Balu Balakrishnan
Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus
Thanks, Joe, and good afternoon. Like many of our peers, we are experiencing a soft patch in demand, driven by global microeconomic conditions. After relatively healthy orders through the month of May, bookings slowed significantly in June, accompanied by a decrease in distribution sell-through suggesting that demand had softened or, at the very least, that the end customers have become more cautious about taking on inventory in the face of uncertain demand conditions.
The slowdown was most pronounced in the consumer market, which is our largest end market at about 40% of sales. Although we saw solid sequential growth in consumer appliances, revenues from consumer electronics applications declined a double-digit rate sequentially, resulting in a mid-single-digit decrease for the overall consumer market.
Communications revenues were also down mid-single digits as a result of weakness at specific end customers in the mobile phone market. We did see continued strength in industrial end market, which grew at a double-digit rate sequentially, excluding CONCEPT, driven by LED lighting, metering and industrial control applications, among others.
Including the impact of CONCEPT acquisition, industrial revenues increased nearly 50% sequentially. Revenues from computer end market grew mid-single-digits sequentially on strength in desktops, including both standby applications and the continuing ramp of high-powered products for desktop main power supplies.
All told, second quarter revenues were $76.4 million, up 6% sequentially and roughly flat, excluding the impact of CONCEPT acquisition, which closed on May 1. While revenue came in below expectations, non-GAAP gross margin was up more than 3 percentage points sequentially, thanks to continued execution on our cost-reduction efforts, plus a more favorable end market mix reflecting the relative strength of industrial and consumer appliance applications. Of course, changes in mix can be transitory in the short term, and we do expect a slightly less favorable mix in the second half of this year as we ramp new designs in lower margin markets like mobile phone chargers.
But it's clear now that our efforts to grow revenues in markets like industrial and consumer appliances have resulted in a sustainable shift in our end market mix. Whereas a decade ago, roughly 2/3 of our sales came from cell phone chargers and PCs, today, nearly 2/3 of our revenues come from industrial and consumer applications where churn is lower, margins are higher and the customers tend to place a greater value on factors like reliability and efficiency.
Overall, we are ahead of plan with respect to the gross margin trajectory we have discussed on recent conference calls, and we expect our non-GAAP gross margin to remain above the 50% benchmark for the balance of the year. A stronger gross margin combined with our new lower tax rate should enable us to continue delivering healthy earnings and cash flow even in the event that demand remains muted.
Notwithstanding the near-term macro headwinds, we remain focused on the unique set of growth opportunities we have talked about over the past couple of years, including energy efficiency, LED lighting and the expansion of our addressable market to include higher power levels.
Regarding energy efficiency, we are seeing increased design activity by customers working towards the new European limitation on standby consumption, which will be reduced from its current level of 1 watt down to 500 milliwatts beginning in 2013. We are seeing particular interest in our Zero products, which target specific sources of standby consumption in appliances, computers and a number of other applications, giving designers a convenient, cost-effective way to reduce waste and meet the tighter standards.
Standards development continues in the U.S. as well, including a rule-making process now underway at the California Energy Commission, which will result in new standards for end products such as game consoles, displays, set-top boxes and computers. New energy STAR specifications for TVs are scheduled to take effect next May, while Department of Energy is well on its way to enacting some of the world's tightest efficiency standards for external adapters and battery chargers.
The push for higher efficiency in chargers and adapters is especially noteworthy in light of rising power requirements for mobile devices. High efficiency and low-standby consumption become more difficult to achieve cost-effectively as power levels rise, requiring ever more advanced power conversion products.
Two weeks ago, we launched LinkSwitch-HP, the latest in our LinkSwitch line of primary-side control chips, with exactly this need in mind. Power Integrations pioneered primary-side regulation with our original LinkSwitch more than a decade ago and LinkSwitch remains the industry's leading primary-side product line. The key benefit of primary-side control is the ability to sense the output power supply -- output of power supply through the transformer, eliminating the need for unreliable, expensive optical feedback circuitry. Because this feedback components consume meaningful amount of power, their elimination gives primary-side control an inherent advantage when it comes to meeting stringent efficiency specs.
The key limitation of primary-side control until now has been its lack of suitability above a certain power level, where a high degree of accuracy is harder to achieve without feedback circuitry. LinkSwitch-HP breaks through this barrier with an unprecedented level of accuracy, enabling the use of primary-side control in applications up to 90 watts of output, including adapters for such products as Ultrabooks, Tablets, set-top boxes and LCD monitors with exceptionally low -- no-load consumption of less than 30 milliwatts. LED lighting continues to be another important growth driver for us with double-digit sequential growth and more than 100 new design wins in the second quarter. We also saw strong growth in revenues from the 50- to 500-watt market, and we remain on track to roughly double sales of these products this year.
On May 1, we completed our acquisition of CONCEPT, the latest step in our efforts to expand the addressable market to include higher power levels. CONCEPT IGBT drivers address all 3 phases of the clean power ecosystem, demand-side applications like industrial motor drives and electric vehicles, distribution applications such as high-voltage DC transmission systems and generation applications such as solar and wind power systems.
Our integration of CONCEPT is progressing well, and while demand for CONCEPT products is not immune to the current macroeconomic headwinds, we are encouraged by our interactions with CONCEPT customers since the acquisition and excited about the pace of design activity.
Key design wins for CONCEPT products in Q2 included a high-voltage DC transmission system in the U.K., a solar installation for the India market and a locomotive application for China, all of which we expect to start production later this year.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Sandeep for a review of the financials.