Earnings Labs

GSI Technology, Inc. (GSIT)

Q3 2019 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 31, 2019

$7.25

+0.97%

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

-0.65%

1 Week

+2.59%

1 Month

+5.58%

vs S&P

+2.21%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GSI Technology's third quarter fiscal 2019 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, we will provide instructions for those interested in entering the queue for the Q&A. Before we begin today's call, the company has requested that I read the following Safe Harbor statement. The matters discussed in this conference call may include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future performance of GSI Technology that involves risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties are described in the company's Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, I have also been asked to advise you that this conference call is being recorded today, January 31, 2019, at the request of GSI Technology. Hosting the call today is Lee-Lean Shu, the company's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. With him are Douglas Schirle, Chief Financial Officer and Didier Lasserre, Vice President of Sales. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Shu. Please go ahead, sir.

Lee-Lean Shu

Management

Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining today's call to review our third quarter fiscal 2019 results. I am very pleased with the performance of our core business which exceed all forecast, primarily due to better than anticipated SRAM sales to our largest customer which increased 11% sequentially and 72% year-over-year. Net revenue for the quarter was $14.7 million, above the high end of the guidance that we provided on our second quarter call of $12.8 million to $13.8 million. With gross margins of 58%, rose above our guidance of 52% to 54%. Doug Schirle, our CFO, will provide additional insight into the factors that drove our strong revenue growth and the margin improvement in his commentary. Earlier this month, we provided an update on the APU, our in-place associative processing solution for artificial intelligence application. We are currently testing packaged units of the first silicon wafers. These initial tests have identified some bugs which are being fixed now. In the meantime, our hardware and software teams are working on demo boards with the APU and determine if their performance are ready for testing by our selected alpha customers. At this time, we hope to receive the next silicon pack in a few months and we anticipate being able to perform payments for beta customers later in the year. In early November, a member of our APU team posted a panel on visual search at ODSC West conference. ODSC is a global data science community dedicated to helping foster the change of innovative ideas in open data science. The panel led by our director of beta science discussed visual search as the next frontier of search. In a panel discussion with experts in the field from eBay, Google, Walmart Labs, Wayfair and Clarifai. Largely driven by visual content, visual…

Douglas Schirle

Management

Thank you, Lee-Lean. We reported a net income of $2.3 million or $0.10 per diluted share on net revenues of $14.7 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2019 compared to net loss of $1.5 million or $0.07 per diluted share on net revenues of $11.1 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2018 and a net loss of $351,000 or $0.02 per diluted share on net revenues of $12.8 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2019, ended September 30, 2018. Gross margin was 68.3% compared to 51% in the prior year period and 62.6% in the preceding second quarter. Strong revenue growth in the third quarter was driven by increased sales to our largest customer, the balance of the shipment of a one-time order for a university supercomputer build up in Europe and in increase in sales at our military segment. These factors drove an increase in gross margins, which benefited from a favorable product mix. Total operating expenses in the third quarter of fiscal 2019 was $7.8 million, compared to $6.7 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2018 and $8.4 million in the preceding second quarter. Research and development expenses were $5.2 million, compared to $4.2 million in the prior year period and $5.8 million in the preceding quarter. Research and development expenses in the prior quarter included an expense in the amount of approximately $1 million related to a non-production mask set for our initial APU product. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $2.6 million, compared to $2.5 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2017 and $2.7 million in the preceding second quarter. Third quarter fiscal 2019 operating income was $2.2 million, compared to an operating loss of $1.million in the comparable period a year ago and $394,000 in the prior quarter. The third…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we will take our first question from Brian Swift with Sutter Securities.

Brian Swift

Analyst

Hi guys. Can you clarify one thing for me, in the press release you said your sales to Nokia were $6.6 million and I think I heard you say that they were $6.2 million and I just want to know which one was it?

Douglas Schirle

Management

No. In the current quarter it was $6.6 million.

Didier Lasserre

Analyst

Yes. You said $6.2 million, by the way, but it's $6.6 million.

Brian Swift

Analyst

Okay. And I will come back for further ones, but I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we will take our next question from Kurt Caramanidis with Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Hi guys. Congratulations. It's probably the best quarter you have had in about seven years, if I am looking at it correctly. So nice quarter. On the APU, do you know not really test anything until it's debugged until the second, I think you referred to second silicon in that presentation, until that's back?

Lee-Lean Shu

Management

Yes. I am sorry. Can you repeat that?

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Do you test it, I am wondering if you have any idea if it's looking like the simulators or do not know until you have debugged and run the second silicon as far as how it's performing compared to what you were thinking prior?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Right. So we have had the assembled units in hand since November and for the first two months, we have been looking at the part on a tester or like on a memory testers, so on a component level. And so that's where we have noticed some of the bugs that we have. So very recently, within the last week or so we have now mounted the APU on to a board. And this is a board that would be one that we would use for demo. So it includes an FPGA and other components as well. So for the first two months, the testing was done on a component level and now we are actually running software and algorithms through the device as much as we can with the limitations of the bug. So we are testing at both on the component level and also on a board level.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay. So what kind of in the next quarter, you might have an idea how it's looking on the board? Or what kind of timeline?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

So this is first silicon. And with this first silicon, we are still hoping to demo one of our alpha guys that we have mentioned in past press releases. But for the majority of the folks, we are really waiting for second silicon. Second silicon will be fixing the bugs that we have identified. That should be done within the next couple weeks. Of course, at that point, you have to go through a series of changing some mask sets and starting new wafers and assembling up the parts. So it will be some time, I would say end of May at the soonest, maybe beginning of June before we have devices in hand, at which point we are look at two different places in parallel. One, we are going to put them back on the testers and then we are also going to mount those on demo boards immediately. What we are hoping is that we will be able to start doing a more broad scale demoing sometime in the calendar third quarter of this year.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay. Great. Do you have to do another $1 million mask? Or is this using the same mask that you had, you are just tweaking it, if that's proper?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Just certain levels will be tweaked. It won't be anywhere near $1 million.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay.

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

And just so they recall, that initial masks that we charged are new expensive, future masks on this will be charged to cost of goods sold over a 12-month period. So you will never see any big impact like $1 million on distribution.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay. And Lee-Lean mentioned some drug, other drug companies. So you have the one deal? You have other large drug companies that have expressed interest? Or where is that at?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

So, certainly we have, as we have spoken about in the past, we have the lead alpha customer. They want early access. So they are willing to look at material that they know have some bugs in them. We are limiting how many people we engage with on first silicon, obviously, because it's very resource intensive to do that because there is workarounds and what have you. But we certainly have seen interest from other folks in the same market but we are going to put them in the second silicon group.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Great. And then, the rad-hard, so you are anticipating a prototype this current quarter. If that testing goes well with your formula, would that determine the timing of a sale? A real production sale?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Right. So we actually received an order last quarter in the December quarter for the first prototype. And this week, we actually received a second quarter also for prototype quantity for second program. These are EH units because where we have not finished the qualification internally. We do feel the recipe we have now does meet the requirements. We still have a few tests to conduct before we can for sure know that. But the prototypes are going to be sent for these two programs for their initial qualification. And so what we are looking at now is probably finishing up the qualifications some time this quarter. It might spill into early next quarter and then during that time, we are waiting for the customers to finish their qualification with the prototype units that they are ordering now. We will have those shipped out within a month, maybe a month-and-a-half.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay. Then the production orders would follow once everybody is all through qualification?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Correct.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay. Sorry, last one. Any outreach in the next quarter or so, whether it's an AI conference or any other investor conferences, just curious?

Douglas Schirle

Management

Yes. We will be going to the Roth Conference and then our IR firm is looking at non-deal roadshow type activities. So we will be out a couple of times in the next two or three months, at least.

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Right. And we are attending some of the AI conferences, but it won't be like the ODSC West where we hosted a panel. It will be more in an informal manner.

Kurt Caramanidis

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Okay. Great. I appreciate all the feedback and congratulations and look forward to the future things that are coming up here.

Douglas Schirle

Management

Thank you.

Didier Lasserre

Analyst · Carl M. Hennig, Inc.

Thanks Kurt.

Operator

Operator

And next, we will move on to Jeff Bernstein with Cowen and Co.

Jeff Bernstein

Analyst

Hi guys. Just quick questions around the rad-hard business. I think you talked about also having a high-rail or rad-tolerant product that would be at different, a lower price point and addressing things like Leos or other more cost sensitive market niches. But can you just talk about what the plans are there and what the timeline is there?

Didier Lasserre

Analyst

Sure. So that requires a different die and that one could be offered in both plastics and ceramics. With the rad-tolerant, we are actually at a position now where we have actually started qualification. We are a little bit ahead of the rad-hard as far as our internal qual. As far as the customer engagements, we have already started those. There are a few programs that we are addressing now and they are determining what direction they are going. I would say the nearest potential is actually a program that's sending a probe to Mars to do some mining on the planet. And so that's certainly one that could be a short-term or I should say, our first win. Certainly, there has been some significant amount of interest in something that' a little robust than the hard.

Jeff Bernstein

Analyst

Got you. Thanks very much.

Didier Lasserre

Analyst

Thanks Jeff.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, there are no further questions.

Lee-Lean Shu

Management

Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our fourth quarter fiscal 2019 result. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. We do appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.