Last week Synopsys reported its 2Q2009 results. It was a good quarter, everything considered. But what Aart de Geus said during the ensuing webcast gave me plenty of material to consider.

In his introduction Aart reiterated what he had said in his keynote address at DVCon: the world wide economic situation is serious and full recovery should not be expected until 2011, at the earliest. He expects that the total semiconductor industry revenue for 2009 will be down 20% over the previous year. In contrast Synopsys revenue for the quarter were up 3.8% over the same quarter of 2008, a result that obviously bucks the trend.

You need to keep in mind that Synopsys fiscal year is not the same as the Julian calendar year. Its fiscal year ends at the end of September, I guess in honor of the new wine that is soon to be put in its casks or metal barrels, depending on the type. By the time the year results are ready to be made public, Beaujolais Nouveaux will be well on its way to welcome in the new calendar year.

As I write this piece, I am monitoring the stock market, with a special eye on Synopsys. The stock is trading around $19.77 per share with 143.44 million shares outstanding. That puts the company book value at just over $2.84 billion. Aart expects that the company revenue for all of 2009 will be at least $1.3 billion. With $800 million in cash and no current debt, the company is quite healthy, in fact may be too healthy. Even a Swiss banker would think that some of that money would be more productive invested, instead of in CDs (that is Certificate of Deposit, not shiny round storage devices).

It is also interesting that the stock is 88% owned by institutional investors, which means that the company enjoys a positive overall impression in the market, in spite of the predictions that EDA is dying by the usual savvy financial gurus our industry has kept in business through what I hope is only benign neglect and not credulity.