Michael Newman
Analyst · Cowen & Co. Please go ahead
Thanks, Michael, and thanks to everyone for joining us on this call to discuss an extremely busy and transformative quarter for Novatel Wireless. During the second quarter, we became a dramatically different Novatel Wireless from where we began the year and from where we've been for the past many years. Three huge events occurred during the second quarter and combined to propel the Company forward with our IoT strategy. First, we integrated Feeney Wireless, or FW, which we acquired at the very end of March. Second, we raised $120 million in financing via the issuance of convertible debt. Third, we negotiated and signed the acquisition of DigiCore, which we expect to close by October. Any of these, by themselves, would have been an extremely significant event. Together, they made for an incredibly busy and transformational second quarter, with our focus sharpening on the IoT market and gross margin expansion. As a result, we believe that Novatel is in position to be one of the leading IoT companies with significant long-term growth potential. I'll describe all three of these major second quarter events in more detail throughout my discussion this afternoon. Total revenue in the second quarter of 2015 grew 47.1% from the second quarter of 2014 to $54.8 million, up from $37.3 million in the second quarter of 2014. Importantly, 36% of our total revenues in Q2 were attributable to M2M Products, compared to only 26% of our Q2 2014 revenues and only 17% of our revenues in the first quarter of this year. Revenue growth in the second quarter was driven by our M2M product sales, which generated $19.8 million of revenue in the second quarter of 2015, double from Q2 of 2014 and $10.9 million greater than we achieved in the first quarter of this year. We acquired FW at the end of Q1, so bear in mind that Q2 was our first full quarter with FW as part of Novatel. Overall, the balancing of our business toward IoT, and the IoT industry's more attractive gross margins, significantly improved in the second quarter. Based on our expectations for continued IoT growth trends, combined with the anticipated closing of the DigiCore acquisition, we are driving toward ending the year with M2M revenues at an annualized run rate of $200 million, along with 45% to 50% gross margins for the M2M business. It wasn't that long ago, just seven months ago, that we entered 2015 at an annualized M2M revenue run rate of $34 million, while boldly claiming that via a combination of organic growth and multiple M&A transactions we could reach up to $200 million in annual M2M revenues. With just the two highly accretive and synergistic acquisitions of FW and DigiCore, along with our organic growth, we expect to exit 2015 having quintupled our M2M business in a 12-month span. We could not be happier with the seamless acquisition and strong initial performance of FW. FW and its Accenture-like business model has enabled Novatel to progress from device-only sales in IoT to what we refer to as five-circle sales in which we monetize the sale of the device, cloud, airtime, professional services and managed services. Put another way, FW completes our IoT toolkit, enabling the combined entity to uniquely provide a full-stack solution to many of the key IoT verticals. Our decision to acquire DigiCore rested in part on our belief that a full-stack or end-to-end offering is a particularly unique and compelling offering in the high-growth telematics vertical of IoT. The telematics vertical includes fleet management, vehicle monitoring and recovery, user-based insurance, and asset tracking. I'll talk a bit more about DigiCore later on. While we were highly successful in the second quarter driving IoT revenues and also on the M&A front, we fell short of our expectations with respect to Mobile Computing. Revenue from Mobile Computing Products grew 27.3% to $35 million in Q2 of 2015 compared to Q2 a year ago, led by continued strong sales of our MiFi 6620L. Mobile Computing revenue declined sequentially from Q1 as a result of several delayed product launches and a shortfall in legacy product sell-through for the quarter. While that was disappointing, we did win two key mobile computing carrier awards for 2016. One of these awards should be the most significant profitability driver in our Mobile Computing portfolio in 2016 and 2017, and is a continuation of an existing Novatel mobile broadband slot at a major carrier. The other award blazes a new product category for our carrier portfolio and in a carrier slot that has been highly profitable over the past few years for the displaced competitor. We expect to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue based on these two carrier wins. So while Q2 revenues were challenged for Mobile Computing, with these two key carrier award wins, we believe that we have secured our Mobile Computing franchise through 2017. Now, I'll move onto the details of our second quarter results. Non-GAAP gross margin increased across all of our product sets in the second quarter of 2015, with overall non-GAAP gross margin of 29.1% compared to just 11% in Q2 a year ago, and up sequentially by 4.3% from just 24.8% in the first quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin for M2M Products increased to 30.6% in Q2 of 2015 compared to just 8.2% in Q2 a year ago, and non-GAAP gross margin for Mobile Computing Products increased to 28.2% in Q2 of 2015 compared to 11.9% in Q2 a year ago. We continue to generate significant gross margin improvements by selling a better mix of products and by increasing the percentage of our product revenues that are associated with IoT products. Our operating expenses in the second quarter increased to $19.3 million, compared to $15.2 million in Q2 a year ago. FW was not part of Novatel in 2014, and the FW portion of the Novatel business that was added to our cost structure in Q2 was profitable with positive operating cash flow on an FW standalone basis. However, during the second quarter, after we targeted DigiCore for acquisition, we proceeded to make increased investments in order to prepare for our transition into an IoT company with multiple five-circle offerings on a global scale. This led to a faster hiring ramp for the personnel needed and increased expenditures in order to capitalize on the combined DigiCore and FW IoT opportunity. When combined with higher-than-expected litigation expense and settlements, our second quarter operating expenses exceeded our guidance range. On the tail end of that hiring ramp, in the third quarter, we reduced costs and personnel related to several of our legacy operations in order to realign our cost structure to levels appropriate to our new model. More specifically, with our key 2016 carrier award wins protecting our Mobile Computing franchise through 2017, we are able to redeploy development efforts that had previously focused on other Mobile Computing related initiatives. Instead, we aim our resources toward the five-circle IoT opportunities coming our way versus chasing lower margin one-time hardware wins. With respect to the details of these cost-cutting activities, earlier this week we reduced our workforce by approximately 55 total heads. This consisted of 34 employees representing approximately 9% of our employees, and 21 outsourced or contractor roles. All 55 impacted individuals were with Novatel, with most having been involved with the Company's legacy initiatives. None of the impacted individuals were with FW, because as I mentioned, FW continues to be cash flow positive on a standalone basis. Overall, the restructuring activities should reduce our annualized operating expense structure by $10 million and are intended to drive legacy Novatel operations into profitability to align with the cash generating power of both FW and DigiCore. We'll see much of the savings in the third quarter having commenced the activities in August, and then the full cost savings in the fourth quarter. We expect to record a restructuring charge of approximately $600,000 in the third quarter related to these activities. Getting back to our Q2 results, our adjusted EBITDA in Q2 improved by $7.2 million compared to Q2 a year ago, at negative $2.3 million compared to negative $9.5 million a year ago. We had achieved a positive adjusted EBITDA for each of the past two sequential quarters, so despite the 76% year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA, we had expected better in Q2. And after our restructuring activities in Q3, we believe EBITDA will once again improve going forward. In the second quarter of 2015, our non-GAAP net loss improved by $6.8 million, to approximately $4.3 million or $0.08 net loss per share, compared to an $11.2 million net loss in Q2 last year or $0.33 net loss per share. I think most of you know how we calculate our non-GAAP financial results, and a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financials is contained in our earnings release. In the second quarter of 2015, we excluded share-based compensation expense of approximately $1.2 million and reversed $300,000 of accruals related to an all-employee [audio gap] approximately $4 million related to M&A activities. Moving on to the balance sheet, we ended the second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $17.9 million compared to $9.4 million at March 31. During the second quarter, we paid down the outstanding balance on our $25 million revolving credit facility with Wells Fargo and the credit facility remains available for future draw-down. We also had $88.5 million in an acquisition-related escrow account for the anticipated acquisition of [audio gap] purchase price for DigiCore was estimated at $87 million on the date that we established the escrow account and signed the purchase agreement. The funding for the DigiCore acquisition and the additional cash on the balance sheet was obtained from our June 10th issuance of $120 million of 5.5% convertible senior unsecured notes. We received net proceeds of $116.5 million from these convertible notes with interest-only payments due semi-annually on each December 15th and June 15th, commencing with a $3.3 million [audio gap] remained consistent with AR at the end of Q1 at approximately $33.4 million. Our inventory declined by $6.7 million during the second quarter, with accounts payable also declining by $11.6 million in Q2, as we sold down inventory while generating revenue particularly with respect to FW sales. Finally, on our share count, our weighted average shares outstanding increased to 53.4 million shares in Q2 compared to [audio gap] in order to partially finance the FW acquisition, HC2 exercised approximately 3.8 million warrants for cash in late March, and those shares were outstanding for the full quarter in Q2. Second, a payment of $15 million for part of the purchase price for FW is due to be paid in shares of Novatel common stock in early 2016, and under applicable accounting rules, the approximately 3.2 million shares issuable for this portion of the [audio gap] share count. Looking ahead at our expected Q3 weighted average shares, on July 22 we issued approximately 2.2 million shares to employees for the payout of an all-employee retention bonus plan that was adopted in mid-2014 as part of our turnaround efforts. This one-time retention bonus program has now concluded. Now, I'd like to briefly discuss our third quarter guidance. We anticipate continued strength in M2M revenues, with our portfolio of FW products driving enhanced sales [audio gap] On the Mobile Computing side, we expect continued stable sales of our MiFi 6620L product. The variability in our overall revenue guidance range is driven by sales of our legacy MiFi products through third-party distribution channels, the magnitude of the sales ramp for the MiFi products that we recently launched, as well as the launch of our MiFi 6630 product with other wireless carriers. This combines for a third quarter revenue [audio gap] as we continue to benefit from our broader IoT product portfolio since the FW acquisition, with M2M gross margins generally being higher than Mobile Computing gross margins. As a result, we expect third quarter non-GAAP gross margins of 27.5% to 28.5%. On the expense side, with the restructuring activities that we commenced this week, we anticipate non-GAAP operating expenses to decrease sequentially in Q3 to $17 million to $18 million. Adjusted EBITDA should improve in the third quarter as a result of our restructuring [audio gap] Q3 non-GAAP net loss per share of negative $0.05 to $0.08 based on 55 million to 56 million weighted average shares outstanding in Q3. Now, on to some thoughts on the signed DigiCore acquisition. We anticipate closing the acquisition by October, and I want to give you some color on what you can expect. Under local rules for public companies in South Africa, DigiCore posts its financial results every six months. DigiCore last publicly reported financial results for the six months ended December 31, 2014 [audio gap]. For now, I'll need to limit my comments to their six months ended December 31, 2014. Based on current exchange rates and as publicly reported under IFRS, in the six months ended December 31, 2014, DigiCore generated approximately $35 million [indiscernible] with gross margin [indiscernible] [66%] [ph] adjusted EBITDA of approximately $4 million. U.S. and South African [audio gap] revenues with reasonably assumed second half growth rates at those gross margins with that income level to our financial profile, it's easy to see [indiscernible] once we acquire DigiCore, we will be a dramatically changed company. [Indiscernible] in combination with continued strong performance by [indiscernible] Novatel teams, we expect our quarterly [indiscernible] revenues [indiscernible] more than 50% of our total revenues with total non-GAAP gross margins [audio gap] to $40 million, generating positive free cash flow. I encourage you to review DigiCore's published financial information which is available now and what will be released in September, and I believe that you will be excited by what you see. And that's just looking at the numbers. Post-acquisition, we believe that Novatel will be the only company that can offer a full-stack telematics solution via a combination of DigiCore, FW and Novatel offerings. As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, the Novatel Wireless of [audio gap] FW and our promising future.