Gerald Colella
Analyst · Bank of America. Your line is open
Thanks, Seth. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us on the call today. In my prepared remarks I will give an overview of the second quarter financial results, provide a brief update on our strategic initiatives, discuss the recent highlights and achievements in our various end markets, and conclude with our outlook for the third quarter. I’ll then turn the call over to Seth for his detailed review of our financial results, after which we will open-up the call for your questions. I’m pleased to report that our second quarter sales increased to $218 million at the high end of our guidance, up 2% from last quarter and up 18% from the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP earnings were $31.1 million or $0.62 per share, compared to $35.5 million in the first quarter. In the semiconductor market we achieved another best in quality -- quarterly revenue, $154 million. These strong results reflect the technology inflection points that particularly favorable for MKS, as well as the impact of a number of strategic investments we’ve made and are continuing to make. Confirming the results of the team’s hard work and customer focus over the last 18 months, I’m also proud to report that in 2014 MKS achieved 200 basis points of overall market share gain and 250 basis points within our RF power product groups in our served semi markets. These strong gains reflect the continued emphasis we’ve placed on working closely with our customers, help solve complex problems with their technology roadmaps. Within our other advanced markets, revenue increased sequentially for the seventh consecutive quarter. I’ll provide additional examples of both design wins and new opportunities in some of these markets later in the call. I’ve spoken in past calls about our goal to broaden our leadership in our core adjacent markets. Today I’d like to talk a bit about some of the specific plans we’re pursuing to further realize these goals. Several years ago we made a concerted effort to deploy technical resources at the customer level to further penetrate the Korean market. The investments we made including the acquisition of Plasmart, a highly respected and technically strong RF technology company have been very successful. As a result, our relationship with Korean customers, our understanding of their challenges and our ability to work close with them to help solve complex problems have been further strengthened. So much so, that the keynote speaker at our recent Analyst Day was a senior technology executive from Samsung, who travel from Soul to New York to give a personnel view of the many challenges facing, a leading device manufacturer. He talked about the complex inflection points they’re addressing and outlined the successful impact at MKS with our local ability has had to help to solve the significant technical challenges, validating our position as an industry leader working closely with both our OEM and end user customers. Through this technical localization, Korea has become the largest and fastest growing MKS subsidiary. We want to extend this localization approach and in this quarter we launched initiative to valuate our regional capabilities globally to ensure we’ve the best technical depth and level of infrastructure resonant near our customers. Our intention is to be close to our customers, so that we can solve problems together, in the end succeed together. It took several years to achieve the results we’re seeing in Korea, we know that expanding this globally will take time, but we’re confident this program will yield long-term success. We are also working hard to continue to make the customer experience with MKS ever better. Our goal is to make customer interaction uniformly exceptional and to achieve this we’re working on various elements of the customer interaction ranging from adopting best business practices, building product identity to early collaboration as a technology leader. We believe, this will now only strengthen our performance in our core semiconductor market, but also provide clarity as we focus a new and adjacent markets where we’re targeting growth. These adjusted few examples of the programs in place to achieve our goal of sustainable and profitable growth. These are in the early stages of development, but we’re progressing well and I’ll provide further updates in our progress in future calls. Moving now to revenue performance in our core semiconductor market business, we had a record quarter in sales. We are a $150 million, or up 2% quarter-over-quarter and up 22% the same period a year-ago. We continue to aggressively pursue the opportunities created by current technology inflection points, especially in etch and deposition where MKS had a strong position. This quarter, we initiated several new product valuations and continue to receive follow-on orders for RF power, remote plasma, ozone, pressure flow, and other products which support 3D structures, multi-patterning, and other technical challenges facing the industry. This quarter we also received a number of orders and new design wins directly from semiconductor fabs. For example, at a major Korean chip manufacturer we work directly with them to use to evaluate a newer more efficient and high reliability chemiclean [ph] solution to replace an older MKS product. The engagement was successful and this despise being a factor as specified this new MKS solution as a process of record for all new tools. Another major chip manufacturer was experiencing technical problems with the competitors CBD chamber clean solution. Our team worked with them top evaluate our new high performance paragon remote plasma source, which was able to cost effectively solve their problem. As a result, we displaced the competitor and this customer is now replacing the original product the MKS advanced paragon solution for all their tools. These examples and many others illustrate how we’re succeeding in the semiconductor market. And as I mentioned earlier, our continued success is reflected in quantifiable market share gains as well. In addition to expanding our leadership position in our core semiconductor market, MKS has a strategy of leveraging the breadth of our portfolio into other adjacent markets. These markets include industrial, environmental and safety monitoring, thin films, biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, solar, flat panel displays and other diverse applications. I’m proud to report that Q2 sales for these markets increased for the seventh consecutive quarter. You may have seen our press release in July 15, where we announced a new sales channel in the industrial marketplace, an important market for our vacuum flow and analytical products. We’ve entered into an agreement with a leading vacuum solutions provider to provide privately labeled and customized gauged products. We are very pleased to have won this important business, especially since we displaced an incumbent supplier. It is a great opportunity to work with one of the most respected companies in general and industrial vacuum market. Shipments are expected to begin later this year and this exciting opportunity expands our sales within the industrial markets, further supporting our growth strategy to organically increase sales to other advanced markets. Moving to the environmental and safety monitoring market, we continue to expand the customer base for our AIRGARD ambient air analyzers, which rapidly detects toxic gases. Our initial focus was on critical government facilities. We have expanded our target market to improve the municipal and commercial applications such as transportation hubs and other public spaces where AIRGARD is gaining traction as well. I’m happy to report that this quarter AIRGARD has been selected by a second major transportation system to monitor the ambient air and provide detection and early warning for hazardous chemicals. Continuing in the environmental applications, last quarter we announced the acquisition of Precisive, LLC an innovator of optical and analyzer technology. These precision analyze are based on TFS to provide real-time gas analysis in the natural gas and hydrocarbon processing industries, a new complimentary environmental application. This quarter we successfully completed the integration into MKS and although still a small part of our revenue, we’ve begun to see increased quarter activity on these products. In many of our other markets, we saw a follow-on business. The revenue stream which is a reward of winning a design. In the flat panel display market, mid to high end cell phones continue to see healthy growth and we’re seeing follow-on sales of our ozone products, which are used to clean the displays between processing steps. This quarter, we received orders from both Chinese and Taiwanese flat panel display makers to dissolve ozone as they increased production to support mobile phone demand. We continue to see growth opportunities in the coating market as well. This quarter we received additional follow-on orders for RF power and matching, as well as flow control for tools to provide waterproof coating, affordable electronic devices. We also saw demand for flow products for energy efficient glass coatings, as well as the hard coatings for wear resistance. A G-Series MFCs continue to gain market acceptance in coating as well as other industrial applications. And today we’ve shipped more than 20,000 units to more than 850 customers around the globe. In the analytical market, we received a follow-on order from the analytical instrument maker for RGAs for additional diagnostic functionality, improving position and performance. As I said, continuous such -- orders [ph] such as these, are the rewards becoming designed in on a product and we continue to support and work with these existing customers as they develop new tools and applications which will open in future opportunities. At this point, I’d like to turn to our outlook for the third quarter. Reports from the recent SEMICON Trade Show indicate a continued healthy market for semiconductor production equipment to support the technology inflection being addressed. Our near-term visibility indicates a continued positive business environment in both our semiconductor and other advanced markets for the third quarter. Based on these factors and looking at current business levels, we anticipate that sales in the third quarter may range from $195 million to $215 million and these volumes are non-GAAP net earnings to range from $0.50 to $0.64 per share. At this point, I’ll turn the call over to Seth, to discuss our financial results and expand on our guidance.