Has Cadence Stock Fallen Like This Before?

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Shares of Cadence Design Systems (CDNS) now trade 22.2% below their June high. Over a ten-year stretch, however, the stock turned $10,000 into about $130,755 before dividends, while the same capital placed in the S&P 500 grew to about $36,078, also before dividends. Looking backward makes holding the stock appear easy, but the reality was quite different. How many times do you think the stock fell 20% or more on the way?

How Often Did Cadence Stock Fall?

The stock suffered seven such declines over ten years, and two of those drops exceeded 30%. The table below details all seven occurrences alongside the performance of the S&P 500.

Investors are currently enduring the deepest of these seven declines. From its high on June 2, 2026, Cadence stock fell 34.2% by September 15, a period when the S&P 500 slipped just 0.3%. The shares have yet to close above their June peak.

The longest wait came earlier, when the stock spent 12.5 months trading below its June 2024 high.

What Was It Like Holding Cadence Through A Fall?

The current decline immediately followed an earlier slump. Shares dropped 28.8% between September 2025 and April 2026, and they only climbed back above their previous high in May. The stock set the June high less than two weeks later, and from there it took 3.4 months to reach the September low.

Holders thus sat through consecutive steep declines with barely a pause in between. While the six earlier drops all concluded within six months of their respective lows, investors lacked that certainty at the time. Similarly, nobody holding Cadence today knows when the ongoing decline will end.

Was Something Wrong With Cadence’s Business?

No. Cadence sells the software engineers use to design chips, led by its core EDA tools, along with System Design and Analysis products. During the company’s steepest stock decline, its twelve-month revenue rose 5.6% between the peak and the trough, while the operating margin stayed near 31% at both points.

The preceding downturn followed a similar pattern, with revenue growing 8.6% as the margin edged up. For the quarter that ended September 30, 2026, Cadence’s revenue was up 22% from a year earlier. The business continued to expand even as the shares lost value. Price drops like these represented the risk of holding the stock, not a sign the business was shrinking.

What Selling Cadence Stock Would Have Cost

Shares of Cadence are up 18.2% since reaching their September 15 low. An investor who sold at that low gave up all of that rise, and the stock is still below its June high. For Cadence, those seven falls were the price of the ten-year gain.

Cadence is expected to report its next results in February 2027. The next time Cadence stock experiences a decline of this magnitude, check whether its revenue is falling too, which it was not in either of the last two falls.

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