Mary Puma
Analyst · Needham & Company. Your line is now open
Thank you, Crystal. With me today is Kevin Brewer, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Doug Lawson, Executive Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Strategy. If you've not seen a copy of our press release issued earlier today, it is available on our website. Playback service will also be available on our website as described in our press release. Please note that comments made today about our expectations for future revenues, profits and other results are forward-looking statements under the SEC’s Safe Harbor provision. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to the risks inherent in our business. These risks are described in detail in our Form 10-K Annual Report and other SEC filings, which we urge you to review. Our actual results may differ materially from our current expectations. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Our second quarter financial results preview the significant earnings potential of Axcelis with revenue driven by continued traction of Purion products combined with a strong GSS business, tight control of expenses and increasing gross margins. This quarter highlights the potential leverage of our business model and shows that Axcelis can generate strong cash flow and earnings. Revenues of $78.4 million driven by healthy sales in both systems and GSS was above both company guidance and analysts’ consensus estimates. Earnings of $0.05 per share was also above both guidance and consensus. For the third consecutive quarter, system revenue showed a healthy split between the memory market at 61% and the non-leading edge foundry and logic market at 39%. We expect this trend to continue into the third quarter and likely throughout the year. These two markets will continue to provide a stable and healthy environment for Axcelis to grow. We will continue to have low exposure to recent CapEx spending reductions in the leading edge foundry and logic market. As a result we expect third quarter revenues between $75 million and $80 million, gross margins of approximately 34% to 35%, operating profit of $5 million to $7 million and EPS ranging from $0.03 to $0.05. Our cash balance will be approximately $80 million. The commonality of the Purion platform combined with our innovative scan spot being advanced energy filter and Eterna ELS Source has enabled the Purion product family to rapidly gain momentum with our customers. Based on this momentum and the strength of both the memory and non-leading edge foundry and logic markets, we continue to expect that Axcelis will exit 2015 with between 17% and 20% share of the approximately $1 billion ion implant market. Our market share growth is mainly driven by our Purion H High Current system, which is the fastest growing new product in Axcelis' history. The Purion H is now installed and running production in four memory fabs at two customers. We recently added two new Purion H customers, one memory, one foundry, bringing our install base by the end of Q3 to four customers in six fabs. Our Purion XE High Energy Implanter is also driving share gains. This year we've penetrated three new non-memory 200 and 300 millimeter customers. As a result of the Purion commonality, these initial Purion penetration should open the door for future expansion of our entire Purion family within these customers and create significant opportunity for continued share gain during 2016. We will also be intensely focused on further broadening the customer base for Purion. Therefore we expect future growth of Purion products to come from new customers as well as repeat sales to existing ones. Our strategy for 2015 remain intact and we've made significant progress to date, which I would like to take a moment to review. We have objectives in 2015 that will increase revenues, growing Purion share and memory globally, placing at least one Purion H evaluation unit at a leading edge foundry logic customer, capturing as much business as possible in the very active non-leading edge process technology segment and growing our GSS business. Our first objective expanding our memory footprint and growing our topline through Purion share gain in this market is on track. This is very important for Axcelis as the memory market is heavily implant capital intensive. Our growth has been driven by rapid Purion H adoption and the very active Korean memory market as evidenced by our strong first half systems revenue growth. Recently we announced a Purion H order for an evaluation system at a third leading memory customer. This positions us for additional revenue outside of Korea in 2016. It also opens the door for Purion H in the growing 3D NAND segment. Our second objective placement of at least one Purion H evaluation unit at a leading edge foundry or logic customer is expected within the next 6 to 12 months. Recent CapEx reductions and 10 nanometer production ramp delays in this market could push our first evaluation placement into 2016. However, we expect that Purion H scanned spot beam advantages will help these customers overcome technical difficulties in advanced FinFET development. As a result, we believe that this potential delay will be a positive for Axcelis in 2016 and '17 just as a pause in memory spending last year ultimately accelerated our Purion H ramp in the memory segment. We’re pleased with our progress against our third objective, maximizing the revenue opportunity at customers using non-leading edge process technology. 42% of our systems revenue in the first half of 2015 has come of this very active market. These customers historically have a large Axcelis install base and strong GSS relationships. They’re rapidly adopting Purion for both technical and productivity reasons. We are also doing well against our fourth revenue objective, growing our GSS business. GSS revenues have been steady in 2015, driven by used tool sales and higher utilization at our customer fabs. We should see future growth as our increasing install base of Purion products exit the warranty period. We've two major objectives focused on improving our earnings. First we have and will continue to maintain tight control of operating expenses in cash and second our initiatives to deliver greater than 40% gross margins in 2017 remain on track. As with our revenue ramp, this will not be a linear March, but we expect to meet our goal to end the year with an average gross margin in the mid 30% range. Overall, we are pleased with the progress we've made toward our 2015 objectives and believe this positions us to gain market share, increased earnings and generate cash in 2016 and beyond. Now I would like to turn it over to Kevin to discuss our second quarter financial results.