Time For Synopsys To Acquire PDF

PDF Solutions, (NASDAQ:PDFS), the leading provider of yield improvement technologies and services for IC manufacturing process life cycle, earlier in the year saw its stock crash to under a dollar per share.

Their Q1 revenues fell 26% sequentially and 50% over the year to reach $10.2 million. Gain share revenues saw a significant 55% fall over the year to $2.4 million and recorded a decline of 5% sequentially.

Net loss for the first fiscal quarter was $0.20 per share compared to a net loss of $0.02 per share a year ago.

The company is continuing to make advances in higher node technology and is hopefully looking at handling their scalability issue through tie-ups with other providers. Recently they collaborated with IBM to develop an IC design platform to mitigate the effects of escalating design and manufacturing process complexity at the 32-, 28-, and 22-nanometer dimensions. They hope to leverage IBM’s semiconductor design and process development expertise and their own pdBRIX™ IC design solution to provide efficient and cost-effective design templates to give designers more design flexibility and creativity at advanced process nodes.

They also announced a strategic tie-up with SVTC Technologies, a provider of technology development and commercialization services, to bring project-specific process optimization and yield enhancement services to their clients.

With Samsung Electronics they are tying up to further improve PDF Solutions’ YieldAware™ Fault Detection and Classification solution, which reduce process variability in Samsung’s fabs by controlling process tool health with models that predict the impact of tool sensor signals on final product yield.

PDF solutions is in a precarious state in an industry whose future seems bleak. Its stock price has recovered significantly to $2.40 after having crashed to a record low of $0.97 in March this year. With a market capitalization of just over $63 million, PDF Solutions might be a good company for any of the major EDA players to acquire. For the moment, my bet would be on Synopsys as the healthiest and the most desirable acquirer.