Mike Newman
Analyst · Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead
Thanks Michael and thanks to everyone for joining us on this call to discuss another successful quarter for Novatel Wireless. Today, we announced that we met all of our guidance metrics for the first quarter, growing revenue substantially and also increasing profitability. I believe this quarterly achievement is particularly significant, because we successfully executed on the quarter while simultaneously working to close our acquisition of Feeney Wireless and immediately accretive acquisition that also double the size our IoT business. Just a few quarters ago, it would have seemed impossible that we could grow revenues on a year-over-year basis while continuing to improve gross margins with positive adjusted EBITDA all while also acquiring another growing EBITDA positive IoT business for an attractive purchase pricing structure. Novatel Wireless is a dramatically change company from the organization that I joined in September and all of our employees have contributed to that turnaround. Now for the details of our strong first quarter. Total revenue in the first quarter of 2015 grew 10.8% from the first quarter of 2014 to $53.5 million consistent with our guidance for the quarter. Year-over-year revenue growth was driven by revenue from our mobile computing products, which grew 23.1% to $44.6 million in the first quarter of 2015 compared to Q1 a year ago. This puts us firmly on the path toward achieving our stated objective of growing mobile computing revenue by more than 20% throughout 2015. Mobile computing revenue in the quarter was led by continued strong sales of our MiFi 6620L and our MiFi 5510. Revenue from our M2M products with $8.9 million in the first quarter of 2015, an increase of 7.1% sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2014 as we continue to grow our M2M business. When you look at M2M revenue in Q1 a year ago, please note that quarter included some last time buys for discontinued products, so it’s not apples-to-apples comparison. We continue to expect double-digit organic growth and M2M revenue in 2015. Also since the close of acquisition of Feeney Wireless on March 27, we recorded revenue from Feeney Wireless sales on our books for the four days from March 28 to March 31, which was approximately $300,000 of revenue. Non-GAAP gross margin increased across all of our product sets in the first quarter of 2015 with overall non-GAAP gross margin of 24.8% compared to just 21% in Q1 a year ago. Non-GAAP gross margin for mobile computing products increased to 24.5% in Q1 of 2015, compared to just 20.5% in Q1 a year ago. And non-GAAP gross margin for M2M products increased 26.2% in Q1 of 2015, compared to 22.2% in Q1 a year ago. The improvement in non-GAAP gross margin combined with year-over-year increasing total revenue resulted in an increase in gross profit of 31.2% to $13.3 million in the first quarter of 2015, compared to $10.1 million in Q1 of 2014. We are very clearly seeing the results of our many initiatives to drive gross margins to improve our overall profitability and we remain on-track to sequentially increased gross margins throughout 2015 led by improved M2M product mix. Our operating expenses in the first quarter were also in line with our expectations and reflected the completion of our cost rationalization activities in 2014 as well as our renewed investment in 2015 for our future. Non-GAAP operating expenses were down 19.7% to 13.8 million in the first quarter of 2015, compared to $17.2 million in Q1 a year ago. And as expected non-GAAP operating expenses increased by $1.1 million sequentially in Q1 compared to the fourth quarter of 2014 to support our 2015 growth initiatives. We expect to see revenue growth stimulated by Research & Development in sales investments starting in the second quarter and then ramping through continued product releases in the second half of the year. As a result of our strong revenue performance increased non-GAAP gross margins and continued expense management. Our adjusted EBITDA was positive $600,000 in the first quarter of 2015, compared to negative $5.2 million in Q1 a year ago. For a year-over-year increase of approximately $5.8 million in adjusted EBITDA. In the first quarter of 2015, our non-GAAP net loss improved by $6.5 million to approximately $600,000 or a penny net loss per share compared to $7.1 million or $0.21 net loss per share in Q1 last year. Let me pause for a moment to discuss our non-GAAP financial results. Historically, but we discuss our non-GAAP P&L, we attended to have a lot of new moving pieces. I’m pleased to report that 2014 we work through most of the transitional items that were part of our corporate turnaround and we should have significantly less in noise in our 2015 non-GAAP financials. We completed an acquisition in Q1 and we anticipate further M&A activity in 2015, which we’ll resulted some very typical M&A related non-GAAP adjustments. But the non-GAAP adjustments related to our corporate turnaround are mostly behind us now. In the first quarter of 2015 in our non-GAAP financials. We excluded share-based compensation expense of approximately $800,000 as well as $5.5 million of accruals related to an all employee retention bonus plan adopted during 2014 as part of the company’s turnaround efforts. Note that the full payout for this retention bonus plan has now been accrued. So going forward, you will not see any increased accruals for. Also in Q1, we reversed approximately $200,000 of revenue charges that have previously been accrued, but now or not anticipated to be incurred. With respect to acquisitions, we excluded amortization of intangibles related acquisitions of approximately $200,000 and acquisition related charges for Feeney Wireless of $900,000. Including estimated continued are now and other acquisition related payments adjustments to inventory valuation based on the fair value of finished goods and professional fees and costs to perform due diligence and other acquisition-related procedures. Now we’ll move on to the balance sheet at year-end. We ended the first quarter, with cash, cash equivalents of $9.4 million compared to $17.9 million at year-end. The decrease in cash was largely driven by the purchase of Feeney Wireless with other costs and expenses related to acquisition as well as back and weighted sales linearity in Q1 that would have resulted and an increase in accounts receivable in the first quarter of $5.9 million excluding Feeney Wireless receivable. Last quarter, we highlighted a strategic increased in our inventory of $9.7 million, which was intended position us to reduce shipping costs and improved gross margins. While also enabling us to more timely need customer expectations for product deliveries. That initiative has been largely successful both internally and from a customer facing standpoint. This quarter excluding Feeney Wireless inventory would decrease slightly by $1.5 million with accounts payable decreasing by $3.8 million as we paid for the remainder of the Q4 inventory build-up. Finally, on our share count. Our fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding decreased to 46.3 million shares in Q1, compared to 50.1 million shares in Q4. This decrease resulted from the company generating and non-GAAP net loss in the first quarter after generating non-GAAP net income in Q4. This net potentially dilutive warrants and employee equity brands that have billion included in our fully diluted share count in Q4, we’re not included in our fully diluted share count in the first quarter just completed, because of their anti-dilutive effect on the net loss. So now I’d like to briefly discuss our second quarter guidance. We anticipate continued strength in our mobile computing products particularly our MiFi 6620L as well as continued improvements on our top-line performance for M2M products both organically and the Feeney Wireless. This combines for a second quarter revenue guidance range of $62 million to $70 million. We also anticipate continuing to improved non-GAAP gross margins across all product accept. In particular with M2M gross margins historically being higher than mobile computing gross margin, and now with the addition of Feeney wireless and its M2 M revenues we are guiding to second quarter non-GAAP gross margin of 24.5% to 26.5%. On the expense side we added over 120 wireless employees and contractors in Q1 along with our own Novatel wireless growth of approximately 20 heads. So non-GAAP operating expenses will necessarily increase consistent with our larger organization. But this isn't just about Feeney wireless and acquisition related roles. We continue to develop programs and infrastructure to support all of our growth initiatives. As a result we anticipate Q2 non-GAAP operating expenses to increase to $16.5 million to $17.5 million range. We once again also expect to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter with a guidance range of one million dollars to two point five million dollars based on our anticipated increased revenues and increased non-GAAP gross margin, partially offset by our ongoing investments in the business. We also anticipate second quarter non-GAAP earnings per share in a range of negative $0.01 to positive $0.02 based on approximately 59 million weighted average shares outstanding in Q2.This is a meaningful increase in weighted average shares outstanding from Q1 and it is driven primarily by three factors. First, since the midpoint of our guidance range for Q2 is for profit EPS, we anticipate that we will once again include potentially diluted warrants and employee equity grants in our share count in Q2 and we expect this to total approximately 5.5 million shares. Second, the shares issued upon HC2's exercise of approximately 3.8 million warrants towards the end of Q1 will now be outstanding for the full quarter in Q2. And third, a stock payment of $15 million for part of the purchase price for Feeney wireless is due to be paid in early 2016, and under applicable accounting rules the approximately 3.2 million shares insurable for this portion of the acquisition price are also included in our weighted average share count. I remain excited about our future at Novatel wireless. For 2015 and beyond as we plan to continue leveraging our technology and the successes we've achieved to date, in 2014 we restored the company to profitability. As we plan for the remainder of 2015, we expect to grow revenues and gross margins on both a sequential basis and a year-over-year basis in each quarter of the rest of the year. And then via combination of organic growth and further M&A activity we expect to enter 2016 with our overall end-to-end revenues more closely aligned with the volumes of our mobile computing revenues. We believe we can continue to execute across all fronts with our dedicated motivated world class employees leveraging our innovative technology and powerful relationships with our major partners, suppliers and customers. Now I'll turn the call over to Alex to provide more color on our business strategy and initiatives.