Jason Rhode
Analyst · Thomas Weisel Partners
Thank you, Thurman. Since I became CEO in May of last year, we set out on a plan to build a stronger, more fundamentally sound company and become the supplier-of-choice for tier-one customers in markets we serve. We had a long to-do list and one of the first priorities was to strengthen the senior leadership team, which we've done with the addition of Scott Anderson, VP and General Manager of the Mixed-Signal Audio Division and Tim Turk, Vice President of Worldwide Sales. We set out to improve our sales organization in Japan and we've done this through the addition of several key new hires. The leadership team developed a strategic plan which ties to our long-term objective of 15% year-over-year revenue growth and 20% operating margins. From this plan, emerged several strategic initiatives, such as new programs in energy management to support our long-term growth objectives. Also, as part of this plan, we exited from product lines that are no longer aligned to these objectives, such as Caretta and we bolstered the Industrial Product Division through the acquisition of Apex Microtechnology and its leading position in high-power products. To align the leadership team's performance to key financial milestones, we developed a bonus program that is tied directly to achieving revenue growth and profit goals. Our recently competed stock buyback program underscores our confidence in our plan. Internally and of great importance to me personally, we committed ourselves to making Cirrus a great company to work for and we've developed a strong vision, mission and core values, aligning all of our employees with our long-term objectives and success. Clearly, Cirrus Logic is a much different company today. We've made significant improvements throughout the company but, of course, there's still more work to be done. Our vision is to be the first choice supplier of analog and digital processing components for audio and energy-related industrial markets. In portable products, this is already happening, as we achieved significant market share growth in FY '08 and we expect additional gains to drive our growth in FY '09. We're focusing on improving our financial results in FY '09, including keeping operating expenses flat, even as we invest in new growth programs. With these numerous and significant actions taken in FY '08, Cirrus Logic is fundamentally stronger overall and we're looking forward to a growth year in FY '09. I'd like now to provide a brief update on our products, beginning with the industrial category. These products include integrated circuits designed for a variety of utility metering, high power, precision measurement, energy exploration and communications applications as well as our line of ARM processors. In the future, we will be primarily focused on the energy-related products within this category. Revenue from industrial products in the March quarter came in at $22.5 million, up 18% compared to $19.2 million in the March quarter one year ago. We continue to achieve success in energy measurement applications and we are currently ramping volume production with Itron, the worldwide leader in digital utility meters. Also in the June quarter, we will sample additional innovative products and more new solutions are planned for later this fiscal year. As part of our strategic plan, we're shifting our investment towards other energy-related applications, in which our analog and digital signal processing solutions will provide value to key customers and drive long-term growth. Let me now turn to our audio products. Components in this category include data converters, class D amplification products, audio processors, and interface circuits, products that are used in a wide variety of consumer, portable, professional and automotive audio applications. This product category contributed $22.3 million of our March quarter revenue, down 9% compared to $24.5 million in the March quarter a year ago. As portable products become a more significant contributor to our overall revenue, going forward, you can expect greater seasonality as products in this category typically have a much stronger demand in our second and third fiscal quarters. Our continued success in growing revenue and market share from portable products is the highlight of FY '08. Portable products include ICs for such applications as portable media, gaming and navigation devices. We began investing heavily in this product line several years ago, which led to initial success with tier-one customers. And today, we're shipping to multiple leading customers that are generating strong growing revenues. In FY '08, we met our goal of $11 million in sales from the this product line or about 5% market share and the momentum generated by this initial success has strengthened our expectation for continued growth in FY '09. We'll be very disappointed if we do not continue to make significant progress in growing our market share this fiscal year. We are growing our market share in portable products because we have focused our engineering efforts to deliver innovative products that our customers value. This success in growing revenue in portable products underscores our ability to enter new markets and gain share and serves as a model for our other product lines, in which we commit resources to drive growth. We are optimistic about our opportunity for revenue growth this year across multiple other applications including automotive, home theater systems and digital television. We are also aggressively targeting new audio product categories such as sound bars, which are good opportunities for both our mixed signal and our audio DSP products. Sound bars are sleek audio speaker products that are often sold as companion products for flat panel TVs. In automotive applications where we provide IC solutions for card audio amplifiers, head units, and telematic applications, revenue from this product line helps to offset some of the cyclical nature of the consumer audio market. Our opportunities in this segment continue to grow. As an example, the Ford Sync telematic system is using one of our audio codecs and we continue to have strong acceptance for our products from other leading manufacturers such as Bose and Harmon-Kardon. Overall, despite our expectation for a relatively weak consumer market this year, we expect that in FY '09 our revenue will grow, particularly beginning this fall when we begin volume production for multiple key customers. Now, let me review our guidance for the first quarter of fiscal year 2009. Our overall expectations are as follows: Revenue is expected to range between $42 million and $45 million. Gross margin is expected to be between 55% and 57%. Combined R&D and SG&A expenses are expected to range between $24 million and $25 million, which includes approximately $2 million in share-based compensation and amortization of acquisition-related intangibles expense. To recap, we undertook a number of actions in FY '08 to make Cirrus Logic fundamentally stronger and strategically aligned for growth this year. Our vision is to become the first choice supplier of analog and digital signal processing components of audio and energy-related industrial markets. We are focusing on improving our financial results in FY '09, including keeping operating expenses flat and we are investing in new programs that we expect to drive long-term growth. Now let's take your questions.