Yuval Wasserman
Analyst · D.A. Davidson
Thank you, Rhonda. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us for our first quarter earnings conference call. The momentum of 2017 carried well into the first quarter, giving us a very solid start to the year. Continued demand for AE's high performance power solutions in advanced semiconductor applications, again, grew to record levels. Our expanding Industrial business also surged ahead in the first quarter, resulting in total revenue growth of 31% and non-GAAP EPS growth of 29% year-over-year. These results demonstrate the solid execution of our growth strategy, and our investment and focus on meeting market technology needs through innovation. In addition to our strong financial performance, we accomplished several key initiatives in the quarter. We completed the acquisition of Trek, adding complementary high voltage and electrostatic technology products to our specialty power products portfolio. This is the second acquisition we have completed during the last nine months, in addition to Excelsys, which we closed in July last year. As part of our general and organic strategy, the Trek position is in line with our roll-up plan in the high voltage technology space, joining high-tech power and UltraVolt acquisitions and increasing our SAM in applications such as life science, ion implantation, metrology and analytical equipment. Following a rigorous and disciplined approach, we are pleased with the six acquisitions we made during the last few years, as all of them have exhibited significant growth and profitability. In addition, and in line with our capital deployment strategy which is ongoing, year to date, we have deployed nearly $28.5 million in share repurchases. Lastly, and most importantly, we deepened our senior leadership team, by hiring Paul Oldham as our new CFO. Paul will play an instrumental role in accelerating AE's growth strategy. And we were excited to have him join us beginning tomorrow. In semiconductors, a booming memory chip market continues to propel the overall wafer-fab equipment market forward. And AE is playing a critical role by delivering highly engineered precision power solutions for these new processing tools. Semi revenue has increased 10% sequentially and 30% year-over-year, and again, reached record levels this quarter. Demand was heavily driven by etch and 3D NAND, supported by a strong DRAM investment, which drove the need for frontend processing tool. Next generation logic devices also contributed as chip makers migrate towards sub-10 nanometers nodes that required advanced dual and quad patterning. Atop this, was a contribution of some of our newer high-voltage applications for ion implant metrology and inspection. And finally, we saw strength that key OEMs from leading-edge capacity as well as 200 millimeter. Our ongoing investment and advancements in product research and development reflect our innovative leadership in critical power delivering control applications, which continue to align with the next generation device manufacturing technology. Our design wins this quarter came primarily from advanced NAND and DRAM applications. With wins in advanced etch applications our technology leadership outpaced the competition, particularly in our dual frequency matching products. This quarter, we successfully displaced multiple competitors due to our design philosophy, easy integration and best-in-class performance. These products enable demanding plasma processes that require high speed and advanced dynamic control capability. Also this quarter, our newly acquired products from Trek increased our presence in the high voltage market for semi applications, including increased content in metrology and ion implantation for advanced logic and DRAM applications. As device structures become more and more complex in nature, AE's position as an enabler of our customers' success is clearly becoming even more essential. Our recently introduced eV Source technology, solid-state match and our new Remote Plasma Source are enabling new capabilities for our customers in pursuing future technology nodes. Looking ahead, we expect to see growth continuing in 3D NAND and DRAM as the proliferation of cloud, edge, high-performance computing, AI and the IoT drive increased content in consumer devices and enterprise infrastructure. We anticipate second quarter revenues to remain at or near the first quarter's record level. Our Industrial business had an outstanding quarter, growing 46% year-over-year and 15% sequentially, clearly demonstrating the very rapid adoption of our advanced technology for the industrial markets. For example, in 2015, we talked about the Ascent DMS advanced bipolar pulse power technology as a key element of our growth strategy within our thin film industrial markets. Today, our DMS bipolar pulse DC business has quadrupled year-over-year and contributed to almost half of our successful design wins in high power AC solutions this quarter. This technology is rapidly being adopted throughout many of our thin film industrial markets, such as consumer electronics, advanced displays, solar PV cell manufacturing and large area glass markets, both domestically and globally. Our leading-edge technology enables us to gain design wins while upholding our market-leading margins. Revenue from our specialty power products improved significantly this quarter, due to the expansion of our portfolio of high and low voltage power delivery and control solutions into a variety of new and adjacent markets. Our high voltage power solutions provides stable output with low noise and low ripple in a small form factor, all of which are critical to applications in the materials, lasers, robotics, medical and life science markets. The expansion of our low voltage customized power solutions is allowing us to grow our presence in some highly regulated market, such as medical instrumentation and defense. And we continue to benefit from the modular high power density and fan-less solution that have become the standard for many of the markets we serve. Overall improvements in the global economy, together with our geographic expansion and increased channel partnerships should continue to contribute to the global rise in demand we are seeing for our products. Our strategy to diversify, accelerate innovation and add differentiating technologies and products should enable us to penetrate new verticals and expand our presence. During the last three years, our industrial products revenue grew by 17% CAGR. AE's industrial design wins are fueling our growth in many diverse verticals. This quarter we saw very strong performance across a variety of industrial applications. In thin films, we secured design wins and gained share in advanced glass coating applications in Europe and the U.S. We also saw increased activity in consumer electronic coating, as our products support existing customers' ramps and broaden our presence to new users. In flat panel display, we expand our presence in China with capacity increases as the ramp of mobile OLED continues. And finally, our traction in solar PV cell applications for upgrades in new purchases continued. In specialty power, we gained share and displaced competitors by winning critical design slots with our high voltage products. We secured wins in high voltage for an electrostatic precipitator application in the laser marking of flat panel display project for traceability. In thermal, we expanded our power control module market presence by winning additional glass line project in Europe and Asia. We also further penetrated the material processing market with a furnace heating project for steel, which requires accurate non-contact temperature measurements. We won these designs due to the modularity and configurability of our product. In low voltage, we secured several designs in the medical laser equipment market, due to the small footprint and isolated outputs of our products and because our solutions enable our customers to meet stringent regulatory and compliance standards. We plan to add complementary applications, technology and product lines to our Industrial business to expand our reach into new and adjacent verticals. In the second quarter, we expect ongoing strength across thin film and specialty power applications, especially consumer electronic products coatings, mobile OLED and high voltage products. Following a few quarters of accelerated growth in our Industrial business, we aspire to increase our CAGR growth target from GDP plus to mid-teens. The investment we have made in our service business over the last several years we design to provide a competitive turnaround time and increase our responsiveness as we evolve and grow our service business beyond break/fix. In response to an increase in activity by our customers and OEMs all across Asia, we recently opened our new Singapore repair center. This center gives us greater regional flexibility, improved responsiveness, increases our competitive stance and reduces cost. In particular, we are seeing strong momentum in the non-break/fix portion of the business that includes retrofits. While our service revenue increased 19% year-over-year, we saw a sequential pause this quarter due to the timing of some of our refurbishment upgrade and retrofit project wins. We continue to see momentum in the market adoption of these non-break/fix service products and expect to see increased implementation in Q2. Our service strategy continues to prove out and market conditions remains very favorable as we identify and pursue new opportunities to customize the value we deliver to each of our customers throughout the entire lifecycle of the products. For the second quarter, we see service revenue growing in high-single-digits. We aspire to continue and grow our service business at a double-digit CAGR driven by our growing installed base, gaining repair share, selling value-add service products and replacing our competitors' legacy product in the field. Heading into the second quarter, we remain at historically high levels of semiconductor revenues and expect to see meaningful sequential growth in our industrial business as we increase our offering and gain share in the markets we serve. The technical synergies, we are driving across our different power product lines, the integration of multiple products into enabling solutions and our commitment to continuous innovation is providing the opportunity to diversify and enter new and adjacent markets. Our Q1 performance combined with our Q2 guidance increases our confidence in our progress toward our three-year aspirational goals of greater than $1 billion in revenue between $5.5 and $6.5 in non-GAAP EPS and over $550 million in cumulative cash generation. With impressive financial performance and strong balance sheet, we plan to further execute on our capital deployment program, returning value to shareholders. We are encouraged by the number of actionable acquisition targets we have in our pipeline, and aspire to close additional deals during 2018. I'd like to thank our customers, partners, shareholders and our valued employees for their support. Thank you for joining us. And we look forward to seeing many of you in the upcoming quarter. With that, let me turn the call over to Tom McGimpsey. Tom?