Earnings Labs

AudioCodes Ltd. (AUDC)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 3, 2015

$8.77

-1.13%

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.

Same-Day

+2.17%

1 Week

+13.55%

1 Month

+18.97%

vs S&P

+19.62%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the AudioCodes Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Collin Dennis. Thank you. Mr. Dennis, you may now begin.

Collin Dennis

Analyst

Thank you, Rob. I would like to welcome everyone to the AudioCodes third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today are Shabtai Adlersberg, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Niran Baruch, Vice President of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer. Before beginning, we would like to remind you that the information provided during this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to AudioCodes' business outlook, future economic performance, product introduction and plans and objectives related thereto, and statements concerning assumptions made or expectations as to any future event, conditions, performance or other matters are forward-looking statements as the term is defined under U.S. Federal Securities Laws. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated in such statements. These risks, uncertainties and factors include, but are not limited to, the effect of current global economic conditions and conditions in general and in AudioCodes' industry and target markets in particular shifts in supply and demand, market acceptance of new products and the demand for existing products, the impact of competitive products and pricing on AudioCodes and its customers' products and markets, timely product and technology developments, upgrade and the ability to manage changes in market conditions as needed, possible need for additional financing, the ability to satisfy covenants in the company's loan agreements, possible disruptions from acquisitions, the ability of AudioCodes to successfully integrate the products and operations from acquired companies into AudioCodes' business and other factors detailed in AudioCodes' filings with the SEC, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. AudioCodes assumes no obligation to update information. In addition, during the call, AudioCodes will refer to non-GAAP net income and net income per share. AudioCodes has provided a reconciliation of non-GAAP net income and net income per share to its net income and net income per share according to GAAP in its press release and on its Web site. Before I turn the call over to management, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and an archived webcast will be made available on the Investor Relations section of the company's Web site at the conclusion of this call. The call will also be archived in our Investor Relations app, which is available for free from the iTunes app store and the Google Play Market. With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to Shabtai Adlersberg. Shabtai, please go ahead.

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon everybody. I would like to welcome all to our third quarter 2015 conference call. With me this morning is Niran Baruch, Chief Accounting Officer and Vice President of Finance. Niran will start off by presenting a financial overview of the quarter and an updated annual guidance for 2015. I will then review the business highlights and summary for the quarter and discuss trends and developments in our business and industry. We will then turn it into the Q&A session. Niran?

Niran Baruch

Analyst

Thank you, Shabtai and hello everyone. As usual we will be referring to both GAAP and non-GAAP numbers on the call. The non-GAAP P&L metrics exclude recurring non-cash items. Today's earnings press release contains a reconciliation of supplemental non-GAAP financial information. Revenues for the third quarter were $34.2 million, up 5.6% from the prior quarter and down 12.1% from the year ago quarter. Revenues from networking products and services increased by 10.3% from the prior quarter, accounting for 90% of revenues for the third quarter. Revenues from our technology product decreased by 23.9% from the prior quarter. Services revenues increased by 3.2% from the prior quarter, accounting for 28% of total revenues for the third quarter. Revenues by geographical regions for the quarter was split as follows. North America 45%, Central and Latin America 5%, EMEA 33% and Asia Pacific 17%. Our top 15% unitedly represented 58% of revenues in the quarter of which 43% are attributed to our eight largest distributors. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 50% compared to 59.9% in Q2 2015. Operating income for the quarter was $0.97 million compared to an operating loss of $1.8 million in Q2 2015. On a non-GAAP basis, quarterly operating income was $1.9 million or 4% of revenue compared to an operating loss of $0.8 million in Q2 2015. Net loss for the quarter was $0.13 million or a loss of $0.00 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, quarterly net income was $1.7 million or $0.04 per share compared to net loss of $0.5 million or a loss of $0.01 per share in Q2 2015. Our balance sheet remains strong. At the end of September, cash, cash equivalent and marketable securities totaled $75.3 million. Days sales outstanding as of September 30 was 70 days compared to 79 days at the same time a quarter ago. Operating cash flow generated during the quarter was $1.8 million compared to $3.4 million for Q2 2015. During the quarter we acquired $1.1 million shares for a total consideration of $3.7 million. We intend to continue to buy shares under the approved buyback plan until the end of the year. This intent was discussed and reapproved yesterday at the board of directors meeting to approve the financial results for the third quarter. In addition, the board of directors has approved filing a new application with the court, requesting approval for the new research program to become effective early 2016 for a total consideration of up to $10 million in share repurchases for a period of six months from the date of receipt of court approval. Now to provide an update on our guidance. We now expect revenues for 2015 to be in the range of $148 million to $142 million compared to original range of $137 million $143 million. We anticipate non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.11 to $0.13 compared to the original range of $0.09 to $0.12. I will now turn the call back over to Shabtai.

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst

Thank you, Niran. We are very pleased to report good momentum and recovery in our business. We returned to growth in revenues after one quarter only and improved financial performance for the third quarter of 2016. As stated in our press release earlier this morning, we continue to grow our networking business and deliver above 10% growth in the networking revenue. We saw healthy demand across most networking business lines which now contribute about 90% of the quarterly revenue. Touching on the highlights of the passing third quarter, I believe we can confidently say that we were able to recover nicely from two of the three main reasons for the shortfall in the second quarter this year and emerged back to growth in revenue and profitability. To remind us all, we have three key reasons for the miss in second quarter '15. First one was lower sales in countries suffering from weaker economy, some of which is related to the crisis in oil prices affecting the economy of these countries. Among these we have mentioned Brazil, other Latin America countries and Russia. Unfortunately, in the third quarter of 2015, we have not seen much change on that front and we do not expect any major change in next few quarters. In order to mitigate this factor, we are adjusting for the loss and the missing revenue on the geographical basis. Second factor was the miss in the contact center business revenue which declined by several millions in the second quarter compared to the story we had. This was a result of several number of small hundred, thousands of dollars opportunities which were pushed up to the third quarter. I am glad to inform that we have recovered fully, nicely back to the level expected for the contact center business in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Rich Valera with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Rich Valera

Analyst

Just I was hoping you could able to give a little more color on your thoughts on the Skype for business trajectory. I think you said that in the short-term you expect lower on-prem sales there as Microsoft pushes for the cloud-hosted version of that product. But longer term you are optimistic of seeing some rebound I think as you see hybrid installations. Can you explain, give a little more color on which products should we don’t expect to be selling near term and why would we see a rebound in those products over time? Thanks.

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst

Sure. So, well, the general market nature of Skype for business is looking much more focused on the cloud, cloud PBX. Which means mainly one thing, that the network will increasingly point more and more towards the cloud. Now one is -- before we go into all kinds explanations, one needs to segment the market into small organization and larger ones. Small offices, small organizations, I would probably look at below and/or 100 employees, will definitely enjoy a cloud-only operation, pure cloud operation. And therefore in such implementation, there will be a need mainly for two kinds of product. One would be the IP phones, the second one would be a new sort of a cloud gateway and/or appliance that will help connect that small office to the cloud. However, when you go into larger organizations such as mid-market, 100 to 1000, and/or into large organization, you need to think about companies who have got many facilities spread either in the nation or global-wide. And there I think CIOs, at least from what we hear, tend to rely on an hybrid implementation. Meaning, small offices in remote areas will enjoy PBX type service but larger companies will still need to rely on kind of an on-prem implementation towards acquiring larger facilities. That means that, again, in that architecture IP phones will be sold. We believe that there will be a need for that cloud appliance that will provide quality of service, will provide connectivity, resiliency to IP network. So all in all, we will miss -- what we will be missing in coming years is mainly SBA sales. SBA stands for survivable branch office appliance, which used, and still by the way, still is connecting to the PSTN and will connect the PSTN over the next good two or three years but will vanish three to five years from today as resiliency will count dual One, dual IP connection rather than relying on the PSTN. So that’s the key change.

Rich Valera

Analyst

Got it. That’s helpful. And within that context, what's your feeling of the near-term trajectory of that business. I mean it was up obviously very nicely in 3Q quarter-over-quarter. Do you expect that to continue to improve sequentially as we move into fourth quarter?

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst

Yes. I think we went to like six to nine months of hesitation in the market before organization could analyze and understand the meaning of the new Skype for business release. All in all, my belief is that while we showed in the past growth rate of above 30% year-over-year, I think this year and going forward, at least this year any maybe part of next year will more like 15% to 20%. But I am confident that as Skype for business gets deployed and people gain more confidence in the release and the launch of Skype for business and cloud PBX, I think we will see continued growth of about 20% annually.

Rich Valera

Analyst

Great. That’s helpful. And then just on the gateway business, last quarter you spoke about meaningful decline, I think especially in the low and mid-density gateways and maybe some questions about whether that was heading into kind of a secular decline after several years of relatively stable performance. Just wanted to get your thoughts on the, generally speaking, the media gateway business and do you think we have kind of reached a level of stability or are you thinking there could be further declines as we move into next [year] [ph] in that business?

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst

Okay. Where we are sitting today, we should talk about gateway -- and I think for us, I need to go to another two to three quarters to solidify my assessment. But I would tend to think, we divided the gateway sales into three key segments. The mid-high, the low-mid and then the analog. We definitely see decline in the mid-high but that segment has reached a level from which we believe that at least for the next two year, we will not see any major decline. The low to mid segment was very successful for us until six months ago. We believe that there is much confusion on the Skype for business market and what we suffer from weak economies has contributed to lower sales in that segment. On the third segment, which is the analog media gateway, we actually see very significant growth. It's all related to what we call the all-IP transformation trend. What's happening is that the world moved to IP previously mostly in large and mid-sized organizations. And in those organizations, the main connection was through high-capacity trunks, [indiscernible] etcetera. The lower end market, which is the analog line was really moving last towards IP and was basically pushed by the channels to buy reduced cost TDMs. Now that the network is going to transition fully into IP and in the next five, seven years, it will -- old PSTN lines will be terminated. There is a big push by the large service providers to get all those small analog offices on to IP. The only way to do that would be through the use of analog gateways. So we have seen those trends are very strong in the past five, six months. We also have been to events such as hospitality events. If you think about large hotel networks, names like Marriot, Hilton and others, which have millions of rooms. Each hotel, you know, 500 rooms etcetera. Those networks do no plan on replacing the phones with new IP phones because that would be too costly. So the only way to go IP would be to put a large capacity analog gateway which we just announced, by the way, two weeks ago. So just to conclude, we will see lower sales in the mid-high range and I think we will see support for higher sales in the analog range. So all in all, either stable and/or declining slowly but we definitely will not see a collapse coming through.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore with Northland Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Northland Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, this is [indiscernible] for Mike Latimore. I have got a couple of questions the business segments. Could you tell me how much is network revenue?

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst · Northland Capital. Please proceed with your question.

I am sorry, again, what was the question?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Northland Capital. Please proceed with your question.

How much -- the network revenue?

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst · Northland Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Oh, networking. Yes. Networking revenues were 90%.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] At this time I would like to turn the floor back to management for closing remarks.

Shabtai Adlersberg

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, operator. We would like to thank everyone who attended our conference call today. We enjoyed a good business environment in the third quarter of 2015 and executed on our plan and we believe that we have set the pace for continued growth and momentum in the next coming year. We look forward to have you on our next quarterly conference call. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You many now disconnect your lines at this time.