Bryan Murray
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
02:08 Thank you, Eric, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. Net revenue for the quarter ended April 3, 2022 was $210.6 million, down 33.8% year-over-year and within our recently revised guidance range. 02:28 Our SMB products continued to perform above our expectation, and if it were not for COVID induced shutdown in Shenzhen in the last month of the quarter, the temporary halt to component supply to our factories in Southeast Asia, our SMB revenue would have been another 5% to 7% higher. We continue to see momentum in the super-premium mesh market represented by our $1,000 plus Orbi 8 and 9 product offerings. Combined, they grew year-on-year and sequentially in this highly profitable segments, in which we are the only player in the market. 03:08 We saw the broader U.S. market contract, exiting the quarter roughly flat to 2019 levels. The lower previous expectation of 15% above pre-pandemic levels. The contraction was primarily driven by the lower end of the market. Being the biggest market shareholder, this decline in market size negatively impacted sales of CHP products sold in retail, with revenues coming in meaningfully below our expectations at the beginning of the quarter. Our market share is steady at 44% in the U.S. consumer WiFi market. 03:48 We ended the first quarter with a non-GAAP operating loss of $9.3 million and non-GAAP operating margin of negative 4.4%, primarily resulting from a loss of top line leverage. In response to this new reduced overall market size, we plan to reduce CHP resources that have been focused on areas that are now declining, while making sure we have adequate investment and those that will deliver future growth such as our Orbi 8 and 9 products, as well as subscription services. 04:23 Additionally, we are taking a new and more efficient approach on how we deploy some of our marketing activities to drive a better return on our investment. Overall, these efforts will better align our cost structure to the projected revenue levels of our CHP business. For the first quarter of 2022, net revenue for the Americas was $144.6 million, a decline of 34% year-over-year and down 9.3% on a sequential basis. 04:56 EMEA net revenue was $36.9 million, which is down 39.7% year-over-year and down 26.3% quarter-over-quarter. Our APAC net revenue was $29 million, which is down 22.9% from the prior-year comparable period and down 30.4% sequentially. Revenue declines were principally driven by the retail portion of the CHP business, with revenue in the prior-year comparative period boosted by elevated end user demand tied to the pandemic and replenishment of previously depleted channel inventory levels. 05:37 For the first quarter of 2022, we shipped a total of approximately 2.4 million units, including 1.5 million nodes of wireless products. Shipments of all wired and wireless routers and gateways combined were about 784,000 units for the first quarter of 2022. The net revenue split between home and business products was about 62% and 38%, respectively. The net revenue split between wireless and wired products was about 63% and 37% respectively. 06:11 Products introduced in the last 15-months constituted about 26% for our first quarter shipments. While products introduced in the last 12-months contributed about 21% for our first quarter shipments. 06:24 From this point on, my discussion points will focus on non-GAAP numbers. The reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP is detailed in our earnings release distributed earlier today. Non-GAAP gross margins in the first quarter of 2022 was 28.2%, which is down 700 basis points as compared to 35.2% in the prior-year comparable period and down 180 basis points, compared to 30% in the fourth quarter of 2021. Increased material and production costs, as well as transportation costs impacted gross margin performance, compared to the prior year. 07:05 During the first quarter, we selectively began to increase prices and we plan to raise prices again for certain SMB products before the middle of the year. We believe these actions will help counterbalance material and transportation cost increases experienced in recent quarters as we progress through the year. 07:25 Total Q1 non-GAAP operating expenses came in at $68.7 million, which is down 1.4% year-over-year and up 0.4% sequentially. Our headcount was 766 as of the end of the quarter, down from 771 in Q4. We expect our headcount to continue to increase, but we will re-bounce our headcount deployment to focus resources and invest in areas that we believe will deliver future growth, such as ProAV, Orbi 8 and 9 WiFi systems and subscription services. 08:04 Our non-GAAP R&D expense for the first quarter was 10.8% of net revenue, as compared to 7.1% of net revenue in the prior-year comparable period and 8.7% of net revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021. To continue our technology and subscription service leadership, we are committed to continued investment in R&D. 08:28 Our non-GAAP tax rate was 16.5% in the first quarter of 2022. Looking at the bottom line for Q1, we reported non-GAAP net loss of $8.1 million and non-GAAP diluted net loss per share of $0.28. 08:46 Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the first quarter of 2022 with $263.8 million in cash and short-term investments, down $7.7 million from the prior quarter. During the quarter, $1.3 million of cash was provided by operations, which brings our total cash used by operations of the trailing 12-months to $17 million. We used $1 million in purchase of the property and equipment during the quarter, which brings our total cash used for capital expenditures of the trailing 12 months to $9.2 million. 09:23 In Q1, we spent $9.4 million to repurchase approximately 354,000 shares of NETGEAR common stock at an average price of $26.50 per share. Since the start of our repurchase activity in Q4 2013, we expect $636.9 million to repurchase 18.2 million shares. We are committed to returning value to our shareholders and plan to continue to opportunistically repurchase shares in future periods. Our fully diluted share count is approximately 29.6 million shares as of the end of the first quarter. 10:04 Now turning to the first quarter results for our product segments. The Connected Home segment, which includes our industry-leading Nighthawk, Orbi, Nighthawk Pro Gaming and Meural brands generated net revenue of $130.3 million in the quarter, which is down 45.9% on a year-over-year basis and down 25.2% sequentially. We experienced a year-over-year decline in both retail and service provider channels. As a reminder, the prior comparative period for the retail portion of the business was boosted by heightened consumer demand in response to the pandemic, along with stocking a depleted channel to meet the heightened demand. 10:50 Although the overall size of the U.S. consumer WiFi market contracted to roughly flat to pre-pandemic levels, we experienced strong demand for our super-premium higher margin WiFi mesh products with higher service attach rates, underscoring the confidence we have in our strategy for long-term profitable growth. Not only did we see our end user sales for these products for over 20%, as compared to year ago, but we also saw sequential growth contrary to normal seasonality. Our service provider business performed largely in line with expectations and we continue to expect a strong sequential increase in Q2 and subsequent quarters, despite continuing supply chain challenges. 11:37 The SMB segment continued to perform well in the face of supply chain challenges and generated net revenue of $80.2 million for the first quarter of 2022, which was up 4.2% on a year-over-year basis and up 4.1% sequentially. Our managed switch products continue to lead the way with over 80% growth as compared to prior year. The investments we made to develop the ProAV market are clearly bearing fruit. 12:06 Additionally, we see growing traction behind our portfolio of WiFi 6 cloud managed mesh wireless access points. However, once again due to supply chain challenges, we spent heavily in air freight to compensate for shipping and production delays, dampening the higher margin contribution from this business. Encouragingly, our market share in switches sold through the U.S. retail channel remained strong at 55% in Q1. 12:33 I'll now turn the call over to Patrick for his commentary, after which I'll provide guidance for the second quarter of 2022.