Lewis Chew
Analyst · William Blair
All right. Thank you, Jason. All right good afternoon, everyone and I hope you’re all staying safe out there. I’m glad to report that Q3 revenues came in at the high end of the scenario that we provided three months ago and our earnings were above the range, as we had a large tax benefit in the quarter to go along with some lower than projected operating expenses. And while we did do better than Q3 outlook, it’s worth noting that the numbers were lower than the original forecast from the start of the year before COVID-19 came into the picture. So here are the numbers. Third quarter revenue was $247 million, compared to $352 million in Q2, and $302 million in Q3 of last year. Our Q3 revenue guidance coming into the quarter was a range of $225 million to $250 million. If I compare that to what we assumed in our guidance, revenues from TVs, PC and Mobile were at the higher end, while Consumer Electronics and set-top boxes were at the lower end of our scenario. Products and services were at the high end of the range, but remember, that we had lowered our expectations by 70% to 80% because of the significant impact of COVID-19 shutdowns on the Cinema industry. Now looking at total company quarter-over-quarter, revenue was down by about $105 million from Q2, roughly half of that was driven by timing of revenue under contracts as well as lower recoveries. And roughly the other half that was attributable to the impact from COVID-19, which includes; lower royalties from unit shipments across a variety of devices; lower sales of cinema products and services, and lower revenue from box office share at Dolby Cinemas. Now looking at total company year-over-year, revenue was down by about $55 million versus last year’s Q3, and that was predominantly attributable to COVID-19 and similar to what I said a minute ago, lower unit shipments, lower products and services and lower Dolby Cinema revenue. The composition of Q3 revenue was $235 million in licensing and $12 million in products and services. So let’s go through a breakdown of licensing revenue by end market, starting with Broadcast. Broadcast represented about 38% of total licensing in the third quarter. Broadcast revenues were down about 34% year-over-year and that was driven by lower recoveries and lower unit volume due to the pandemic, despite the fact that adoption of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos into TVs and set-top boxes is higher than last year. On a sequential basis, Broadcast was down by about 31% due to lower recoveries and lower unit volume. Mobile represented approximately 33% of total licensing in Q3. Mobile was up by about 65% over last year, due to higher recoveries and revenues from our patent programs, offset partially by unit volume impact from the pandemic. On a sequential basis, Mobile was up by about 3% driven by recoveries offset partially by unit volume impact from the pandemic. PC represented about 10% of total licensing in the third quarter. PC was down by about 4% year-over-year due to lower recoveries and lower unit volume. Although it’s worth noting that adoption of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos into PCs has increased since last year. And sequentially, PC was down nearly 50% due to timing of revenue under contracts and also lower recoveries. Consumer Electronics represented about 9% of total licensing in the third quarter and on a year-over-year basis, CE licensing was down by about 29%, driven by lower volume and lower recoveries. On a sequential basis, CE was down by nearly 60% due to timing of revenue under contracts as well as lower unit volume. Other markets represented about 10% of total licensing in the third quarter. They were down by about 34% year-over-year, due to significantly lower revenues from Dolby Cinema because nearly all those screens were closed for the quarter, and lower revenues from Gaming due to console lifecycles. On a sequential basis, other markets were down by about 16%, driven by lower revenue from Dolby Cinema and from via admin fees and those are the fees in the patent pool program that we administer. And this was offset partially by higher recoveries in automotive and gaming. Beyond licensing, our products and services revenue was $11.8 million in Q3, compared to $23 million in Q2 and $30.3 million in last year’s Q3. We had anticipated a big drop off in sales in this category, as most of this revenue comes from equipment that we sell to cinema exhibitors, and these customers in general, continue to be negatively affected by the pandemic. Now let’s cover margins and operating expenses for Q3. Total gross margin in third quarter was 87.9% on a GAAP basis and 89% on a non-GAAP basis. Products and services gross margin on a GAAP basis was minus $5.5 million in the third quarter due to fixed costs not fully covered by the lower volume that we ran. And as a reminder, the guidance I gave at the beginning of the quarter was for GAAP gross product margin to range from minus $6 million to minus $9 million. Products and services gross margin on a non-GAAP basis was minus $3.5 million in the third quarter for the same reasons as I just went over in the GAAP discussion. And there as a reminder, our guidance for non-GAAP product gross margin was minus $5 million to minus $8 million. Operating expenses in the third quarter on a GAAP basis were $182.9 million, compared to $209 million in Q2. Operating expenses in Q3 were about $8 million less than the low end of the range we had guided, mostly driven by timing of certain marketing programs that were pushed into Q4, lower legal expenses and lower travel and outside services. Operating expenses in the third quarter on a non-GAAP basis were $159.2 million compared to $188.4 million in the second quarter. And the Q3 non-GAAP total was also below the range from projected and for the same reasons that I discussed in the GAAP expenses. Operating income in the third quarter was $34.1 million on a GAAP basis or 13.8% of revenue, compared to $34.3 million or 11.3% of revenue in Q3 of last year. And last year’s Q3 included a $30 million charge for restructuring, mostly associated with an early exit from a leased facility. Operating income in the third quarter on a non-GAAP basis was $60.5 million or 24.5% of revenue, compared to $85.9 million or 28.4% of revenue in Q3 of last year. Income tax was a $27.4 million benefit in Q3 on a GAAP basis, and a $21.2 million benefit on a non-GAAP basis. The Q3 income tax amounts include approximately $36 million of discrete benefits for specific items that were resolved during the quarter. Net income on a GAAP basis in the third quarter was $67.3 million or $0.66 per diluted share, compared to $39.6 million or $0.38 per diluted share in last year’s Q3. Net income on a non-GAAP basis in the third quarter was at $87.5 million or $0.86 per diluted share, compared to $79.3 million or $0.76 per diluted share in Q3 of last year. For both GAAP and non-GAAP, net income in Q3 was above our original guidance due to revenue being at the higher end of our range, operating expenses below our range and the favorable income tax that I discussed. During the third quarter, we generated about $134 million in cash from operations, which compared to about $91 million generated in last year’s third quarter. And we ended the third quarter with a little over $1.1 billion in cash and investments. During Q3, we bought back about 500,000 shares of our common stock and ended the quarter with about $230 million of stock repurchase authorization still available. We also announced today a cash dividend of $0.22 per share, which will be payable on August 26th, 2020 to shareholders of record on August 17th, 2020. Now let’s cover the outlook for Q4. Three months ago, when I went over the guidance for Q3, I highlighted the challenges that we were facing in the environment; consumer demand was dropping; visibility was much more limited than usual; and industry data reports were not consistent or current. Fast forward to now, we have updated TAM data for some of our end markets, but not all of them. Customer visibility is still very limited and remember, we won’t have actual shipment data for the June quarter until all our customers send us their reports over the next two months. And the economy is still pretty uncertain. So with that as a backdrop, here’s our current scenario for Q4 along with some key assumptions that we’ve embedded into the outlook. Let’s start with products and services revenue, most of which goes into the cinema industry. Screens are opening more slowly than we thought last quarter. So we are assuming that there will not be any significant uptick in equipment purchasing activity from exhibitors in Q4. We estimate that products and services revenue in Q4 could range from $10 million to $15 million. Let’s talk about licensing. We estimate that licensing revenue in Q4 could range from $215 million to $240 million. That’s in comparison to the $235 million that we had in Q3. As I look at the transition from Q3 actual to the Q4 outlook scenario, there’s downward movement from timing of revenue under customer contracts. This is not unusual, and I think of it as Dolby’s seasonality. In other words, within the course of our fiscal year, we tend to have higher revenue in our Q2 and our Q3 and lower amount in our Q1 and Q4. And a lot of this is because of timing of revenue under various contracts that partially offsetting it this year, is an assumption that total unit shipments could increase modestly in Q4 over Q3 as consumer spending starts to improve. Our Q4 scenario assumes that there will roughly be a 5% improvement in unit shipments plus or minus blended across all device categories. And for Q4, we’re also assuming very little revenue from Dolby Cinema box office share. So to summarize, our scenario for total revenue in Q4 is a range of $225 million to $255 million. If I compare that to last year’s Q4 actual revenue of $299 million, the majority of the potential decline will be attributable to the economic ripple effect of the pandemic, and the remainder would largely be due to lower recoveries. Let me finish up with the rest of the Q4 outlook, so I can turn it over to Kevin. Gross margin for Q4 on a GAAP basis is estimated to range from 85% to 86% and non-GAAP gross margin is estimated to be about 1 percentage point higher than the GAAP number. Products and services gross margin will remain in negative territory in Q4, mainly because of fixed costs that are not fully covered at the lower revenue levels. At the revenue range in the outlook I provided, products and services gross margin on a GAAP basis could range from minus $6 million to minus $9 million in Q4. And on a non-GAAP basis, it could range from minus $5 million to minus $8 million. Operating expenses in Q4 are estimated to range from $187 million to $197 million on a GAAP basis and from $167 million to $177 million on a non-GAAP basis. Other income is projected to range from $2 million to $3 million for the quarter, and our income tax rate for the fourth quarter is projected to range from 19% to 21% on both the GAAP and non-GAAP basis. Based on combination to the factors I just reviewed, we estimate that Q4 diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis could range from about $0.05 to about $0.20. And then on a non-GAAP basis, we estimate it would range from about $0.22 to $0.37. And as for the full year, if you do the math that would mean that our FY ‘20 revenue for the full year could range from about $1,115 million to $1,145 million. GAAP diluted earnings per share could range from $2.04 to $2.19. And non-GAAP diluted earnings per share could range from $2.76 to $2.91. So now, I would like to turn it over to Kevin. Kevin?