Earnings Labs

FiEE, Inc. (FIEE)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Fri, Mar 1, 2019

$7.00

+1.92%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-8.85%

1 Week

-20.35%

1 Month

-21.24%

vs S&P

-23.22%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Zoom Telephonics Q4 2018 Shareholder Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Zoom CEO, Frank Manning. Please go ahead, sir.

Frank Manning

Analyst

Thank you. Welcome to the Zoom Telephonics conference call for Q4 2018. I’m Frank Manning, Zoom’s CEO. Our President, Joe Wytanis, will also be speaking and answering questions during this call. When you have time, please read Slide 2. Note that, we cannot predict the future, and our comments and forward-looking statements are subject to risks. Slide 3 provides a brief overview of Zoom Telephonics, and I think most of you’re familiar with that. On Slide 4, you can see that we had 10 straight quarters of increased year-over-year sales, but Q4 2018 broke that streak. Q4 2018 was a difficult quarter, primarily due to the 10% China tariff and its impact on revenues, gross profit, expenses and profitability. Looking at revenues, sales of Motorola brand products through U.S. retailers continued to dominate. Sales declined 15.8% from Q4 2017 to 2. – to, excuse me, to $7.5 million. The main reason was China tariffs on almost 100% of our products starting September 24. Unfortunately, our largest competitor at retail locked in low selling prices for the quarter before the tariffs set. That reduced our sales as we resisted dropping price and attempted to minimize margin impact of the tariffs. Excuse me, starting in January, cable modem prices imprinted [ph] higher, though there’s still aggressive competition. Now, let’s look at Slide 5. You can see that gross profit was hurt significantly by the 10% tariff, as it increased our cost of goods and reduced sales. Note that the impact would have been worse if we hadn’t shipped a significant quantity of fast-moving inventory to Amazon right before the tariffs started in September. In 2019, we are having success in driving down our cost of goods and we continue to work hard to offset the impact of the tariffs. Operating expenses for…

Joe Wytanis

Analyst

Thank you, Frank. As we turn to a product discussion, Slide 12 summarizes our Motorola brand worldwide exclusive licensing agreement. The focus is on Internet access and local area networking, with coverage of cable modem, DSL and cellular Internet access technologies. I do want to mention that we are seeing significant growth from modem – Motorola routers, MoCA adapters, DSL products and other non-cable products. Total revenues more than quadrupled from 2017 to 2018, with 2018 revenues about $2.6 million. Our Motorola cable modem revenues also grew from 2017 to 2018. Slide 13 summarizes some of the technology trends that will help to drive our sales growth later in 2019 and beyond. For cable modems, DOCSIS 3.1 is an important – because it significantly increases cable modem speeds. We carefully track weekly Amazon sales and DOCSIS 3.1 products on Amazon were up about 22% from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018. Mesh is a very exciting router technology that expands Wi-Fi coverage and helps you roam through your home without losing your Wi-Fi by connection. 2019 will be the first year with a mesh standard EasyMesh. Wi-Fi AX also called Wi-Fi 6 is a way to get higher Wi-Fi speed and more range, and the first shipments will occur in 2019. We already shipped cellular modems for use with cellular data providers that include Verizon and AT&T, and our experience with these products will help us as the 5G standard takes off. The IoT space is growing fast and it’s a natural fit with our routers, cable modem routers and future cellular router products. We plan to have a security and energy management products in this exciting new growth space. Finally, our Cellular MultiSensor will be our first product with downstream revenues. We have exciting plans for downstream revenues from other…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] At this time, there are no questions.

Frank Manning

Analyst

Okay. Why don’t we wait a few seconds and see if anybody wants to offer a question. Okay. I guess, we’re all set. Thanks for joining, everybody…

Joe Wytanis

Analyst

Thank you.

Frank Manning

Analyst

…and look forward to speaking with you in the future.

Operator

Operator

This completes today’s conference. You may now disconnect.

Q -

Analyst