Earnings Labs

Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Limited (AOSL)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Sun, Nov 8, 2015

$39.29

-7.20%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Alpha and Omega Semiconductors Fiscal Q1 2016 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today’s conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference Ms. So-Yeon Jeong. Ma’am you may begin your conference.

So Yeon Jeong

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Alpha and Omega Semiconductor’s conference call for fiscal 2016 first quarter financial results. This is So-Yeon Jeong, Investor Relations representative for the company. I am here with Dr. Mike Chang, our CEO, and Yifan Liang, our CFO. This call is being recorded and broadcasted live over the Web and can be accessed for seven days following the call via the link in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.aosmd.com. The earnings release was distributed by globe newswire today, November 5, 2015, after the market closed. The release is also posted on our company's website. Our earnings release and this presentation include certain non-GAAP financial measures. We use non-GAAP measures because we believe they provide useful information about our operating performance that should be considered by investors in conjunction with the GAAP measures that we provide. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings release. We would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements, including discussions of business outlook and financial projections. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from such expectations. For a more detailed description of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our recent and subsequent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligations to update the information provided in today's call. Now, I’ll turn the discussion over to our CFO, Yifan Liang to provide an overview of the first fiscal quarter financial results. Yifan?

Yifan Liang

Analyst

Thank you, So-Yeon. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. To begin, I will discuss financial results for the quarter. Then I’ll turn it over to Mike, our CEO, who will review the company’s business highlights and I will follow-up with our guidance for the next quarter. Finally, we’ll reserve time for questions-and-answers. Revenue for the September quarter was $81.4 million, flat compared to the prior quarter, and a decrease of 7.7% from the same quarter last year. As expected, the flattish quarter-over-quarter and the year-over-year decrease in revenue reflected below normal seasonality due primarily to a combination of the macroeconomic headwinds and channel inventory digestions prior to the Skylake ramp. In terms of product mix, MOSFET revenue was $59.9 million, down 5.6% sequentially and 7.7% year-over-year. Power IC revenue was $17.5 million, up 20.4% from the prior quarter and down 8.6% from a year ago. Service revenue was $4 million as compared to $3.5 million for the prior quarter and $4.2 million for the same quarter last year. In terms of segment mix, this quarter’s Computing segment represented 46% of the total revenue, Consumer 21.3%, Power Supply and Industrial 18.3%, Communication 9.2%, Service 4.9% and Others 0.3%. Gross margin was 18.5% for the September quarter as compared to 17.6% in the prior quarter and 20.6% for the same quarter last year. The increase in gross margin quarter-over-quarter was mainly driven by the improved product mix. Operating expenses for the quarter were $15.8 million compared to $16.2 million for the prior quarter and $16.4 million for the same quarter last year. The lower operating expenses quarter-over-quarter were primarily due to the fluctuation of our new product introduction expenses, which tend to correlate to the timing of tape-outs. Income tax expense was $1.2 million for the quarter, flat compared to…

Mike Chang

Analyst

Thank you, Yifan. For our fiscal Q1 2016, the total revenue of $81.4 million came in within our guidance range. While revenue was slightly shy of the mid-point, the gross margin marked at the high end of the guidance on account of a favorable product mix, which led us to deliver a better than expected bottom line for the September quarter. Our team executed well in the challenging market conditions as we carried out the initiatives under the recovery plan. First, we continued to gain traction in the deployment of our Low Voltage DMOS products and the Power IC solutions on Skylake platforms. We are also encouraged to see that the progressive improvement in new design ins and wins in the September quarter is continuing into the current quarter. Second, we further strengthened our focus areas of Power Supply and Industrial, as well as Communication. The accelerated adoption of our quick charger and Alpha DFN solutions led to growing business. Simultaneously, we reduced internal inventory, as well as inventory in the channel, paving the way for the upcoming product replacement. I will discuss in more details on these highlights in the following segment report. But before I do so, let me take a moment to elaborate our business momentum in China. Revenue from China demonstrated steady growth quarter after quarter and accounted for 31% of our total revenue in the September quarter. Our recently launched Mobile strategy initiatives that include quick charger and the smartphone battery management applications are progressing well in China. We grew the mobile application revenue with our new products, seizing the momentum of good timing. Chinese ODM manufacturers are increasingly playing a bigger role in the global mobile industry, and the local mobile demand is also expanding as well. Putting these all together, we achieved about…

Yifan Liang

Analyst

Thank you, Mike. As we look forward to the second quarter of fiscal year 2016, we expect our December quarter’s revenue to be in the range of $77 million to $81 million. GAAP gross margin is expected to be approximately 17.5% plus or minus 1%. GAAP operating expenses are expected to be in the range of $15.5 million to $17.5 million. Tax expenses are expected to be about $1.1 million to $1.3 million. Our share-based compensation should range from $1 million to $1.2 million. As per our regular practice, we are not assuming any obligations to update this information. With that, we will open up the floor for questioning. Operator?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Evan Wang

Analyst

Yes, hi, this is Evan Wang calling in for Tore Svanberg. Congratulations on the quarter and the guide and it looks like the December quarter it looks like a above seasonal guide. Is it the Industrial that’s helping you to offset the sale decline in the other areas?

Mike Chang

Analyst

Sure Evan. In the December quarter, first of all keeping in mind the September quarter was not as peak as used to be. The December quarter is normally reflected in normal seasonality putting in that way, and then in particularly in the each segment, I mean in the Computing area I would expect some normal seasonality with a little bit upside from the Skylake ramp. But Skylake ramp is still at a very early stage. In the – focus areas, yes in the Communication area for example even though this is normally a lower quarter for the Communication segment, but our new product in the smartphone battery packing area, which we expect we can catch up in some of the backlog. And then actually we expect to stay flat in this segment. And in the Power Supply and Industrial area, yes we saw pretty strong growth in there. So – especially from our quick charger and some industrial applications. So overall, I think it’s a decent quarter if you take our mid-point of the guidance.

Evan Wang

Analyst

Yes. Yeah, thank you for the color. So I just wanted to get a sense of given that you’ve improved your profitability towards breakeven this past quarter, could you talk a little bit about your plans to return to profitability, do you see that in the near future? And where you do you think your breakeven level is?

Yifan Liang

Analyst

Definitely, you can see from this quarter, our margin improved because of the improved product mix. So our new products carried higher gross margin for us. In future I would expect our new product in the focused areas they can continue to contribute to our margin improvement and this will lead to calendar year 2016 profitability, the improvement that’s all we are committing to this profitability improvement. This is more as we expected our revenue to grow I would also expect, in our factory you’ll have [indiscernible] would benefit us as well. So overall, I would expect our breakeven point at this level as more at high-80 range – mid-80 to high 80 range.

Evan Wang

Analyst

My last question is about your joint venture. One is the timing of the agreement, when do you expect that to be finalized? And then my follow-up on that is that it sounds like you’re expecting some improved penetration into the local customers in that area. And I was wondering if you can talk about which end markets those customers are in and how that might change your end market mix?

Mike Chang

Analyst

This is Mike, Evan. Yes, this frontline take time okay, so we put it maybe some time in the later part for January for the agreement just sort of a rough estimate. Once this happened okay, then it would become a joint venture suppose I have the ownership to promote our business. So China is big in the appliance and also to some degree Communication. In the longer term it will be more – automotive. So however, our product can really can expand – the current product there. So this is really very exciting for us and we’re looking forward for that.

Evan Wang

Analyst

So appliances and automotive would both be your Industrial bucket?

Mike Chang

Analyst

I’m sorry, I should not mention automotive because automotive is much a further way okay. The immediate is most value appliance and in the Communication, those are in which we can benefit.

Evan Wang

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Mike Chang

Analyst

Thank you, Evan.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the call back to Yifan Liang, CFO of Alpha & Omega Semiconductor for closing remarks.

Yifan Liang

Analyst

Thank you. This concludes our earnings call today. Thank you for your interest in AOS and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter. Thank you.

Mike Chang

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.