Kevin Conley
Analyst · Stifel. Please go ahead
Thank you, Dave. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to be speaking with you on my first Everspin quarterly earnings call. It has been a little over two months since I joined, and I want to reiterate how pleased I am to be working with a very talented team that possesses such leadership technology. Let me extend that by expressing my gratitude for the strong and supportive engagement I've received from many of our key customers and ecosystem partners. I would like to start this call by announcing we achieved record shipments and revenue in the third quarter. While our revenue was below the guidance provided last quarter, we have beaten EPS guidance due to higher margins. Jeff will provide the financial specifics later in this call. Now I would like to share with you our vision and how we see the market developing toward it. We believe that there is a strong trend that is creating a consistently growing appetite for ubiquitous data. As a result, computing from edge devices to the data center has an increasing demand for persistent or nonvolatile memory that delivers critical performance gains and power savings. Today we already see this opportunity manifesting itself in the IoT space creating a significant opportunity for Spin Transfer Torque or STT-MRAM technology in embedded applications. We are pleased by the progress we have made with our joint development partner, GlobalFoundries in developing embedded STT-MRAM or eMRAM for industrial and wearable IoT SOC customers on their 22 nm FDX technology node. GlobalFoundries has further plans to develop and commercialize this 22FDX eMRAM technology for automotive applications. GLOBALFOUNDRIES' recent announcements and announcements from others in this space indicate that the STT-MRAM revolution is beginning and we are proud to enable GlobalFoundries as our partner to provide high reliability, low power solutions for their customers. We also continue to be optimistic and I believe that discrete STT-MRAM will deliver value and applications demanding high-performance nonvolatile memory. As a result of the slowdown in Moore's Law, DRAM manufacturing cost for big gains are expected to diminish creating an opportunity for STT-MRAM to narrow the gap in cost. We also see additional benefits in the current supply capacity constraints holding DRAM's pricing up which we believe will also be a favorable factor in the adoption of STT-MRAM. It is still early in the development of the market for STT-MRAM components but we believe our lead in product development and market engagement put us in good position to capitalize on this long-term opportunity. With that goal in sight, what we must do is take our company from a developer of the innovative MRAM technology and turn it into one that can develop markets, scale operations and reduce costs to compete in what we expect to be a competitive MRAM market. In many ways I see similarities what we must accomplish that I experienced at SanDisk in the very early days. With that as a backdrop, I would like to take this opportunity to communicate two shifts in strategy related to both our standalone components as well as our nvNITRO storage module product. These shifts are rooted in the analysis of our past efforts and are designed to bring us the surest and fastest path to standalone STT-MRAM revenue through the primary focus on MRAM development execution. The first shift is that we have re-prioritized 256 Mb as the primary STT-MRAM vehicle for our customers to go to market. We are finding customer value in our 256 Mb components that are ready for production in application for performance, reliability and endurance outweigh the importance of memory density. This gives us the lower risk path to STT-MRAM revenue in the coming quarters. Our one gigabit technology requires more work to meet the demanding requirements of our customers. As a result production milestones will be later than what was previously communicated. Nevertheless we are increasing our diligence and execution focusing on reduced iteration cycles and more predictable outcome on this one gigabit program. As our STT-MRAM products are coming to market we are stepping up our ecosystem engagements to create more attach points for our ST DDR3 and ST DDR4 interfaces including the licensing of system technology that enhances memory performance. The second shift in strategy is based on the recognition that our capabilities are strongest as a supplier of memory components and that differs tremendously from the capabilities of the storage module supplier. Therefore, we have shifted our strategy on module components strictly to one of market enablement and that the qualification, production, and direct sales of our nvNITRO technology will be done through partners better suited to that task. With these recent shifts I'd like to provide you an update on our progress with our customers. For clarity I would like to explain the terminology I use in reference to customer product engagements. We consider our technology “designed in” when sample parts have been evaluated and our inclusion in a development is communicated to us as plan of record by the customer. We will consider an engagement a “design win” when our products have completed qualification and we have a production forecast. As previously communicated, we had one customer evaluation of our 1 Gb components in progress while we are designed in with a major Flash Array manufacturer. Recognizing with us that 256 Mb could still meet their requirements and give a more secure path to market that effort has now been migrated from 1 Gb to 256 Mb. While we never want to disappoint our customers, we believe that we must ensure successful execution to build confidence in our company and its technology to bring them success. The customer qualification of the 256 Mb with his major Flash Array manufacturer continues on the schedule that we previously communicated for the 1 Gb and we expect volume revenue to begin in the second quarter of 2018. We did provide engineering samples of our 1 Gb components in Q3 as planned, but we now anticipate that the 1 Gb qualification samples will be later than previously communicated. We expect some key internal 1 Gb development milestones to occur this quarter and we will communicate more on the 1 Gb outlook after we have that data. On modules, our partner SMART Modular Technologies is onboard with our shift in strategy and is ready to bring their full strength as a leading supplier of NVM modules to bear in making nvNITRO a success. Our strength in STT-MRAM components and their integration to systems coupled with SMART's strengths in module design, manufacturing, and supply are an ideal platform upon which to deliver value to the market. Our 256 Mb component is designed in here as well and we expect qualification to complete this quarter. We now turn our joint attention with them to bringing the benefits of these innovative product ultra- low no-tail latency to enterprise workflows. While to date we have spent enormous energy in the creation of innovative MRAM solutions we now turn to the task of bringing this innovation to the market and delivering value to our customers. We have initial traction in the enterprise storage space and we will look to bring this value to other adjacent markets. In past calls much of our dialogue centered on communicating the state of our future STT-MRAM products, but now I'd like to emphasize how very pleased I am to see the sustained value that our existing Toggle MRAM and legacy products continue to deliver to our customers. During the third quarter we recognized record revenue and strong gross margin on these workforce products. As we look at what currently is holding us back in getting the most out of our fab it is apparent that we need to increase the focus on Toggle yield stabilization that brings cost and capacity benefits. The challenge for a company our size is to do so without slowing it down on ST-MRAM development. In pursuit of these critical goals we are strengthening our management team and so I am pleased to announce that Norm Armour has joined Everspin as Vice President of Operations. Norm brings a wealth of logic and memory fab experience from companies like GlobalFoundries and Micron coupled with experience in magnetics manufacturing during his time at Western Digital. Norm assumes responsibility for our captive and partner fab management as well as general operations functions. He will drive his team to further our current profitability gains and prepare us for our operational scaling with the addition of a fabless business model. At this time, I'm also pleased to report that we are in the process of signing a two-year extension to our sublease agreement with NXP securing a space for our Toggle production line into 2020. As we build our team strength to grow our business and bring predictability and execution we will also invest in further scaling the density and reducing the cost of our memory components. A key factor in opening up new market demand, I'm a strong believer in the need to maintain leadership through advanced develop and the team is eager to increase focus on this core strength that has been the center of Everspin's ability to lead the market. As such we intend to continue investing in advanced MRAM research and development and maintain a strong technology roadmap. With that, I'll now turn it over to Jeff, our CFO, who will walk you through the specifics of our financial performance in the third quarter and the guidance for Q4.