Scott Keeney
Analyst · Stifel. Please go ahead
Thank you, Jason. Before discussing nLIGHT’s financial and business performance, I want to say a few words on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had an unprecedented impact on global daily life and economic activity. Through these uncertain times, our priority is ensuring the health and well-being of our global workforce and the communities in which we operate. At the same time, we remain focused on supporting the needs of our customers, suppliers and partners. As a provider of essential products and technologies to a variety of critical aerospace and defense, industrial and medical-end applications, all of our manufacturing facilities remain open. We have implemented safety procedures at our facilities based upon local and federal government guidelines to protect the wellbeing of each of our employees. I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for all nLIGHT employees who put an extra effort to sustain our operations through these difficult times. We continue to invest in the development of our differentiated technology. And we remain steadfast in our belief that we are positioned to deliver significant growth over the long term. In industrial applications, high-power lasers remain underpenetrated, particularly in geographies outside of China. Additionally, global manufacturing operations increasingly require the ability to work with complex parts in an automated manner. Both these dynamics are key drivers for future laser adoption. We are well positioned to capitalize on these trends with our industry-leading semiconductor laser technology, a full portfolio of highly reliable fiber lasers and truly differentiated offerings such as programmability. In aerospace and defense, we expect spending on directed energy lasers to expand meaningfully over the coming years. Fiber laser technology continues to improve and governments are increasing their focus on deploying laser technology in the field. Here, we are a leader with our vertical integration of key enabling technologies from semiconductor lasers through beam control. While the current COVID-19 crisis presents challenges for us in the markets we serve, it has not altered our focus on driving technology and new product development. We are well positioned operationally and financially to continue to bring innovative products to market and to increase our penetration with new and existing customers. We have a strong balance sheet with over $100 million of net cash at the end of Q1. At the same time, we are being proactive in managing our cash and we have undertaken a number of cash management actions, which Ran will discuss later. We continue to prioritize investments in research and development and initiatives we view as essential for ensuring our ability to drive long-term growth. One of these investments is our purchase at the end of March of land and buildings in Camas, Washington. The site was previously occupied by Sharp Laboratories of America and will serve as our future corporate headquarters. We see this facility as a unique asset in the local area as it offers existing clean-room space, offices and manufacturing space. The facility will support our investment in setting up new automated manufacturing and provide space for future company expansion. Our strong balance sheet and our belief in the opportunity in front of nLIGHT, puts us in a position to be opportunistic with this purchase. Beginning on Slide 3 of our earnings presentation, I will review highlights of our performance during the first quarter. Like many organizations, nLIGHT’s operations have been impacted by the unprecedented disruption and shutdown of business activity around the globe. We first witnessed this at our facility in Shanghai, China, when in February we had a slower restart of operations post Chinese New Year. We have also seen the impact of our customers and partners across the globe as end-demand and supply chains have been disrupted by government-mandated shutdowns and uncertainty around the ultimate impact of the virus. Despite these challenges, we were able to deliver first quarter financial performance that exceeded the outlook we provided in the middle of February. This performance reflects strong execution across the organization as our manufacturing and facilities teams stepped up and responded to the highly fluid environment. In China, we saw less manufacturing and supply chain disruption than we had anticipated when we provided our outlook. While there was delay in getting operations back to full capacity, we were able to accomplish this before quarter end and ahead of plan. Across the business, we have not, to date, experienced any meaningful supply chain disruptions. Demand in our commercial end markets was resilient relative to the lower expectations we outlined back in February. We saw activity in the Chinese industrial market pick up in March and a smaller impact on non-China industrial sales than anticipated. In aerospace and defense, we delivered record sales as activity was strong across the business. Moving to Slide 4, I will provide an update on the current business environment and the near-term outlook for our 3 end-markets. As we sit here today, demand is holding up across most of the commercial end-markets we serve. Our order book is strong in aerospace and defense, and we expect the contribution from Nutronics to continue to grow as the year progresses. In aerospace and defense, we delivered a record quarter of revenue in Q1, up 34% on an organic basis, and 83% including the contribution from Nutronics. Aerospace and defense accounted for 39% of overall company revenues during the quarter. We saw strong demand from our core customers, supporting long-standing programs, and benefited from increased activity around directed energy in both our products and our development segments. With Nutronics, the integration is progressing well, and we are already seeing the benefits of enhanced collaboration on product development. We have good visibility into the aerospace and defense portion of our business and we expect the strong trends we experienced in Q1 to continue as the year progresses. Within microfabrication, our sales were down 28% compared to the first quarter of 2019. Sales remain constrained by more limited market activity across several key end-applications, including consumer electronics and automotive. Within China, we saw some encouraging signs related to consumer electronics and application demand. We believe the primary driver for this is investment in ramping product manufacturing to support 5G, including networks and handsets. Spending in this area in China appears to be accelerating and is helping our outlook for the microfabrication end-market in Q2. Our industrial business declined 12% year-over-year in the first quarter. And China demand was negatively impacted by a reduction in the pace of business due to COVID-19 shutdowns and uncertainty. However, demand showed improvement as the quarter progressed. The positive momentum has carried over into April as current order levels in the Chinese industrial market are healthy. Turning to Slide 5 across geographies, our fiber laser sales are shifting to higher power. During Q1, our 6-kilowatt and above fiber laser sales nearly doubled year-over-year. Sales in this category accounted for approximately 49% of our total fiber laser sales, which compares to 24% in the comparable period in 2019. We continue to drive our product road map to support higher power levels and provide customers with highly reliable differentiated solutions. Moving to Slide 6, we continue to have success increasing penetration at target accounts in our non-Chinese industrial business. Key to this is providing customers with differentiated technology. We see strong customer interest in our programmability offerings and growing engagement in our well-being solutions, while we anticipate quarterly variability in the geographic split of our revenues. Over time, we see the trend of a more balanced geographic exposure continuing. This will be driven by growth in directed energy and our non-China industrial sales. Our Q1 China revenue was below 30% of total company revenues for the first time since Q1 2016, and industrial revenue in China was less than 20% of overall company revenue during the quarter. In conclusion, I would like to extend a word of gratitude to all of our employees for their extraordinary efforts during this crisis. The dedication of all nLIGHT employees has helped ensure we sustain our operations and are able to support our customers and partners through these challenging times. As we look forward, nLIGHT is on strong financial footing, and we continue to make investments in our business and focus on driving innovation across our product portfolio. These investments position us to benefit from long-term secular trends that we continue to see driving the adoption of high-power lasers. I will now turn the call over to Ran to provide more detail around our Q1 financial performance, and outlook for the second quarter.