CSP Inc. (CSPI) Q1 2011 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to CSP Inc.’s first-quarter fiscal 2011 conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session toward the end of this conference call. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS.) I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gary Levine, CSP’s chief financial officer. Please proceed, Gary.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me on the call today is our chairman, president and chief executive officer, Alex Lupinetti. I’ll take you through our first-quarter financial results, and then Alex will review our operations before we take your questions. But first, our safe harbor statement. During the call, we will take advantage of the “Safe Harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 with respect to statements that may be deemed to be forward-looking under the Act. The Company cautions that numerous factors could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements made by the Company. Such risks include general economic conditions, market factors, competitive factors and pricing pressures, and others described in the Company’s filings with the SEC. Please refer to the section on forward-looking statements included in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, let’s get right into our financial review. We performed well in the first quarter of fiscal 2011 – on the top- and bottom-lines, and in the execution of our growth strategy. Total sales grew 18% to $22.1 million. This included a 3% negative effect from foreign currency due to the strong U.S. dollar in Q1 2011 versus Q1 2010. The year-over-year revenue increase was driven by 11% growth at our Service and Systems Integration business and a triple-digit increase at Systems. CSP’s total cost of sales for Q1 increased year over year to $17.6 million from $16.4 million in Q1 2010, in line with the higher sales volume. Gross profit for the quarter grew 97% to $4.5 million as a result of the sales increase, and higher gross margins at both segments. Overall gross margin climbed 800 basis points to 20% of sales. First-quarter Engineering and Development expense was flat at approximately $500,000,…

Thanks Gary. And welcome to our call this morning. We were very pleased with this quarter’s performance, which surpassed our expectations on the top- and bottom-line. I’ll begin by providing some context around the first-quarter results for both our Service and Systems Integration and our Systems segments, and discuss our growth initiatives for each. Then we’ll go right to your questions. Let’s start first with our Systems segment, which consists of our MultiComputer business. This business sells exclusively to the major prime contractors that sell to the U.S. Defense Department. The Systems business reported revenues of $1.8 million, a significant increase over the $0.5 million in the first quarter last year. $1.4 million was from high-margin royalty payments from Lockheed Martin related to the E2D Advanced Hawkeye intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. The payments were for aircraft being built as part of the Low Rate Initial Production Phase, or LRIP. As a result of the high-margin royalty payments, Systems gross margin was 82% for the quarter compared with 14% last year. We anticipate approximately an additional $200,000 in E2D royalty revenues for the remainder of the year, in line with the expectations we discussed on our last conference call. This will complete phases 1 & 2 of the LRIP. At this time, we are in discussion with our customer about phases 3 & 4 of the LRIP. Going forward, we will continue to invest in technology to position CSP to capitalize on the military’s focus on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (or ISR). In addition, we are marketing two products we launched toward the end of last year -- our 3000 SERIES Open VPX and 4000 SERIES ATCA. The 3000 SERIES OpenVPX improves interoperability between computing and communications platforms and reduces customization, testing, cost and risk. The 4000 SERIES gives CSP…