Mike Goergen
Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Your line is now open
Thank you, Ron. As Ron mentioned, we're off to a good start to the year. We're pleased with our Q1 results, which were within the guidance we provided on our last call. This is important since the first quarter is typically our lowest revenue-generating quarter of the year. This year we expect this to be the case again. From a profit generation perspective, we continue to prove the scalability of our business. During the quarter, we further built upon the more athletic business model Ron and I put in place when we came aboard. Profitability also benefit by currency fluctuations as the dollar continued to strengthen against other world currencies we do business with, in particular the yen, euro and the British Pound and we realized benefit on our U.S. dollars held abroad. From the P&L perspective, we generated $45.2 million of total revenue, which as I indicated fell within our guided range of $45 million to $48 million. Revenue decreased by $5.1 million or 10.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Included in revenue performance for the year was a foreign currency translation decrease of $300,000 when compared to the same period in the prior fiscal year and again was primarily caused by the weakening of the British Pound and euro against the U.S. dollar. We were pleased to see the cellular business return to growth and increase by 13% compared to the year ago quarter and by 10% sequentially from last quarter. We expect that cellular revenue will be supported in future quarters by the recent new product line introductions including the LR54. We did experience weaker revenue performance than a year ago in our RF and embedded categories. As we expected with calendar year-end reporting, many of our channel partners optimized inventory balances in our fiscal quarter one, which negatively impacted these categories. We are starting to build meaningful pipeline with the new product introductions that Ron mentioned, including the CC6UL and are cellular XP. Our network category performance as planned. As I've mentioned previously, this category is typically purchased only in replacement cycles for our customers and not necessarily when technology is upgraded. We do expect our network category to decline in the high single to low double digits for the foreseeable future. Service revenue was flat in Q1 2017 versus the year ago quarter. Incremental revenue from Digi cold chain solutions, which began with the bluenica acquisition a year ago, offset a modest decline in our wireless design services revenue versus the year ago quarter. We're starting to see that business stabilize with more consistent topline performance. Gross profit decreased by $2.9 million or 11.9% in Q1 2017 versus the year ago quarter due primarily to lower topline revenue performance. Our overall gross margin was 47.5% compared to 48.5% in Q1 2016, a decrease of 100 basis points. This was driven primarily by our product gross margins. Our Q1 2017 hardware product gross margin was 48% compared to 48.8% in Q1 2016, decreasing largely from sales mix as our network product category declined as an overall percent of our product's revenue. Service gross margin for Q1 2017 was 35.9% compared to 40.8% in the year ago quarter. We expect margins in the service category to be between 35% and 40% for the balance of the fiscal year. Operating expenses in Q1 2017 decreased by $2 million or 9.7% compared to the year ago quarter. The decrease is primarily due to compensation related expense savings and realizing the reduced cost associated with the restructuring of our German office location, which was completed in April of 2016 as well as our wireless design services relocation from a year ago. We incurred a restructuring charge of $700,000 in Q1 of last year from these activities. As I mentioned previously, we benefited from favorable currency gains on our U.S. dollars held abroad in Q1 2017 as the dollar continued to strengthen. This resulted in favorable currency gains of approximately $600,000. We recorded an effective tax rate of 24.5% for the quarter compared with an effective tax rate of 10.9% for the first quarter a year ago, including tax benefits specific to the quarter. In Q1 of 2016, we recorded a tax benefit of approximately $700,000 largely related to the permanent re-reinstatement of the federal research and development tax credit. Our overall effective tax rate results from the mix of income between taxing jurisdictions many of which have lower statutory tax rates in the U.S. for planning purposes, we project an overall effective tax rate of approximately 28% to 30% for the full fiscal year 2017. Income from continuing operations for the quarter was $2.4 million or $0.09 per diluted share compared to $3.1 million or $0.12 per diluted share in Q1 2016. As a reminder, we divested our theory of subsidiary in Q1 2016 and recorded income from discontinued operations after income taxes of $3.3 million or $0.13 per diluted share most of which resulted from the gain on sale. EBITDA from continuing operations was $4 million or 8.8% of revenue, compared to $4.6 million or 9.1% of revenue for Q1 2016. We anticipate that we will remain on track to deliver our 10% EBITDA margin goal for the fiscal year. We have provided a full reconciliation table for non-GAAP items in our earnings release for your convenience. Moving to the balance sheet, cash and investments including long-term investments totaled $136,400,000, a decrease of $1.3 million over the comparable balance at September 30, 2016. The decrease in cash was primarily a result of the FreshTemp acquisition and other M&A activity. Fiscal year 2016 incentive compensation payments and our first earnout payment for bluenica. As a reminder, we have a $15 million stock buyback plan in place that expires May 1, 2017. To date, we have not utilized this plan. Our balance sheet continues to be very strong with a current ratio 10.8 to 1 at December 31, 2016, compared to 8.2 to 1 at September 30, 2016. We continue to improve our working capital position by reducing our inventory and receivables from September 30, 2016. We remain debt-free. Before I move to our updated guidance, I would like to take a moment to talk about our cold chain solutions business. First, we will be reporting these revenues in our services category as well as now being included in our updated guidance. We expect our existing and recent acquisition in our cold chain portfolio to generate between $10 million and $15 million in revenue over the next 12 months. We love the attributes of this solutions-based business, with it's sticky recurring revenue, strong growth rates and better predictability. We further believe as these businesses become a larger percentage of our topline revenue, we will also benefit from increased valuation multiples for our overall company. Second, to date we have invested approximately $35 million in cash, the majority of which you'll see in the second quarter as part of the SMART Temps acquisition. Now I would like to provide our updated guidance, which includes the second quarter and the full year of fiscal 2017. For the second fiscal quarter of 2017, we expect revenue to be in a range of $47 million to $50 million. We expect net income per diluted share from continuing operations to be in a range of $0.06 to $0.09. For the full fiscal year, we now expect revenue to be in a range of $201 million to $211 million. We would expect net income per diluted share from continuing operations to be in a range of $0.40 to $0.48. That completes our prepared remarks. At this time, Ron and I are pleased to open the call for your questions. Operator?