David Anderson
Analyst · Bank of America. Your line is open
Thanks, Michael. Please turn to slide 3. Overall, our third quarter revenue and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share exceeded our expectations. Revenue of $2.03 billion was at the high end of our outlook of $1.925 billion to $2.025 billion. This was driven by solid demand across all of our end markets. Revenue was down 4.7% sequentially and up 11.8% from the third quarter of last year. As supply continued to stabilize in the third quarter, we were able to continue catching up the demand from a broad set of customers and are seeing revenue return to more normalized level. We also benefited in the quarter from the ongoing ramp of new programs to volume production. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share at $0.82, was at the high end of our outlook was down 9.7% sequentially and up 48.4% over the third quarter of last year. On a year-to-date basis, non-GAAP diluted earnings per share have grown 66.7%. I will discuss our end market revenue, non-GAAP margin and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share performance in more detail in a few minutes. Please turn to slide 4. From a GAAP perspective, we reported net income of $42.9 million, which resulted in diluted earnings per share of $0.60 for the third quarter. This was up $0.03 sequentially and $0.13 from Q3 of last year. The sequential improvement in GAAP diluted earnings per share was largely result of our ability to make further operational improvements that partially offset the negative contribution margin flow-through on a sequential drop in revenue. The improvement over Q3 of last year resulted from higher gross profit, driven by the positive contribution margin flow-through on the increased revenue as well as operational improvements. My remaining comments will focus on the non-GAAP financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2019. At $149.7 million, gross profit was down $5.4 million from the prior quarter. Gross margin came in at 7.4% which was 10 basis points higher than Q2. Operating expenses were up slightly on a sequential basis and in line with our Q3 outlook at $68.6 million. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses were up 20 basis points sequentially to 3.4% and flat compared to Q3 of last year. Operating expenses were up sequentially mainly due to higher incentive and professional services costs. Operating expenses continue to be one of our key operating levers and we are focused on containing operating expenses as a percent of sales. On a year-to-date basis, operating expenses as a percent of sales are down 50 basis points to 3.2%. Operating margin was 4%, which was down 10 basis points sequentially and at the midpoint of our outlook and up 100 basis points compared to Q3 of last year. In Q3, we continued to be in line with our goal of driving operating margins to the 4% plus range. Other income and expense at $9.6 million was up $600,000 when compared with last quarter and up $3.8 million from the third quarter of last year. OIE was up slightly sequentially. We started to see a reduction in net interest expense from lower short-term borrowings throughout the quarter that were driven by our efforts to reduce our inventory level. This reduction in net interest expense was offset by a reduced gain in deferred compensation assets on a sequential basis. As I mentioned on last quarter's call, the gain in deferred compensation assets has no net impact on non-GAAP diluted earnings per share as changes in deferred compensation are equally offset in gross profit and operating expenses. The tax rate for the quarter was 17.25% of pretax non-GAAP income which was in line with our expectations. Our tax rate is impacted by the geographic distribution of our profits. We earned $59.2 million in non-GAAP net income with our non-GAAP diluted earnings per share coming in at $0.82 which was at the high end of our outlook for the third quarter. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were down $0.09 or 9.7% from Q2 and up $0.27 or 48.4% from Q3 of last year. This was based on 72 million shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis for Q3. Please turn to slide 5. I will now give you some color around our end market segments for the third quarter. We continued our solid progress in fiscal 2019 with better than expected revenue across each of our end markets. Communications networks was $736.3 million or 36.3% of Q3's total revenue. This was down 3.2% sequentially and up 9.4% year-over-year. Year-to-date revenue in this end market is up 14.2%. Industrial automotive defense medical was $1.12 billion or 55% of revenue for the quarter. This was down 4.1% on a sequential basis and up 19% compared to the same period a year ago. Year-to-date revenue in this end market is up 29%. Revenue is up year-to-date and year-over-year across all four subsegments. Cloud solutions consists of cloud computing, storage systems, point-of-sale, and casino gaming. This segment was $176.4 million or 8.7% of revenue in the third quarter. It was down 13.2% sequentially and down 13.6% compared to the same period a year ago. Year-to-date revenue in the end market -- in this end market is up 8.7%. While in aggregate customer demand remained fairly stable, a key contributor to the better than expected Q3 end market revenue and yearly growth was a continued stabilization of component lead times and our team's ability to partner with our customers and suppliers to meet demand requirements. Our top 10 customers were 55.2% of revenue for the quarter. We continue to diversify the programs we participate on within our customer base as we strive to improve our program and customer mix. Please turn to slide 6. The Integrated Manufacturing Solutions segment represents printed circuit board assembly and test, final system assembly and test, as well as direct order fulfillment. As you can see from the graph on the left, the IMS segment revenue was $1.72 billion, down $73 million sequentially. IMS gross margin was flat at 6.4% compared to the prior quarter. IMS gross profit margins came in better than we expected, largely driven by the profit, contribution flow-through and higher than expected revenue, and operational improvements including the resolution of certain cost recoveries from our customers. On the right is our second segment; Components, Products & Services. Components include printed circuit board fabrication, backplane assemblies, cable assemblies, enclosures, precision machining and plastic injection molding. Products include computing and storage products, defense and aerospace products, memory and SSD modules as well as optical and RF modules. Services include design and engineering, as well as logistics and repair services. In aggregate, the review for this segment was down sequentially by $32.9 million to $362.1 million with gross margin up 100 basis points from Q2 at 11.2%. CPS segment gross margins improved sequentially, mainly driven by improvements in the gross margins within our products subsegment. As you can see on this chart, CPS revenues have dropped from a high of $456 million in the first quarter of 2019 to $362 million in the third quarter. This drop is largely due to the project nature of the tier one Cloud Solutions providers program that we started ramping back in the fourth quarter of 2018. As you can also see, CPS gross margins have been improving steadily in 2019. This is largely due to operational improvements that we've been making across this segment as well as some continued benefits flowing through this segment from the restructuring actions, we announced back in January of 2018. Please turn to slide 7. Here we are showing you the quarterly trend in our key non-GAAP P&L metrics. Revenue was down 4.7% from last quarter and up 11.8% over Q3 of last year to $2.03 billion, which was slightly above our outlook. Gross profit was down 3.5% from last quarter to $149.7 million. Gross margin at 7.4% was up 10 basis points from last quarter and consistent with our outlook. Our operating profit was down 7.2% from last quarter to $81.1 million. This led to operating margin of 4%, which was down 10 basis points compared to Q2. We continue to be in line with our goal of driving operating margins to be in the 4% plus range. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were at the high end of our outlook at $0.82. And on a year-to-date basis non-GAAP diluted earnings per share have grown 66.7%. Please turn to slide 8. Our balance sheet remains strong. Our cash and cash equivalents were $414.3 million at the end of the quarter. Cash was up $8.8 million from the previous quarter. Accounts receivable was down $77.9 million. Contract assets were down $14.4 million. And inventory was down $91.4 million. We'll talk more about contract assets and inventory in a moment. From a liability standpoint we had $89.3 million decrease in accounts payable during the quarter. Our short-term debt was $154.6 million, down $488.7 million from the prior quarter. Short-term debt includes the current portion of our long-term debt. Our long-term debt increased to $351.5 million. On May 31, we borrowed $375 million under the secured delayed draw term loan, that was available under our credit agreement, and we used the proceeds to discharge the senior notes loan indenture that was due on June 1 2019. The $375 million secured delayed draw term loan has a maturity date of November 30 2023. In conjunction with the setting up with the delayed draws term loan, we have entered into forward interest rate swap agreements that effectively convert our variable interest rate obligations, to fixed interest rate obligations, through December 1 2023. Through June 29 2019, we had entered into interest rate swaps with an aggregate notional amount [Technical Difficulty] approximately 4.3%. We also improved the flexibility of our capital structure by increasing the revolving commitments under our credit facility by $200 million to a total of $700 million. And we maintained the flexibility to increase our commitments by another $200 million under the accordion feature that is subject to lender approval. As of the end of the third quarter, our gross leverage was approximately 1.27 based on our total debt. Our strong capital structure provides Sanmina with the flexibility to be opportunistic. Overall, our balance sheet and capital structure remain in great shape. Please turn to slide 9. Here we are showing you the quarterly trend in our balance sheet metrics. Cash was consistent with prior quarters in the $400 million range. Cash flow from operations for the quarter was positive $165.5 million. Net capital expenditures for the quarter, were $26.1 million which was down from Q2 and below our expectations for the quarter. We ended the quarter with positive free cash flow of $139.3 million. Our cash generation for the third quarter was positively impacted by strong cash collections coupled with our team's continued focus on reducing our inventory levels. In the upper right quadrant, we are showing you the trend in inventory turns and dollars with the fiscal 2019, quarter shown on the old versus new basis for comparative purposes. As of the first quarter of fiscal 2019, Sanmina adopted the new revenue recognition standard, referred to as ASC 606 on a modified retrospective basis. As I previously indicated, we did not expect the adoption of ASC 606 to materially impact our revenue or earnings per share which was again the case for our third quarter of 2019. However, ASC 606 does have an impact on our balance sheet. With the recording of revenue on an overtime basis for the majority of our non-product revenue stream, we are required to reflect work in progress and finished goods inventory along with the profit element, as contract assets which is essentially unbilled receivables. As a result, at the end of Q3, we had $387.3 million of contract assets and $915.2 million of inventories on the balance sheet. For comparative purposes, from an inventory turns perspective, we have provided the inventory turns calculation for fiscal 2019, under the old methodology and the new methodology. Our inventory dollars under the old methodology were down $107 million sequentially to $1.28 billion and our turns were 5.6 times. We remain focused on reducing our inventory levels and improving our turns. Inventory continues to be a challenge, largely driven by ongoing material constraints on certain commodities such as resistors, capacitors and discrete semiconductors. While we saw a continued improvement in lead times during Q3, we still anticipate the supply environment will remain constrained. Particularly on legacy technology commodities, we expect this to at least be maintained through the remainder of calendar 2019 with supply potentially further tightening by the first half of calendar 2020. Lead times are still extended compared to a more normal market. We continue to work with our customers to better understand the demand outlook so that we can plan for the requirements with our suppliers. Our supply chain organization and operations teams continued to do a good job partnering with our customers and suppliers to secure constrained parts to continue to help us catch up with our customers' demand requirements, which was instrumental in our ability to generate revenue at the high end of our guidance and reduce our inventory by over $100 million. We will continue to work with our customers and suppliers to maximize the fulfillment of our customers' demand while also working on addressing our inventory levels and the negative impact on our cash flow. We expect to continue to make improvements in our operational efficiencies and materials execution in the areas we can control during Q4. In the lower-left quadrant, we're showing cash cycle days, which combines our cycle time for inventory, contract assets, accounts receivable and accounts payable. Overall, cash cycle time was up slightly on a sequential basis to 53 days, which was largely driven by unfavorable customer payment terms mix. Finally, pretax ROIC was 22.2%. This was down 0.9 percentage points from the prior quarter. Compared to the third quarter of last year pretax ROIC improved six percentage points and remains above our target of 20%. Please turn to slide 10. I will now share with you our outlook for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019. Our pipeline remains strong. And as supply continued to stabilize, we expect revenue will start to normalize in the range of $1.9 billion to $2 billion. GAAP diluted earnings per share will be between $0.61 to $0.71. This includes estimated stock-based compensation expense of $0.12 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, we expect the gross margin will be in the range of 7.3% to 7.7%. Operating expense should be $67 million to $69 million. This leads to an operating margin in the range of 3.8% to 4.2%. We expect that other income and expense will be in the range of $10 million to $11 million and our tax rate should be around 17.25%. And we expect our fully diluted share count to be around 72 million shares plus or minus 0.5 million shares. When you consider all of this guidance, we believe that we will end up with non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $0.73 to $0.83. For your cash flow modeling, we expect that net capital expenditures will be around $35 million while depreciation and amortization will be around $30 million. We expect net capital expenditures for 2019's fiscal year to be in the range of $130 million to $140 million. We expect to generate positive cash flow from operations in Q4, as we continue to drive better materials planning and execution by continuing to partner with our customers and suppliers in the supply-constrained environment. Overall, we delivered solid third quarter results at the high-end of our outlook. Our revenue at $2.03 billion was at the high-end of our outlook. We continue to drive our operating margins in line with our goal of 4% plus. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.82 was at the top end of our outlook and we generated $139.3 million of free cash flow during the quarter. Taking the midpoint of our fourth quarter revenue outlook, we are on track to finish fiscal 2019 with year-over-year revenue growth in the mid-teens. This is consistent with the outlook we provided on our prior earnings call. We will continue to focus on our operational execution, productivity and cost structure that will leverage our operating model and help further expand our operating margins earnings and free cash flow. I will now turn the call over to Michael to further comment on our outlook for the fourth quarter and fiscal 2019.