Rahul Mathur
Analyst · ROTH Capital. Your line is open
Thanks Ron. I'd like to begin with our financial results for the quarter and I'll touch on some highlights for the year. Let me start with some highlights on Slide 7. As Ron mentioned, we had a solid quarter. We delivered revenue growth of 4% year-over-year, up 3% from Q3 and better than our typical seasonality of up 2%. We delivered non-GAAP EPS at the midpoint of our range by executing on our growth initiatives while continuing our investments in our business. We are also pleased with our results for fiscal 2017. Revenue was $393.1 million, up 17% year-over-year. The increase in revenue was due to execution on the acquisitions we made in 2016 and continued strength in our licensing business. We also delivered $117.4 million of cash from operations in 2017, our strongest result since 2010. To drive long-term growth, we continue to leverage our high-margin historic businesses to fuel growth in adjacent areas where we have strong technical and market expertise, with a focus on memory and security. Now let me walk you through some revenue details on Slide 8. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $101.9 million, above the midpoint of guidance we provided of $98 million to $104 million. We have a diversified revenue stream that supports our long-term growth and our Q4 revenue performance was due to strength in our licensing growth. Our licensing business continues to perform well, is the foundation of our success, and is core to our initiatives in both our memory and security businesses. Going into additional detail, our Memory and Interface revenue was $73.9 million, Security was $23.8 million, and our Lighting and Display Technology revenue was $4.2 million. Year-over-year, MID revenue grew by 8% and our Security Division grew by 3%. Let me walk you through our non-GAAP income statement on Slide 9. Along with our solid revenue performance in Q4, we once again met our profitability targets. Cost of revenue plus operating expenses, or what we refer to as total operating expenses, for the quarter came in at $68.4 million. We ended the quarter with headcount of 819, flat from 818 in the previous quarter. Over the course of 2018, we expect to invest in headcount to support our growth initiative in our memory and security businesses. Stronger revenue and operating expenses led to operating income of $33.5 million. We incurred $0.3 million of incremental interest expense related to the convertible notes we issued midway through Q4. This was offset by incremental interest income related to a higher return on our cash portfolio. After adjusting for non-cash interest expense on our convertible notes, this resulted in non-GAAP interest and other expenses for the fourth quarter of $0.9 million, down from Q3. Using an assumed flat rate of 35% for non-GAAP pre-tax income, non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $21.2 million or $0.19 a share at the midpoint of our guidance. Now, let me turn to our balance sheet details on Slide 10. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $329.4 million, up $145.7 million from [prior] [ph] quarter. This was due primarily to the $172.5 million in convertible notes we issued which resulted in net cash proceeds of $159.6 million after expenses, sale of warrants, and the cost of call option we issued in conjunction with the notes. These convertible notes carry an interest rate of 1.375% and mature on February 1, 2023. We purchased a 60% capped call and these notes will only become dilutive to our shareholders once our stock price reaches $23.30. We used proceeds to extinguish $56.8 million of the $138 million convertible notes due in Q3 of 2018. Cash also increased due to $59.8 million of cash from operations, reflecting the strong collections we anticipated in Q4. For the full year of 2017, cash from operations was $117.4 million, again our strongest result since 2010. This is a strength of ours and we expect to maintain our ability to generate cash from operations in 2018. This will also be an important metric to monitor on an annual basis as we implement ASC 606. Fourth quarter CapEx was $3.9 million and depreciation was $3.3 million. In 2017, we made numerous capital investments to help fuel our growth, specifically at some of our international facilities and for our chip program. As a result, we had $9.4 million of CapEx for the year, in line with our expectation. Correspondingly, we had depreciation of $13.3 million for the [year] [ph]. Looking forward, I expect roughly $4 million of CapEx for the first quarter and roughly $9 million for the full year of 2018. I also expect depreciation of roughly $3.5 million per quarter in 2018. Overall, we have a strong balance sheet with limited debt and expect to continue to generate strong cash from operations in the future. Now, let me turn to our guidance for the first quarter on Slide 11. As a reminder, our forward-looking guidance reflects our best estimate at this point in time and our actual results could differ materially from what I'm about to review. Effective January 1, 2018, we adopted Accounting Standards Update No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers in Accounting Standards Codification Topic 606, or what we refer to as ASC 606. This supersedes the revenue recognition requirements in ASC Topic 605, Revenue Recognition, or ASC 605. As we have publicly discussed over the past many months, we expect the adoption of ASC 606 to materially impact the timing of revenue recognition for our fixed-fee intellectual property licensing arrangements. We do not expect the adoption of ASC 606 to have a material impact on our other revenue streams, cash flow from operations, or the underlying financial position of our Company. In order to provide additional insight into our business, we have also been providing information on licensing billings, which is an operational metric that reflects amounts invoiced to our patent and technology licensing customers during the period. The only difference between licensing billings and royalty revenue under ASC 605 is timing, as we don't always recognize revenue the same quarter we bill our customers. As you can see in the supplemental information we have provided on Slide 18 of our earnings deck and also in our press release, on an annual basis licensing billings closely correlates with what we reported as royalty revenue under ASC 605 given this timing [indiscernible]. We'll continue to provide licensing billings as another operational metric to help our investors understand the underlying performance of our Company. In order to provide our investors and analysts additional transparency, we are also providing financial outlook as if we were still under ASC 605 as well as ASC 606 during this transition period. We believe that providing this additional disclosure in the short term will help our stakeholders understand the impact of the change in revenue recognition standards, especially given the material difference expected in the timing of revenue recognition for our fixed-fee licensing arrangements as mentioned above. Of course, please note that the presentation under ASC 605 is not a substitute for the new ASC 606 revenue recognition standard under GAAP. Additionally, as we had said in the past, our Lighting Division is an adjacent business and we would be open to all strategic options including selling it to someone who could leverage the technology better. Recently, as I mentioned last month or earlier this month, we didn't renew our supply agreement with our largest light guide customer due to some unfavorable terms. As of the end of last year, we are no longer supplying our largest customer light guides. To be clear, none of our memory or security customers are impacted by this decision. We have historically been breakeven in our Lighting business. However, because we did not renew our supply agreement with our largest light guide customer, our lowered revenue would cause the business to be unprofitable. We do not intend to run an unprofitable business and are therefore excluding this business from our outlook in Q1. As this business has been roughly breakeven for us, this does not impact our outlook on profitability, though it does reduce our revenue outlook by roughly $18 million year-over-year and roughly $4 million for the first quarter of 2018. With that said, under the new ASC 606 revenue standard and excluding our Lighting business, we expect revenue in the first quarter between $41 million and $47 million. This represents $21 million to $27 million of royalty revenue and roughly $20 million from product, contract and other revenue. Under the ASC 605 revenue standard, and again excluding our Lighting business, we would've expected revenue in the first quarter between $94 million and $100 million. This represents $74 million to $80 million of royalty revenue and no material difference between product revenue, contract and other revenue between ASC 606 and ASC 605. We expect Q1 non-GAAP total operating expenses, which include COGS, to be between $63 and $67 million, down from Q4 primarily due to the exclusion of Lighting, offset by a seasonal increase in statutory payroll expenses. Over the course of 2018, I expect we will keep operating expenses roughly flat as revenue grows, providing leverage to our financial model. I expect total operating expenses, which include COGS, related to our buffer chip business to grow through the year as we ship more product. We are targeting $35 million to $40 million in buffer chip revenue in 2018. Under the new ASC 606 revenue standard, non-GAAP operating loss for the first quarter is expected to be between $16 million and $26 million. We expect roughly $2 million in non-GAAP interest and other income and expense. This includes $600,000 of interest expense related to the 2023 notes and another $200,000 related to the remaining [indiscernible]. Based on the new tax legislation passed at the end of December, we expect our pro forma tax rate to drop to roughly 24%. The 24% is higher slightly than the new statutory rate of 21%, primarily due to higher tax rates in our foreign jurisdiction. As a reminder, we pay roughly $20 million of cash taxes each year, driven primarily by our licensing agreements with our partners in Korea. Based on a 24% tax rate, we expect a GAAP benefit of between $4 million and $7 million from taxes in Q1. We expect our Q1 share count to be roughly 110 million basic shares outstanding. This leads you to between $0.12 and $0.19 of non-GAAP loss per share per quarter. Under the ASC 605 revenue standard, using the same pro forma assumptions for expenses and other income and expenses, $6 million to $9 million for taxes assuming a 24% rate and 114 million fully diluted share count, under ASC 605 we would expect between $19 million and $27 million of non-GAAP net income and between $0.17 and $0.23 of non-GAAP earnings per share for the quarter. Looking ahead to 2018, while we do not issue annual guidance, as we look at consensus estimates from our sell-side analysts, we were comfortable with the current consensus estimates for growth for 2018 as reported under ASC 605 prior to the new revenue recognition rules and excluding our Lighting Division. Again, under ASC 605, I would've expected our top line in Q2 2018 to be flat to slightly down from Q1, better than our typical 5% seasonal decline. Based on the revised pro forma tax rate of 24%, consensus estimates for our non-GAAP earnings for 2018 under ASC 605 would have approximated $0.85 per share. Let me finish with the summary on Slide 12. As I look at the year, we are proud of the solid performance by our team and the progress we continue to make across all of our businesses, delivering continued growth in our data center and mobile edge markets. Over the course of the year, we've made our numbers delivering profitable growth and strong cash from operations, made changes to improve our operating margins, and we are very well-positioned for continued success as we head into fiscal 2018. With that, I'll turn the call back to our operator to begin Q&A. Jessie, could we please have our first question?