Patrick Lo
Analyst · Guggenheim. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Christopher and thank you everyone for joining today’s call. 2015 was a very successful year for us, as we entered a new growth product category, expanded our premium pricing model and restructured our service provider business for improved profitability. At the beginning of the year we launched Arlo, the world’s first wire free high definition IP camera. And in short 12 months, we became the undisputed number one market shareholder in North America, Western Europe and Australia for the retail IP camera segment. We also released cutting edge Wi-Fi technology with our new Nighthawk X8 router, which they built, the world’s first TriBand 4x4 an active antenna technology, helping to push of the ASP of our product line up as well as the overall industries ASP. On the commercial side of the business, we introduced the world’s first quad-mode 11ac access points and the world’s first web managed 28 port 10-gig switches. Paving the way for success in 2016 is SMBs transition to 11ac and 10-gig. As for the service provider business unit, we have restructured our business and improved its contribution margin percentage in the second half of 2016. Last but not least, we returned $117.7 million to our shareholders in 2015 through our share repurchase program. We will look to build on all these successes in the year ahead. For the full year of 2015, NETGEAR net revenue was $1.3 billion, which is down 6.7% or $92.8 million compared to full year 2014 revenue. The entire decline was due to the resizing of our service provider business from approximately $580 million in 2014 to about $421 million in 2015. Our non-carrier business grew robustly year-over-year from approximately $814 million to over $879 million or 8%. Specifically, our retail business unit grew an impressive 20.9% year-over-year. For the fourth quarter of 2015, NETGEAR’s net revenue was $360.9 million, which is up 2.2% on a year-over-year basis and up 5.5% on a sequential basis. Once again, RBU or the retail business unit was the growth engine up 33.6% year-over-year as compared to Q4 of 2014. Non-GAAP diluted EPS for the full year of 2015 was $2.23. Non-GAAP diluted EPS for the fourth quarter of 2015 was $0.83, which is up 27.7% year-over-year. For a full reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please refer to the fourth quarter and full year 2015 earnings press release. During the fourth quarter, net revenue for the Americas was $231.8 million which is up 19.1% year-over-year and up 5.5% quarter-over-quarter. Holiday sales exceeded even our most ambitious target for the retail business unit driven by a successful extended cyber week and the promotion of our Nighthawk line of premium home routers. In addition, it was the first holiday season for our Arlo line of home security cameras. The holiday demand for this product category was significantly more than the seasonal uplift that we usually experienced in the router category. Europe, the Middle East and Africa or EMEA net revenue was $86.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2015 which is down 18.2% year-over-year and up 11.8% quarter-over-quarter, while the depreciation of European currency continues to make year-over-year comparisons difficult we are pleased with the sequential improvement that we saw in this region. The sequential increase was primarily driven by holiday demand for our Arlo cameras and Nighthawk routers and gateway Our Asia-Pacific or APAC net revenue was $42.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2015, which is down 19.2% from the prior year’s comparable quarter and down 5% quarter-over-quarter. Once again, the APAC region’s results were challenged year-over-year due to the ForEx headwinds. Meanwhile the quarter-on-quarter revenue was due to lighter service provider revenue. In Q4, we shipped 6.1 million units. We also introduced 13 new products during the quarter. As always, sales channel development is the key focus for the company as our sales channel remains a critical strategic asset. By the end of the fourth quarter of 2015, our products were sold in approximately 27,000 retail outlets around the world and our number of value added retailers stand at approximately 31,000. Now let’s turn to our review of the fourth quarter results for our three business units; retail, commercial and service provider. For the retail business unit or RBU, net revenue came in at $197.5 million which is up 33.6% on year-over-year basis and up 20.4% sequentially. For the second quarter in a row, the retail business unit had a record quarter in terms of revenue, driven by the strength of our Nighthawk routers and gateways as well as our Arlo IP cameras during the holiday season. Of note, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in North America have transformed from single day sale events into a robust, continuous two-week sale, resulting in a more pronounced holiday uplift. This year, we focus our holiday promotion on the high ASP Nighthawk routers which was a huge hit in the market enabling us to reach new high in market share and drive Q4 results beyond our expectation. Turning to products, our Arlo revenue continues to grow and we expanded the product line during Q4, with the introduction of Arlo Q. Arlo Q is an AC-powered Wi-Fi camera with 1080p High Definition video, 2-way audio, night vision 24/7cloud video recording and 7-days of free cloud storage for uses. Unlike the original Arlo, wire free cameras, Arlo-Q is designed specifically for continuous indoor use where users can listen in and talk back through the camera. Two years ago, the retailed business unit was a little more than one third of NETGEAR’s overall business. Now it is approaching half of the company’s revenue. In 2016, coupled with the anticipated recovery of our CBU business our non-service provider business will be over 75% of our overall revenue. Given the greater proportion of revenue coming from RBU, increased demand that we experienced during the two weeks income passing Black Friday and Cyber Monday and the exceptional holiday uplift from IP cameras, we believe the seasonal strength of Q4 versus subsequent Q1 will be more pronounced than we typically experience as reflected in the guidance that Christine will provide in a moment. The commercial business unit or CBU generated net revenue of $63.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2015 which is down 19.5% on a year-over-year basis and down 2% sequentially. As discussed on the prior earnings call, the year-over-year decline in CBU is primarily the result of a difficult small business market climate in Europe cost by currency headwinds. We are also seeing continuous channel shift from traditional distribution sales to online sales of our CBU products, resulting in continuous de-stocking in the distribution channel. Since our net revenue is based on selling for the distribution channel, our CBU revenue has been negatively impacted throughout 2015. However, we expect that distributor de-stocking will normalize and should have a much smaller negative impact on CBU going forward. For our Service Provider Business Unit, or SPBU, net revenue came in at $99.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2015. While this is down 21% year-over-year and down 11.7% on a sequential basis, it is within the formerly announced revenue range that we shared for fiscal year 2015. More importantly SPBU turned significantly more profitable in the second half of 2015, in both absolute dollar terms and on a percentage basis, compared to the second half of 2014 and the first half of 2015. As previously announced at our Analyst Day, we expect SPBU revenue to further decline in 2016 as we continue to shift away from low margin products and accounts. As a result, we expect the revenue level will be approximately $75 million per quarter starting in Q1 of 2016. In order to keep cost in mind with this reduced revenue outlook and better focus our service provider team, we underwent a small restructuring exercise in January 2016 to resize the cost structure of this business unit. We expect this will allow us to continue to drive profitability within this business unit by focusing on the delivery of premium advance technology products to our committed service provider customers. We also used this opportunity to re-deploy some R&D resources for Arlo and our broader smart home initiatives. The three areas that we continue to invest in for SPBU are DocSys 3.1, VDSL and LTE as these are the technologies that are valued by our service provider customers. We are pleased to announce that we were one of the first vendors to receive Cablelab certification for DocSys 3.1 product. Additionally in Q1, we launched the World’s First 4x4 802.11ac vDSL Voice Gateway with Telstra in Australia. Lastly, during Q4 we also provided the World’s First LTE Advanced Category 9 mobile hotspots for deployment in Australia. This is the world’s first mobile data device capable of over 500 megabits per segment download speed in a live LTE Advanced network. We expect to have this product deployed in other parts of the world in Q1 and throughout 2016. In summary, we are pleased with our fourth quarter results and believe that we are well positioned for success in 2016. For 2016, we believe we can further increase the premium value of our Nighthawk line of Wi-Fi routers, gateways and extenders [ph] with first to market proprietary hardware [ph] and software and gain more share worldwide. Our Arlo cameras achieved over 20% market share in the North America retail channel in December 2015 and we expect to increase our share further in 2016 with the addition of new products and wider distribution throughout 2016. We are also hoping to enter a new product category in the smart home market. For CBU with the recent ground breaking Quadmode 11ac wireless line introduction and the successful debut of our high port [ph] count web managed 10-gig switch. We believe 2016 will be a growth year with many new products waiting in the wings. For SPBU we continue to service our most valued customer who desires superior technologies and reliability thus ensuring our profitability levels. I will now turn the call over to Christine for further commentary on our financials for the fourth quarter and full year.