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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good afternoon and welcome to the Knowles Corporation Second Quarter 2016 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. With that said, here with the opening remarks is Knowles' Vice President of Investor Relations, Mike Knapp. Please go ahead.
MR
Michael J. Knapp - Vice President-Investor Relations
Management
Thanks, Shane, and welcome to our second quarter 2016 earnings call. I'm Mike Knapp and presenting with me on the call today are Jeff Niew, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and John Anderson, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our call today will include remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects for Knowles, which constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under applicable federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements in this call will include comments about demand for company products, anticipated trends in company sales, expenses and profits, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The company urges investors to review the risks and uncertainties in the company's SEC filings including, but not limited to, the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the SEC, and the risks and uncertainties identified in today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and Knowles disclaims any duty to update such statements, except as required by law. In addition, pursuant to Reg G, any non-GAAP financial measures referenced during today's call can be found in our press release posted on our website at knowles.com, including a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. All references on this call will be on a non-GAAP continuing operations basis unless otherwise indicated. Also, we've made selected financial information available in webcast slides, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff, who will provide some details on our second quarter results. Jeff? Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Mike. And thanks to…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Harsh Kumar of Stephens. Your line is now open.
HI
Harsh V. Kumar - Stephens, Inc.
Analyst
Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. Hey, Jeff and John, maybe a question for both of you guys. I'd love the input here. Gross margins of 39.5% and you're guiding to 39%. Your MCE business is taking off in the back half. I suspect it'll be pretty strong in 4Q as well. I'm just curious – you talked about scrap, just curious what else is going on and what we should be thinking about here?
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I'll let John comment...
John S. Anderson - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. I'll take the gross margin question, Harsh. You're right. Historically, our gross margins are typically higher in the second half and in Q3, as a result of higher capacity utilization. This year, a little different. In order to level load our microphone production, we actually started building inventory for our largest customer kind of midway or late in Q2. As a result, our Q2 gross margins, as I just mentioned, were a little higher and above the midpoint. But what this also results in, this level loading kind of decreases the capacity utilization in Q3. In addition, related to our largest customer's new product introduction, we are incurring higher-than-expected scrap cost. We expect this to get resolved and go back to a normalized scrap level or reduced scrap level in Q4 as we exit 2016. And again, I reiterate, full-year gross margins were on track with the full-year margins of 39%.
HI
Harsh V. Kumar - Stephens, Inc.
Analyst
Got it. Thanks, guys. And then, as my follow-up, you mentioned something about your largest customer where the ramp was flattish with last year. First of all, is that correct and is that dollars or units? And then, can you maybe talk about your position there? I think you mentioned your position is pretty solid. Maybe put that in reference for us, how we should think about that?
John S. Anderson - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question, Harsh. First thing I would just say is we expect to maintain our number one share position at that customer. Let's just start with that. So I think what we have to do is take a step back and just say builds are not always aligned directly with demand. As we saw last year, in the back half of the year, builds got ahead of the actual demand with our largest customer. And we saw that big drop-off, I mean most of the vendors did, in the first half of 2016. So, if you start with the market reports that are out that everybody reads, our expectation is that, roughly speaking, that there should be roughly flat from year-over-year. You would expect that the builds would be slower in the early stages than they were last year, but we wouldn't have that big inventory correction in the first half of 2016. And that's kind of what we're seeing in terms of the demand that how the shape of it's changed from the previous cycle. But we do expect our sales to this customer to be roughly flat over the product cycle.
HI
Harsh V. Kumar - Stephens, Inc.
Analyst
Got it. So, dollars. And then, historically, you've been selling to this customer, Jeff, for a while. Are you back at kind of your historical highs in terms of your share at this particular customer or are you close?
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I mean I guess, Harsh, what I'd say is we typically have not been talking about share directly about any individual customer. And I would say, going forward, it's really hard for us to project until we see the build and we know everything that goes on. I would say for our overall marketplace, we're not seeing any major shifts in share, with the exception of China. I mean, Q2 was a very, very strong quarter for us in China. We do expect growth to continue in Q3 and Q4. But there's a lot of tailwinds for us with China that are very, very positive. So I think what we'd say is, overall, we're pleased with our share position overall and where we're headed for the full year.
HI
Harsh V. Kumar - Stephens, Inc.
Analyst
Got it. I'll get back in line, guys. Thank you.
MR
Michael J. Knapp - Vice President-Investor Relations
Management
Thanks, Harsh.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Bob Labick of CJS Securities. Your line is now open.
BI
Bob J. Labick - CJS Securities, Inc.
Analyst
Thank you. Good afternoon.
MR
Michael J. Knapp - Vice President-Investor Relations
Management
Hey, Bob.
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Bob.
BI
Bob J. Labick - CJS Securities, Inc.
Analyst
Hi. Just wanted to go back with the gross margin. You mentioned a bit of level loading of the capacity. Does this mean that if you expect the high 30%s, 38% to 40% gross margin kind of back-half, would we expect stronger gross margins in the first half of next year? Do you expect this level loading to be the new norm to continue going forward? Or how are you thinking about capacity in gross margins on a go-forward basis?
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, let me just start from a perspective of sales. I think it's a little too early to start projecting sales in Q1. But, I mean, assuming that we don't see this inventory correction we saw in the first half of 2016, I would say there's some opportunity for margin improvement if we don't see that inventory correction, because that did impact our gross margins specifically in Q1. I don't know if you have any good color on that, John?
John S. Anderson - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: No, I think you hit it. I would say that I think the catalyst to improve margins beyond the 39% that we've talked about for full-year 2016 is really penetration with our intelligent audio, which typically comes in at a higher margin given the software content.
BI
Bob J. Labick - CJS Securities, Inc.
Analyst
Great. Yeah. Just touching on that, can you talk a little bit about – obviously intelligent audio is new product, so you're just introducing this stuff now. Can you talk a little bit about your percent of sales that are new products now and what you would expect that over the next year or so? And is that also therefore the driver for potentially higher gross margins?
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, we do track internally our new products as a percentage of sales. It typically has been larger in the back half of the year and the trend has generally been positive in terms of new product sales. I don't know, John, if you want to comment on new product sales at all in terms of for the full year at all or do you have any data...
John S. Anderson - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. I mean, it's in the range of one-third of our sales coming from new products in 2016, two-thirds coming from mature products, which those are products that have typically been in the marketplace more than 18 months. I would expect that as we go into 2017, the same thing. As we make penetration with intelligent audio, that percent of sales derived from new products will increase.
BI
Bob J. Labick - CJS Securities, Inc.
Analyst
Okay. Great. And then, just last one. You touched on the Versant launch and I believe, obviously, part of that has been influenced by the Audience acquisition. Can you talk a little bit about that, how Audience has helped you in regards to the Versant launch and any other new products that could be coming out that have been influenced from the Audience acquisition?
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Well, let me comment first on the Versant. I would just say is, without the Audience acquisition, we would not be where we are today in terms of Versant. And I think what we have to realize here is that it's driven a lot of opportunity for us with software and mics and speakers on the hearing aid side to increase the content for headsets. And I gave though just, Bob, one example. I have the Bragi Dash, I have one myself. And I've been driving down the road, which I've never been able to do in my convertible with the top down, going 50 miles an hour, and I can talk clearly to someone on the other side. I mean it really quite frankly is quite amazing what the team, which is a combination again of the acoustics team, both microphones, speakers, and also the software team for the former Audience out in Mountain View of what they put together, really kind of incredible. Our goal now is now we've got this first design win, we've proven the technology out. It's just to start expanding this I would say to other customers.
BI
Bob J. Labick - CJS Securities, Inc.
Analyst
Super. Thanks so much.
Jeffrey S. Niew - President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this moment.
MR
Michael J. Knapp - Vice President-Investor Relations
Management
Okay. Well, thanks, Shane, and thank you everyone for joining us today. As always, we appreciate your interest in Knowles and look forward to speaking with you on our next earnings call. Thanks and good-bye.
OP
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.