What is Altera’s financial business model?
Since the PLD market was created in the 1980s, the financial business models of the leading PLD suppliers have generally been favorable when compared to most other semiconductor companies. High sales growth rates, fabless strategies, high barriers to entry, and proprietary architectures have helped drive strong financial results for PLD suppliers. As the semiconductor industry and the PLD market have matured, revenue growth in the PLD segment, while still higher than many other semiconductor segments, has slowed. In recent years, we have increased our focus on enhancing our business model despite slower revenue growth. Through various programs to improve R&D and SG&A productivity, as well as a general movement to simplify our business processes, we have been able to achieve higher rates of net income as a percentage of total revenue and a higher return on equity. We believe that our early focus on cost reduction and productivity enhancement may provide us some benefits compared to othe
