Earnings Labs

Power Integrations, Inc. (POWI)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 28, 2016

$65.54

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Aaron and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Power Integrations' First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Thank you. Joe Shiffler, Director of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference. Joe Shiffler - Director, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications: Thank you, Aaron. Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us to discuss Power Integrations' financial results for the first quarter of 2016. With me on the call are Balu Balakrishnan, President and CEO of Power Integrations; and Sandeep Nayyar, our Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will refer to financial measures not calculated according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Please refer to today's press release available on our website at investors.power.com, for an explanation of our reasons for using such non-GAAP measures, as well as tables reconciling these measures to our GAAP results. Our discussion today, including the Q&A session, will include forward-looking statements reflecting our forecast of certain aspects of the company's future business and financial results. Such statements are denoted by words like will, would, believe, should, expect, outlook, estimate, plan, goal, anticipate, forecast and similar expressions that look toward future events or performance. Forward-looking statements are based on current information that is dynamic and subject to abrupt changes. Our forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in our statements. Such risks and uncertainties are discussed in today's press release and in our most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 11, 2016. This conference call is the property of Power Integrations, and any recording or rebroadcast is expressly prohibited without the written consent of Power Integrations. And now, I'll turn the call over to Balu. Balu…

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Steve Smigie of Raymond James. Your line is open. Vincent Celentano - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. This is Vin Celentano on for Steve. I had a question about InnoSwitch as far as, I guess at this point of time, what is revenue in terms of not smartphone related? I mean how do you see that shifting over time? It sounds like the new generation of InnoSwitch applies to more of a higher voltage, so I think this would mean a higher share of not smartphone application, so you kind of speak forward to that. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: At the moment, the non cell phone revenue for InnoSwitch is very small. It is negligible, because it takes approximately nine months to a year before the products go into production and we only introduced the device for the non-cell phone market in late 2015. So, we don't expect any revenue until late this year and again, that will be small; only next year, you will see significant revenue. Vincent Celentano - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, thanks. And then looking at the LED market, I thought that you saw a bit of a decline in the quarter. Could you talk about if it's grown at all year-over-year and then your overall expectations for 2016? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I did grow year-over-year. I believe it also grew in Q4. Q4 and Q1, it grew year-over-year. Vincent Celentano - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great. Do you have any expectations for 2016 for LED? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We do expect it to grow in 2016 over 2015. There are a couple of good reasons for it. One is, if you remember in 2015, we walked away from the lower-end commoditized market for light bulbs in Asia and that transition is pretty much over now. That was a significant headwind for us in 2014 and 2015. And now, we are focusing on the higher-end bulbs and the commercial industrial market, and we are seeing a pick-up there as a result of products that we are now specifically targeting to those markets. We introduced a product called LYTSwitch-3 and we will be introducing additional products, and that has a pretty fast design cycle. So, we expect to see an increase in LED revenue this year. Vincent Celentano - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great. Thank you very much. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Evan Wang of Stifel. Your line is open. Tore Svanberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yes, hi, it's actually Tore Svanberg from Stifel. The first question is, in the past, you have talked a little bit about your design wins in rapid charge. Would you care to update us on that, obviously not naming companies, but the actual number? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. Hi, Tore. We have design wins in rapid charging in literally all large OEMs who are using rapid charging today. And this includes the Korean players, the Chinese players and even a European player, I would say. So, that's doing very well. Now, you were asking specifically the actually numbers – what was your question on the numbers? Tore Svanberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yes, I think in the past, you've talked about 10, 15 different models using your technology. I was just wondering if there's enough to update there. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, there are many models even within each one of the large customers, and those models don't necessarily correspond to the cell phone models. But I would say one of the leading cell phone models that was introduced recently in China that's doing extremely well, uses our InnoSwitch as a rapid charger. Tore Svanberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Very good. And when would you expect USB PD to become a more material part of the market? We're kind of hearing mixed reviews there. Some say this year, some say next year. What's your current take on USB PD? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: From everything we are hearing from customers, it's going to be negligible…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ross Seymore of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Ross C. Seymore - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hi guys, thanks for letting me ask a question. Just wondered, an earlier question asked about InnoSwitch revenues outside of phones. Can you talk about what it is overall as a percentage of your revenues, absolute dollars, whatever metric you are willing to share? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think we have said in the last conference call that we grew, we quadrupled our revenue in 2015 from the revenue we had in 2014 which was roughly about $5 million. We quadrupled in 2015. And for this year, we think that in dollar terms, it will be a similar growth as last year. It won't quadruple obviously, because we have the larger revenue now, but in dollar terms it will be a $12 million to $15 million increase from last year.

Ross C. Seymore - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

And then as we think about the mix of the business going forward and especially as you layer in some of the new products with the cost down version of InnoSwitch and then InnoSwitch going into new markets, whether, Balu or Sandeep, however you want to answer this, how do we think about gross margin if the biggest growth driver in 2016 comes from InnoSwitch and from what you said earlier, mainly in handset-driven applications? Sandeep Nayyar - Vice President, Finance & Chief Financial Officer: So, I think for this year, if you remember, we talked about that we will hover around 51% give and take depending on the mix. And you have seen that we were above that in Q1, mix going the other way a little bit down. So I think we will – for this year, we're going to hover around the 51%. Now, we are going to get a bit of a challenge in Q4 of this quarter because, as you know, the yen has moved against us and it will flow a little unfavorably and be a little bit of a headwind by Q4. I think if you're looking at from a long-term perspective, with all the products that we have in the pipeline, I think our model from a long-term still stand in the 50% to 55%.

Ross C. Seymore - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

And I guess this is my last question, one for you Sandeep. You guys did a great job in the first quarter; the second quarter goes up a little bit but still less than what I had expected. How should we think of OpEx as we transition through the year? Is kind of somewhere around that 31%... Sandeep Nayyar - Vice President, Finance & Chief Financial Officer: Yes. I would hover around the 31% give and take. So slightly up to slightly – hovering around there.

Ross C. Seymore - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Got you. Congrats on a great quarter. Thanks, guys. Sandeep Nayyar - Vice President, Finance & Chief Financial Officer: Thank you. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Ross.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Evan Wang with Stifel. Your line is open. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yes, thank you for taking my question. You talked about in your prepared remarks some strange thing in China for high power. I was wondering if you can give us some comparison against what your expectation earlier in the year that the Chinese Government might be resuming its infrastructure spending as part of the stimulus program and how is that looking now for 2016? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It is actually looking very good. They have resumed investment in infrastructure. There are number of new high-voltage DC transition lines being installed in China. In addition to that, they are converting their public transportation, which is buses, into electric buses starting from Beijing and Shanghai where they have the most pollution, and we have actually a significant portion of that business that we have won on and we expect that to contribute to our growth this year and next year. The other area we're seeing really good growth, which is not related to government spending, but related to their electrification of motor bike -- actually scooters I should say. China is really pushing hard on converting public to – I mean, the private transportation also into electric vehicles. And one of their pushes is to convert -- get rid of all of their scooters and motorcycles, and replace them with electric bikes. And these electric bikes, we have won again very significant design for charges for these bikes. And it actually uses our TOPSwitch product and it's growing very nicely for us. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: I agree, thank you for that clarification. I have one more question,…

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Joe Shiffler, I turn the call back over to you. Joe Shiffler - Director, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications: Okay, Aaron, thank you. Thanks everyone for listening. There will be a replay of this call available on our web site at investors.power.com. Thanks again for listening and good afternoon.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.