Mohan Maheswaran
Analyst · Stephens
Thank you, Emeka. Good afternoon, everyone. I would discuss our Q1 fiscal year 2013 performance by end market and by product group, including a brief update on our progress integrating our 2 recent acquisitions, and then provide our outlook for Q2 fiscal year 2013.
In Q1 of fiscal year 2013, we achieved net revenues of $116.6 million, an increase of 12% from Q4 of fiscal year 2012 and down approximately 5% from Q1 of fiscal year 2012. For the quarter, our non-GAAP gross margin was 58.5% and our non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.27 per share. In Q1, revenue from the communications end market increased sequentially and represented approximately 36% of total revenues. Revenue from the high-end consumer end market increased from the prior quarter and represented 33% of total revenues. Approximately 20% of this revenue was attributable to handheld devices and approximately 13% was attributable to other consumer systems.
Revenue from the industrial end market increased and represented 19% of revenues. Revenue from the computing end market also increased from the prior quarter and represented 12% of revenues. The growth in our industrial and computing businesses is mostly attributable to approximately 6 weeks of revenue from Gennum. Excluding Gennum, all end markets, except for computing, increased modestly.
Now let me discuss the performance of each of our product groups. In Q1, our protection business grew 4% sequentially and represented 41% of Semtech revenues. While all end markets in protection grew sequentially, we saw particular strength in communications and consumer applications. We expect demand for our protection platforms to continue to grow for the foreseeable future as electronic device manufacturers increase the number of high-performance cores in their systems.
In addition, advanced microprocessors continue to transition to next-generation lithography nodes, making them much more susceptible to catastrophic ESP events. As processes move to the 28-nanometer and below nodes, protecting these highly sensitive and expensive devices becomes even more challenging, and we do expect this will further fuel the demand for our high-end protection products. Our industry-leading technology in high-performance protection platforms enables Semtech to benefit from these industry trends.
Q1 was another strong design win quarter for our protection business, including major design wins in smartphone, TV and video applications. During the quarter, we launched several automotive qualified protection solutions, including a 2.5 volt 4 line protection solution for automotive Ethernet interfaces, as well as a solution for protecting automotive, can bus and antenna applications. In Q2, we expect our protection business to increase nicely from Q1, driven primarily by a strengthening in demand from the high-end consumer market.
Turning to our advanced communications product group. Revenue in Q1 decreased 2% sequentially and represented 25% of total revenues. The decrease was driven primarily by softness in both the core and access infrastructure segments as we saw lower revenues from both our timing, sync products and the 40 gigabit per second SerDes products, partially offset by higher revenue from our 100-gigabit per second platforms for both Asia and Europe.
In Q1, we experienced solid design win traction for many of our advanced communications platforms. During the quarter, we announced the availability of our 51-gigabit per second multiplexer and demultiplexer platforms for submarine and ultra-long-haul optical links. This leading technology platform offers highly reliable, high-performance links at lower cost. In addition to our 40-gigabit per second and 100-gigabit per second long-haul SerDes platforms, we continued to make good progress on several new advanced technology platforms for the communications market, including our new microwave platforms, our new driver platforms and our next-generation 100-gigabit per second coherent transceiver platform. In Q2, we expect revenue from our advanced communications business to grow significantly from Q1. Driven by our optical transport business, fueled by the build-out of communications infrastructure worldwide.
Moving on to our power management and high reliability product group. In Q1, revenue for the group decreased sequentially by 6% and represented 14% of revenues. The decrease was driven primarily by a seasonal decline in computing revenue partially offset by growth in automotive displays and set-top box applications.
In Q1, we saw good design win momentum for our power management and high reliability solutions. During the quarter, we launched the first device in our platform of innovative high-frequency 20 megahertz switching regulators, which enable designers to draw their own inductors directly on the PC board and improve the EMI performance of chip inductors. This product is targeted for use in set-top box, HDTV, automotive and industrial power management applications.
We are making solid progress with the evolution of our power management and high reliability strategy, and I expect to see meaningful results by the end of this fiscal year. In Q2, we expect our power management and high reliability revenues to increase, driven by strength in the high-end consumer and computing end markets.
Next, we'll turn to the wireless and sensing business. In Q1, revenue for wireless and sensing grew 4% sequentially to represent 10% of total revenues, driven primarily by the resumption of business previously impacted by the Thailand floods, as well as strength in automated meter reading. In Q1, we saw solid design win traction for our touch sensing platforms and industrial wireless platforms in television, set-top box and automated metering applications. We recently announced a new low-cost, low-power radio transmitter platform targeted at consumer remote control systems, remote keyless entry systems and garage door openers.
In Q1, we also closed the acquisition of Cycleo, a startup IP company specializing in long-range wireless systems IP. We expect this business to be neutral to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2013 and accretive in fiscal year 2014. The integration of Cycleo is largely complete, and we are now in the process of building our first wireless technology platforms based on the Cycleo IP, which is targeted at the automated metering market.
We expect the first platform to be sampling in Q1 of the fiscal year 2014. We believe that this platform will enable us to gain a leadership position in the long-range segment of the metering market within a few years. In Q2, we expect sales for our wireless and sensing product group to grow modestly, driven by industrial and medical applications.
Now let me comment on our Gennum acquisition and our newest product group. In Q1, we closed the acquisition of Gennum, the largest acquisition in Semtech's history. Semtech's leadership position in providing solutions to 40-gigabit per second and 100-gigabit per second-line-of-sight infrastructure applications is now complemented by a portfolio of 1-gigabit per second to 25-gigabit per second physical media and CDR devices targeted at the metro, access and enterprise computing markets where there are tremendous number of bandwidth bottlenecks emerging on the client side.
Gennum is very well positioned at strategic accounts in the storage networking, fiber to the home and enterprise computing markets. We believe that the market for 40-gigabit per second and 100-gigabit per second devices will continue to grow at a rapid rate, as both public and private networks look to increase their bandwidths to accommodate more voice, video and data traffic in both long-haul and short-reach applications. Semtech is now a key technology supplier to many of the leading communication systems companies in the world.
In Q1, we recognized approximately $12 million of revenue from Gennum. The revenue was driven by the enterprise computing, datacom and industrial end markets. We saw healthy design win activity for Gennum video products in a range of video applications, including Blu-ray DVD recorders, video monitors and video surveillance equipment and solid design wins in the enterprise computing segments with Gennum's physical media devices.
In addition to the design win momentum of Gennum's best-in-class physical media devices, we are seeing very good design win traction with Gennum's 10-gigabit per second to 25-gigabit per second CDR platforms and Gennum's Thunderbolt CDR platforms. We believe that these platforms are the highest performing CDR platforms in the industry today, which is validated by both the design win momentum and the pull from customers for these products in data center applications.
In Q1, Semtech also exhibited at the 2012 North America broadcast show, which is the premier industry event for the video broadcast market. During the event, we demonstrated the latest Gennum broadcast video products, including our 3-gigabit per second SDI crosspoint and advanced 3-gigabit per second video optical modules.
The integration of Gennum is proceeding very well. We are on track to achieve the cost synergies we previously forecasted, and we believe that the revenue synergies in fiscal year '14 and fiscal year 2015 are greater than we had originally anticipated. In Q2, we expect the Gennum product revenue to grow significantly and achieve a quarterly revenue record. In Q1, we saw distribution POS increase by approximately 19%. Excluding Gennum, distribution POS increased by approximately 4%. The increase was driven mainly by the high-end consumer and the industrial end market, as well as the impact from Gennum.
Our distributor business, much like the overall Semtech business, is very well balanced, with 52% of the total POS coming from consumer and computing end markets and 48% total POS coming from industrial and communications end markets. Distributor inventory decreased by 12 days from 78 days in Q4 to 66 days in Q1. We believe that our channel inventory is in line with normal seasonal patterns and below our 70- to 80-day channel inventory models.
Moving on to new products and design wins. In Q1, we released 17 new products and achieved 1,170 new design wins, another company record. We believe that we are uniquely positioned to benefit from long-term trends driving growth for our industry and expect to see a continuation of the strong design win momentum in Q2.
Now let me discuss our outlook for next quarter. Based on recent booking trends and our backlog entering the quarter, we are currently estimating Q2 net revenue to be between $146 million and $154 million. To attain the midpoint of our guidance range or approximately $150 million, we needed net terms orders of approximately 40% at the beginning Q2. We expect our Q2 non-GAAP earnings to be between $0.37 and $0.45 per diluted share and GAAP earnings to be between minus $0.04 and plus $0.04 per diluted share.
We believe that the overall demand continues to improve, albeit at a measured pace and are encouraged by the growth in bookings in Q1 and continued booking strength so far in Q2. While there are clearly still some macroeconomic concerns, we are excited by the new opportunities for secular growth that the Gennum and Cycleo acquisition brings to Semtech. And our effort is well underway to ensure we meet our cost synergy targets as we integrate these acquisitions.
With that, I'd like to hand it back over to the operator for questions.