Earnings Labs

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (DLB)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 21, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Dolby Laboratories Conference Call Discussing Fiscal Fourth Quarter Results. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, Wednesday, October 21, 2015. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Elena Carr, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations for Dolby Laboratories. Please go ahead, Elena. Elena Carr - Director-Corporate Finance & Investor Relations: Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to Dolby Laboratories' fourth quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Kevin Yeaman, Dolby Laboratories' President and CEO; and Lewis Chew, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made today. A discussion of some of these risks and uncertainties can be found in the earnings press release that we issued today under the section captioned Risk Factors as well as in our most-recent report on Form 10-Q. Dolby assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements made during this call as a result of new information or future events. During today's call, we'll discuss GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between the two is available in our earnings press release and in the Dolby Laboratories' Investor Relations Data Sheet on the Investor Relations section of our website. As for the content of this call, Lewis will begin with a recap of Dolby's financial results and provide our fiscal 2016 outlook and Kevin will finish with a discussion of the business. So, with that introduction behind us, I will now turn the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. One moment please for our first question. And your first question will come from Mike Olson with Piper Jaffray. Mike J. Olson - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Hey. Good afternoon. On the Dolby Cinema, sounds like that's tracking a lot faster. Does rolling it out much faster with this AMC deal lead to more expenses than you had expected due to kind of early implementation in the upcoming year? Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hey, Mike. This is Lewis. I wouldn't associate it with more expenses. It may involve a little more capital, but it's well within the parameters of what we can afford. But the Dolby Cinema initiative right now is leveraging an existing set of activity. So, I don't think you should think of that as something that drives a lot more personnel costs, if that's kind of what you're asking, adding more head count or people, if that's kind of what you're getting at. Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's certainly part of what we baked into our operating expense guidance this year are the sales and marketing expenses to take advantage of this opportunity. And we've obviously baked that into our guidance. Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And we're excited about the feedback we've gotten from consumers, reviews we've gotten from the industry. And that's why we're in a position to significantly accelerate the deployment of Dolby Cinema. Mike J. Olson - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Okay. And the model here is you don't get paid a ton upfront. It's kind of more in the rev share ongoing. Is that how to think about it? Kevin…

Operator

Operator

Next, we'll hear from Steven Frankel with Dougherty & Company. Steven B. Frankel - Dougherty & Co. LLC: All right. Good afternoon. To follow-up on Mike's question, TCL and Skyworth, could you tell us if they're going to be in the market in 2016 rather than 2015? And kind of where is their price point relative to where VIZIO is today? Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, we expect those to be 2016, not 2015, shipments. Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't have information yet on their pricing. The VIZIO Reference Series is, of course, a high-end SKU. So, as we go into 2016, we'll be looking to execute on the wins we have, getting those into the market. We'll be looking to expand into the breadth of the product line of each of the partners we already have. Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And of course, we're really focused on bringing on additional partners. And one of the – some of the momentum we've seen this quarter is we've had very good traction, very good uptake, on the chipset providers and continued momentum on content and distribution. Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Steven B. Frankel - Dougherty & Co. LLC: And just to clarify, TCL, Skyworth and VIZIO, are those the only three Vision partners you have today? Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Announced. Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, those are the only announced TV partners. Steven B. Frankel - Dougherty & Co. LLC:…

Operator

Operator

From B. Riley, we'll hear from Eric Wold. Eric Wold - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Thank you and good afternoon. Quick question on Dolby Voice. Can you characterize where you are in the development of that kind of with carriers away from BT, kind of how much that could represent due to the cost you're putting in the guidance for this year? Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, we are engaging with other potential partners and it is absolutely a goal of ours to expand the reach of the service this year. And what we have proven so far is that this is a very compelling experience that it's a differentiator in the selection process for audio conferencing. And like I said earlier, for those customers that we do have implementation, the usage stats go up over time as word spreads and as people come to appreciate the experience. And so, it's our goal to get those large accounts in implementation and drive revenue from those accounts. It's also our goal to expand our reach through additional partners. Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And maybe tying back to the question that Mike asked earlier, Eric, on a different front, we have incorporated the additional investment we need to make to secure some of that additional activity into the numbers we already guided. Eric Wold - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay. Perfect. And then just one follow-up. On the patents you said you acquired, you incorporated the $10 million of revenue for this year. Is that revenue from licenses that may have already been signed and tied to those patents when you acquired them or ones you kind of expect to get kind of throughout the year? Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: These are revenues that, right now, if we look at it, would be more in the vein of what we see as an existing stream of revenues from the patents that we acquired. Over time, we also see the opportunity for that revenue stream to grow. But we thought it would be important to highlight the sort of scale of what we're expecting from that amount this year. Eric Wold - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

From JPMorgan, we'll go to Paul Coster,

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

So, thanks for taking the question. On the OpEx front, obviously, you're still spending and it's going to be on sales and R&D. Can you give us some sense of where that spend is and why it's going up year-on-year after having made all of this investment in these new products that are now just coming to market? Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I would say a couple things. Lewis may want to add. In addition to the factor that Lewis mentioned as it relates to the quarter, which is the extra week of payroll, the growth is really being driven by – where we're increasing investment is in sales and marketing programs around these initiatives that are showing success and that are getting very positive early feedback in the market. On the R&D side, there – it's true obviously that we've done the development to get these to market. It's also true that there are ongoing engineering initiatives to continue to meet the needs of customers in the market and advance the initiative. So, you're going to see it in the areas of R&D and sales and marketing, that's mostly in the area of the growth initiatives that we've articulated.

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then, so Vision is explicitly not going to be material in the next fiscal year. But as we think about the calendar year, I think it's presumably reasonable to think that the first generation of HDR TVs will come to market in the holiday season of 2016, which should lead to licensing at the beginning of calendar year 2017. What's wrong with that statement? Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't see anything wrong with that statement. I mean, our assumption is that we – this is the time to capitalize on this momentum we've built with the early wins, the chipset support, the content support. We're going forward with the assumption that people are making their decisions now, as you described, that HDR's happening and that this is the time to capitalize on the work we've done over these last years.

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

And of the three initiatives, would you describe this as the largest potential in terms of bottom-line impact at Dolby? Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I'd certainly describe it as the one that's the most akin to our traditional business model. And so, I think it's probably the easiest for people who... Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Understand (34:28). Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: ...who follow us to model what that looks like relative to it's a very classic kind of Dolby model. Now, I see a great – as I guess I likened this before, Paul, it's – when people ask me who is my favorite child, I talk about what's special about each of them. And the same is true of each of these initiatives. I mean, Dolby Vision, I think, is a very big opportunity, a very profitable opportunity. It looks a lot like the Dolby Digital Plus business at full – at success. That's what it looks like. I believe Voice is a very exciting opportunity. I think that, in and of itself, this audio conferencing opportunity is getting very strong reviews and is a good growth opportunity. And I think, beyond that, it opens the door to quite a number of very attractive adjacent opportunities for us in this communications space. Dolby Cinema is, I believe, just a – here we have an opportunity to take a business that we've been in for a very long time, the cinema business, built a lot of respect broadly across the industry, have traditionally been subject, like anybody else who serves this space, to the ebbs and flows of capital investment, and build a sustainable growth revenue stream over time in a…

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

All right. Well, I mean, I do hope that when Kevin's kids graduate college, the cost of supporting them will diminish. Thank you. Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We're going to get everyone to pitch in, college jobs, all the rest. No, as Lewis says, we are – that is our focus this year is it's establishing the growth from these new initiatives, but it's also being really focused on delivering both revenue and earnings growth. Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah.

Operator

Operator

And once again... Lewis Chew - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Operator, any more questions?

Operator

Operator

Kevin J. Yeaman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Well, thanks again, everyone, for joining us today and we look forward to updating you soon.