Earnings Labs

CSP Inc. (CSPI)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 16, 2016

$10.39

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's program. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Gary Levine. Please go ahead, sir.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today is Victor Dellovo, CSPI's Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Dellovo is out of the country on business. And if he is dropped from the call, I will continue with his presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the call today, 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 can cause actual results to be different materially from the 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. During today's call, Victor will provide an update on our business segments and our strategic progress. And then I will discuss our first quarter's financials. Then, we'll open it up to your questions. Victor?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Thanks, Gary. We performed well in the first quarter of fiscal '16, as many of the strategic changes that we put into effect in 2015 are becoming -- are beginning to come together. Our Myricom product line continues to perform well, and the new product rollout schedule is on track and has potential to smooth out the lumpiness inherent in our High Performance Products division. In the Technology Solutions division, we are seeing growth in our managed service pipeline as well as an increase in sales, which include a recurring revenue stream. With that, I'll get right into the segment review, starting with our High Performance Products division. Revenue increased 5% for the quarter as we received royalty revenue for 1 E-2D plane in addition to some miscellaneous E-2D revenue compared with $58,000 of E-2D royalty revenue a year ago. Looking ahead, our expectation is to receive royalty revenues from 4 more planes in fiscal 2016, all in the back half of our fiscal year. Our Myricom product line continues to perform very well, including our legacy product. As we have mentioned before, we've had expected revenue from the legacy product to decline over time, but we have been able to keep sales at a steady pace. However, the long-term strategic opportunity lies with our next generation of products, which have been -- which have the potential to expand the commercial market reach of the division and be the primary growth driver for HPP. You may remember that in Q3 of fiscal 2015, we began to ship early versions of the Myricom 10-gig DBL network adapter to the financial customers for beta testing. To-date, customers' response have been very positive, and we're excited by the market potential. In early April '16, we will be placing an updated model of this…

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Thanks, Victor. Revenues increased 16% to $23.7 million from 29.4 -- $20.4 million a year ago. Our total cost of sales for Q1 was $18.5 million, up 12.2% from the prior year. Gross profit for the quarter was $5.2 million compared to $4 million a year ago. Gross margins increased to 21.9% from 19.4% in the prior year as a result of the mix of products and services in our businesses. First quarter engineering and development expenses decreased to $799,000 from $853,000 a year ago, primarily as a result of planned turnover of engineering personnel as we hire talent that is in line with our strategic initiatives. As a percentage of sales, Q1 engineering and development expenses were 3.4% compared to 4.2% last year. This is just slightly below our expected range of between 3.5% and 4% of sales. SG&A expenses were $4 million for the year -- for the quarter or 17.1% of sales compared to $4 million or 19.7% of sales in previous year. Based on our planned investment, we expect SG&A expenses to be in a range of 17.8% to 18.2% for fiscal 2016. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 23% compared with 54% in the prior year. We expect our overall tax rate going forward to be approximately 39%. We reported net income of $283,000 or $0.07 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $430,000 or $0.12 per share a year ago. Cash and short-term investments decreased to $10.5 million from $11.2 million at year-end as a result of a pay down of accounts payable and accrued expenses of approximately $700,000 and partially offset by cash from other operations. Lastly, our board of directors voted to pay a quarterly dividend of $0.11 per share to shareholders of record on February 26, 2016, payable on March 11, 2016. We aim to improve our bottom line performance by focusing our growth initiatives, increasing the level of high-margin products and aligning cost containment across our organization. I'll now turn the call back over to Victor.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Before we go to questions, let me sum up. In the High Performance Products division, we are making progress with our next-generation Myricom product line and expect to see meaningful revenue from the new network adapters, beginning Q3. We anticipate royalty revenue from 4 more E-2D planes during the later half of the year. In our Technology Solutions division, we plan to increase revenue on a global basis from our managed service offerings, which we expect to be an excellent driver of growth in recurring sales for the long term. While we still have much more work to do, the more significant changes to transform the business are in place, and we are now focused on the solid execution of our strategy. We have created many opportunities for CSPI, and we are looking forward to capitalizing on our potential in fiscal 2016 and beyond.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Now we will take your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we can take our first question from Sam Kidston with North & Webster.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Just a couple quick questions on the results here. First of all, I know it appears that E&D expense, engineering and development, was up about $250,000 from last quarter. What's going on there?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Well, we're ramping up, Sam. I think as we've said that we're -- we've been hiring. So basically, we're down with our expenses in the last quarter and brought in some new personnel to work on our new products. So there's been a shift in personnel. So as people have been leading in the other areas, we've brought in new people as well as some consultants to help with the transition to the new product line.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Got you. So headcount in that area was down last quarter because you're essentially turning over engineering and development talent?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Correct.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Okay. Great. And then on the E-2D, in the press release, you guys said that you received royalty revenue for 1.5 E-2Ds, and, what 3.5, what's going on there?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Well, it's just the way that the -- our integrator takes the product. So we don't really have any say -- they necessarily don't take a full plane all at once sometimes. They may take partial shipments as they ship them off to the integrator. So that's -- we just get notifications, Sam. So that's based on that as well as there was, I think, a small amount of parts that was purchased in the first quarter.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Okay. So it's not 1.5 royalty payments? This is...

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Well, it's the equivalent. Right. There was just a small amount, I think, of parts.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

So you took 1 royalty...

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Royalty. Right.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

So you still have 4 more royalty payments.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Well, see, the problem is that as I'm saying it, they do take partial. So we're saying truthfully -- probably we're going to get, like, 3.5.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Royalty payments?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Correct.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Okay. Have you guys recognized 0.5 royalty payment before?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

We've recognized -- what we do is we base it on boards. So as they ship boards, that's how we receive royalty. And they don't necessarily take a whole plane. It's what -- we get notification from the integrator as to what was built, and then we receive payment on that, and they invoice them appropriately. So it's not necessarily a full complement of boards each time. It may get portioned. They just send us a requisition to build us x number of boards.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Okay, perfect. And then just finally, on the dividend, I would guess that you guys are getting close to the point, where you're going to need to repatriate cash from abroad to continue to support the dividend, given that you're paying out more than you earn consistently. When do you expect that to happen?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Well, I think we're going to have positive cash flow for the year, and we've had some discussions. But currently there is no plans going forward from continuing with dividend that is being funded by the U.S.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

So you have more than $2 million of cash on hand in the U.S.?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Yes.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll go next to Joseph Merges [ph] with Seagram Investments.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

You did answer. I was wondering about the 0.5 airplane. And I don't recall ever in the past utilizing a partial payment in your reports, but maybe I'm missing out on the past experience on that.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Joe, it's a matter of the way that they procure, and this is the way that it's been done. So probably in the past within cut offs within quarters, we probably have had full planes or approximately full plane. But it's really based on the number of boards that are delivered.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Yes. You mentioned that, and I just, like I said, I don't recall in the past ever having 1/2 plane or 1/4 plane or whatever the case may be. On the upgrades, I'm talking about the Myricom upgrades, you're talking -- in the press release, you were specifically talking about in the third quarter -- our fiscal third quarter, beginning in April that is, that's we're referring to the quarter beginning in April, the fiscal third quarter, that you're expecting greater revenues from the financial markets.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's what we're planning.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And so in the last conference call, I guess, we discussed the -- one of the hang-ups -- was the fact that the Linux operating system wasn't fully rolled out yet, and I'm assuming that that's been the case now that we're going to have a Linux version that's being tested in the financial marketplace?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Yes. So we also have Windows based and Linux.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And the Linux -- in the past, we didn't have Linux, and that's part of the upgrade on the adapter.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's correct.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

And also, you mentioned about the security, and I assume that's in the packet capture area.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's correct.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

You're looking for possibly revenues there late in the fiscal year or...

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's correct. Right now, as we've mentioned on there, it's all in beta. So that's -- we're trying to give you some information of what our strategy is. And as long as all the testing comes back in a timely fashion, those are some estimates that we hope to see some revenue from these new products.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

So the beta testing right now is being done in financial as well as packet capture. And do we have any beta testing being done in the third market area, which is the video or not at this point in time?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Not at this point.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay. So basically we're testing in both financial and packet capture with the beta tests?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's correct.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Very good. And on the managed services end, you're -- just a little clarification on the -- in Germany, you're talking about you're partnering what QSB you said and was it Claranet were the 2 names that were mentioned. What are they? Are they just another sales...

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

They're colocations, where they're basically just providing gear power for customers. And we're looking to take over the MSP side of it and manage some of the security needs for those different customers that they currently have.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay. So their -- you're working with their customers in an MSP arrangement?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's correct. It's early stages, but I wanted to mention kind of where we're looking for to -- with some new partnering there and to look at their customer base, which is pretty big, thousands of customers, and looking to offer our MSP in SOC and security management for them and see if we could add value to not only what we're doing but also what Claranet is offering.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

That's a pretty large base of customers there. So the possibilities should be quite good if we can sell the idea.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

That's correct.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

And are they going to be -- are they being paid a royalty or a commission based on signing their customers? Or is it just from their standpoint security -- they're providing a service that they haven't provided in the past?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Exactly. There's no commission based on it. It's just a service to give extra value of what they potentially provide.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay. That takes the question of why would they even -- why do they want to deal with us? I mean, what are they getting out of it, I guess, would be my question. What do you think they are?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Well, in Germany, for years, right, for over a decade, we're known for one of the best security organizations around. We handle a lot of large organization security needs and have done that successfully. So the reputation that we have in Germany has been second to none. So with our reputation and what we can offer, that's what -- that's the value that we're providing.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

That sounds like an excellent -- sounds like we're in a great position in Germany and in an area that's critically more important more than ever. So that sounds extremely good.

Operator

Operator

And we also have a follow-up from Sam Kidston.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster

Just for my unification, how many boards typically go on under 1 plane?

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Sam, I'm . . .

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

65, I think, it is, right. It's about [indiscernible] give or take.

Operator

Operator

And it does appear we have no further questions at this time. I'll return the call to management for any closing remarks.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst

Thank you for all joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again on our next call.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's program. Thanks for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a great day.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster

Thank you.