PR - Mentor Graphics Corporation announced revenues for fiscal third quarter ending October 31st, 2008 of $184.9 million, a GAAP loss of $.85 per share, and a non-GAAP loss of $.04 per share. The GAAP loss is primarily driven by a $.55 per share tax provision that is abnormally high as it includes recapture of tax benefits previously claimed in prior quarters as well as the continuing effect of tax expense in non-US jurisdictions.

“The current economic outlook has delayed the typical contract renewal pattern we had been seeing. Customers are now more typically waiting until the quarter of contract expiration to renew. One of the consequences of this pattern is that we see greater strength going into fiscal 2010,” said Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics. “Even in this tougher environment, renewals in our top ten contracts in the quarter increased 35% over their previous contract value primarily due to adoption of new capabilities, like design for manufacturing, that were just emerging three years ago when the contracts were created.”

During the quarter, the company released a parallelized version of its Olympus-SOC™ place and route solution, significantly improving completion times for design closure, analysis and optimization. The company also introduced Calibre® equation-based design rule checking (DRC), allowing customers to embed complex design-for-manufacturing checks directly into their DRC runs.

“Cost control measures begun earlier in the year, as well as the weakening of the Euro and the strengthening of the Yen, have benefited the company,” said Gregory K. Hinckley, president of Mentor Graphics. “In addition to the $26 million in cost reductions that we will deliver over the course of fiscal 2009, we see an additional $30 million in expense savings that we can deliver in fiscal 2010. We continue to look carefully at all of our business investments in light of the current environment.”