Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (CDNS) 3-Statement Financial Model, Rule of 40 & 5-Year DCF Summary
Golden Door Asset's Financial Engine connects audited SEC 10-K/10-Q income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements to a deterministic 5-year unlevered DCF valuation, Reverse-DCF implied growth solver, ASC 350-40 software capitalization bridge, and 1-year lagged R&D capital efficiency benchmark across 251 public software companies (167 ranked in the R&D Return universe).
Company & Ticker
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (CDNS)
Ratings v3 Score & Band
Stale
Fundamental Verdict
Buy
Rule of 40 Score
44.1%
TTM Revenue (USD)
$6.13B
TTM Gross Margin
86.0%
TTM Free Cash Flow Margin
28.8%
1-Year Lagged R&D Return & Grade
Below $10M R&D rank floor
Core Software Valuation Formulas Used by the Financial Engine
5-Year Unlevered DCF Enterprise Value = Sum of discounted Years 1–5 Unlevered Free Cash Flows at WACC + Discounted Terminal Value (Gordon Growth Perpetuity or Exit EV/FCF Multiple).
Ratings v3 Score (0 to 100) & Band (Leader to Laggard): 3-factor weighted percentile composite of R&D Spend % of Revenue (45% weight), Net Profit Margin (35% weight), and 1-Year Lagged R&D Payback (20% weight) across eligible software companies (80 to 100 Leader, 60 to 79 Strong, 40 to 59 Neutral, 20 to 39 Weak, 0 to 19 Laggard).
Revenue (ARR) $6,132,096,000 86.05% GM
Net Retention (NRR) 110%
Gross Churn 5.0%/yr
Financial Copilot
CDNS
Executive Financial Copilot
CDNS · SEC
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (CDNS) · R&D Return 2×2 Quadrant
- CDNS Position: 33.3% R&D Intensity ($2,041,833,000) → 0.40x 1-Yr Return (+$811,542,351 New GP)
- Regime & Rank: Burners · Grade B · Rank #100/167
- Peer Cohort (Hardware & Equipment): Median Growth 23.7% · Gross Margin 63.0% · Rule of 40 33.2%
- What This View Can Do: Plot CDNS against 250 software peers across Compounders, Harvesters, Burners, and Faders, inspect SBC discipline, or simulate Agentic AI R&D yield lift. What would you like to do next?
ARR/FTE: $547,509·SaaS: 4.5% of ARR·Drag: $396,032,000/yr
Executive FP&A Briefing
Lens:
Optional filing snapshot. Automatically seeds live 3-statement model & customer tiers.
Intensity = R&D ÷ revenue from the same period. The grade uses TTM when that period end is fresh; otherwise the latest fiscal year if that end is fresh; otherwise the name is ungraded. Bands describe spend level, not quality.
Freshness is form-aware: quarterly filers 120 days; annual-only 20-F/40-F 15 months past FY end.
Very High ≥ 30% · High 20–30% · Moderate 10–20% · Low 5–10% · Very Low under 5%.
Peer percentile sits next to the band for context. It is not the grade.
Missing R&D or revenue: ungraded. Negative R&D: data flag. Over 100%: Very High, manual review.
As of 2026-10-22.
Focus Tickers · Click any dot or row to inspect
R&D Return 2×2
x = R&D % of revenue (FY) · y = new gross profit per R&D dollar (FY)
CDNS: not ranked (stale)
Hover or tap a dot to inspect peer R&D intensity and return
R&D intensityUngraded 33.25%TTMstale data
How this is calculated
How R&D intensity is graded
Intensity = R&D ÷ revenue from the same period. The grade uses TTM when that period end is fresh; otherwise the latest fiscal year if that end is fresh; otherwise the name is ungraded. Bands describe spend level, not quality.
Freshness is form-aware: quarterly filers 120 days; annual-only 20-F/40-F 15 months past FY end.
Very High ≥ 30% · High 20–30% · Moderate 10–20% · Low 5–10% · Very Low under 5%.
Peer percentile sits next to the band for context. It is not the grade.
Missing R&D or revenue: ungraded. Negative R&D: data flag. Over 100%: Very High, manual review.
Every score is derived strictly from annual and trailing-twelve-month reported financial statements. Stock prices and valuation multiples are never used.
Quadrant cut-offs are never hard-coded constants—they are computed dynamically from the medians of the ranked universe (20.12% intensity, $0.47 return). Letter grades map 10-point percentile bands of R&D return among ranked names:
The rated universe has no ungraded names. Prior-year R&D under $10M stays in the table with R&D marked below R&D floor and a fundamentals Buy/Watch/Pass grade. Stale filings (quarterly > 120 days; annual-only 20-F/40-F > 15 months past FY end) stay, graded on the latest filing, with a data-as-of / stale label. Gross profit with no cost-of-revenue line is marked not reported, not excluded. Names leave only when they cannot produce a clean statement or fail the $50M revenue floor. Medians, ranks, and AAA–D bands use only the ranked set. No input is invented.
