Earnings Labs

Cirrus Logic, Inc. (CRUS)

Q1 2010 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 22, 2009

$162.65

-4.77%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Cirrus Logic first quarter fiscal year 2010 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Thurman Case, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Case, you may now begin.

Thurman Case

Management

Thank you and good afternoon. Joining me on today's call is Jason Rhode, Cirrus Logic's President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, you are reminded that during the course of this conference call, we will make projections and other forward-looking statements regarding and among other things, our estimates for our second quarter fiscal year 2010 revenues, gross margin levels, combined R&D and SG&A expenses, amortization of acquired intangibles and share-based compensation expense, as well as our estimates and assumptions regarding future demand for our products and expected revenue and market share growth. These statements are predictions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. By providing this information, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any projections or forward-looking statements whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. Please refer to our press release issued today which is available on our website, our latest Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending March 28, 2009, as well as our other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission for additional discussion of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. I also want to mention before we proceed that all financial numbers are prepared unless noted in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial information provided in today's call to the most directly comparable GAAP information is included in today's press release and in our website in the Investor section. Non-GAAP financial information is not meant as a substitute for GAAP results, but is included because we believe such information is useful to our investors for informational and comparative purposes. In addition, we use certain non-GAAP financial information internally to evaluate and manage our operations. As a…

Jason Rhode

Management

Thank you Thurman, I’m pleased that Q1 saw strong year over year and sequential revenue growth from our audio products driven by high volume shipments of new products for home and portable audio applications. This growth however was offset by sharp declines in demand for energy exploration and overall weak demand for our energy products. Our portable product line continued to build momentum in Q1 shipping new products into new applications such as media-centric’s mobile phones. This continued success in portable audio underscores our ability to identify exciting markets and successfully take market share and it serves as a blueprint for our success in our new energy control and audio DSP programs. Both our first power factor correction IC and our new 65-nm audio DSP have achieved production worthy silicon and are currently sampling to key customers. We expect that these two new product lines will begin to contribute significant revenue next year. Let me provide you with a brief update on our products beginning with the energy category. These products include integrated circuits designed for a variety of energy exploration, measurement, and control applications. In the June quarter revenue came in at $12.7 million which is down by 42% compared to the June quarter a year ago. Demand for energy exploration products was impacted more heavily than we anticipated such that seismic products were not a meaningful contributor to Q1 revenue. While we continue to serve this market for the long-term we don’t anticipate an up tick in demand for energy exploration products in the foreseeable future. In addition we continue to anticipate general weakness across several of our industrial product lines due to overall market demand. Despite this broad weakness sales of our power meter products remain a bright spot with continued good momentum. In energy control products…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Vernon Essi - Needham & Company Vernon Essi - Needham & Company : Some good results here and great guidance, I wanted to dive into some of the comments you made about the energy side and just on a, just so we understand from a go forward basis, were you [inaudible] the flatness in the market as an overall commentary or just the seismic side of things.

Jason Rhode

Management

No, overall the traditional business that we’ve been in in the energy space we expect that that’s fairly well bottomed out, we don’t see it recovering in a rapid fashion but we don’t think its going to continue to decline at this point either. Vernon Essi - Needham & Company : One of your larger peers today discussed a lot of robustness in the industrial area and wondering if there is any disconnect to be thought of there. I know you are heavily skewed towards the seismic area but any color on some of the end markets that might help us understand that disconnect.

Jason Rhode

Management

Well yes, our industrial business is a fairly diverse collection of pretty specific businesses so seismic is one. We have a communications product line that is pretty long in the tooth that is in that segment as well for example, the line of ARM processors was pretty heavily industrial focused. That’s in that product line as well. So it’s a little bit, it’s a significant impact from market issues but its also a collection of product lines that we’re not heavily investing in at the moment either. Vernon Essi - Needham & Company : And then we should obviously expect the proportions to, that is a percent of sales to rise later this year and early next as your PFC solutions start to hit the ground and ship I suppose.

Jason Rhode

Management

On a percent basis whether it can keep up with audio in the short-term I’m not sure but certainly we do expect good results from the PFC stuff. That has gotten a very positive reception from everybody we’ve shown it to. Its been, that’s a fun situation as a marketing person to be out talking to customers and showing them a product like this and really have them, you really get a strong sense that this hits a strong need in the market. So its cool. Vernon Essi - Needham & Company : Just on the current quarter maybe even into next, some other things we’ve been hearing about are component shortages in the supply chain, do you, was there any revenue that you felt might have been recognized in the quarter had there not been any disruptions perhaps with your customers or was it pretty much as you expected.

Jason Rhode

Management

No, we were good on that last quarter. There’s always a couple of little things here and there but nothing significant or out of the ordinary. Going forward supply across the industry is tight. I think we went through a period where we had an over correction on the channel inventory at pretty much every level which drove all the foundries to be 45% utilized or whatever back in the January timeframe. Suddenly everybody woke up and realized that at some point they’re going to have to buy something again if they’re going to want to build their products and so I think you’ve seen from most semiconductor companies and certainly the foundry announcements for the world, they’re all quite busy at this point, whether that is now an over correction I’m not sure. But anyway I would say that from a capacity point of view it’s a bigger issue in Q2 and maybe Q3 than it was in our fiscal Q1. We’re certainly working hard to make sure that we keep up with all of our customers’ demand. Vernon Essi - Needham & Company : And just on R&D obviously continuing to head upwards in terms of dollars and you talked about [mask] sets and some other costs that are coming in, should we expect that to flatten out and perhaps even tread a little bit lower in dollar terms or should we be looking for that to just going up sequentially through the course of 2009.

Thurman Case

Management

No we think that the levels that we’re reaching this quarter are pretty much where we’re going to be. We may still tread up a little bit on the R&D side depending on the number of [mask] sets we may do and what we invest in on R&D expending but not significantly.

Jason Rhode

Management

To be specific I’d model right in the middle of the range that we gave you. And if we exceed that in the next couple of quarters or something it might be because we’ve got an extra tape out or two that we managed to pull in, but we’re, which in my view is a good kind of expense to have.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Longiaru – Sidoti & Company Christopher Longiaru – Sidoti & Company: Congratulations on the guidance, just want to dive into that a little bit more, it sounds like right now you’re expecting the industrial side to stay, the energy measurement side to stay flat, and most of this growth is coming from really market share gains. I know you can’t talk about maybe the customers that you want but maybe you can give us an idea of how many design wins added into those market share gains and what you’re up for and what’s reasonable to expect to win.

Jason Rhode

Management

Well, let’s see how do I answer that, its in the portable business we’re doing pretty well on a design win by design win basis. I don’t have a specific number to hand out but our strategy of focusing on the Tier 1 accounts in every territory and in every application is working out pretty well. That has the benefit of (a) you focus on the big guys first and then (b) the smaller guys tend to copy what the big guys are doing. So there’s a certain amount of panache that goes with being in some of the higher running products out there and we’re seeing some of that. But literally in every territory we do business in we’re seeing design wins for these different products. It’s a fair amount of media player at this point there’s a handful of other applications such as the portable gaming, navigation, things like that. And then as I mentioned of course there’s the mobile phone stuff. We’ve got work to do to continue to broaden the mobile phone business as we go forward. That business tends to require a fair amount of hand-holding. Christopher Longiaru – Sidoti & Company: And just kind of piggybacking on that just talking about regions, none of this is really from I’m guessing is from games in Japan yet.

Jason Rhode

Management

No we’ve got some new stuff we’re shipping for designs in Japan. Christopher Longiaru – Sidoti & Company: Okay so that is starting, okay so the portable gaming is from basically opening up that market a little more to Cirrus.

Jason Rhode

Management

Yes, a little bit there and then we’ve got what looked like some design wins in portable navigation stuff coming from there. We’ve got as I mentioned in the script we’re in the middle of a custom development with one of the best brand names in the business in Japan. Christopher Longiaru – Sidoti & Company: So is that shipping yet or—

Jason Rhode

Management

No, we’re in the middle of development, but that to me says we’re doing the right stuff in Japan.

Operator

Operator

There are no additional questions at this time; I would like to turn it back over to management for any additional or closing comments.

Jason Rhode

Management

All right I guess when you guide up 30% plus there’s not a lot of questions. In any event thanks for all of you who joined us on the call today.