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Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Apr 23, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Super Micro Computer Incorporated Third Quarter Fiscal 2013 Conference Call. The company's news release issued earlier today is available on its website at www.supermicro.com. In addition, during today's call, the company will refer to a slide presentation that has been made available to participants which can be accessed in a downloadable PDF format on its website at www.supermicro.com, in the Investor Relations section under the Events and Presentations tab. During today's company's presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only-mode. Afterwards, securities analysts and institutional hopefully managers will be invited to participate in a question and answer session, but the entire call is open to all participants on a listen-only basis. As a reminder, this call is being recorded Tuesday, April 23, 2013. A replay of the call will be accessible until midnight May 7th by dialing 1-877-870-5176 and entering conference ID number 2907442. International callers should dial 1-858-384-5517. With us today are Charles Liang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Howard Hideshima, Chief Financial Officer and Perry Hayes, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Now, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Hayes. Mr. Hayes, please go ahead, sir.

Perry Hayes

Management

Good afternoon and thank you for attending Super Micro's conference call and financial results for the third quarter fiscal year 2013, which ended March 31, 2013? By now, you should have received a copy of today's news release that was distributed after close of regular trading and is available on the company's website. As a reminder, during today’s call the company will refer to a presentation that is available to participants in the Investor Relations section on the company's website under the Events and Presentations tab. Please turn to slide two. Before we start, I remind you that our remarks include forward-looking statements. There are a number of risk factors that could cause Super Micro’s future results to differ materially from our expectations. You can learn more about these risks in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, our Form 10-K for fiscal 2012 and our other SEC filings. All of these documents are available on the Investor Relations page of Super Micro’s website at www.supermicro.com. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Most of today’s presentation will refer to non-GAAP financial results and outlooks. For an explanation of our non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to slide three of this presentation or to our press release published earlier today. In addition a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results is contained in today’s press release and in the supplemental information attached to today’s presentation. I'll now turn the call over to Charles Liang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Charles Liang

Chairman

Thank you, Perry, and good afternoon everyone. Please turn to slide four. First let me provide you recent highlights of our third quarter. We are pleased that our third quarter revenue was $278 million. It's 4.6% lower quarter-over-quarter and 15.8% higher year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income was $10 million or 28.1% higher quarter-over-quarter and 13.8% higher compared to last year. Super Micro’s non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.23 per diluted share, compared to $0.18 last quarter, or $0.19 last year. Slide five, please. Geographically, revenue in North America was 56.6%. Europe was 32% and Asia was 19% of total sales. As expected, Asia was softer last quarter due to the Chinese Lunar New Year. 41.2% of our overall business came from OEMs and direct sales customers of which internet data center were 10.8% of sales. Our server systems contributed 41.8% of revenue and ASPs remained stable. Slide six and seven please. Now typical March quarter seasonality was evident in the lower to revenue. However, we have said the revenue for the quarter was up 15.8% from last year. We are confident with this constant growth during a time when global economy weakness continues to impact IT spending. Our revenue growth this quarter much outpaced our competitors and we continue to grow at a multiple or industry's average. Super Micro continues to take much share by providing the industry's most innovative products that feature the best performance per watt, per dollar, and per square foot. Competition in our industry continues to intense due to big changes taking place with Tier-1 competitors. In addition, the PC market continue to decline over the past year, which force competitors to data centers, cloud and enterprise market for growth and profitability. Also other oversea competitors entered the market with limited commodity product and lower priced product…

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Charles, and good afternoon, everyone. I will focus my remarks on earnings, gross margins, operating expenses and similar items on a non-GAAP basis which reflects adjustment to exclude stock compensation expenses. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP is included in the financial statements of the company in today’s earnings release and in the supplemental detail in the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. Let me begin with the review of the third quarter income statement. Please turn to slide eight. Revenue was $278 million, up 15.8% from the same quarter a year ago and down 4.6%, sequentially. The increase in revenue from last year was primarily due to strong growth in our energy efficient high density products, which are growing in importance of cloud and Big Data application continue pushing that for solutions offering the best TCOs. With the new technology releases from our partner, such as Intel, AMD and NVIDIA, et cetera, Super Micro is strongly positioned to capitalize on it with our innovative application optimized platforms. The sequential decrease in revenue from last quarter was primarily due to seasonal weakness as well as concerns about the economy and we saw strength in the U.S. as revenue was comparable to the prior quarter. Europe was weaker due to economic concerns and Asia started out as expected, but when the pause caused by the Lunar New Year, we saw business come back later in the quarter than expected. We continue to see a good ramp in Sandy Bridge products with an increase of 7%, sequentially, representing about 65% to our Intel-based revenues. Slide nine. Turning to product mix, the portion of revenues from server systems was 41.8% of total revenues, which is down from 48.5%, the same quarter a year ago and down from 43.3% last quarter. ASP for…

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you, Howard. We were successful this past quarter in growing large share, because we [consistently] application optimized server solutions. Awarded in technology and system architecture, plus now including system management all the way up and service are critical to our future growth. We were continuously focused on our increasing market share by leveraging our world-class products, innovation and brand recognition. Our growth strategy remains intact. Our people are committed to succeed and our opportunities remain as great as ever. Operator, at this time we are ready for questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And, we'll go first to Aaron Rakers with Stifel Nicolaus.

Aaron Rakers - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions. I was wondering if you could comment on the, looks like hard disk drive pricing has stayed relatively over the past two quarters, but I was wondering if you could comment on memory pricing. What you are seeing there? Then I have a follow-up.

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes. I mean, our hard drive prices getting stable for many quarters already and memory pricing keeping growing since above two to three months ago and we expect these prices are going grow. Because we have a very solid and strong relationship with our suppliers and so we've strong partnership, I believe our supply in the memory should be stable in the coming quarters.

Aaron Rakers - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks. Then, I wanted to talk a little bit about your Enterprise Data Center segment, and looks like you saw a kind of a slowdown in that segment this quarter. Is that from maybe an increase in competition relative to HP's new shot announcement Qantas, they are looking to double their direct server business in 2013 and then you have some comments coming from others saying that, you know, IBM and Lenovo might check a deal for their [business]?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes. It is. In this segment, we feel very optimistic for a couple of reasons. One is our factory. We introduced our product 45 months ago, and the product has been growing very stably and we do see a good demand on the coming quarter and other than that about 16 months ago, we introduced our MicroCloud solution, which is high density for cloud application or web hosting. That product I think grow very well in last 16 months and recently indeed we are planning to introduce another solution. As I just mentioned, it was 6U, so more than 100 Atom pace low power processor and that system I believe outperformed that competition, and so with our Asia facilities, now the utilization doing is growing, our facilities are getting mature, so we do believe we will continue to improve our cost and when that continue to happen, we will be more capable to compete in the high volume period and clarification. So, in this area, I do feel very optimistic.

Aaron Rakers - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Mark Kelleher from Dougherty & Company. Mark Kelleher - Dougherty & Company: Thanks for taking the questions. Just as a follow-up to that question, IBM selling its accessories to Lenovo, would you consider that a increased competitive threat or decreased competitive threat?

Charles Liang

Operator

Both, I guess, that's why we invested in Asia two years ago to enhance our production capability and close competitive capability. So, now Asian operation is ready, so we are able to compete in Asian market and also with the facility there, we are able to compete low cost high volume server market in U.S.A. and Europe as well. So, I believe that change overall won't impact us too much. We need to have a strong pullback in kind of cost effective solution. Mark Kelleher - Dougherty & Company: Okay. And, in terms of product cycles, you mentioned where you were with Sandy Bridge. Could you kind of walk through the year and kind of indicate where you think new product cycles might give you about it. I know Sandy Bridge comes out and more after that. Could you kind of walk us through product cycles this year?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes. We like technology change. New technology always mean better performance for per watt, better performance per dollars. With Ivy Bridge becoming nascent in next few months, we do have a very good forecast and customer commitment from there and also order top three order coming very soon for much faster performance for high end application and also UP, uni-process Intel hardware product line we have around here within next few weeks and we did have really strong product available today. So, from those point of view, I could feel a new product line in [satellites]. Mark Kelleher - Dougherty & Company: Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Alex Kurtz with Sterne Agee.

Amelia Harris - Sterne Agee

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Hi. This is Amelia on for Alex today. Thanks for taking the question. How far along would you say are you with Seagate on a contract for HDD pricing, and if so what does that timeframe look like?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Hi. This is Howard. Yes. We've been in discussions obviously with our vendors all the way along and so we are hopeful that we will have things. They are looking to us and we are negotiating with them.

Charles Liang

Operator

Basically, we already have a certain reasonable and [aver] to say a very positive agreement and the relationship continue to improve basically.

Amelia Harris - Sterne Agee

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Thanks. This is a follow-up. Are you seeing ODMs at Qantas more active or less active in the market right now? How would you say they are on a competitive front?

Charles Liang

Operator

Those who see formation have a better cost and lower price from certain standard to for certain Big Data standard customer we do want to really expand our Asia facility kind of strongly in last two years, so our facility formation now it is pretty ready and however what customer really need? I mean most of the customer really need is a TCO, basically a TCO, so that mean not just a lower cost from that, but better quality, better optimization, including performance optimization and power saving optimization also including management all the way total solution. So, indeed the most of the market I mean the customers feel, now their TCO in total.

Amelia Harris - Sterne Agee

Analyst · strongly in last two years, so our facility formation now it is pretty ready and however what customer really need

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Glenn Hanus from Needham.

Glenn Hanus - Needham

Analyst · Needham

Hi, guys. Could we dive a little bit more into; so you have a new target for gross margin, you had talked about a 300-basis point improvement from abatement of the HDD and memory issue. Can you sort of bridge out from the 19 and now you are kind of talking of 17. If I take the middle of the range, what are the factors that are going into the reduced gross margin guidance and sort of the rank the factors that are contributing to that? Thank you.

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes. I guess the competition is getting stronger if I compare with three years ago, four years ago, so we already understand that. However, our product mix is getting stronger like the MicroCloud, and especially storage, GPU. Also, our purchasing, bargain power is getting stronger too together with our service value and operation with lower cost from Asia. And that's why in next 18 months, we believe 17% can be a reasonable number.

Glenn Hanus - Needham

Analyst · Needham

And, the 300-basis point improvement. How should we think about that relative to what you've said in the past there?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Glenn, this is Howard. Like I said, some of it come back and we are still working with our customers, our providers to get that back and so basically we pull that from the model, per se, in the form of basically just a negotiating with our vendors and put that as improving our purchasing power and our Taiwan facility.

Glenn Hanus - Needham

Analyst · Needham

Okay. Can you give us any color here sort of sequentially in gross margins? You showed a little improvement this quarter. Would we see sort of a similar improvement next quarter or might we see a greater improvement and what are the factors that are kind of really driving your sequential gross margin improvement or like thereof right now?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. With regard to the June quarter, you'll find seasonally a strong quarter, so coming out of this March quarter, which is seasonally weak, you see a lot of competition happening for a smaller pie, so that maybe put some pressure on margins, or we did pretty well with that. Also, again, our product mix hurt us a bit this past quarter in March, and so as we go into the June quarter, hopefully we'll see that come back a little bit more towards our full service solution, so those positive. Yes?

Glenn Hanus - Needham

Analyst · Needham

Okay. And then typically you have a pretty healthy uptick in OpEx in the June quarter. You have to in order to in order to get to your guidance there, so can you go through that?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Generally, actually, we're being very prudent with our operating expenses going forward as far as we are making the strategic investments that we need to as Charles alluded to on new products and canalization, but we are going to be keeping a tight handle on it. We've invest a lot of over last year or two.

Glenn Hanus - Needham

Analyst · Needham

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). It appears at this time, we have no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Liang for any additional or closing comments.

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to talking to you again at the end of this quarter. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference. We thank you for your participation. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude Super Micro third quarter fiscal 2013 conference call. We do appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you.