John Kispert - President and Chief Operating Officer
Analyst
Thanks, Rick. Once again, revenue for the quarter was $602 million, and fully diluted GAAP earnings per share was $0.61, non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.67. The difference between the two EPS numbers are first, acquisition-related charges, which in this quarter were actually a net gain of $2.2 million, or $0.01 of EPS. This was caused by unrealized gains resulting from the euro call option contract related to the pending ICOS acquisition. Second, restructuring, severance and inventory-related charges of $13.5 million, or $0.07 per share, and finally, more option investigation charges of $5.2 million, or $0.03. This adds up to about $0.09 pre-tax or $0.06 after tax, again a difference between $0.67 per share and $0.61 per share. In our press release, you'll find a GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation, which covers the non-GAAP adjustments I just mentioned in far, far more detail. The reminder of my comments on the quarter will be focused on the non-GAAP results, which excludes the adjustments I just mentioned, but does include stock-based compensation. This is reflective of the financial performance of KLA-Tencor and how we run the business and enables a transparent comparison of results across periods and among peers. Operating results were driven by our expectation of orders received during the quarter, and we're managing the company according to our best estimate of the business environment over the coming quarters. For the March ending quarter, net bookings were $554 million, down 4% from the December ending quarter, and above the midpoint of our guidance of down 10%. At the end of the quarter, we initiated a $31 million de-booking. This was due to recurring delivery date changes by two customers and not due to a cancellation by either customer. We anticipate these orders will rebook sometime over the next six to nine months. Looking back over the last two quarters; new orders, that is gross value of orders before the previously mentioned adjustments were for the December ending quarter, of $602 million and new orders for the March ending quarter were $585 million. So, the new order environment and business level has changed a little for KLA-Tencor over the last six months. Customers are focusing on new technology development and pilot lines for next-generation production nodes, and our differentiating products play a significant role in that effort. The slowing demand environment we first began to experience late last year continues in each of these markets. Macroeconomic instability is adversely impacting demand for our customers' products and as a result, it's clearly affecting their capital investment decisions, both in size and in timing. While our business level appears to be stabilizing around current levels, visibility into meaningful growth inflection points continues to be very low. In total, we ended the quarter with over $1.2 billion of backlog, which is approximately the same as last quarter. You can break this out as $795 million of shipment backlog or orders that have not yet shipped to customers and $416 million of revenue backlog, or products that have been shipped, but have not yet been signed off by customers and, thus, we have not taken revenue for them. Keep in mind that we do not include any service bookings or service revenues in any of our backlog numbers. The regional distribution of orders was the U.S. was approximately 22%, down from 28% from the December quarter. Europe was approximately 6%, down from 11%, Japan was approximately 29% and that's up from 22% last quarter, Korea is approximately 15%, down from 20%. Taiwan is approximately 20% and that's up from 18% last quarter. And the rest of Asia was approximately 8% [ph], and that's up from 1% a quarter ago. Our new products continue to do well at 45-nanometer and below. The market segment distribution of orders did not change significantly from last quarter. The approximate distribution was wafer inspection at 43%, reticle inspection was 11%, metrology was 22%, service was 23%, and other markets including LEDs, storage, and some solar was 2%. 45-nanometer and below investment continue to be a compelling customer spending trend for us, and those orders made up 53% of the orders received in the quarter. Looking at our income statement, operational execution was solid in the March quarter. As I said earlier, revenue was $602 million, slightly above our guidance range of $575 million to $595 million. This level is down 5.3% quarter-to-quarter and down 16% from the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP gross margin was 56.9%. We continue to focus on the productivity and efficiency of our manufacturing and service organizations as we ramp new products globally and improve our service delivery and spare parts distribution in the face of lower shipment volume. In our current fiscal year, service revenue is expected to be about 20% of total revenues, up from approximately 16% two years ago. While the significant growth of our service business is becoming a dilutive mix factor in our overall gross margin percentage, our belief is that gross margin dollars of this business drops to the bottom line serves as a solid and predicable cash flow generator for the company. As we told you about 24 months ago when we laid our operational plan, the company remains committed to a number of key operational initiatives focused on operational flexibility and operating cash flow. In fact, over this period, we have increased our sustainable cash flow yield to find its operating cash flow as a percent of revenue by over 25%. We have done this while integrating four acquisitions, adding customer development support resources, investing heavily in channel development and infrastructure for adjacent markets outside of semiconductors, and transitioning major product lines offshore. We have successfully ramped our Singapore operation to ship our SP2 product line to ramp down portions of our U.S. operation. So, not only we are encouraged by the predictability and efficiency of our team there, we are meeting our customer commitments and seeing better than expected cost savings. Currently, our Singapore plant is only 20% of capacity and we have multiple products that are due to transition from the U.S. to Singapore over the next several quarters. The operation continues to yield a cost advantage to us, our customers and our shareholders. In addition, this facility along with the operations in the U.S. and in Israel provide a global footprint that enables us to focus more on continued outsourcing of non-core manufacturing activities in the supply chain worldwide. In terms of working capital management, we are continuing to focus on cycle times across our businesses. Across the company, we have improved over 30% over the last year in manufacturing and in long lead time material flexibility. These initiatives will provide us with a long-term operational flexibility that is required to respond quickly to changes in customer demand, both down, and believe it or not, soon enough up, while generating more operating cash flow in any scenario. In the June quarter, we expect gross margin to be slightly lower, due primarily to revenue mix, as we expect product revenue to decline $20 million to $30 million quarter-to-quarter and we expect service revenue to be up another 3% to 5%. Non-GAAP operating expenses were down $2 million quarter-to-quarter to $189 million. R&D was $94.8 million, up $1.8 million from the December ending quarter, as we continue to accelerate key research and development activities driving organic growth in our core businesses as well as in programs and recently acquired companies, and we have several new product introductions planned over the next two months. SG&A for the quarter was $94 million, down $3.7 million quarter-to-quarter. We continue to focus on the sales channel efficiency and elimination of acquisition redundancies. Over the last year, we have made significant progress in integrating acquisitions and streamlining our core business cost structure. In fact, since the June quarter of last year, SG&A per quarter is down $19 million. While we are pleased with this progress, we believe there is additional opportunity here and we expect to continue to focus on these areas over the next several quarters. Historically, downturns have been an opportunity to strengthen our leadership position as our backlog level and product differentiated business model enables us to sustain profitability, while continuing to invest in key product development programs and to enhance the many key customer collaborations we have going. [Technical difficulty]. As a result, we expect total non-GAAP fixed costs on the core businesses will be roughly $190 million over the next several quarters. Other income for the quarter was $24.2 million. We realized gains from the redemption of our investment portfolio to fund the cash requirements for our proposed acquisition of ICOS. In the June quarter, we expect other income to be approximately $10 million as we use cash to fund our proposed acquisition of ICOS if as expected; we get it closed in the June quarter. The tax rate was 31.8% in the quarter, higher than the 28% discussed in the last conference call, due to the reduction in tax exempt interest. So, incremental other income was almost fully offset by the higher tax expense. Non-GAAP net income was $121 million, or $0.67 per fully diluted share. This number includes share-based compensation expenses of $25.9 million. In the June quarter, we expect expenses for share-based compensation to be roughly flat, at about $26 million. Turning to the balance sheet, cash and investments ended the quarter at roughly $1.3 billion, an increase of $17 million quarter-to-quarter. In the quarter, we have purchased approximately $180 million of stock and paid a dividend of $27 million. Cash from operations was $148 million in the quarter. Inventory decreased by $39 million to $444 million. The results of the quarter include $18.3 million of charges from the scrapping and disposing of service inventory, due to fundamental changes in our spare parts delivery model, primarily in two key areas. First, we have improved in service efficiency, particularly in the areas of diagnostic capability, service engineered training, and most importantly, the overall reliability of our products from our engineering teams. And second, our push over the last 24 months towards more commonality across our platforms and new products. These common platform initiatives, which are a key component of our operational plan, have enabled platform maturation, which has led to earlier product performance stabilization, requiring lower average parts usage versus what we have seen historically. We believe these improved areas in the service delivery model are sustainable and will enable us to support this growing business at lower inventory levels in the future. As a result, due to the nature of this event, we initiated a one-time action to scrap the now-not-needed spare parts from inventory. Accounts receivable finished the quarter at $573 million, down $5 million from the prior quarter. And net capital expenditures were a negative $5 million. Note that the brief proceeds from the sale of three of our buildings in San Jose offset capital acquisitions by approximately $10 million in the quarter. Depreciation was $15.8 million, so on a net basis including retirements, fixed assets decreased by $21 million quarter-over-quarter. Fully diluted shares ended the quarter at just under 181 million. For the June quarter, fully diluted shares are expected to be about 179 million. Headcount ended the quarter at 5,770 employees, essentially flat to the December ending quarter. And finally, as we commented earlier, we believe that our business appears to be stabilizing at roughly these levels. However, we continue to be in a period of very low visibility. As a result, like last quarter, we remain very cautious. Given this environment, we will continue to run the company in a way that will enable us to maintain key investments, while ensuring sustained profitability and cash flow. Our guidance for the upcoming quarter does not include the financial impact of our announced intent to acquire ICOS Vision Systems. With that, to reiterate Rick's guidance for the quarter, bookings are expected to be minus 5%, plus or minus 10%; revenue between $560 million and $580 million, EPS including share-based compensation, but excluding one-time charges, at $0.56 to $0.60. This concludes our remarks on the quarter, and I'll now turn the call back to Ed to begin the Q&A.