Jeffrey Niew
Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Anthony, your line is now open
Thank you, Sloane, and thank you to everyone for joining us this afternoon. The third quarter was above our expectations, but clearly a difficult one for markets and industries around the world. Before I get into the results, and market commentary, I'd like to highlight the aggressive stance we have taken in response to this backdrop. As announced on our last call, we are accelerating the strategic repositioning of our MEMS microphone business to further deemphasize our exposure to commodity products. We have been very proactive and are already seeing the benefits of this strategy in our second half results. Now, let me get into the financials for the quarter. Knowles generated $178 million of consolidated revenue, which was down 24% versus the prior year, driven primarily by very challenging market conditions in the consumer electronics portion of our Audio segment. In contrast, Precision Devices delivered record revenues of 64 million and grew 16% year-over-year as we continue to see robust demand across most end markets. While challenging, Audio segment revenue finished largely in-line with our expectations due to factors we cited last quarter, specifically a weak backdrop for consumer electronics demand, access channel inventory across most markets, and persistent COVID-related shutdowns in China. On a consolidated basis, Knowles delivered against each of our guided performance metrics for the third quarter. Revenue, gross margins, and adjusted EBIT margins were all above the mid-point and EPS was above the guided range. Cash generated by operations was near the low-end of our range this quarter, due to higher than expected inventories and timing of collections. We anticipate strong sequential improvement in cash flow in the fourth quarter and remain confident in our previously stated view of a faster path to a medium-term free cash flow margin target of 15% to 17%. Now, I'd like to provide perspective on the current dynamics of each of our end markets. We understand tracking demand of our products is challenging, especially given the diversity of our markets and the crosscurrents such as inventory corrections and strategic mix decisions like the ones we have made in our MEMS microphone business. Today, I would like to provide additional color to help understand our business. First, in Precision Devices, we continue to see strong end market demand driven by secular trends across defense, medtech and EV. We still see organic growth in the mid-to-high single-digits going forward or an addressable market that is over $1 billion in growing. In addition to strong growth, this segment continues to show resilience in the base of market uncertainty with bookings in the quarter continuing to exceed expectation. Both of our product categories, high performance capacitors, and RF filters continue to demonstrate our superior technical capabilities, which provide a competitive advantage for Knowles in markets where we have strong tailwinds today and in the future. Now, I'll turn to our Audio segment. First, the Hearing Health market continues to be much less volatile in the face of weak consumer demand, similar to the pattern we have observed in previous downturns. In fact, we remain confident business will provide 3% to 5% annual growth over a cycle and are increasingly optimistic about the over-the-counter hearing aid demand based on recent customer announcements and partnerships. Given these market dynamics and our strong competitive offering for acoustic solutions, we will continue to invest in Hearing Health and believe it is an underappreciated asset in our portfolio. Now, on to our MEMS microphone business. While we expect sequential revenue improvement in Q4, the growth is driven primarily by new product introductions by our customers as opposed to positive changes in end market demand or sentiment. These headwinds are across most end markets and geographies, including PCs and smartphones, Additionally, inventory in the channel is still being worked through, which presents additional obstacles to resume year-over-year growth. We still validated our decision to move quickly to reposition the MEMS business for the future by further deemphasizing the commodity portion of this business. I'm pleased to see the impact of our strategy show up in our second half results and I'm confident that the MEMS microphone business is well-positioned to improve our revenue and profitability when the market recovers. On that point, let me speak to the drivers and considerations that went into our strategic repositioning and why we believe it will add significant value for shareholders in the quarters and years ahead. Over the last few years, we have taken the challenging global market conditions to accelerate our transformation. This transformation is already delivering results with more than 60% of our revenue coming from products with above the average corporate gross margins. The strategy to focus on higher value products and markets has been coupled with strong execution and dedication from the Knowles team in the face of significant macro challenges caused by the pandemic and its unpredictable after effects. I want to thank everyone in the organization for their hard work and execution in the face of these challenges. Our strategy is working, which gives me strong conviction in our ability to achieve the mid-term financial targets we introduced last November, sooner than expected. With that, let me turn the call over to John to provide more detail on our quarter.