Synopsys (SNPS) Q3 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

Synopsys (SNPS 0.49%)
Q3 2018 Earnings Conference Call
Aug. 22, 2018 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Synopsys earnings conference call for the third quarter fiscal year 2018. [Operator instructions] Today's call will last one hour. Five minutes prior to the end of the call, we will announce the amount of time remaining in the conference. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Lisa Ewbank, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lisa Ewbank -- Vice President of Investor Relations

Thanks, Ana. Good afternoon, everyone. Hosting the call today are Aart de Geus, chairman and co-cEO of Synopsys; and Trac Pham, chief financial officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during the course of this conference call, Synopsys will discuss forecasts, targets, and other forward-looking statements regarding the company and its financial results.

While these statements represent our best current judgment about future results and performance as of today, our actual results and performance are subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. In addition to any risks that we highlight during the call, important factors that may affect our future results are described in our most recent SEC reports and today's earnings press release. In addition, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures during the discussion. Reconciliations to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and supplemental financial information can be found in the 8-K, earnings press release, and financial supplement that we released earlier today.

All of these items plus the most recent investor presentation are available on our website at synopsys.com. In addition, the prepared remarks will be posted on the site at the conclusion of the call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Aart de Geus.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Good afternoon. I am happy to report that Synopsys delivered another outstanding quarter and passed the $3 billion mark in trailing 12-month revenue, an exciting milestone as we enter our next phase of growth. And it's a good time to thank our Synopsys team, our customers, our partners, and all of you for your support. We entered fiscal 2018 with expectations for solid revenue, earnings, and cash flow.

As a result of strong customer demand and excellent execution, we're on track to substantially exceed the targets we communicated last November and expect to deliver double-digit revenue and non-GAAP earnings-per-share growth for the year. For Q3, we posted revenue of $780 million, with strength across all product groups. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.95, and we generated $289 million in operating cash flow. We repurchased $165 million of our stock, bringing the total for the year to $400 million.

Lastly, we're raising our revenue and non-GAAP earnings guidance for the year. Trac will provide more detail in a moment. The customer environment is strong as the age of AI, or digital intelligence, drives hefty investments by traditional and new semiconductor and systems companies as well as software developers across many industries. Investments are directed at supplying the increasing demand for compute power, cloud storage, and networking infrastructure, all in support of massive data and complex software.

Add to that a huge and growing challenge of security, and one can readily see that the need for design solutions will continue to expand for years to come. Synopsys is uniquely positioned to address these technological challenges, sitting at the intersection of hardware and software. As a result, we've grown and strengthened our leadership position in EDA, built a strong and broad IP business group, and branched out into the large adjacent TAM of software security and quality. In this context, let me provide some highlights from the quarter, beginning with EDA.

The primary driver of EDA growth is complexity, whether due to more advanced process technologies, sophisticated designs at established nodes or immense amounts of software embedded on a chip. In our entire history, leadership in electronic complexity had been the differentiator for the Synopsys solutions. Today, this means moving to 7, 5 or even 3 nanometer process technologies. With our TCAD and lithography tools, we're a key partner in the initial stages of manufacturing process development.

These early engagements benefit all subsequent products as demonstrated by some of the successes in the quarter. We announced broad certification for several Samsung Foundry advance processes, from digital and custom design to verification. And just last week, we announced a collaboration with IBM to enable their very advanced process development with our manufacturing digital design and IP capabilities. Our design platform generated revenue greater than planned, reaching an all-time high with accelerating growth over the past year.

On the digital side, our recently introduced Fusion Technology, which brings about a revolutionary new level of integration between synthesis, place-and-route, and signoff is really hitting the mark with customers. Not only does the Fusion Technology provide a fundamental infrastructure to design better chips, but we've already embedded a number of AI techniques that further improve speed, area, and power. Engagements with partners and customers have grown. Samsung Foundry has certified our Fusion Technology for its 7 nanometer Low Power Plus process with EUV.

Multimedia SoC provider, Vatics, standardized on this technology after realizing 40% runtime reduction. We're seeing plan of record adoption by several high-profile systems companies. And at the Design Automation Conference, industry leaders, AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Renesas, and Samsung presented the benefits that the new technology brings to their implementation flows, highlighting solid early results.Now to verification, where we also delivered an excellent quarter. Demand is high for our Verification Continuum platform built upon the fastest engines in the industry and our number one positions in all three key areas: Emulation, FPGA-based prototyping, and verification software.

Verification hardware had another very strong quarter, with broad-based adoptions and renewals. High-profile companies Samsung, Intel, and AMD presented to fellow engineers at DAC their real-life successes using ZeBu. In Q3, we announced general availability of ZeBu Server 4, the industry's fastest and largest capacity emulation system. With 2X the performance over competing systems, ZeBu is ideal for the extremely demanding verification requirements in automotive, 5G, networking, machine learning, and data center SoCs.

In analog simulation, Toshiba Memory and Synopsys collaborated to accelerate the 3D flash memory verification. The resulting technologies address increasing design complexity and reduce multi-day simulation runs to less than a day. Let me now move to IP, where we expect another record year. Double-digit growth in IP is driven by several dynamics: one, continued outsourcing of semiconductor IP blocks; two, an increasingly broad portfolio covering interfaces, embedded memories, security, and processor IP optimized for high-growth markets such as automotive, AI and cloud computing; three, coverage of leading-edge and established process nodes; and four, the demand for IP subsystem that make it easier and more efficient for customers to outsource their designs to us.

We're seeing strong demand for our processor IP solutions, notably the ARC-embedded vision processor that features the industry's first ASIL D Ready embedded vision IP for autonomous driving applications. Our acquisitions in nonvolatile memory are also bearing fruit with significant orders in the quarter across many different market segments. Now to software integrity where Synopsys provides testing for security vulnerabilities and quality defects in software code during the development phase. While software developers in our traditional customer base are prime growth opportunity for us, the number of companies who develop and rely on software as a critical component of their business is much broader than EDA and IP.

This mounting need in verticals such as medical devices, financial services, automotive, aerospace, and industrials represents a large TAM that we're just beginning to tap. Our mission is to enable companies to more easily test both open source and proprietary code through a combination of a unified tool platform and consulting services. With general availability planned for next year, we're making steady progress toward our Software Integrity Platform with early testing happening now. An important part of the platform is the set of Black Duck's testing tools, which address the growing need to diagnose security risks in open-source software.

A recent analysis of more than 1,100 commercial code bases found that 96% of applications scanned had open-source components. 78% contained at least one open-source vulnerability with an average of 64 vulnerabilities per code base. The integration of Black Duck is going well. For us, this is visible through both early cross-selling opportunities and enhanced brand recognition.

Our services organization is another important aspect of our holistic approach to assisting the customer journey toward a more mature security development process. The progress made over the past four years has been recognized by industry leaders such as Gartner and others, stimulating further strong interest by new customers. For example, at the recent Black Hat security conference, we received around 7,000 inquiries from current and potential customers, nearly doubling last year's tally. From a financial perspective, we're also executing well.

We have reached critical mass, passing $0.25 billion in trailing 12-month revenue and are quite enthusiastic about the future potential. Reaching up into emerging vertical market segment, automotive is a key focus for Synopsys, not only in software security but across our entire portfolio. Our unique virtual prototyping is gaining traction across the automotive supply chain. By providing models of critical chips and subsystems, Tier 1s and OEMs can start software development earlier to better meet strict time-to-market objectives.

We've collaborated with the leading automotive semiconductor companies to create the most comprehensive ISO 26262 qualified tool flow with differentiated technologies for functional safety and reliability. At DAC, we hosted an automotive panel with leaders from NVIDIA, Panasonic, TSMC, and NSITEXE, a division of leading automotive Tier 1, Denso, who shared their successes with Synopsys. We also have the most comprehensive portfolio of automotive certified IP, ranging from our ASIL D embedded vision processor to key interfaces and memories. To summarize our strategy over the past several years, our actions have been deliberate.

First, maintain and grow our leadership in EDA. As the market leader, we're rolling out new leading-edge technology and have gained share. Second, continue to broaden our IP portfolio and customer adoption. As the number two global IP vendor, we build the most comprehensive portfolio of high-value titles and continue to see double-digit revenue growth.

And third, enter and scale the brand new high-growth TAM and diversified customer base in software integrity. We believe that we've reached critical mass by passing the $0.25 billion mark, having built a recognizable brand and are poised for ongoing 20% organic growth. During the past years, we made significant investments both organically and through M&A. We did these while also delivering on our guidance for high single-digit EPS growth.

In fact, in the last two years, Synopsys overachieved delivering double-digit revenue and earnings growth and crossing the $3 billion mark earlier than our own internal projections over two years ago. This backdrop provides a solid foundation for continued growth and increased operating leverage in the business. We will be in a position to provide an update to our long-term operating model objectives and assumptions when we report next quarter. For now, I will say that we currently intend to drive non-GAAP operating margin to approximately 26% over the next three years, with a longer-term ambition of high 20s.

As we are presently in the middle of our budgeting process, we're not yet ready to provide 2019 guidance. But even with the change in revenue accounting next year, we expect non-GAAP operating margin to increase in FY '19. To conclude, we delivered another excellent quarter and are raising revenue and non-GAAP earnings guidance for the year. Our strategic investments over the past several years are paying off.

Near term, our strong products and customer relationships in EDA and IP are leading to very good revenue and EPS growth. Longer term, our expansion into the new software security and quality TAM is making excellent progress. Let me now turn the call over to Trac.

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Aart. Good afternoon, everyone. Reaching $3 billion in revenue is a great accomplishment that not only reflects our financial execution but also demonstrates that our strategy and investments for the long term are paying off. This is evident in our strong performance this quarter and improved outlook for Q4.

As a result, we're raising our 2018 revenue and non-GAAP EPS guidance. Now to the numbers. As I talked to you the results and targets, all comparisons will be year-over-year unless I specify otherwise. Total revenue increased 12% to $780 million, reflecting strength across our product portfolio in all geographies.

Total GAAP cost and expenses were $716 million, which includes a $26 million charge for the Mentor Graphics patent litigation settlement. Total non-GAAP cost and expenses were $612 million, resulting in a non-GAAP operating margin of 21.5%. GAAP earnings per share were $0.52. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.95, exceeding our target range due to strong revenue growth and operational execution.

Operating cash flow for the quarter was $289 million, reflecting very strong collections and offset by a onetime payment of $65 million related to the Mentor legal settlement. Cash and cash equivalents at quarter end were $741 million, 18% of which is onshore with total debt at $622 million. We launched a $165 million accelerated share repurchase in May, bringing our total buybacks for the year-- bringing our total buybacks year-to-date to $400 million. As a result, we've been able to reduce our share count versus last year.

We currently have $325 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization. We're progressing very well with our integration of Black Duck and remain on track to achieve our 2018 target of $55 million to $60 million of revenue. This estimate reflects a purchase accounting deferred revenue haircut of about $20 million. In addition, we continue to expect Black Duck to be approximately $0.12 dilutive to 2018 non-GAAP EPS and to reach breakeven in the second half of 2019.

Before moving on to guidance, let me provide some brief commentary about the new ASC 606 revenue accounting rules, which will go into effect for us in fiscal 2019 beginning in November. As we've previously discussed, we do expect a onetime loss backlog at the time of transition. While revenue recognized under the new rules will be slightly lower than under the current rules, we do not expect a material impact based on our current forecast, and there's no impact on cash flows or the economics of the business. As we look to 2019, please note that we're still working through our normal budgeting process and are assessing the business outlook coming off another record hardware and IP year in 2018.

Therefore, we would suggest that it's premature to change your 2019 estimates until we provide detailed guidance next quarter. We will also provide a full year-- full view of our long-term operating model objectives and assumptions at that time. In the meantime, let me reiterate what Aart said. We intend to increase operating margin in 2019 and beyond with the goal of reaching 26% in the next three years in the high 20s longer term.

Now to the fourth quarter and fiscal 2018 guidance, which reflects overachievement in Q3 and incremental upside in Q4. For Q4, the targets are: revenue between $774 million and $804 million; total GAAP costs and expenses between $722 million and $738 million; total non-GAAP cost and expenses between $655 million and $665 million; other income and expenses between minus $3 million and minus $1 million; a non-GAAP normalized tax rate of 13%; outstanding shares between 153 million and 156 million; GAAP earnings of $0.39 to $0.47 per share; and non-GAAP earnings of $0.76 to $0.80 per share.The revised targets for fiscal 2018 are therefore: revenue of $3.1 billion to $3.13 billion; other income and expenses between minus $5 million and minus $3 million; a non-GAAP normalized tax rate of 13%; outstanding shares between 153 million and 156 million; GAAP earnings of $1.55 to $1.63 per share; non-GAAP earnings of $3.89 to $3.93 per share; capital expenditures of about $100 million-- $110 million; and cash flow from operations of $460 million to $500 million, reflecting the onetime Mentor legal settlement. In conclusion, we delivered strong Q3 results and are raising full-year guidance for both revenue and non-GAAP earnings, reflecting another year of double-digit growth. We reached $3 billion in revenue by investing to carry out our growth strategy while also delivering on the earnings commitment and returning cash to shareholders through our consistent stock repurchase program.

We're confident in our balanced approach to maximizing long-term shareholder value, making the most of compelling revenue growth opportunities while also driving operating leverage. Let me now turn it over to the operator for questions. 

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Gary Mobley with Benchmark.

Gary Mobley -- Benchmark -- Analyst

Hello, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to delve a little bit deeper into your implied Q4 operating margin on a non-GAAP basis. I believe the implied operating margin is, what, 16.5%, down about 500 basis points sequentially, down about 700 basis points from what you're implying 2019 operating margin maybe? So, I'm just curious what sort of investments are being made.

Black Duck seemingly would be just a small contribution to that dilution. And well, I'll stop there and change the question.

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

OK, Gary. Yes, you're in the ballpark, Gary. It's really a timing of the expenses and nothing unusual. I would take the Q4 expense ramp and normalize it for next year.

Given how strong our outlook is for the year, we are seeing a true-up in our variable account program this quarter and the next quarter as well. So it's really a reflection of a very strong outlook for the year.

Gary Mobley -- Benchmark -- Analyst

All right. And your main competitor announced a cloud-based delivery system at the Design Automation Conference. And I think your position has been that maybe the infrastructure isn't ready from a security standpoint, from a file system standpoint, and just from a latency standpoint. I wondered if you have softened on that stance, and maybe just give us your latest thoughts on whether or not EDA is ready for the cloud.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Sure. The first thing is to understand clearly why people are interested in the cloud is to find the sort of the sweet spot between available performance and the economics, and this is often driven by the need to have point utilization go up for short periods of time, for example. From a practical point of view, all large customers have very large clouds themselves. We have a very large cloud.

And actually, we have quite a number of customers that are running the software on our own cloud. And we have a substantial number of customers that are running our software on commercial clouds already. It's also noteworthy to say that we have an ability to provide also our emulation through the cloud. And so the combination of all of those have definitely provided opportunities for customers to either get peak performance, or if they're very small, to start without having to make big investments.

The [Inaudible] security is one that, on one hand, have dramatically improved, on the other hand, never quite goes away. And you're correct that quite a number of years ago there was a very high concern about security, and rightfully so, I would say. Today, that is substantially better resolved. It is also the case that customers are a little bit more centered in terms of how they look at the issue.

I think on the margin, any system retains certain vulnerabilities and, of course, that is helped-- or hopefully helped by our other part of our business. But fundamentally, I think the time for doing certain things on a variety of clouds is upon us.

Gary Mobley -- Benchmark -- Analyst

Thank you, guys.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

You're welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Rich Valera with Needham & Company.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Thank you. A question on operating margin. You've done quite a bit of M&A in the software integrity business, which you've indicated is going to be dilutive to margin this year. Is there any way you could give us a sense of what the operating margin of the base business will be without the SI business, without software integrity business?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

That's a good question, Rich. I think if you were to look at the commentary that we provided in the past around our investments in Black Duck's digital and even [Inaudible]-- even Coverity when we started five years ago, it would probably-our overall operating margins will probably go up on the order of 250 basis points because of the investments in the new TAM.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Yes. If I can answer that, you may recall that every time we made one of the major acquisitions, we said that notwithstanding the fact that these companies typically tended to not be particularly profitable in the first place, there was a haircut in that we typically would work through those in a period of 18 to 36 months. And I grant you, that's a fairly broad window, but the circumstances are all different. I think we're living up very much to that.

And so, an additional reason why we think that now, the time has arrived for that business to see some operating leverage is that we are at critical mass. The integrations have gone well. And in general, the markets that we hoped would be a positive market has definitely manifested itself, so we see growth opportunities. So, it's our job now to make sure that that additional growth comes up to a high degree of profitability.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Thanks for that. And just a quick follow-up to that, Trac. The plus 250, what baseline would that be relative to? Is that sort of relative to your expected fiscal '18 baseline?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Rich. That refers to where we are today.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Got it. And then just one more on the ZeBu Server 4. Nice to see that went GA at DAC. Can you say if there was-- I know it was in production with-- limited production release, I guess, before that with, I think you mentioned 10 customers or more in that release.

But was there pent-up demand of customers that wanted ZeBu Server 4 and now they're getting it sort of in this current quarter and beyond?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

I wouldn't say pent-up demand. I think that we managed the demand by virtue of introducing the product gradually, which allowed us to make sure that it was really solid by the time we went to channel availability. And also, some customers were clearly further ahead in their thinking about how to ring up software on hardware as part of a strategy to increase the speed with which they could bring their products to market. And there are now a number of quite extraordinary stories of chips for cellphones, for example, for smartphones, that literally shaves off a number of months to go to market.

And I can't-- don't have to tell you that that's a market that is hyper competitive. And so I think the capabilities are coming online at the very moment where the demand is strong, and so we have high hopes for the new Server 4 ZeBu.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Got it. Congratulations on the strong results. Thanks, everyone.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tom Diffley with D.A. Davidson.

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

Thank you, [Inaudible]. Just to follow-up on the operating margin projection you have over the next three years, so is most of that increase coming from the Software Integrity side [Inaudible] as well as some restricted [Inaudible]

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Tom. I had a hard time hearing you, but I think the question was, where the operating margin expansion coming from, whether it's specifically to Software Integrity across the board. I would-- the short answer is it's going to be across the board. Having reached $3 billion of revenues, we're at a point where we should be able to drive more operating leverage in the business.

The expansion is going to come through a combination of both solid revenue growth going forward and looking for improvements in the way that we're executing on the various businesses.

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

OK. Would you expect the Software Integrity business acquisition rate to slow then going forward?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, we generally don't comment on what our acquisition strategy is. And so going into it, we'll look at each deal on its own and whether or not it fits into the overall strategy.

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

OK. And, Trac, I know it's early, but can you give us a feel for what you're seeing right now for the tax rate for next year. I mean, I assume it's going to go up several hundred basis points?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Are you asking about the tax rate, Tom?

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

Correct. Yes.

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

It's still a little early, but I think I would say it's safe to say it's somewhere between 13 and where it's been historically, 19. And again, we are in the midst of working through how we're going to approach the tax strategy going forward in light of the very significant changes in the U.S. taxes.

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

OK. And then finally, when you look at the-- some of the advance nodes, the 5 nanometer, the 3 nanometer nodes, how large are those nodes today from a business point of view for you? Are they just nodes you want to get in front before they happen, or is it meaningful revenue today?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

So, the if you look at the advanced nodes, the nodes that are now moving into substantial production that re most advanced is really 7 nanometer. The 5 nanometer is now technically ready, and the first designs are being done. And the 3 nanometer is, at least, to say it, at least, is a work in progress, I would say. But what is quite astounding is that these technologies would have been viewed as impossible, again, a number of years ago and here we go.

And that's the theme that we know well for like over 20 years now. And so, we are in the midst of quite exciting technologies that are in high demand but also demand a high degree of sophistication of the tools, and so we feel right at home.

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

OK. Thank you.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

You're welcome, Tony.

Operator

Our next question comes from John Pitzer with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

John Pitzer -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Yes. Good afternoon, guys. Congratulations on the solid results. Thanks for letting me ask the question.

Trac, just one more question on the operating margin target of sort of 26% over the next few years, given that there's now leverage as revenue grows, can you help us understand the underlying growth rate assumption to hit that target? And if you're not ready to give us sort of an absolute number, is there some way you could kind of give us a relative number to kind of the historic growth rates we didn't see?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. I think you answered the question there, John. We're not prepared to talk about the FY '19 or the components of the long-term model. But definitely, we'll give you more details of that in December.

At a high level, I would refer you to comments that we made in the past in terms of where we see the growth for the different areas of the business. Traditionally, we expect growth in EDA in the low to midsingle digits. IP is comfortably in the low double digits and then Software Integrity is in that 20% range. The other thing I would highlight is in terms of revenue growth year over year keep in mind that we've got the benefit of the extra weeks for this year, which accounts for about 2% impact.

And then even though I think at a high level that 606, the new rev rec rules, will be immaterial to the results. It will have a slight negative impact to the numbers, but we'll give you more details to that come December.

John Pitzer -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

That's helpful. And then, Aart, for you. I've spent the last couple of days in the Valley at the Hot Chips conference. And at least over the last couple of years, there's sort of been a resurrection of the debate in sort of general purpose compute versus ASIC, the thought process being with things like Moore's law becoming more difficult and aren't scaling, slowing, and Amdahl's law, that maybe we're entering into a world of just more ASICs over general purpose compute.

I'd love to get kind of your thoughts on that debate. And I guess, more importantly, if we are moving into a more ASIC-driven world, how does that impact your business, not only within EDA, but maybe across your portfolio?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

OK. Well, in my mind, there has been no doubt already for many years that while general computing will continue to be pushed forward massively, especially at general offerings in the cloud, that the demands of the emerging machine learning and AI techniques are that with the present success, the one thing you'd like to have is not 2X more computation but 1,000X more computation. And so no matter how hard you squeeze the silicon technology, and it will get squeezed still further, there's no reason to be able to believe that you could get a 1,000 times faster results. And so what can you do? Well, the thing you can do is to, say, reduce the breadth of the problem, i.e.

go to special processors that do a task particularly well, and now, suddenly, you are in the 10 and 100X more capabilities. And you can call that an ASIC or you can call it dedicated processors, but that is where this is heading at rapid speed. And the evidence is already clearly visible, and we can see it in our own business because in the last few years, we have had a number of random semiconductor companies that all are building the ultimate AI chip, and we'll see which one is the ultimate, ultimate, but the investments are broad. We see a number of existing players at substantial dedicated engines to their offering.

And so I think the push will be on-- in every dimension. And we benefit from that because these are designs that all immediately go to the leading edge that use the most advanced silicon techniques that typically drive the complexity of the chip to the maximum that is manufacturable at a-- not even reasonable cost, but affordable cost, and it's driving the state-of-the-art. Lastly, I wouldn't underestimate the amount of effort that is also going into various forms of storage and, of course, the communication between processing and storage because, of course, the term big data is not new to you, and there's a lot of data. And so the key is going to be where do you keep it and how quickly does it become accessible for computation.

So all of this, I think, bodes well for the domains that we are in, including the very fact that there are also some risk factors in the form of security around these systems, and we have the good fortune of touching many of those from multiple angles.

John Pitzer -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Aart, is there any way of quantifying what this new dynamic had done either to your growth over the last couple of years or your addressable market, whether it's looking at kind of nontraditional customers of that might not have been customers a few years back, however, you want to cut it? Is there any way to sort of quantify what this does to the growth rate of the TAM?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Well, as you know, the growth rates are a function not only of the technical needs and the demand. They're also a function of the health of the semiconductor industry. And as you may remember many years ago, actually five, six, seven years ago, there was always this lamenting of semiconductor industry not growing particularly well. Well, the opposite has been the case, precisely because that very industry supplies the hardware that makes this possible.

And so it's really a phenomenon that is actually pretty broad. That doesn't mean that every year will be an incredible banner year. I think it's more that the solidity of both the market that we serve and our own market is higher. And maybe that is an additional reason why we are looking at healthy growth going forward, but also the opportunity to focus more and increase our operating leverage in that process.

So, I would consider both of those terms part of a healthy market.

Operator

Our next question comes from Sterling Auty with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Yes, thanks. Hi, guys. Trac, maybe a couple for you. As we're sitting here trying to work our models, especially as we're working into the quarters of next fiscal year and need to understand the comparables with Black Duck, can you give us a sense of what the organic growth was in the quarter?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

The organic growth for SIG? Sure, we think the market's growing in the 20% range, and we're keeping pace with that.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

No. I'm saying for Synopsys overall. So, if you look at it, what is the organic revenue growth for Synopsys overall?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, overall, I think that-- I would say the majority of what growth rate you're seeing in the business right now is organic. The acquisitions we made this year that has a material impact is really on Black Duck. And keep in mind, while we're successful in terms of driving that north of 250, this is on a $3-plus billion business. And you're seeing growth across the entire portfolio and you're seeing it across all regions.

So, [Inaudible] healthy growth.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Because I was looking at an estimate that it would be somewhere around 125 to 150 bps of impact to the growth rate in the quarter if you went organic versus reported.

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, we haven't talked about that separation. But I'd just say-- would safely say though, a good portion of our-- a large portion of our growth for this year is organic. And when you--

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

OK. And did you--

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

You can see where that's coming from, too, is we're having a phenomenal year on IP, and the growth rate in EDA has been very strong for the last two years.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

OK. OK. And the comment that you made about 26% operating margins over three years, since you're transitioning to ASC 606, I want to make sure we're all on the same page. Does that 26% include the benefit, if you have one, of moving to the sales commission recognition under the new rules? In other words, are you recognizing sales commissions upfront today? Are you going to move to ratable? And how would that impact that 26%?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

So, Sterling, the highest level of the increase in 26% will really be operational. As far as reporting goes, 606 has two impacts for us. One is on the impact of revenues for next year, which will be negative, but we think is immaterial. As far as the impact on commissions, the net-net of that is going to be neutral over the next few years.

So, when we talk about improving operating leverage, it really truly is operating leverage as opposed to any reporting benefit or drag. And while I'm on the topic, we'll give more details in '19 at December, but we want to clarify that when we talk about margin improvement, we do expect margin improvement in 2019 even with the impact of 606. The specific amount, I think, we'll have to test out, but we do expect margins to improve.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Excellent, and then last question. Aart, you mentioned products that are currently actually running on the Synopsys cloud and on customer clouds. I think it's easy for us to understand how verification emulation will work in the cloud because you're running kind of a batch process versus some of the actual design where you have that interaction. So, I'm kind of curious, which products are actually up and running in some of these customer or Synopsys clouds for customers?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Well, we actually I think have examples, I would say, broadly, across the spectrum. But your opening comment is actually right on, which is that the variety of verification or analysis tools tend to go to the cloud first because they're very batch-centric. And so you do large simulations there, for example, or large verifications, and I think that will continue for a while. We have really not announced what we're doing in this area, and so I don't want to have too many comments on this.

But I think the gist of your question has its own answer. It is very much verification.

Operator

Our next question goes to Mitch Steves with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Mitch Steves -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I had a few couple quick clarifying ones and one long-term one. So for the July quarter, so the one thing that happened is gross margins came down.

Could you help us understand why there was a case of hardware slowing down a little bit due to the outperformance over the last couple of years?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Keep in mind, Mitch, that there's a few things that actually roll up into COGS. It's not just hardware. So I wouldn't extrapolate changes in gross margins as strictly an impact of variation in hardware. Remember, we-- the series of acquisition that we made last year, which is the services business-- security services business, you'll see the COGS flow to that line.

And then the other part is there's an element of IP, specifically the consulting part of IP that's recognized at a percentage completion basis, and you'll see COGS there. And there's really no correlation between the movement in COGS and gross margins because the variability of IP and hardware, as we've stressed over the last few years, have been very lumpy. But overall, when we look at individually at that, we feel like we're running the business in an appropriate way as far as margins for-- at the gross margin level for each of those businesses.

Mitch Steves -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

Got it. And then the second clarifying one. So, your cash flow number of $460 million to $500 million, correct? So I know you guys had a bunch of onetime charges. Can you maybe walk us through what the, I guess, the normalized one would be? Because you had the Hungarian lawsuit, you had the repatriation, and you had the Mentor settlement.

So, what would be kind of the more normalized cash flow number?

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, you hit the big ones. So, let's take-- let's start with the guidance for the year. It's $460 million to $500 million. We had-- we have about $165 million of onetime items for this year, right? At the beginning of the year, we had a $33 million payment related to the Q4 repatriation.

Early in the year, we also had an outflow of $65 million related to the Hungarian tax dispute. Now keep in mind, that's still pending, but we had to pay more to litigate. And then in this past quarter, we had a $65 million outflow for the Mentor settlement. So, at that end, it's -- you can see that the business is healthy and generating very strong cash flows.

Operator

Our next question goes to Jay Vleeschhouwer with Griffin Securities.

Jay Vleeschhouwer -- Griffin Securities -- Analyst

Thank you. Aart, two broad questions for you about the EDA market or Synopsys as a whole. The first part is as Synopsys' business mix has evolved, including but not exclusively with SIG; and as the customer base has evolved including, in particular, meaning the rise of your systems customers, what are the external or leading indicators that you as a CEO and management use, if any, to anticipate or plan the business? And then how are you thinking about the external indicators differently perhaps now than when you were a $1 billion or $2 billion company? And then secondly, more specifically about EDA. The question was prompted by the recent announcement by NVIDIA of its Turing chip.

And the question is we generally assume that customers ingest EDA tools and technologies and, voila, out the other end comes super chips of the kind that you've been talking about. But is that really so? In other words, what are you seeing? Or what do you think people need to see in terms of customers' methodologies and design implementation skills and differentiation having to change along with your tools and along with the node changes?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

OK. So, regarding the external indicators, there are obviously multiple sort of horizons around that. The macro horizon is all around the belief that the-- both connectivity and smarts of the electronics world is dramatically changing, and both of those words are relevant because they imply large amounts of data being moved around with a risk, i.e. security risk. And then-- but also is the need to be manipulated, stored and so on, and therefore, opportunities for silicon utilization and new chips.

As we zoom in a little bit more into the Software Integrity business, and I assume most of your question is motivated by that, they're-- we also observed that what's different, let's say then, at least the last 10 years plus in EDA or IP, is we are still getting many more new customers, meaning logos that we have never touched or even never heard of before. While simultaneously seeing that a number of companies that we've done business with for a number of years are gradually moving to larger spending levels because they adopt more with more users or with more departments in the larger companies. And those two things, we watch, we measure, we look at the renewal rates. Essentially, we continue to try to assess, is the business healthy? And so the combination of the external landscape and the internal execution, so far, have been good.

When you talk about companies like NVIDIA that are extremely sophisticated, they also have extremely sophisticated utilization of our tools, of combinations of our tools, of certain things that they have added to this. And the word methodology is right on, which is really great companies know what to pay attention to and when to pay attention to in the flow so that they: A, reduce risk; and B, maximize how much they can squeeze out at a given silicon technology. In general, to your point of do people have evolved their methodology? My answer would be absolutely yes. The complexity that we see is changing not only in scale, meaning more transistors, but also in systemic complexity, meaning more dimensions that have to be satisfied simultaneously.

And the traditional dimensions of speed area and power are still very foundational, but so is now the approach to temperature, thermal issues on a chip, the dealing with the reliability and safety of certain constructs in automotive spaces and so on. And then on top of that is, increasingly, the intersection between hardware and software where a lot of issues pop up but also opportunities are sitting. So, it's in that context that we provide an increasingly large amount of methodology support and help, and also in our Fusion Technology, have integrated a number of tools together to essentially accelerate what could be viewed as methodology but is really the intersection between tools. So this may sound all somewhat convoluted and complex, and that, for us, is actually good news because that's where we add value.

Operator

Our next question comes from Monika Garg with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Monika Garg -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. So, first one here, per our estimates, software security is growing 20% that you've talked about, and it could be bigger than $350 million business next year, which is a pretty good-sized business. Could you talk about how to think about the profitability of the business? And is 20% growth a right way to think about the growth?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Well, we've said before that we do see this business growing in the 20% range. And so after that, you probably did the math correctly. We are not pre-announcing '19, but directionally, you're certainly right on the mark. From a profitability point of view, in a very rapidly growing business, we have commented on the individual pieces where each one of the companies we acquired over time were becoming profitable in 8 to 36 months.

We have commented, I believe, on Black Duck turning profitable in the second half of next year. And so, you can see that in aggregate, all of that is moving in the right direction. And yes, there will be a bit of trading off how we look at growth versus profitability and how we manage that. But in the bigger picture of Synopsys, the numbers that you're mentioning essentially say this is heading toward being 10% of the overall company.

And while it's material to the bottom line, it is in that range of its contribution.

Monika Garg -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

All right. Then, Aart, you are guiding to greater than 40% top-line growth for this year. Black Duck, you have given us estimates. It's probably adding 2% in organic growth. And even if I take the effect of the extra week in 2018, I mean, it'll grow definitely, accelerating year over year on an organic basis.

Could you talk about the factor which is leading to higher growth? Thank you.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Well, again, I'm a little reluctant to get too close to giving directives for '19, largely because we're not done with our own process, and we tend to not extrapolate from years that are not great and not extrapolate from years that are great. We just want to be careful in making sure that we hit it just right against what we think we can deliver. Having said that, I think the reason why overall growth is good is because the external factors of the importance of electronics-- and I'll use electronics as the broader term for a combination of hardware and software-- are very positive.

The complexity is all coming our way in the EDA's direction for providing sophisticated tools. And I think that over the last few years, we have proactively made investments that maybe penalized the ops margin a bit, but we're, I think, right on from a strategic point of view. So, we feel that we're in the right position. So, the combination of all of that says, "OK.

Looking forward, it should give you predictions on '19, but we'll do that at the end of last year." And lastly, we continue to see in a number of areas the run rate of the company grow, and so at least it says we have a fairly solid outlook.

Monika Garg -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Just the last thing on the cloud side. Could you talk about how ready Synopsys' provisions are for usage in the cloud? And are you seeing interest from customers to use these solutions in the cloud?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Well, we can make things work quite well in the cloud. It is different than when people own their own environment for a variety of reasons. It is also interesting that the EDA utilization of computation tends to be at the high end of sophistication, meaning that our programs are, arguably, among the most complex and demanding in the software world, period. And so, they tend to use both maximum computational power, but also need a high degree of memory availability to run the very large designs that are there.

And so, we have quite a number of customers that on their own run a number of our products on the cloud. I think they are continually looking at are the economics in their favor, or are they better off if they're a large customer to do it themselves. And I think that won't go away anytime soon.

Operator

Our next question comes from Krish Sankar with Cowen. Please go ahead.

Krish Sankar -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple of them. Aart, you spoke about your foundry customers doing like 7 nanometers and then 7 nanometer plus at EUV.

I'm kind of curious. When your customers start doing-- when they start to introduce EUVs either for like one, two, three, five, seven, several layers, what impact does it have on EDA design? Is it a material impact? Or do you have to go and redo the design? I was kind of curious on that, and also have a follow-up question.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

OK. Well, in general, every time you introduce anything new, in reality, it reduces complexity. It adds more things that you have to know about what that technology is. And while EUV have different needs in terms of masks or fewer needs in terms of mask making, it is typically limited to only the lowest layers because it's quite expensive and slow.

And the design has to be prepared well for those techniques, and so we're quite familiar with EUV needs and satisfy those. And so I wouldn't say that EUV has changed our business perspective massively. I'm looking at it more as a, well, the push for smaller dimensions is still continuing. And so it touches another part of our company more, which is the part that is doing simulations in three dimensions of very small features because some of those features are new-- are only possible if you use EUV.

But for the broad designs, it is really a set of steps that is related to the manufacturing that we have solutions for. I don't think it changes our business picture all that much at this point in time.

Krish Sankar -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Got it. Got it. That's really helpful. And then as a follow-up, you guys have been interacting with your auto customers for a long time for several years now.

Back in the days, like the auto customers would like to have the same design, same component or whatever design designed in for like 8 to 10, 12 years. Has that behavior changed now with increasing semiconductor content and technology going into autos? Is that cycle time shortening? Are they willing to refresh design every few years now? Or has that philosophy not changed?

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

This is a very complex question, because even when you said we're attracting a lot of these automotive companies for a long time, it almost feels that we were interacting but they were not. And the reason was that automotive companies, for many, many years, had a layer of suppliers called the Tier 1s that really provide them with subsystems. And what the automotive companies did, they would give the general spec of what a subsystem needed to do to them, and the Tier 1s would deliver. And the Tier 1s, in turn, would go to the semiconductor people, and those, we certainly knew very well, and then have certain demands for automotive characteristics in the chips.

And so, we have worked our way literally up the value chain, so to speak. And now in the last few years, we have suddenly had many more interactions directly with people that actually sell cars to automotive companies. And you say why did that change? Well, the change is because the two macro changes on the automotive industry, one is electrification and the second one is the push toward autonomous driving, are so phenomenally deep that companies have to deal with this. What have come down from the OEM, from the automotive companies, through this food chain all the way to us is that the notion of safety now have to be anchored in how certain chips are designed, and we are pushing right up because we're adding the notion of security, which is mostly manifested software back up to them.

So to say, the least, we have a much richer set of interactions with them, the industry will, in my opinion, struggle with your question. Meaning that if you want to design something for a 20-year life, just imagine using the parts that we had 20 years ago in your most modern smartphone. It's complexly inconceivable. And so, I think these car companies are going to have to go to mechanisms where certain part of their platform is meant to survive long periods of utilization, but that some of the pieces will be upgradable over the years.

And that in itself is a challenging question because if you upgrade something, can you make sure it still works. And so you can see that the number of technology problems that are moving up the value chain is phenomenal. And while we, of course, play with many others that bring great value, I think we're well-positioned to connect with these companies in multiple dimensions. My last comment is-- this is also visible, by the way, in our Software Integrity business.

And we've already done a number of transactions, some quite significant, directly with automotive companies, and this is almost like coming at this company from two completely different angles. But at the end of the day, they all connect back to the intersection of hardware software.

Operator

I will now turn it back over to our host for closing remarks.

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you very much for participating in the earnings release today. It has a little bit of a special color by version of the $3 billion milestone. And so, we do appreciate that many of you have covered and followed the company for many years. And while we may differ in perspective from time to time, we also very often align and we always feel that your reporting is to the point and appreciate the very support that you have given our company.

And so, onto the next milestone and thank you for the time spent today.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 63 minutes

Call Participants:

Lisa Ewbank -- Vice President of Investor Relations

Aart de Geus -- Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer

Trac Pham -- Chief Financial Officer

Gary Mobley -- Benchmark -- Analyst

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Tom Diffley -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

John Pitzer -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Mitch Steves -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst

Jay Vleeschhouwer -- Griffin Securities -- Analyst

Monika Garg -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Krish Sankar -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

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