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QuickLogic Corporation (QUIK)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 14, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to QuickLogic Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2017 Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the Company’s formal remarks [Operator Instructions]. I’ll repeat these instructions after management completes their prepared remarks. Today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to the Company's Investor Relations representative, Ms. Moriah Shilton of LHA. Ms. Shilton, please go ahead.

Moriah Shilton

Analyst

Thank you, Andrew. Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today for QuickLogic's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2017 Results Conference Call. With us today are Brian Faith, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sue Cheung, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I will read a short Safe Harbor statement. Some of the comments QuickLogic makes today are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, stated expectations relating to revenue from new and mature products, statements pertaining to QuickLogic's future stock performance, design activity and its ability to convert new design opportunities into production shipments; timing and market acceptance of its customers' products; schedule changes in projected projections per date that could impact the timing of shipments; the Company's future evaluation systems; broadening its ecosystem partners, expected results and financial expectations for revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, profitability and cash. These statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary warnings that appear in QuickLogic's SEC filings. For additional information, please refer to the Company's SEC filings posted on its Web site and the SEC’s Web site. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this call involve risks and uncertainties, and that future events may differ materially from the statements made. For more details of the risks, uncertainties and assumption, please refer to those discussed under heading Risk Factors in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 1, 2017, the Company filed with the SEC on March 9, 2017. These forward-looking statements are made as of today, the day of the conference call, and management undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release any revisions of forward-looking statements in light of any new information or future events. Please note, QuickLogic uses its Web site, the Company blog QuickLogic HotSpot, corporate Twitter account, Facebook page and LinkedIn page, as channels of distribution of information about its products, its planned financial and other announcements, its attendance at upcoming investor and industry conferences, and other matters. Such information may be deemed material information, and QuickLogic may use these channels to comply with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. This call is open to all and is being webcast live. A supplemental presentation management will reference on today’s call is posted at QuickLogic’s IR portion of its Web site and also available through today's webcast. We will start today's call with the Company's strategic update from QuickLogic’s CEO, Brian Faith. And then CFO, Sue Cheung will provide financial results and guidance. Brian will deliver closing remarks and open the call for questions. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Brian Faith, President and CEO. Please go ahead, Brian.

Brian Faith

Analyst

Thank you, Moriah. And thank you all for joining our Q4 and fiscal 2017 conference call. I am very pleased with tangible progress we showcased in our CES suites last month and the favorable reception we received from the many customers and ecosystem partners that we met with during the show. The nine products we displayed at CES represent just the selection of the design wins that we expect will contribute to our growth this year. We shipped EOS S3 to a number of customers during Q4 2017 to support initial production and prototype builds. We expect these and other EOS S3 designs will begin moving into production late this quarter, and that the number of designs and volume will ramp beginning in Q2. I believe this trend will continue to build momentum during the second half of 2018, and that we are well positioned to realize our growth and profitability objectives. Before we get deeper into the progress we made with our sensor processing and embedded FPGA IP licensing initiatives, let’s take a minute to review 2017 and our outlook for 2018. In Q4 2017, display bridge revenue from our lead customer was down over $540,000 from Q4 2016. This was slightly more than I expected and was attributable to the customer’s end product mix shifting to larger form factor tablets that have never required a discrete display bridge. To be clear, the decline in display bridge revenue with this customer was not due to us losing any designs. Offsetting this decline in Q4 2017 were increased shipments of mature products and EOS S3, as well as shipments of new higher margin display bridge designs to other customers. While these offsets drove only a modest increase in revenue, the more favorable mix resulted in 57% increase in non-GAAP gross…

Sue Cheung

Analyst

Thank you, Brian. Good afternoon, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Please note we are reporting our non-GAAP results here. You may refer to the press release we issued today for a detailed reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP results and other financial statements. We’ve also posted an updated financial table on our IR web page that provides current and historical non-GAAP data. For Q4 2017, total revenue was $3 million within our guidance range. Our new product revenue was $1 million and the mature product revenue was $2 million. The primary reason new product revenue was below our forecast was lower than anticipated demand from Samsung for our ArcticLink III VX Display Bridge. Fourth quarter 2017 mature product revenue was above our forecast due to higher than anticipated demand from one of our large customers in the defense, security and aerospace industry. Samsung accounted for 10% of total revenue during the fourth quarter compared to 24% during the previous quarter, as we continue to diversify our customer base. Our Q4 2017 gross margin was 52%, above our forecasted range due to higher than anticipated sales of mature products, which carry a higher gross margin and a more favorable mix of new product sales. Operating expenses for Q4 totaled $4.6 million, which was within our forecasted range. R&D expenses were $2.3 million and SG&A expenses were $2.3 million. The net total for other income, expense and taxes in Q4 2017 was a credit of $65,000, which was due to a one-time year-end tax adjustment. This resulted in a net loss of approximately $3 million or $0.04 per share, essentially at the midpoint of our forecasted EPS range. We ended fourth quarter with approximately $16.5 million in cash. The net cash usage during the fourth quarter was $2.5 million,…

Brian Faith

Analyst

Thank you, Sue. 2017 marked an inflection point for QuickLogic, and CES provided us an opportunity to illustrate the momentum we have going into 2018 with a display showing some of the new customer products that are enabled with our EOS S3 SoC. With ArcticPro eFPGA IP licenses established with two fabrication partners and a third fab running our technology in production, we are very well positioned to finalize IP agreements with major semiconductor companies and OEMs for new SoC and ASIC designs. We currently have meaningful engagement activity targeting 40 nanometer processes at GlobalFoundries at SMIC, as well as numerous engagements targeting our soon to be released 22 nanometer FD-SOI eFPGA IP at GlobalFoundries. As I look forward to 2018, I do so with a very high level of confidence. QuickLogic has never been positioned as well as it is today for sustainable growth, and I think we will clearly illustrate that as we move through the year. I'd like to open the call for Q&A.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Gary Mobley with Benchmark. Your line is now open.

Gary Mobley

Analyst

If I can ask you a question about eFPGA. Just to be clear, were there any NREs received in the fourth quarter, and do you expect any additional NREs associated with your bond relationships. Are we in the wait and see mode in the next revenue catalyst being users of those that have eFPGA and SoC designs?

Brian Faith

Analyst

Yes, I think in Q4 we talked about not planning another foundry reporting agreement for laggard process, and we were going to focus on the sales and marketing efforts on the ones that we had reported and then moving forward. So we’d know we didn’t find any in Q4. Our focus with all of our foundry partners now is on go-to-market now that we have qualified processes with the ones we have in the test ship moving through GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX so we anticipate the revenue events will come from actual semiconductor companies or OEMs.

Gary Mobley

Analyst

And appreciate the commentary about the revenue tail for the Display Bridge products being $2.5 million per quarter for the balance of the year. What about some of the legacy products, which have been running maybe as much as $2 million a quarter, if not mistaken, there has been a whole lot of plowback into business. And just curious about the sustainability of that revenue source?

Brian Faith

Analyst

So just for clarity, the $2.5 million a quarter that we talked about is including the Display Bridge, the mature products and the connectivity FPGA solutions, so it’s not just Display Bridge. We do see that continuing at that pace for at least 2018, and it's going to go I'm sure well beyond that, we just don’t know at what rate at this point in time, but that's a good margin business for us it's a stable business and we see that moving forward. We do have new designs on FPGA. In our new FPGAs, we have new designs on the Display Bridge as that come into picture as we go through the year. But most of these sales and marketing efforts that we have with the company in a whole are focused on the EOS S3 and the embedded FPGA.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum.

Richard Shannon

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

Maybe ask you about the revenue guidance and some of the commentary regarding design wins. Brain just to make sure and I think I know the answer, but just want to make sure. You mentioned a number designs that you thought could start to ramp either late this quarter or early next. And did I catch your commentary right that you’re not expecting any of those or assuming any of those inward first quarter guidance. Is that correct?

Brian Faith

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

No, we are assuming semi EOS S3 in first quarter guidance. How much of that comes from the Alexa enabled ones, is going to be dependent on the call process that Amazon pushes out for people that have to get certified before they market it, as such. But there are other EOS design wins that we have started shipping small quantities during Q4 that we do have forecast for Q1 that are not Alexa enabled, but they are going to be revenue drivers for EOS S3 in this quarter.

Sue Cheung

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

Just want to add that, Richard, that helped the revenue from EOS S3 in Q1, helps to offset the downfall from Display Bridge from Samsung.

Richard Shannon

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

Brian, following on your commentary again about design wins, the once you listed you said were just a sample of or subset of all the designs out there. Were to you intent to describe all the designs at a late stage where you're getting some sense of forecast and shipment dates and production volumes from these guys or other ones out there exist that you haven't mentioned yet.

Brian Faith

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

If you look our funnel graphically, it going to look like upside down pyramid, which is typical in any sales funnel. So there is actually a lot of activity in the early stages and we go through the qualification process with these guys. And as they get in that middle phase where they’re done evaluating and they’re ready to start committing to TCBs that where we start to get a better sense of what they’re forecasting for their own products. So we are getting a better sense now, I would say, for the middle year. We’re getting a good idea for the backend of the year. But just in general, I would say that, we have probably until April or May where everything is got to be locked in for the year from a designing point of view, and that’s where we’ll really start to have a better sense of what the numbers will be based on their forecast. But for this early in the year, I think we have some fairly good visibility with the current designs.

Richard Shannon

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

Brian, also in your prepared remarks you talked about -- I thought may be alluded to competitive design win rates that I'm not sure. But maybe if you could discuss at what rate are you wining designs out there if anyone to quantify or qualify that in anyway just get a sense of relative competitiveness out there.

Brian Faith

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

I would qualify it in this way. If a customer wants that always on voice, we’ll probably have the conversation with that customer. And voice right now is so pervasive in the market that there is a lot of room for everybody that has a voice chip to gain market share. I don’t think we’re at the point at where we’re getting squeezed because the market is fixed in size and we have a very competitive situation. So due to that and the fact that our power is so low and compelling and the fact that we have a lot of these readymade solutions now all the way up to the Alexa Cloud with Qualcomm, and with Vimicro and with [Aroha]. Our hit rate is pretty high. I would say its well over 75% when we start to engage with the customer. If you look at some of the other use cases, there may be some more competitive situations. If you're looking at like for example, just the micro controller, there is a lot of people that just have micro controllers. Our focus so is to identifying areas where it really plays to our significant value proposition, which is power for voice, the integration of FPGA and then always on motion sensing. So the way we describe it also is that if somebody has their value for two of those four functions that integrate in S3, we’ve got a really good hit rate. And those four functions just so everybody is on the call, the low power micro controller EON core, the flexible fusion engine that’s now patented and great for always-on light weight processing, the embedded FPGA, which is totally unique to QuickLogic in this space and the always on voice optimization in our platform. So if you value two of those, we’re in a great spot. If you value one, you get a little competitive but we're still wining, especially if that one at voice.

Richard Shannon

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

Sue, maybe a couple of quick questions for you, and I'll jump out of line here. For the fourth quarter, you had big gross margins 51%, and you're guiding to 45%. How should we think about the trend as we go through the year as we grow the 50% year-on-year getting all the products ramping together here, obviously with embedded FPGA we can see some inflection there. But just wondered how we should think about that and then the trajectory in OpEx you think we should start forecast, going forward.

Sue Cheung

Analyst · Craig-Hallum.

Richard, so think about in terms of gross margin. I think what we should model is -- I want to model from 45% to 50% at least for the first half. Second half, I expect much higher, because we expect IP license revenue will kick-in in the second half that can pick us up 60% or so. So that’s in terms of gross margin, or you saying in terms of OpEx, OpEx wise, pretty stable. Now Q1 normally in the beginning of the year is a high that usually is. But I would model it about 4.6% to 4.8% per quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Suji Desilva with Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

Suji Desilva

Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

So the EOS S3 wins, congratulations on the progress here. Can you give us a sense of what an average unit run rate might be for some of these wins? I know it's going to be all over the map, and remind us the ASP range, so we can get a sense of how much of your customer wins could entail for you in their life time, or for a year?

Brian Faith

Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

So I would say the lowest volume that we heard with these customers is just very high five digits, and that's the lowest been. Most of them normally are in the six-figure, I'd say mid-six figure. And depending on some of these like as they're subsidized by people, then they can start to see the million unit number, at least that's what they're telling us for these initial wins that we’ve talked about. For ASPs, so the answer there is it depends for these specific ones, I would model probably around $1.50 or so. It's going to depend if we’re including software or not and the volumes or not, we have ASPs well over $2 in some cases and we have some that are below $1. But I think for your modeling purposes, I'd peg it at $1.5.

Suji Desilva

Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

And then for the Tier 1 here, I know that's coming around in the first half of '18. You also mentioned a second product and engagement there and the wearable and then the hearable, being the second engagement. It sounds like you're going to be mostly going to be engaging with them in the first quarter, and it would come to market perhaps in the second quarter. I am wondering how that quick turnaround is going to happen, where you still don't know that you'll be in it but it could turn the market fairly shortly thereafter?

Brian Faith

Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

So to be clear, we've been engaged with this customer for a while. When we say turn into an engagement, we're talking about where they’re actually doing a board that would use our devices. So it gets to be more serious in terms of engineering commitment. So we're giving ourselves a little buffer on how long it's going to take us this quarter to deliver what they've been asking us to deliver for them to evaluate. And because this is an existing form factor product for them and they already have a launch plan in place, it would just be a matter of including this in that final form factor. So I think the range is right for the time frame given that it's already a product they’ve done in the past.

Suji Desilva

Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

And then lastly on the Edge AI product, you kind of teased a little bit here. What would be the timing in your mind of customers adopting this just to get a time frame? And is there a lead customer you’re working with on the AI portion of your product offerings at this point? Thanks.

Brian Faith

Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open.

So for competitive reasons, I don’t want to go to clear into what we’re re doing in that area right now. So definitely stay tuned for more detail. But this also plays into what we talked about publicly in the past about expanding our ecosystem partners to help us diversify markets and gain more value preposition for our technology. We do see clear use cases for FPGA in these types of architectures. And to be clear for everybody on the phone, AI means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Our focus is on how we could enable more of this to be deployed at the Edge or battery-powered devices so it’s not in the datacenter. And there is -- I think that's an underserved market right now and I think that there’s an opportunity there to use what we've already developed in terms of our open software framework and our S3 today to get into these markets. And again stay tuned, but I don’t want to spill too many of the beans on this call, but we’ll do that when we can.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Rick Neaton. Your line is now open.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

My first question is getting back to the Tier 1 smartphone OEM. The third design win that you have there or second design win, the third engagement is the initial wearable you talked about. And to clarify something you said that it's now the field testing has now been expanded to its target customers. Does that mean something different than what they were field testing at it before? Is this not a consumer wearable?

Brian Faith

Analyst

So because I think we have this customer and I have asked them if I can expand more about this engagement publicly, and they said no. I think to be fairly brief in my comments. So I can’t say a direct answer to your question, Rick, as far as the end markets go. But what I can say is that they definitely have exposed this product now to a different set of people to do testing than they have in the last time that we've talked publicly about this product.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

So it’s beyond several hundred individuals that we're testing as of November.

Brian Faith

Analyst

Yes, that's correct.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

And turning then to the region of Europe. You have discussed two different design wins there one is a B2B design win that is being targeted for initial production in the second quarter. And now you've disclosed a second design win with the European fitness company, targeted for the second half of 2018. And is that the correct clarification or understanding of what you said?

Brian Faith

Analyst

Yes, I think that's what I said.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

Talking about then your non-Samsung Display Bridge and connectivity revenue. Is that going to remain fairly stable between fourth quarter of last year and first quarter of this year? In other words, you said that last quarter Samsung was came in about, you said about 500,000 less and then this quarter -- because it was 10%. And then this quarter you’re saying that the forecast is 500,000 lower. And that plays into your flat guidance. The other display -- you have other customers for Display Bridge and connectivity revenue other than that large customer. So I wanted to get a sense of how that revenue is fairing quarter-to-quarter?

Sue Cheung

Analyst

Rick, it’s pretty stable. We expect that -- is little bit more than Q4 but not much more. So again, that’s opposite of what comes from the EOS S3 sales for our new product family.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

And so then rest of our your new product revenue category, and your forecast then is made up of S3 and any possible license revenues. Is that correct?

Sue Cheung

Analyst

Correct. So just again it’s clear on -- so our revenue product revenue category include EOS S3 eFPGA IP license revenue, Display Bridge promotions and connectivity. Those are our new product revenues. The rest are the mature product revenues.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

And one last question for Brian. Last year you sounded, at this time, you sounded confident that you were going to hit your 50% CAGR target in 2017. But it seems that last year was depended on two or three large deals. Why are you even more confident this year that you will get at least the $8 million of new product revenue to put on top of your $10 million base and hit your CAGR target this year?

Brian Faith

Analyst

So I think it goes down to a few points that I'm happy to make. Firstly, you're right. Coming into last year, we had a less diversification in the funnel, and it was fairly heavily depended on a few deals moving through into mass production. As I look at the funnel today and I have it right here, it’s a lot more diverse. And it is not depended on a single customer to go to production, and it’s not depended in terms of percentage of business by anyone guy. I think every single one of these opportunities and customers and engagements are less than 10% of the total. So having diversification is great, because you never know what's going to happen to the end customer. If you look at the product readiness, we are so much further along now than we were a year ago in terms of having a stable open platform, and all of this voice technology ported on through it and working with Alexa, things that we weren’t even to close to having in some point with hearables last year. And now we have a very mature solution that anybody that came to our suite this year could see. And then on the eFPGA side, the fact that we hit our tape out goal for 22FDX and its in fab and we’re going to have to qualify it into the quarter, we're seeing a lot of interest in that process move, it’s global because it’s a very unique note for the characteristics that brings for a lot of low power applications, and low powers are sweet spot with our embedded FPGA. And just talking to these customers gives me a sense of real optimism that there is something there. So for all those reasons, that’s what’s given me the optimism. Hopefully, it’s coming through with my voice on the phone. If you were to sit here across the table before me, you would definitely see it. But hopefully, you can feel it because it's there and it's real.

Rick Neaton

Analyst

Well, thanks Brian. You couldn’t slide that funnel into the slides. Thanks Brian, that’s all I have for now. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. So with that, I would like to turn the call back over to CEO, Mr. Brian Faith for closing remarks.

Brian Faith

Analyst

Thanks everyone for joining our call today. We will be participating at the following events; The 30th Annual ROTH Conference at Dana Point, California, March 12th and 13th; The Design and Reuse, IP-SoC Days in Santa Clara, California on April 5th; our CTO and SVP Engineering, Dr. Tim Saxe, will be presenting on eFPGA for AI and IoT Applications. Our next conference call is scheduled for Wednesday, May 9th at 2:30 PM Pacific. Thank you for your continued support, and good bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.