( ESNUG 596 Item 4 ) ----------------------------------------------------- [04/12/2024]
Subject: WTF? -- Sassine held his very first SNPS Investor Day at SNUG'24!
SASSINE TRULY BELIEVES: To be 100% brutally honest, I was both a little shocked and
stunned to see Sassine had co-located his very first Annual SNPS Investor Day 2024
along with his very first SNUG'24 user conference. ("WHO DOES THAT!?!")
All the normal publicly traded EDA (and semiconductor and system houses) all hold
their annual stockholder "investor days" in New York City -- ostensively "as a favor
to the investor communinity" -- but REALLY to make sure their investors only receive
a carefully vetted (i.e. company-appoved) and "true" picture of how it is doing.
That is, "keep those damned unpredictable customers away from our investors lest the
customers eff up our sales pitch to Wall Street!" And I don't blame them. God Knows
what one minor disgruntled unknown user can offhand say that sinks SNPS shares!
Was this Sassine being irresponsibly cocky and/or crazy!??
Or, by his actions, is this Sassine showing he truly believes his $5 Billion SNPS can
grow to $8 Billion -- and he isn't afraid to say it with his customer base there?
(And from what I saw that week, I think Sassine truly believes.)
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Seriously, the Wall Street guys were actually mixing with raw SNPS users at SNUG'24:
"At SNUG'24, we surveyed 55 chip designers of which 84% work for traditional
semiconductor companies while 15% work for systems companies.
80% were digital designers while 20% were analog designers or other.
81% of respondents design at advanced nodes (7nm and below), while 19%
design at mid-critical and legacy nodes.
Unsurprisingly, 67% said that they primarily used SNPS tools.
Interestingly, 34% said CDNS was their primary tool (at a SNPS user event!)
which we believe highlights that this is still a "best of breed" market.
On the AI front, 19% said they use AI functionality today. 17% said they
use AI functionality today -- and will use more over the NTM. While 20%
said they are not using AI today -- but plan on using AI in the NTM.
Most respondents (46%) had a neutral view on the impending ANSS acquisition,
while 37% were positive, and 15% were very positive. 30% respondents
already use Redhawk and other EDA specific ANSS tools. 9% use ANSS EDA
and Simulation tools, while 61% of respondents are not ANSS customers;
which we view as a significant cross-sell opportunity.
$6 billion
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+
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$2 billion
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==
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$8 billion
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Of those respondents who are ANSS customers, 13% expect to increase their
use of their current SNPS tools if the ANSS deal closes. 28% will use
more of their existing SNPS tools and adopt more tools from the ANSS
product suite. While 55% expect no change in usage.
We walk away with greater conviction in SNPS's ability to sustain
double-digit growth and a better appreciation for the ANSS acquisition.
We value SNPS on ~40x P/E on CY25 EPS to arrive at our $620 PT, which
implies a 43x P/E on pro-forma CY25 EPS in the event the acquisition of
ANSS closes, ex-synergies. We reiterate our Outperform rating."
- Josh Tilton, CFA at Wolfe Research (03/24/2024)
And, Wall Street Josh's assessment here pretty much matched the 7 Big Concerns that
all the other SNPS stock followers had:
1. "how will the SNPS-ANSS merger work out?"
2. "does ANSS + SNPS == Big $$$$ Profits?"
3. "will a combined SNPS-ANSS pay out in the long run?
4. "can I make big dollars if SNPS and ANSS merge?"
5. "what about SNPS and ANSS together? is that good?"
Oh, and ...
6. "how much AI does SNPS really have?"
7. "how good overall are SNPS tools anyway?"
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Ravi, Sassine and his SNPS CFO, Shelagh Glaser, and then even Ajei Gopal, the CEO
of ANSS himself! explained again and again and again and again and again and again
and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and
again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again
and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and
again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again
and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and
again and again and again how a SNPS-ANSS merger would pay off... to answer these
Top 5 questions of the 7 Big Concerns above ...
They answered in tool terms. In segment terms. In direct user experience terms. In
verticals terms. In "digitial twin" terms. In "how long for it to settle down" terms.
They even answered in lingo that only Wall Street finance nerds would understand to
show how a SNPS+ANSS would (~4 years after close) grow SNPS to $8 Billion revenue.
(What 125 bits-per-seconds has to do with this, only the finance guys know. Anyway,
you can go directly to Synopsys.com for all 183 PDF SNPS Investor Day slides plus
watch the 4+ hour SNPS Investor Day video to see for yourself if you want!)
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To answer the #6 of the 7 Big Concerns above ...
6. "how much AI does SNPS really have?"
Shankar and Ravi made sure to say the words "AI" as much as possible, and to show
slides with "AI" smeared everywhere possible.
And I totally totally totally loved playing guess-the-SNPS-AI-using-customer-logo game
that Shankar's SNPS Corporate Marketing Minions subtly injected in his slides!
See those 9 Big Name customer logos in grey at the bottom of Shankar's AI slide????
The game is to match up which Big Name logo goes with which Synopsys.ai achievement!
It's fun for the whole family!
"No, honey, Samsung can't be the 6nm Moble with 6.5% smaler area with
DSO.ai, because I put Samsung in the 4nm Moble with 25% lower power
with Sassine's DSO.ai. Damn it!"
"There's two automative chips! And two HPC chips! And three CPU chips!"
"Is there nothing Sassine's Synopsys.ai can't do??????"
(I later asked Shankar if there was a prize if I guessed everything correctly. He gave
me a snort and a quick-"Usual-Suspects"-Keyser-Soze-like glare before looking away.)
Shankar's next slide was on Synopsys.ai design activity count
And again those grey customer logos at the bottom... It's very clear that this slide...
... was veeeeeery subtly crafted to psychologically drive home the subtext that Synopsys.ai
is the AI that the Big Boy logos use!
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And to answer the #7 of the 7 Big Concerns above ...
7. "how good overall are SNPS tools anyway?"
I'm kind of biased on this because there were 120 technical sessions at this SNUG'24;
but I cherry-picked 3 of them because they're currently newsworthy in some way.
WTF? Scooby Doo Mystery -- why did Ravi launch a mediocre ZeBu EB2 at SNUG'24?
Whoa Shankar is now seriously gunning for Tom Beckley's Virtuoso empire
Whoa hands-on user benchmark confirms SNPS ASO.ai gets 50% analog migration done
Zing Sassine's unfair advantage in hard design IP ... but not in soft VIP
There's a ton more that I'll be presenting in later DeepChip.com posts, it's just
that these 3 stories were what I could do a deep tech dive on now.
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WALL STREET IS NOW WATCHING: One of the olde time perennial gripes of 10 to 30 years
ago that all the EDA vendors of that time loved to cry like babies about was how
"nobody appreciates what EDA does... especially Wall Street!"
I can't think of the number of times Gary Smith, or Joe Costello, or Jim Hogan, or
Aart de Geus, or Wally Rhines would complain about this decades ago.
But now in 2024, that's an old, out-of-date complaint of yesteryear.
Sassine's 2024 SNPS Investor Day event had:
live in-persom attendees: :###### 120 attendees
live virtual attendees: :###################### 433 attendees
later video replays: :###################### 438 viewers
That's a grand total of 120 + 433 + 438 == 991 people willing to sit through 4 hours
of detailed talks about investing in SNPS stock. Wall Street is now watching EDA;
or at least Wall Street is now watching Sassine's SNPS (-- because I don't know of
any equivalent data for Anirudh's CDNS, nor Ajei's ANSS, nor Bernard's DASTY ...)
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AART DID A GOOD HAND-OFF: On a deeply personal note, I was both happy (and a little
sad) to see how Aart appeared during Sassine's very first SNPS Investor Day.
Aart was just another guy in the second to last row of the room. He wasn't pulling
strings behind the scenes. Aart was NOT gladhanding the Wall Street guys doing this
old-style-mob-Godfather-introducing-his-son-to-the-syndicate type of thing.
Instead, it was veeeeery veeeeery clear that Sassine was 100% running the show, and
that our 37-year-elder-stateman-of-EDA verson of Aart de Geus wasn't there. Instead
Aart was just yet another anonymous guy in the second to last row of the room.
In fact, Aart didn't sit near an aisle in that 2nd to last row, making it awkward
to reach him. I never saw any Wall Street analyst -- nor investor -- greet Aart.
In contrast, right when the SNPS Investor Day dog & pony show was about start, I sat
in the 3rd row unknowingly right next to the BlackRock guy. To my shock -- when I
politely introduced myself -- he said: "Oh! So you're John Cooley! I've read you!"
And during the whole SNUG+SNPS-Investor-Day week, whenever an embarrassing/messy
question came up, I never once saw Sassine seek a "who-wants-to-be-a-millioniare"
lifeline from Aart -- nor from anyone else.
Aart was 100% hands-off. Sassine really is stearing the SNPS ship now.
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Related Articles
Whoa - Sassine's first real speech anywhere was his keynote at SNUG'24
WTF? - Sassine held his very first SNPS Investor Day at SNUG'24???
WTF? - Scooby Doo Mystery; why did Ravi launch a mediocre ZeBu EB2 at SNUG'24?
Whoa - Shankar is now seriously gunning for Tom Beckley's Virtuoso empire
Whoa - hands-on user benchmark confirms SNPS ASO.ai gets 50% analog migration
Zing - Sassine's unfair advantage in hard design IP ... but not in soft VIP
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