CEVA, Inc. (CEVA) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to the CEVA, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Kingston, Vice President of Market Intelligence and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CEVA's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today on the call are Amir Panush, Chief Executive Officer; and Yaniv Arieli, Chief Financial Officer of CEVA. Before handing over to Amir, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as well as assumptions that if they materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of CEVA to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. We will also be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide a meaningful analysis of our core operating results and comparisons of quarterly results. Please see the earnings release we issued this morning for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings release can be found in the SEC Filings section of our Investor Relations website. And with that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Amir, who will review our business performance for the quarter and provide some insight into our ongoing business. Amir?

Thank you, Richard. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 2025 was a landmark year for CEVA. We strengthened our foundation, reinforced our leadership position in wireless connectivity and accelerated our expansion into AI for the Smart Edge. Throughout the year, we continued executing on our long-term strategy, partnering closely with customers to solve their most critical technology challenges through a comprehensive best-in-class portfolio of IP platforms that enable smart edge devices to connect, sense and infer data locally. This strategy matters now more than ever. The shift of AI inference from the cloud to the edge and toward hybrid AI continues to accelerate. And the next wave of innovation is increasingly about Physical AI, where devices must connect to and sense their environment, process data locally and infer in real time to make decisions. CEVA is uniquely positioned for the Physical AI era. By offering a comprehensive portfolio of IP building blocks spanning Connect, Sense and Infer use cases, we provide the flexibility our customers need. Whether licensed individually or in multi-IP configurations, these technologies drive superior customers' outcomes and strengthen our long-term economic model. Before reviewing the year and our key achievements, I'll first provide an overview of our fourth quarter performance. For the fourth quarter, we delivered the highest quarterly revenue in CEVA's history, which was 7% higher year-over-year, excluding the Intrinsix Design Services business, which we divested in 2023. Licensing revenue increased 11%, exceeding our expectations through strong execution across all 3 of our technologies pillars and reflecting broad demand across multiple end markets. In the quarter, we signed 18 licensing agreements, including 3 NPU licensing deals, multiple Wi-Fi 7 and combo connectivity wins and a meaningful software engagement reinforcing the breadth of our portfolio. Of the 18 deals signed, 5 were with OEMs. Turning to licensing highlights regarding AI. We reached one of the most significant AI milestones for CEVA to date during the fourth quarter, signing an NPU licensing agreement with one of the world's leading PC OEMs developing its next-generation AI personal compute architecture. Their selection of CEVA's new NPU portfolio is a strong validation of our technology and represents a breakthrough for on-device AI adoption in the PC category. This win underscores our ability to set the standards for high-performance AI integration into next-generation computing. This partnership is strategically important on 2 fronts. First, it demonstrates top-tier customers' trust in CEVA's leading and optimized IP foundations to their AI road maps, allowing them to focus their engineering talent on software, model optimization and user experience differentiation. Second, it confirms that the PC ecosystem has reached a tipping point where dedicated NPUs are a baseline requirement for competitive AI performance. As AI features proliferate across operating systems, creative workflows, productivity applications and local LLM acceleration, the ability to deliver superior performance per watt is the new strategic differentiator, and CEVA is a key player in this transition. Importantly, our AI momentum is also increasingly reflected in our financial mix as well as deal activity. AI processor licensing represented a meaningful portion of our licensing revenue in 2025. While AI design cycles can be longer than traditional connectivity deployments, these agreements typically carry higher per unit and longer-term royalty potential, expanding content per device and strengthening the durability of our royalty model over time. As for licensing highlights in connectivity, our connectivity business delivered another strong performance in the fourth quarter, highlighting the depth and durability of our wireless franchise. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi IPs continue to see strong demand as customers upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth high data throughput. This quarter's deals include Wi-Fi 7 for IoT, a multiuse Bluetooth HDT agreement and 3 Bluetooth Wi-Fi combo wins. One notable win was with the semiconductor division of one of the world's largest white goods manufacturers, which licensed our Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth IP for a combo connectivity chipset supporting smart home applications. This illustrates a broader trend. Consumer, industrial and automotive OEMs are increasingly designing their own connectivity silicon to deliver tightly integrated app-centric experiences and selecting CEVA as a trusted partner for road map critical platforms. As for sensing, another standout deal in the fourth quarter was a software licensing agreement with a leading TV platform planning to integrate our motion engine technology into its smart TV operating system used by multiple global TV brands. As TVs evolved into interactive experience hubs, motion-based inputs and enhanced user interactions are becoming increasingly important. CEVA's long-standing presence in this market provides deep domain expertise and platform credibility. Now turning to royalties. This was our strongest royalty quarter in more than 4 years. Growth across our diversified Smart Edge royalty customers more than offset mobile softness, underscoring the strength and resilience of our business model. In the fourth quarter, Wi-Fi shipments reached a record high, up 31% year-over-year, reflecting increased deployment often as part of combo connectivity chips. Cellular IoT shipments were up 30% year-over-year, driven by Smart Edge applications and Bluetooth shipments continue to be our largest volume category. We also saw a recovery from China-based handset customers during the quarter. However, memory pricing and supply constraints continue to impact smartphone shipments. Now turning for the full year 2025 review. For the full year, total revenue increased 2% year-over-year. Licensing and related revenue grew 6%, reflecting strong demand across AI and advanced connectivity. Royalty revenue was down 2%, primarily due to smartphone softness and memory supply shortage impacting overall unit shipments. Importantly, royalties grew sequentially each quarter, and we exited the year with our strongest royalty quarter in more than 4 years. CEVA power devices shipped in 2025 reached a record 2.1 billion units, up 6% year-over-year, with record Wi-Fi shipments, which grew 48% year-over-year and record cellular IoT shipments, up 42% year-over-year. Overall, we signed 54 licensing agreements in 2025 across our extensive IP portfolio, including 10 OEMs agreements. Importantly, 12 customers licensed multiple CEVA technologies, a clear indication that our strategy to offer a broad portfolio across Connect, Sense and Infer is resonating and enabling customers to address multiple requirements within a single engagement. Taking a step back, 2025 features several important milestones that reinforce our long-term opportunities. The strength of our connectivity franchise is defined by deep customer integration and scale. During the year, we signed nearly 30 new engagements for our Bluetooth and Wi-Fi IPs, underscoring continued relevance across smart edge markets. We also secured Wi-Fi 7 agreements with 2 of our largest connectivity customers who together have shipped more than 3 billion CEVA power devices, effectively establishing long-life royalty engines that we expect to drive billions of units and tens of millions of dollars in royalties over the life of these programs. In addition, our ability to deliver integrated combo solutions continues to differentiate us and improve deal economics over time. 2025 was a breakthrough year for CEVA in AI and NPU licensing. During the year, we signed 10 NeuPro NPU agreements, headlined by a comprehensive new portfolio license with Microchip and a strategic engagement with a leading global PC OEM underscoring our traction across embedded, consumer, automotive, industrial and compute markets. This momentum is increasingly reflected not only in deal activity, but also in our financial mix with AI processor licensing representing a meaningful portion of licensing revenue in 2025. Strategically, the licensing agreements we signed during 2025 are building long-term royalty trajectory and visibility. Based on these signed agreements and our insights into customers' road maps, we estimate that they represent an aggregated lifetime royalty potential of $125 million over their expected product lives. While this value will be realized over multiple years and is dependent on customers' deployment and market adoption, the magnitude of this opportunity relative to our current royalty base underscores the strength, durability and accelerating momentum of the licensing and royalty flywheel we are building. In terms of scale and credibility, we celebrated reaching 20 billion cumulative CEVA power devices shipped to date during the year and in fact, exceeding 21 billion cumulative units by the end of the fourth quarter. These milestones reflects the trust we have built with the industry over decades and position CEVA strongly for the Physical AI era now underway. A key strength of our business that is often underappreciated is our diversification across Smart Edge end markets. In 2025, Smart Edge applications generated 86% of total revenue, driven by market share gains by CEVA-powered customers across consumer, automotive, industrial and infrastructure markets. As intelligence continue to move into physical devices, this diversified and expanding customer footprint positions CEVA to evolve naturally from enabling the smart edge to enabling Physical AI, where connectivity, sensing and inference converge to drive the next phase of growth. Entering 2026, we are focused on extending our leadership in established categories and deepening our integration with our customers' road maps. By providing a more complete IP stack, we are becoming an even more essential partner to our customers, effectively increasing the value per device. Now I will turn the call over to Yaniv to review the financials.

Thank you, Amir. Good morning. I'll now start by reviewing the results of our operations for the fourth quarter of 2025. Revenue for the fourth quarter increased 7% year-over-year and 10% sequentially to an all-time record high of $31.1 (sic) [ $31.3 ] million. The revenue breakdown is as follows: licensing and related revenue increased 11% year-over-year and 9% sequentially to $17.5 million, reflecting 56% of our total revenues. Royalty revenue increased 2% year-over-year and 12% sequentially to $13.8 million, reflecting 44% of our total revenue. Quarterly gross margin were 88% on a GAAP basis and 89% on non-GAAP basis. Total GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $28 million and total non-GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter, excluding equity-based compensation expenses, amortization of intangibles and deal costs were $22.2 million. GAAP operating loss for the fourth quarter was $0.4 million as compared to GAAP operating income of $0.1 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating margins and income were 18% of revenue and $5.7 million and grew 20% and 26% year-over-year, respectively, as compared to non-GAAP operating margin of 15% and non-GAAP operating income of $4.5 million recorded for the fourth quarter of 2024, respectively. Financial income was $1.4 million compared to a net loss of $0.1 million for the fourth quarter of last year. GAAP and non-GAAP taxes were approximately $2.2 million, higher than our guidance of $1.8 million and affected by the adverse tax asset write-off associated with the utilization, limitation of withholding taxes and from a regular geographic relocation of revenue recognized from deals and royalty revenues in the quarter. GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter was $1.1 million and diluted loss per share of $0.04 as compared to a net loss of $1.7 million and diluted loss per share of $0.07 for the fourth quarter of 2024. Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP diluted income per share for the fourth quarter of '25 increased 86% and 71% to $4.9 million and $0.18 year-over-year, respectively, compared to non-GAAP net income of $2.7 million and non-GAAP diluted income per share of $0.11 for the fourth quarter of '24. With respect to other related data, shipped 606 million units of CEVA power devices, down 3% from the fourth quarter of last year. Of the $606 million reported, 108 million units or 18% were for mobile handset modems. 479 million units were for consumer IoT products, up from 459 million for the fourth quarter of last year. 19 million units were for industrial IoT products, down from 35 million units in the fourth quarter of last year. Bluetooth shipments were 303 million units for the quarter, down from 343 million units for the fourth quarter of '24. The IoT shipments were a quarterly record 60 million units, up 30% year-over-year, and our Wi-Fi shipments were a record 86 million units, up 30% year-over-year. As for the year, total unit shipments were record 2.1 billion devices in 2025, up 6% year-over-year, which equivalents to approximately 66 CEVA power devices sold every second in 2025. Annual modems shipments were down 18% year-over-year to 280 million units, reflecting softness in smartphones. Bluetooth shipments were 1.1 billion units, similar to last year. Annual consumer IoT-related shipments were 1.7 billion units, up 14% year-over-year. Annual industrial IoT-related shipments were 87 million units, down 31% year-over-year. Wi-Fi, cellular IoT and audio AI shipments all showed strong year-over-year growth of north of 40% each. In terms of royalty contribution, Wi-Fi royalties were up 70% year-over-year, reflecting higher volumes and ASPs from our Wi-Fi 6 customers and cellular IoT royalties were up 20% year-over-year. On an annual financial metrics, revenue increased 2% to $109.6 million, in line with our updated outlook we shared in May last year. Non-GAAP gross profit remained strong at 88%. Our non-GAAP net income increased 20% year-over-year and diluted EPS increased 17% year-over-year, all contributing to sustainable and gradual growth and profitability. As for the balance sheet items, at the end of the year, cash, cash equivalent balances, marketable securities and bank deposits were approximately $222 million. In the fourth quarter, we successfully executed a 3.5 million share follow-on offering for approximately $63 million net to strengthen our balance sheet. Our DSO for the fourth quarter was 57 days. And during the fourth quarter, we generated $8.7 million of cash from operating activities. Our ongoing depreciation and amortization was $1.1 million and purchase of fixed assets was $1.5 million. At the end of the fourth quarter, our headcount was 424 people, of whom 343 were engineers. Now for the guidance. Amir highlighted our achievements in 2025 and the strong fundamentals we have in place to build long-term growth and profitability. From a financial perspective, this execution translates into solid progress across key metrics with annual non-GAAP net income increasing 20% year-over-year and non-GAAP fully diluted EPS growing 17%. These results were supported by record high revenues in the fourth quarter of '25 and non-GAAP operating margin of 18%, reflecting both operating discipline and improving mix. Building on the consistent progress we have made over the last 2 years gives us the confidence as we enter into 2026, which we view as another year of growth across multiple financial and business dimensions. In licensing and related revenues, we expect growth to be driven by continued expansion of AI adoption across multiple industries, an increasing mix of higher value, more integrated engagements and our leadership in wireless connectivity supported by a diversified product portfolio of connectivity, AI and sensing IPs. On the royalty side, we are encouraging momentum across our connectivity product lines, including 5G handset modems, Bluetooth, WiFi and cellular IoT as deployment broaden and program license in recent years continue to ramp. While we do not have the control and the precise timing of royalty growth and continue to monitor factors such as memory pricing and broader market conditions, the underlying trajectory for our business and our diversified end market exposure positions us well moving into 2026. On an annual basis, our total revenue is expected to grow 8% to 12% over 2025 with lower growth in the first half of the year and higher in the second half, similar to prior years and seasonal trends and subject to the memory pricing fluctuation and supply challenges. On the expense side, we continue to demonstrate strong cost discipline and operating leverage. Excluding currency impacts, our overall 2026 non-GAAP expense base, including both cost of goods and operating expenses is expected to increase in the range of 1% to 3%, significantly below our expected top line growth, reflecting the scalability of our business model, but excluding any FX costs. During the second half of 2025 and so far this year, the strengthening of the euro and the Israeli shekel against the U.S. dollar has created foreign exchange headwinds across the industry, particularly for companies with global distributed engineering teams. As a result, our non-GAAP -- our non-U.S. dollar-based expenses, which are mainly the research and development teams in Europe and in Israel are expected to increase by approximately 10% year-over-year, representing an incremental impact of around $5 million. Taking both factors into account, modest organic expense growth with FX impact, we expect total non-GAAP expenses in 2026 to be in the range of $104.4 million to $108.4 million, with non-GAAP cost of goods sold increasing by approximately $0.5 million and non-GAAP operating expenses increasing by approximately $6.1 million. Importantly, this outlook reflects our continued focus on disciplined investments, efficiency and maintaining flexibility as we support growth across our diversified Smart Edge markets. From the guidance and activities we have just discussed, we anticipate non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP net income to increase significantly by approximately 35% to 40% year-over-year. Annual 2026 equity-based compensation expenses is forecasted to be between $22 million and $23.5 million and amortization of acquired intangibles and costs associated with business acquisition, approximately $0.4 million to $0.5 million each. Gross margin is expected to be approximately 88% on GAAP basis for the year. Specifically for the first quarter of '26, with traditional seasonality in shipments of consumer IoT and mobile products post the holiday season, revenue is forecasted to be between $24 million to $28 million, sequentially lower than the record fourth quarter we just reported, but still significantly higher than the first quarter of 2025 at the midpoint. Gross margin is expected to be approximately 86% on GAAP basis and 87% on non-GAAP basis due to lower seasonal royalties, excluding an aggregate of $0.2 million of equity-based compensation expenses and $0.1 million of amortization of acquired intangibles. GAAP OpEx for the first quarter is expected to be between the range of $27.6 million to $28.6 million, higher than the level we just reported for the fourth quarter of '25 at the midpoint of our guidance range, mainly due to the FX effect that I just walked through. Of our anticipated operating expenses for the first quarter, $5.2 million is expected to be attributed to equity-based compensation expense, $0.1 million for the amortization of acquired intangibles and another $0.1 million of costs associated with business acquisitions. Non-GAAP OpEx is expected to be in the range of $22.2 million to $23.2 million. Net interest income is expected to be approximately $1.7 million. Taxes for the first quarter are expected to be approximately $1.3 million and the share count for the first quarter of '26 is expected to be approximately 27.7 million shares on GAAP and 29.4 million shares for non-GAAP basis. Betsy, you could now open the Q&A session, please.

[Operator Instructions] the first question today comes from Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities.

Congratulations on the great results. For your NPU pipeline, can you just give an idea of the scale? How much -- how many more engagements do you have right now compared to, say, this time last year? And maybe even what the end market exposures are?

Yes, Kevin, thanks a lot for congratulating us and for the questions. First, I will start that I'm very, very encouraged by how we executed in 2025, our penetration into the AI. That was a year of very significant market share gain as well as more than 10 deals that we have been able basically to capture. With that, we have built a complete portfolio of NPUs for all the different type of edge -- Smart Edge markets and as they transition to the Physical AI. So overall, we are very well positioned right now going into 2026. The pipeline overall keeps growing across pretty much all the different type of submarket segments that we see across the Smart Edge. This is true for consumer, different type of computing devices, different type of embedded MCU type of applications as well as in the industrial as well as in automotive. Really, we see a very healthy pipeline across all these submarkets. Very encouraged with how we have executed and how we see the future going to 2026 on that.

Okay. Great. And just as a follow-up, a little clarification on the PC OEM and congratulations on that. But I just wanted to make it clear, I think you said a dedicated NPU. So is this a separate chip? Or is it integrated in a CPU package too, like in the same silicon with the CPU?

Yes. So first, it's definitely a design win or a deal that we are extremely, extremely excited about. This is with one of the top PC OEMs out there. And this is for an OEM that decided to build so-called their own internal AI and NPU functionality within so-called the SoC platform that they are integrating into. So basically, what we are delivering them is the whole core NPU functionality, and they integrated into the SoC that they are building.

So a separate chip separate chip?

Yes.

Separate chip for...

For NPU.

For NPU.

The next question comes from Ruben Roy with Stifel.

Echo the congrats on a nice end to '25. Amir, maybe I could follow up on Kevin's question and just talk a little bit more about the NPU win. Can you talk a little bit about the competitive dynamics for that because you have others like Arm sort of integrating NPU. So how should we think about the functionality? Are there going to be multiple NPUs, do you think in PCs going forward as the AI workloads evolve? Or is this something where from a competitive basis, you guys were able to displace sort of the existing solutions maybe that are available to the OEM?

Yes, definitely, Ruben. So first, I would say the way that we see right now in the landscape and definitely for the high-end compute devices, is that there is stronger and stronger need to really best-in-class performance. And by that, I mean the power per watt that you can generate, the so-called the latency or the performance of throughput per token that you generate. This really requires so-called a core architecture and flexibility of the core architecture to deliver best-in-class, what we call PPA, power performance area, that deliver basically a very competitive landscape for our customers. With this specific OEM, they looked at what is available out there, and they want to make sure that they have complete internal integration between the hardware and the software to drive the so-called the high performance that they need. But what they need is the underlying core silicon IP technology where the software has come on top of that, that deliver for them the best-in-class performance. And I think we are well, well positioned competitively, and that's why they picked us in this specific basically designed.

Right. Okay. Very helpful. And then as a follow-up, just to go through the guidance again a bit here. You guys talked a little bit about a recovery in China from a handset customer. And obviously, there's some moving parts with memory pricing, et cetera. So in thinking through sort of the first half versus second half commentary, can you just give us a little bit of -- a little more detail on how you're thinking about sort of end demand relative to dynamics out of your control like memory pricing, et cetera, on first half? Is it much different, would you say, from typical seasonality? I mean if you look at as Yaniv said, you're up year-over-year at the midpoint. And seasonally, it looks pretty similar to what you saw last year. So I'm just wondering what some of the assumptions on things out of your control might be in the first half, if that's much different from typical seasonality.

Yes. I would start first that our business -- a significant portion of our business is really not so-called dependent on mobile. It's well diversified across the different submarkets of the Smart Edge. And in that market, we keep gaining market share. Our customers keep ramping with our different type of technologies. And overall, we expect similar seasonality as we have seen in previous years. But with that seasonality, we keep increasing our market share. Now more specifically on mobile, where potentially there is so-called more dependency or can be some impacts related to the memory supply. First, again, we are going to see increase in market share, thanks to the mobile OEM that is going to integrate more and more of the internal modem, at least that's our expectation moving forward. But on a so-called integrated basis with the other smartphone OEMs that we have, definitely, again there's potential impact coming from the memory shortage. And even there, we do expect meaningful seasonality between the first half and the second half. So on an aggregated basis, we're still expecting quite strong seasonality in 2026 as well, while driven by market share gain across all the different markets for us.

Ruben, I'll maybe add to that, that our customer in China that you referred to, most of his sales are export to the rest of the world. India is a big market, Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe type. So it's not necessarily domestic use. And therefore, the demand -- the end demand is good. The question is how they will perform with the memory shortages and prices. So that's just a little bit of another anecdote with regards to demand, end demand at least for the products. And back to your first question, another references to the NPU, we came up with another press release of highlighting the entire -- not just Q4, but the entire activity and results and achievements we had with AI. And in that press release, we are -- this morning, we are saying that 6 of the NPU customers that have signed with us over the last year to 2 years should be ready in production by the end of the year and then probably or hopefully, royalty contribution in the beginning of 2027 for us from this relative new product line. So that's quite encouraging, and we'll wait and continue to monitor their progress.

That's really helpful, Yaniv. And I guess you just made me think of another question. So apologies, but I'd just love to follow up on that last point that you made, which is -- Amir talked about the $125 million in lifetime royalty potential, and you've got a PC NPU deal here. PC design cycles maybe are a little bit quicker than some of the stuff that you might expect from, let's say, a Microchip that's much more broad-based into a lot of different markets. So if we think about the waterfall of the $125 million, it sounds like you're going to start to see some of that in '27. Any way to think about that pipeline relative to how it will flow into the model outside of what I just said, PCs may be a little bit faster than some of the broader markets? Or anything else you can add on the pipeline, that would be great.

I think that over time, not necessarily these first 6 part of them, yes, we're going to see, on one hand, the higher royalty contribution because as Amir explained, our offering today is both the high end and low end, very sophisticated automotive, PC type of application as well as IoT and wearables and low-power type of devices. So the most important thing is higher volume for these new royalties. But on top of that, also higher ASPs on at least the higher end stuff. It's our mix, and this is a little bit more difficult to predict exactly how 2027 will look like and when it's going to hit, whether the first half or the second half. But when we monitor these customers of ours and when we support them in their design cycle, these are the dates and the opportunities we see in front of us. Overall, an increase in dollar revenue content from a new market for us. This is on top of the connectivity. This is on top of the IoT and mobile. It's essentially the third leg of AI. We did very well in licensing, just over 20% of our licensing revenue for the first time ever in 2025 came out from that market. And potentially in '27, we could see also those royalties start to kick in, indeed exciting times.

Yes. I would just add to that, Ruben. Definitely, we are extremely excited and encouraged by the fact that those design wins are going to generate our estimation, $125 million in terms of royalty potential. And you pointed out very correctly on that in consumer PC and so on, the time to royalty is shorter. And definitely, we expect with that market type of design wins that it will also start generating in 2027.

The next question comes from Suji Desilva with ROTH Capital.

Congratulations on the strong year and the progress here. The PC OEM win, just keeping up on that, is it more likely that it was a one-off special case for this OEM? Or would you think on the other hand, there's a pipeline potential for additional OEMs to follow suit considering CEVA-based solutions as well?

I would say, first, the PC landscape is such that the number of customers, of course, is not super large versus, let's say, the other more diversified IoT market segment that we're addressing as well. But within that landscape, having the ability to internalize the AI capabilities and with that, the software hardware integration and the specific optimization to the use cases they want to drive it's a big value add. So definitely, there is potential that other will follow suit with the same type of configuration. And regardless of that, of course, we are extremely excited by the fact that after very significant lengthy type of evaluation, we came at the top based on very, very strong performance metrics that we can provide to, in this case, to the PC OEM, but for potentially other PC customers as well as in other high-end compute devices that need the high-performance type of metrics.

Very interesting. And then separately, you highlighted in your prepared remarks, Amir, Physical AI. I was curious what pipeline opportunities there are there or current opportunities there are in Physical AI that you would call out in terms of apps and which Physical AI app categories are the largest incremental royalty opportunity for you as that ramps up?

I think what is emerging more, and this is so-called the growth area beyond so-called our traditional market segment that we're after is everything related to robotics. We're already addressing and we will keep gaining market share in the type of like automotive and other industrial application and the broader IoT. But what is really exciting right now, so-call specifically related to Physical AI is the expansion of those capability all across wireless connectivity, they need, of course, to sense and understand the environment and then make an inference or decision based on all that information that really is going to happen across robotics. And now robotics moving so-called from a small volume in, let's say, warehouses to potentially be everywhere and supporting all human beings worldwide. So there is very big potential there. Of course, as the year progresses, we will see the real impact of that.

[Operator Instructions] the next question comes from Alek Valero with Loop Capital.

This is Alek on for Gary. My first question is on your fiscal 2026 guidance. What specifically would need to improve in fiscal '26 to trend toward the high end of your guidance range or even above your -- the high end of the guide?

Yes. Obviously, in guidance, you have the 2 aspects, revenue and expenses. On the revenue front, 8% to 12% was our long-term growth trajectory back from Analyst Day that we did back in December of 2 or so or 3 years ago. So that's still intact. Maybe we've been behind in '25, but we're back to that. Stronger licensing, obviously, could help us royalty ramp-up for many of these markets that we talked about this year, less or more effect from memory. Those are the normal typical events that could influence the royalty level, obviously, the timing of different product ramp-ups and things like that. On the expense side, some of the biggest element for us this year is less associated to the organic plans and running the company. It's more of a macro thing, which is what I talked about earlier, the currency exchange rate differences between this year and last year, dollar compared to many other currencies around the world. And while most of our R&D is outside the U.S., this is hurting us. So there will be some type of future change throughout the next 6 months or so, one way or the other, that could shorten or increase the gap. But on the other hand, we are fully in control to still offset that or enjoy that if it's on the positive side. So I think these are the more or less moving pieces in our business from a cost and management, we came out with a pretty low expense and increase and are managing our investment very, very tight and efficient to try to maximize shareholder value.

But maybe just to add on that, Alek, in terms of unpacking so-called, what are the drivers for the top line growth as we look at 2026. First, definitely, our very strong leadership in wireless communication. We see us keep gaining more both on licensing and the royalty keeps increasing very, very nicely across all those different type of submarkets. The second, of course, is our momentum in AI, extremely encouraged about what we have seen in 2025, and we have all the so-called the capabilities from a product portfolio and engineering capabilities to drive that momentum even further in 2026. And then last but not least is overall our expectation we'll keep gaining market share both in mobile and Wi-Fi from a royalty basis, mobile coming from the U.S. mobile OEM and on the WiFi coming from just the continued penetration of our technology and the transition into Wi-Fi 6 and 7 and Bluetooth 7 driving higher royalty per unit.

Got it. I really appreciate all that color. Just a quick follow-up. So with your recent capital -- your recent equity capital raise, I believe you are about at $200 million in the balance sheet. How do you think about M&A today? And what do you think about the current valuations?

I think you guys are the expert for that, right? We wanted to strengthen our balance sheet. We're looking for nonorganic growth to grow faster and gap that licensing to royalty 18 to 24 months time frame. That's the merit in raising that cash. And that's our goal. That's our goal for the next 12 months to find the right fit technology-wise, market-wise, business-wise to increase that. Hopefully, when the market -- if we do well and continue to execute and the market understands that CEVA is a very interesting AI play, which I'm not sure we're yet being recognized for that, I see a lot of value for shareholders. But those -- that's your forte, not ours. We'll manage the business.

Yes. One thing to add -- thanks, Yaniv. One thing to add on that, Alek, in terms of the balance sheet or the cash position, I strongly believe we really have built excellent, excellent IP enterprise in terms of being able to deliver so-called IP licensing across many different markets. And the goal, of course, is to utilize that balance sheet to find additional assets out there in the IP domain that we can take on and expand even further our potential for growth and profitability. And so this really helps us to have the financial strength to go and be able to expand that further.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference...

Yes. We're back to -- I think Amir has some closing remarks.

In closing, I want to thank our employees worldwide for their dedication and execution through 2025. We enter 2026 from a position of strength with a diversified business model and deep customer integration across the market, driving the emergence of Physical AI. With leadership in connectivity, accelerating traction in AI and a portfolio designed to scale across Connect, Sense and Infer, we believe CEVA is well positioned to continue building long-term value for our customers and shareholders. Richard, I will hand over to you to wrap it up.

Thank you, Amir. As a reminder, the prepared remarks for this conference call are accessible through the Investors section of our website. And with regards to upcoming conferences, we will be participating in the following events: Mobile World Congress, March 2 through 5 in Barcelona, Spain; Loop Capital Markets Seventh Annual Investor Conference, March 10 in New York; the Stifel 2026 New York City Technology One-on-One Conference, March 11 in New York; and the 38th Annual ROTH Conference, March 22 in California. Further information on these events and all events we will be participating in can be found on the Investors section of our website. Thank you, and goodbye.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.