Chris Diorio
Analyst · ROTH Capital. Please go ahead with your question
Thank you, Ellen. And thank you all for joining the call. Our first quarter results were strong, with revenue and profitability exceeding our guidance. Already strong fourth quarter 2020 bookings became even stronger in first quarter 2021, setting another quarterly record. High demand, record bookings and terrific progress on our retail loss-prevention engine highlight underlying strength in the business. But even as those bookings grow, limited wafer supply constrains our ability to fully capitalize on the opportunity. We know the wafer headwinds will abate, but we remain uncertain when, so today we are carefully managing our partners’ needs, and those of the growing RAIN market, against that limited wafer supply. Endpoint IC demand surged in the first quarter. Revenue and bookings exceeded our expectations and set quarterly records, driven, in part, by enterprises accelerating their digital transformation. At the same time, worldwide wafer demand also surged, restricting our wafer upside. Leveraging that strong demand and tight supply, we sold a significant amount of fully reserved endpoint IC inventory in the first quarter. Despite us shipping record endpoint IC volumes, our inlay partners are, for the most part, operating hand-to-mouth, having consumed their own inventory. Recall we anticipated today’s wafer shortfalls back in mid-2020, and built 200-millimeter wafer inventory in the depths of the pandemic. In hindsight, we didn’t build enough. We shipped that prebuilt inventory in first quarter 2021 at a pace that significantly exceeds our quarterly 200-millimeter wafer supply. Also recall our newly introduced Impinj M700 ramped more slowly in 2020 than we hoped, as our partners focused on existing volume runners even as we invested in additional 300-millimeter wafer post-processing capacity. In hindsight, we didn’t invest soon enough. First quarter 2021 M700 demand was many times larger than third quarter 2020, outstripping our current 300-millimeter post-processing capacity. With our capacity expansion scheduled to begin coming online in third quarter, for now we are maturing the capacity we have. Looking into second and third quarters, endpoint IC demand far exceeds our wafer supply. And until our M700 post-processing capacity expansion is fully operational later this year, our 300-millimeter output remains constrained. We spoke last quarter about navigating the crossover between our declining 200-millimeter inventory and our ecosystem ramping the M700, but with today’s constraints, our focus is simply total unit volumes. Short of a significant wafer increase from our foundry partner, we do not expect endpoint IC revenue to grow in the second quarter, despite 2021 orders already exceeding total units shipped in 2020. We plan to moderate our inventory burndown, at least for the next two quarters, to stretch our IC supply through 2021. In so doing, we recognize our product shipments will not satisfy customer or market demand, and we will need to prioritize those shipments. First quarter systems revenue declined quarter-over-quarter. Delays at our packaging subcontractor restricted our reader IC supply, causing a revenue shortfall that exceeded increased revenue from improved reader sales. We expect those packaging delays to moderate in second quarter, but reader IC supply will remain below demand and we expect to carry significant backlog into third quarter. Like for endpoint ICs, our reader IC partners are operating hand-to-mouth. Reader revenue increased, bucking typical seasonal quarter-over-quarter declines, with green shoots in partner-led dock-door opportunities driving reader strength in supply chain and logistics. But here again, demand exceeded supply, with temporary component shortfalls limiting our reader production and causing some opportunities to shift into second quarter. Also, our partner channel reduced their aggregate inventory, with certain reader products at very lean levels. We anticipate the component shortfalls to moderate and supply to normalize in second quarter. In retail, we shipped the first production units of our RAIN-based loss-prevention engine, recognizing modest first quarter revenue. We expect to largely deliver the remaining units against the $6 million prepayment from the visionary European retailer in second quarter. For the second consecutive quarter, we also generated meaningful revenue from a self-checkout deployment by a leading global retailer based in Asia, with that retailer now looking at RAIN-based loss prevention. Today, I am even more convinced that self-checkout and loss prevention represent a terrific opportunity for our platform, with the potential to grow our long-term endpoint IC opportunities via the 100% tagging required by touchless consumer self-checkout. On the organizational side, we are thrilled to welcome Steve Sanghi to our board of directors. Steve brings with him a wealth and depth of operational and business insights, and is already providing valuable input to our business. I look forward to Steve’s advice and help in the months and years ahead. We are also thrilled to announce that Brian Wong, a four-time private company CEO, will join Impinj in early May as our chief product officer. Brian brings 35 years of technical and business expertise in emerging technology markets, as well as deep semiconductor know-how. Brian, welcome to the team and happy birthday today. In closing, we delivered a record bookings quarter, strengthened our team and see strong demand and growth opportunities ahead. We exceeded our profitability guidance, delivered positive adjusted EBITDA and positive free cash flow. We also face IC supply constraints that require empathy for and close alignment with our partners as well as superb operational execution by us. With the utmost confidence in the Impinj team, I am energized by the opportunities ahead and our efforts to deliver against them. I will now turn the call over to Cary.