Cadence to acquire Jasper Design Automation for $170m

Jasper Design Automation is a market and technology leader in the fast-growing formal analysis sector, providing multiple verification solutions (Verification Apps) built on the JasperGold® platform. Jasper’s customers include many of the top systems, semiconductor and IP companies. These companies, which are also Cadence customers, are increasingly adopting formal analysis to complement traditional verification methods, so as to better address the challenge of verifying increasingly complex and flexible IP designs and systems-on-chip (SoCs). With verification representing over 70% of the cost of developing a system-on-chip, it has become the top system and SoC development challenge and is the critical factor for time-to-market.

Jasper’s technology strengths are highly complementary to Cadence’s System Development Suite, which has been the standard bearer for integrated system verification solutions since 2011. The combination will expand differentiation of the industry’s strongest and broadest system verification platform, and will be tightly integrated with Cadence’s common debug analysis, formal and semi-formal solutions, simulation, acceleration, emulation and prototyping platforms, while leveraging its unified verification planning and metric-driven verification flow. In addition, the combination of extensive dynamic and formal VIP portfolios will be particularly well suited to enable embedded processor system verification.

“Jasper’s products are recognized as the technology leaders in formal analysis, targeting complex verification challenges and increasing overall verification productivity,” said Charlie Huang, senior vice president of the System & Verification Group and Worldwide Field Operations at Cadence.  “Jasper’s formal analysis solutions are used by customers today alongside Cadence’s metric-driven verification flow to form a broad verification solution. We look forward to welcoming Jasper’s strong formal development expertise and skilled team to Cadence.”

The combination of Jasper and Incisive® Formal technologies and expertise will result in the most complete formal and semi-formal offerings in the industry. With its broader verification portfolio and worldwide field team, Cadence has the opportunity to accelerate the expansion of the emerging formal analysis sector as more mainstream customers adopt Verification Apps for IP and SoC development.

“Jasper and Cadence serve top-tier customers that will benefit from expanded formal technology and a broader, tightly-integrated verification solution,” said Kathryn Kranen, president and CEO of Jasper. “The verification technologies, when combined, will benefit customers through a comprehensive metric-driven verification approach that unites formal and dynamic techniques, realizing the strength of each and leveraging the integration between them.”

Cadence intends to finance the transaction with available cash and an existing revolving credit facility. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of fiscal 2014, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals. Cadence expects the transaction to be accretive to its non-GAAP earnings per share in fiscal 2015 after the impact of merger-related accounting.  The impact on fiscal 2014 non-GAAP earnings per share will be provided when Cadence reports its second quarter fiscal 2014 financial results.  The impact on GAAP earnings per share will be available after the completion of valuation and purchase accounting.