Earnings Labs

Cohu, Inc. (COHU)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Sat, May 2, 2015

$47.15

+5.46%

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

Greetings and welcome to the Cohu First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference 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. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jeff Jones, Chief Executive Officer for Cohu Corporated. Go ahead sir, the floor is yours.

Jeff Jones

Analyst · Dougherty

Thank you and good afternoon and welcome to our discussion of Cohu’s most recent financial results. I am joined today by our President and CEO, Luis Müller. Following our opening remarks, we will provide details of our performance for the first quarter of 2015 as well as our outlook for the second quarter of this year. If you need a copy of our earnings release, you may obtain one from our website, cohu.com, or by contacting Cohu Investor Relations. But before we get started, I must remind you that during the course of this conference call, we will may forward-looking statements reflecting management’s current expectations concerning certain aspects of the company’s future business. These statements are based on current information that we have assessed, but which by its nature is subject to rapid and even abrupt changes. Forward-looking statements include our comments regarding the company’s expectations regarding industry conditions, future operations, financial results and any comments we make about the company’s future in response to your questions. Our comments speak only as of today, April 30 2015 and the company assumes no obligation to update these comments. We encourage you to review the forward-looking statements section of the earnings release as well as Cohu’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recently filed Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Cohu assumes no obligation to update these statements as a result of developments occurring after this call. Further, our comments and responses to any questions will not make reference to any specific customers, as we are precluded from disclosing such information by our non-disclosure agreements. And now, I will turn it over to Luis. Luis Müller: Thanks, Jeff and good afternoon, everyone. In Q1 sales were $68.1 million up 5% year-over-year and above our guidance of approximately $63 million.…

Jeff Jones

Analyst · Dougherty

Thanks, Luis. Before I move into the Q1 financial details and our Q2 outlook, I’d like to touch on a few highlights from the first quarter. We were profitable in this seasonally slow period generating 2.2 million of non-GAAP operating income and $0.03 of EPS. Q1 was our fifth consecutive quarter of non-GAAP profitability. The actions we’ve taken with respect to manufacturing transition and operating cost of reductions are benefitting our operating results. We also continue to have positive cash flow. In Q1 we generated $4.2 million from operations and over the last four quarters we have generated approximately $33 million. Orders were very strong and up 52% sequentially, our semi conductor equipment orders were $85.4 million and up 53% quarter-over-quarter driven by strong demand from mobility and automotive customers. System orders were 62% and recurring 38%. Entering Q2, equipment utilization is approximately 81% and semi reported back end equipment orders increased every month in Q1 and are up 92% from the trough in November but still 23% below the last peak in June of 2014. Before I move in to the Q1 results, I’ll comment on our GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments which include approximately 1.7 million of stock based compensation expense, 1.8 million of purchased intangible amortization expense, 200,000 of restructuring cost and 300,000 for the write down of a long term asset with a book value that exceeded its current fair market value. My comments are based on a non-GAAP results which exclude the impact of these items and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to equivalent GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release located on the investor section of COHU’s website. As a reminder, in 2014 we sold our video camera segment and its operating results are presented as discontinued operation with all prior periods amounts…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] First question comes from Kim Donovan from Needham & Company

Kim Donovan

Analyst · Needham & Company

Hi, this is Kim Donovan on for Edwin Mok. You mentioned the new ITS segment will target consumables area. Can you give us an idea of how the contactor business has grown, and how you see that business trending going forward? I know it was a small part of your business but represents a $650 million market. Luis Müller: Yes, hi Kim, this is Luis. We don’t send you a typically disclosed revenue by product line but like you said it’s fair to say it’s a small fraction of our sales at this time. In fact, its in the 5% to 6% of our sales in Q1. And it’s a sizeable market, we are investing on it, we are looking at opportunities to expand and we will continue to give you an update as we make progress in the following quarters, but at this time no I don’t have a specific plan to put on the table and disclose exactly what we are going to be doing in that space other than yes we are growing and we have a specific business unit focussed on products and customers in that market.

Kim Donovan

Analyst · Needham & Company

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Dick Ryan from Dougherty

Dick Ryan

Analyst · Dougherty

Great, thank you. Hey Jeff, when will the transition at gravity feed be completed? It sounds like the initial happened sooner than expected; but what's the timing?

Jeff Jones

Analyst · Dougherty

Hey Dick, yeah you’re right. We are making good progress on that transition. We expect that in the – we’ll do another quarter of the transition but in the second half of the year we’ll have that transition completed.

Dick Ryan

Analyst · Dougherty

And that should help drive the margins even more closer to your model?

Jeff Jones

Analyst · Dougherty

Well yes, certainly I mean it sticks into the model. For 2015 we expect that benefit to be minimal and overtime we expect three to four hundred basis points for the gravity feed handlers and that equates to about 100 basis points overall for those [ph] you’ve consolidated. Like I said it’s in the financial model and we are largely using the benefits to offset anticipated ASP erosion in the future.

Dick Ryan

Analyst · Dougherty

Okay. Great, thanks. Hey Luis, on the die prober can you talk a little bit more about the timing of that? And I may have missed -- I thought you mentioned something about the RF filter market or providing product into that. Can you give us a little more color on that as well? Luis Müller: Yes sure, Dick. You know frankly its’ a little too early to talk about projected sales and in the die prober space. We have new products that’s under development, its not out there yet, but we do plan to share more details about the product itself for our June Investor Conference in New York. So I think we’ll be expanding a little bit more on that topic there. But like I said it’s a little too early to say what is our penetration, sales penetration in that market like at this stage. Regarding the – your question about the RF, we do have sale predominantly turret handlers already into that space and frankly the way I see it is the space is growing and it’s benefitting that product line that we have.

Dick Ryan

Analyst · Dougherty

Okay. Can you give a sense of the market opportunity you see there? Luis Müller: I don’t have a specific number to back onto it right now, it would be starting to sort of break off turret specific sales relative to the other products which we don’t particularly disclose it.

Dick Ryan

Analyst · Dougherty

Great. And can you talk a little bit about the share? I know that's one of the goals. And it sounds like very good execution on the mobility side, but can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing on your share in that space? Luis Müller: Sure. For us mobility really has two distinct lags, one is more of the application process where the mobile processor we say and then the rest of it is the power management ICs and our RF devices. So specifically on the mobile processor I think as I have mentioned in earlier quarter there is a requirement for thermal control or active thermal control of these devices during the past. And that’s really surfacing here with the new generation smartphones or new generation processors and smartphones. Its fair to say that we are today touching on the range of around 15% to 20% of the all processors going into phones in the market. I think the opportunity is there and we’re certainly working hard with new products, including this Eclipse ATC that I mentioned that was introduced earlier in this year and we see opportunity to continue growing that space essentially as companies have to read through their handler capacity to be able to test these new devices. So it’s almost like independent of total unit volumes growth or smartphones more related to a technology shift in the space.

Dick Ryan

Analyst · Dougherty

Great. Thank you guys, good quarter. Luis Müller: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Durham Nathan [ph] Private Investor. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just going further deeper on the thermal technology, now that’s becoming a bigger and bigger market for you and as part of revenue can you give us more details on what percentage of revenue is this? What’s the potential here? And as far as the margins are they better, similar or worse than your current average? Luis Müller: Yes so, I mean as far as the – hi Durham, this is Luis. As far as the potential goes, it’s pretty much like around the lines of the answer I just gave. We’re touching 15% to 20% of the market that’s sort of our penetration to date on smartphones and I think that gives you a sense of how much more it can go pretty clearly and we’re working towards that. The timing of it I can’t quite comment at this stage, but that’s the target.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And so as far as sort of a new phase starting 15% to 20% like who are you selling to, is it – are you selling it to the fastest [Indiscernible] Or is it to the device manufacturers and the consumer device manufacturers? Luis Müller: Well we had too many products in this space. We have the thermal subsystem itself as I said based on the T-Core technology that product we sell into a system integrated that then performs the sort of the test for the microprocessor or sorry the processor manufacturer. And then we have the Eclipse handler that we just recently introduced beginning of this year that product also features the T-Core technology, in this case we sell off that product directly to the manufacturers which could be in this case test, sub contractors in Taiwan and Korea as a reference we have several systems under evaluation there.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, thank you. That’s all I had.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Luis Müller for closing comments.