAAP operating margin in the range of 38.5% to 40%, GAAP EPS in the range of $2.51 to $2.59, non-GAAP EPS in the range of $3.89 to $3.97, operating cash flow in the range of $1.19 billion to $1.29 billion, and we expect to use at least 50% of our free cash flow to repurchase Cadence shares in 2022. For Q2, we expect revenue in the range of $825 million to $845 million, GAAP operating margin in the range of 29% to 30%, non-GAAP operating margin of 39% to 40%, GAAP EPS in the range of $0.59 to $0.63, non-GAAP EPS in the range of $0.95 to $0.99, and we expect to repurchase at least $200 million of Cadence shares in Q2. Our CFO commentary, which is available on our website, includes our outlook for additional items, as well as further analysis and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations. In conclusion, all our businesses had a strong start to the year. I am pleased that revenue growth and profitability continue to accelerate. We are on track to exceed 50% incremental margin for 2022, which contributes to our continued operating margin expansion. Also, with the increase in our outlook at the midpoint, we now expect revenue growth for the year to exceed 14%, driving acceleration in our three-year revenue CAGR to over 13%. As always, 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

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

Gary Mobley, Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions and let me extend my congratulations to the strong start to the fiscal year. I want to start off by asking about backlog; you had roughly a 16% sequential increase, and I was wondering, to what extent has emulation, prototyping hardware tools contributed to that increase, as well as IP? And I want to ask you about the diversity of the backlog increase; was it largely driven by that marquee customer win that you highlighted in your prepared remarks?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah, Gary. Great question. This is John. Yeah. We are very pleased that backlog is now up to over $5.1 billion, and it mainly came from broad-based strength across all of the different business groups. There was a substantial uptake in terms of hardware demand, and you saw some of that come through in the revenue number in the quarter. But also I think you refer to, we had a large record contract with the marquee U.S. semiconductor company that we booked in Q1. This was a big extension and expansion to replace an existing deal that was expected to expire at the end of 2022, and that contributed significantly to backlog growth as well.

Gary Mobley, Analyst

Great. Thank you. Thank you, John. I wanted to ask you about the disclosure in your SEC filings about the subpoena that you received from the U.S. Commerce Department or BIS, and I was wondering if you can give us any update on what that entity is asking for and perhaps, what it relates to, as well as your take on what specifically is motivating them to ask you for more information?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah. Gary, yeah, we mentioned previously that this is an administrative subpoena, and the focus of the subpoena is information about sales to certain Chinese entities. Our response to the subpoena at this stage is mostly complete, and Cadence is in compliance with all export control regulations. But other than that, I really don’t have anything else to say.

Gary Mobley, Analyst

Okay. All right. Well, thank you, guys.

Operator, Operator

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

Charles Shi, Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. Maybe the first question, I want to follow-up quickly on the U.S. marquee semiconductor customer. I wonder you mentioned about the record contract you signed. Is that a reflection of expanded scope of collaboration with that customer or a longer contract duration with this particular customer, or maybe a combination of both? Can you give us some color on that?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yeah. Hi, Charles. Thank you for the question. This is Anirudh. So, like we have mentioned, key approach, a key element of our strategy is to focus on market-shaping customers. And I am very happy with this new arrangement with the marquee U.S. semiconductor company. And you may know we have been working with this particular customer for a while, and now we are excited to build upon these successes with these new contracts, and it’s a broad-ranging contract like we mentioned, so it includes our EDA solutions, but it also includes our hardware platforms and our new systems solution. So it’s a fairly comprehensive arrangement, and we look forward to continuing deployment with this very important customer. And to give you an example, I think last time we also mentioned, for example in EDA, we have a lot of successful engagements on our digital full flow, and for example, Cerebrus gave very good results at several key blocks on a recent tape-out with about 5X productivity improvement. At the same time, we also have engagement in analog with Virtuoso and Spectre and, of course, verification with the key element of hardware and then system solution. So, overall, we are happy with the progress, and we look forward to wider deployment as we go forward.

Charles Shi, Analyst

Thanks, Anirudh. So maybe a second question I want to follow-up on China. Definitely I understand you don’t have any new news on the subpoena front, but your competitor recently, I mean, maybe not recently, they received a subpoena and made news. Just not really asking you to provide more legal comments on that, but from a business standpoint, are you seeing any changes in terms of behavior among the Chinese customers, who are not really subject to the export control measures, but may see what’s the new development as a sign of potential escalation between the U.S. and China on semiconductors? I just want to point out that your China revenue did see a little bit of a pickup in the first quarter. Maybe I am not making the wrong correlation here, but any color on this front would be great? Thank you.

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yeah. Thank you, Charles. So we are pretty pleased with our business in China. I think you may know we had some tough comparisons in 2021 versus 2022, fiscal 2021 versus fiscal 2020. But that’s behind us now. So I think we expect China business to be strong and continue to grow, and we are seeing that strength across our product portfolio. So, John, do you want to comment?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah. I would add that, yeah, I mean, we are seeing customer demand is strong, and it continues to present a growing opportunity for us out in China. One thing that benefited us in China in Q1 was we did pick up some software revenue in custom IC and digital IC from some license compliance transactions, and that benefited us in Q1, as well as the strong hardware in the quarter.

Charles Shi, Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink with Baird.

Joe Vruwink, Analyst

Great. Hi, everyone. Maybe just going back to the backlog development. When you think about how your involvement with the marquee U.S. semiconductor company has evolved, do you think it is emblematic of kind of how your relationships across your broader customer base are evolving? And maybe at a strategic level can we just discuss how that scope of involvement is changing? And related to that, you introduced quite a few new products over the past 12 months. You have been talking about some today. Are you starting to see those factor into larger ACVs or deal sizes?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yeah. Joe, that’s a good point. So, what I would say is that we are pretty happy with our product portfolio and competitive positioning. We are happy that we always start by focusing on the important customers, benchmarking, and focusing on adoption and proliferation that leads to bookings and revenue. Overall, I think we all feel confident in our product portfolio that includes EDA and IP, and then the expansion of that product portfolio into system design and analysis, as you see that also grew pretty well in Q1. The use of AI to further differentiate our solutions, whether in EDA or systems. So at this point, I think we feel good where we are, and also, as you know, we are in the golden era of semiconductors and electronic systems. So the market is also growing, and we feel we are in a strong position. So together it’s a good tailwind for our solutions and our company.

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

And I would just add there, Joe, that we are very excited about the growth opportunity that this expansion brings us over the next several years.

Joe Vruwink, Analyst

Okay. That’s great. And then specifically on your hardware platforms, a quarter ago, you discussed how verification had really good visibility and this was informing your view on a strong Q1 forecast at that time and also a strong first half, but that you weren’t necessarily extrapolating the strength in the first half into the second half. Maybe with the updated forecast you are providing today can you just give an update on kind of where your thinking and forecasting stands with your verification hardware?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yeah. Let me go ahead and talk about verification first, and I think, John, can comment more about the outlook for the year. But I think verification, as you know, is a key differentiator for our customers. To really be a state-of-the-art kind of design company or a systems semiconductor company, your ability to do good verification is critical. That is what can lead to the rapid cadence of your products and also how fast from silicon tape out to product release. So I think the importance of verification becomes critical, and the importance of hardware platforms, especially driven by Palladium and Protium, to do not just ideal verification but also software bring-up is critical. Therefore, we are seeing a strong demand across both semiconductor companies, but also the system companies which inherently have software who are verification products, and we had a record quarter following a record year last year. Now in terms of going forward, I would like John to comment on the rest of the year guidance.

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah. Joe, I mean, we are seeing significant demand for all of our hardware products, and as we said in our year-end call just a few weeks ago, we weren’t comfortable with providing an outlook or extrapolating that demand into the second half of the year until we saw the pipeline closer to the summer, and that’s we kind of retained that position for this guide.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Blair Abernethy with Rosenblatt Securities.

Blair Abernethy, Analyst

Thanks very much, and nice quarter, guys. Just wondering if we could talk a little more about the multiphysics simulation side of things. I just wanted to get an update on how your channel partner programs are developing, whether they are getting traction in the overall business? And just perhaps on the multiphysics simulation, sort of what would you classify or what do you view as areas where you have got some competitive strengths?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

That's a great question. First of all, we are seeing strong growth in system design and analysis. As a reminder, we recognize all our revenue ratably in this segment, unlike some other companies. With ratable revenue, bookings tend to grow faster than revenues. Overall, we are quite satisfied with system design and analysis, particularly the System Analysis segment, which is becoming a larger part of Cadence's business. Our main advantage lies in our computational software expertise. Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have gained extensive experience in efficiently and accurately handling very large systems. We leverage this expertise in System Analysis, making our solutions significantly better than legacy options in this domain. Our focus is primarily on our key customers, who are often similar to our traditional top clients, including large system and semiconductor companies. We aim to ensure our product stands out, and we believe that is evident in the strength of our offerings like clarity, Celsius, and the recent introduction of Fidelity. Additionally, we are working on expanding our channel partnerships and increasing the availability of these solutions on the cloud, which allows us to reach more customers. Our strategy is to prioritize product development, target our top customers, and methodically build a framework for deployment and go-to-market efforts. Overall, we are happy with our progress, which aligns well with our broader EDA positioning and intelligent system design strategy.

Blair Abernethy, Analyst

That’s great. Thanks very much.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Pradeep Ramani with UBS Securities.

Pradeep Ramani, Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I just had a couple of questions on the marquee customer win that you are talking about. Should we think about that as a competitive displacement from your side, or should we think about it more as a similar scope or maybe expanded scope, but larger contract values? How do you think about that?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah. I would profile it as an expansion of the proliferation of our technology with that customer. I think that customer has seen the value in the products that we have provided over the last number of years, and it's ready to take the next step. Typically, when we are proliferating with costs like this, it starts with them using our technology in a number of individual designs and then based on the success of those designs, they proliferate and expand into other multiple designs. They may also continue to use the other technology, but it’s certainly, I was very excited about the growth opportunity that this expansion means for us for the next number of years.

Pradeep Ramani, Analyst

Great. As a follow-up, it seems your IP business is gaining momentum when looking at the last two quarters. Do you still anticipate a growth rate in the low teens for the year, or should we expect something significantly higher?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Well, over the last three years or so, I think they have been growing around mid-teens. We put in the outlook low teens. It’s in the outlook at 13%. We haven’t changed that from the end of last year, but you might have noticed that they achieved 17% in Q1. What we find is that when we give them a target for low-teens, they focus on the most profitable IP business and generally overperform. The current outlook just represents 13%, there may be upside for us.

Operator, Operator

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

Jay Vleeschhouwer, Analyst

Yeah. Thank you. Good evening, Anirudh and John. Question number one, Anirudh, we have spoken over the last few months of how your semiconductor customers are becoming increasingly like systems customers, and systems customers are becoming more like semi customers. With that in mind, though, in what way are the two halves of the customer base still different? I mean, even though they are becoming more alike, what are the important differences that remain in terms of their process or their mix of products from a company like yours? And in any case, given the overall rising tide of your business, given the strength of the end markets, how are you seeing the kinds of services and support requirements that you are having to invest in and expand for your customer base? Second question, going back to the marquee customer, that is who we all think it is, that company is already by far the largest vendor on commercially EDA. They, like many other semi companies, have been materially expanding their R&D budgets, inflecting higher substantially over the last number of quarters. The question is, could you foresee that particular customer becoming a more than 5% customer for you, or even perhaps 10%, and thereby increasing your overall customer concentration? Thanks.

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yeah. Hey, Jay. Let me start with your first question. Like you said, system companies are doing more semiconductor design, and semiconductor companies are becoming more system companies, and this is great for Cadence and the industry. There are similarities there but you asked about the differences. Some of the differences, of course, first thing is that’s one of the reasons we expanded into system design and analysis. Naturally, to system companies, we are not just engaging with our EDA and IP products; we're also engaging with the system design and analysis products, whether it’s 3D-IC or PCB design or simulation. That’s a natural synergy of our strategy and the natural synergy of what is happening in the customer base. The second big difference is that the system companies naturally have software content; that’s why they are a system company. The need for hardware platforms, especially both Palladium and Protium, and software bring-up, is always critical but is even more critical for these system companies that are doing semiconductors. I would say these are probably the two big things. And then, the third thing that always helps is that a lot of times the system companies are new or sometimes are engaging in new activities in semiconductors. So there is no legacy there. That always helps us, because without legacy, with the strength of our portfolio, we typically do well in the market. Now, regarding your second question, like we said, we are pretty happy with our engagement with the marquee U.S. semiconductor company, and there are a lot of opportunities to grow there over the years in multiple aspects: EDA, hardware, and system solutions.

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

We have a very diverse customer base, and we are pleased that this opportunity suggests this particular customer is likely to invest a higher percentage of their spending with us in the coming years, positioning us for growth in that account. We anticipate strong growth across many, if not all, of our accounts in the next few years, so I am not anticipating just a 10% customer.

Jay Vleeschhouwer, Analyst

Thanks. If I can just ask you...

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Another point to highlight is that as we develop more AI-based solutions, like Cerebrus, you'll see us deliver even more moving forward. This presents a significant opportunity to enhance productivity for our clients, whether they are in the semiconductor or systems sectors. Given the current tight labor market and the increasing demand for talent, there is a growing necessity for automation and higher-level automation. This trend creates a chance for us to perform well across a range of clients, particularly as they shift towards greater automation rather than solely expanding their workforce. While they will still continue to hire, there is an opportunity for EDA and IP to capture a larger share of their budgets as we enhance our automation solutions.

Operator, Operator

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

Vivek Arya, Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. I know that you look at the growth acceleration over the last few years; has it come from a wider customer base or is that more revenue per customer? And if I carry that question forward for the next three to four years, what do you think is going to be a more important factor in driving the growth, is it a wider customer base or is it more revenue per customer?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yeah. That’s a good question. What I would say is that three big trends are helping us. The first trend is, as you know, we are in a golden age of semiconductors, and it’s expected to grow and continue to grow for the next five to 10 years. So our core business can do well with the semiconductor companies. The second thing is, as mentioned earlier, the system companies are doing more silicon. That adds new kinds of opportunities to engage with system companies, and I think that is going to continue for the next five to 10 years, because there are systemic reasons for system companies wanting to use silicon for customization and differentiation. The third big trend is we are also expanding our portfolio in the system design and analysis, which is a growing tab for us and also it’s a profitable area. These three trends, which is one: the core semiconductor business is going to do well, that helps EDA and IP. Two: system companies are going to do more silicon. And three: our portfolio itself is expanding the system design and analysis, all these three things can help with AI and more automation; I don’t see that changing in the next five to 10 years. These are fundamental trends for a while that can help us.

Vivek Arya, Analyst

Got it. I know this is probably, it might be apples and oranges, but when I look at semiconductor companies, they are benefiting from raising prices, and they see across the board that their margins are getting better. Are you benefiting at all from raising prices on a like-to-like basis, or is that not a factor when you look at the stronger growth and acceleration this year? Is there a level of price inflation that is benefiting you in some ways as well?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Our revenue growth comes from a mix of increased volume and higher prices, and this trend is evident across all accounts over time. I don't have much more to add, but we continue to focus on delivering greater value to our customers, who, in turn, are allocating more of their spending to us.

Vivek Arya, Analyst

Okay. I guess my question is, is the price increase this year different than what you have had historically?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

We have increased prices this year, but similar to the prior years.

Operator, Operator

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

Ruben Roy, Analyst

Hi. Thanks. Anirudh, I just want to follow up on sort of the discussion around the core segments and certainly off your fast start and some of the other areas this year. I am just wondering, when you look at especially the customized IC design, are you thinking that that’s an area of your business that is going to sort of get back to sort of the corporate type of growth rates or maybe underperform a little bit relative to some of these newer areas, whether it’s fabrication tools, system design and analysis tools, etc. Just wondering, I hear you the core business is still growing along with the semiconductor area. But it seems like some of your other businesses are set up to grow at a faster pace. Am I thinking about that correctly?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Yes. I believe regarding the analog custom business...

Ruben Roy, Analyst

Yeah.

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

... with signal business. If you look back several years, that business has performed very well and continues to grow, because as we go to newer nodes, it’s not just the digital, but the analog has to go to these advanced nodes. We have a pretty good position in the market there. That has grown slightly slower than maybe digital verification, but still has done pretty well over the last few years, and I expect that to continue. There are a few things that are helping it also apart from traditional analog design, I mean, there is more and more RF design. Our recent move into RF with the acquisition of AWR is well integrated with Virtuoso. With 3D-IC and more and more, there’s a lot of activity still at mainstream nodes. Overall, we are pretty pleased with that business, and it still has a very healthy growth rate and continues to be also a fairly profitable business for us.

Ruben Roy, Analyst

Okay. Understood. As a quick follow-up, Anirudh, given what’s going on, it’s great to hear about the traction that marquee customers and large deals, etc. Is there an update on how to think about your cloud, the kind of move to the cloud for some of your products, or whether or not you are seeing some of your customers move to even a hybrid cloud situation? Or do you think, as we get more of these larger customers, is it still going to be the vast majority of your business is going to be on-prem? I am just trying to figure out if that’s still a big initiative for the next few years?

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Oh! Absolutely. I mean, cloud is a key initiative, and I think we have done this for several years. We were probably the first company to really invest heavily in the cloud, both from a customer-managed cloud or a Cadence-managed cloud, and also a variety of business models, right? Because primarily cloud allows more flexibility for our customers in terms of usage and business models. We have done this for several years, and we are open to all kinds of possibilities. It’s important to give choices to our customers; in some cases they use their own cloud platform, in some cases, they use our cloud platform that we work with our partners in a more of a SaaS offering. In some cases, like you said, they use hybrid, especially really big customers if they have a good existing data centers internally, then they use the hybrid cloud for peak utilization; whereas some of the smaller customers or newer startups may completely go to the cloud. So I think we will see how the market evolves, but we are ready with all kinds of solutions and business models to how the customers use those solutions. I do see the smaller or newer companies go more towards full cloud, and more of the traditional companies go towards hybrid cloud. But in any case, we are set up to service all these models for our customers.

Operator, Operator

Our final question comes from Devin Au with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Devin Au, Analyst

Hi, John. Hi, Anirudh. Thanks for taking my questions. Yeah. Some double-click on verification and China. Did you see any of the strength in these areas was maybe due to customers trying to buy ahead of any price increases or perceived inflation, just given the whole term macro backdrop?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah. I mean, there is very strong demand, but we have such strong demand that there’s a waiting list right now for our hardware. We are building the hardware as quickly as we can. The hardware that we delivered in China in Q1, many of those orders were pre-Q1; they were from last year. We have many, many more orders that we booked in Q1 that we will deliver later in the year, but we are flat out trying to build those systems as quickly as we can right now; demand continues to outstrip our ability to supply.

Devin Au, Analyst

Got it. Got it, John. Maybe just one more for you. Nice raise to the operating margin for the full year. Where you look at the first half margin, if my math is right, it’s around 40%, 41% range. The guidance suggests operating margins are a little bit lower in the second half. Can you remind us on what’s mainly driving the mix shift? Is it mainly due to timing of investments or maybe hiring that’s more backend loaded?

John Wall, Senior Vice President & CFO

Yeah. I would characterize the second half guide as prudent. There are lots of external factors playing out at the moment, and we are very, very confident in that second-half outlook. At the start of the year, we highlighted that we expected a strong start to the year with hardware. We didn’t want to extrapolate that into the second half of the year until we saw the pipeline sometime in the summer. But we are delivering those hardware systems as quickly as we can; we will take a look at the second-half outlook in the summer when we have a better visibility into the pipeline. Thanks.

Anirudh Devgan, President & CEO

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. It’s an exciting time for Cadence with strong business momentum and a thriving semiconductor and systems industry offering tremendous market opportunity. We are proud of the innovative and inclusive culture we have built at Cadence. And on behalf of our employees and our Board of Directors, we thank our customers and partners for their continued trust and confidence in Cadence. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you for participating in today’s Cadence first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect.