Gregory R. Beecher
Analyst · Timothy Arcuri
Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Before diving into the details of the third quarter and our outlook for the fourth quarter, I will take a few moments to recap the broader picture behind our strategy and finances. Our overall strategy has 2 main elements. First, continue to grow share profitably in our core test markets by developing great products, while still maintaining strict financial discipline; and second, to use these hard-earned profits for the best possible return for our shareholders. Let me begin with the first component. We decided, about 5 years ago, that we needed to have financially healthy test businesses, based upon the industry realities. It became clear that the secular growth rates, and the ability to move market share, had both moderated with the maturing and consolidation of the ATE industry. These industry realities required a very different model, with each business unit and function knowing their part of the larger financial picture. For example, each unit knows they must self-fund annual raises with productivity gains. It also requires very careful selection of the test segments that we focus on, only those segments where we can use clever design to differentiate from our competitors, and where the end market trends are favorable. Thus, our focus on mobility in both IC and consumer device end products and our deselection of some of the PC-centric markets. That's why this year, despite lower customer buying in our major markets, we're on track to deliver our fourth consecutive year of greater-than-the industry-model operating profit rate of 15%. Looking over a longer time period, since 2010, we have averaged a 24% operating profit rate and generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow. Even with the 2010 recovery excluded, since 2011, our average operating profit rate is 22%, and we have had free cash flow of $618 million. An obvious concern with pressing hard on a financial model is a potential adverse impact on new products or customer support. Well, by that scorecard, we're doing just fine. In 2013, based upon strong share gains and SOC and memory test, we are on track to deliver our highest semiconductor ATE market share position in our history. And to top this off, we received first place in VLSI technology's customer satisfaction survey, based on survey responses from SemiTest customers around the world. So customers are voting in favor of both our products and service support with their wallets and also at the ballot box. And as Mike mentioned, our R&D pipeline has delivered a new round of products in semiconductor and Wireless Test that have strengthened our position at existing customers and earned us new ones in 2013. And despite a projected 25% decline in the SOC test market this year, our SOC test revenue is tracking to be down only about 15%, far less than the industry decline. And again, we should exceed the industry target profit rate. A significant portion of this industry decline is in segments where we don't have a presence, such as in PC microprocessor testing. But some of the decline in 2013 was also in the application processors segment where we do have a strong presence. However, we expect this segment to recover in 2014. Moreover, we are well positioned in the segments that offer higher long-term growth potential, such as mobility, automotive and microcontroller, to name a few. I've talked about LitePoint extensively, in the last few calls. So I will quickly summarize 2013 and our outlook for 2014. First, we met our key goal of breaking into cellular test and have expanded our customer base. We are encouraged by the long-term trends and our prospects to gain additional share next year. We don't plan to guide 2014 LitePoint revenue, as it now has been part of Teradyne for 2 years, but you should expect it to perform strongly inside of Teradyne. After a digesting year in 2013, the long-term market drivers of unit growth, new standards and increasing device complexity remain in place. Now coming back to the model. I should point out that it isn't static. When opportunities exist to grow, we up our investment. A good example is at LitePoint, where we significantly expanded our Asian distribution and cellular test engineering capabilities in line with our plans described to you in October of last year. But equally important, when markets change unfavorably, such as an HDD test, we resized our fixed cost structure to reflect those changes. We completed that resizing a few months back. Turning now to the second component of our strategy: using the hard-earned profits for the best possible shareholder return. As you know, we actively look for closely related businesses that offer a rate of return in excess of our cost to capital. Let me reference LitePoint, as the most recent example. Recall LitePoint more than doubled its sales inside of Teradyne in its first year. If you take 2012 and 2013 together, we are on track to deliver about $550 million of additional revenue versus our original 2-year target of $350 million. And to acquire LitePoint, we needed sizable U.S. cash reserves, otherwise we faced unnecessary shareholder dilution, as sellers significantly discount any buyer stock. Going forward, we believe having sizable drive power in the U.S. ultimately avoids diluting shareholders. And while we've grown cash and marketable securities quite significantly since the acquisition of LitePoint, and in the quarter with a total gross balance of slightly under $1.2 billion, our actual total U.S. cash is about $600 million. This is net of $360 million in offshore cash and the $190 million convertible debt principal due in March of 2014. So we're actually operating with a considerably lower level of fully flexible U.S. cash than we've had since before the LitePoint acquisition. We also accept that we may be too opportunistic with our stock buyback program. But for now, we'd rather be opportunistic and cautious in share buybacks, so we have the latitude to invest in growth opportunities without trading off dilution. Of course, there is no predicting if we can find another attractive nonorganic additional size that requires U.S. cash, so we'll continue to evaluate and consider all other options too. So to recap, our play book is to operate an optimized business model, designed for the industry realities, and then to use these hard-earned profits for the best possible shareholder benefit. In our third quarter call with you each year, we like to update our model for the following year. You'll recall that we need about $375 million in quarterly sales to achieve a 15% operating profit assuming normal product mix. We aren't planning any changes to that model this year, however, given our rising profit outlook, our cash tax rate will increase from about 13% in 2013, to upwards of 18% in 2014. Post 2014, we expect this rate to be in the mid-20s. We have included our model in the accompanying slide deck for your reference. Now moving to the key highlights of the third quarter. We have total company bookings of $271 million, down from the second quarter, consistent with seasonal patterns. The top line of the $433 million was essentially flat with the second quarter. We had one customer that was more than 10% of company revenues in the quarter, and our top 5 customers accounted for 43% of our total third quarter sales. Total company product turns business was 37% versus 38% a quarter ago. SemiTest product turns business was 42% versus 48% a quarter ago. Memory revenue was $39 million. Moving down to P&L. Non-GAAP gross margins increased to 59% from 56% in the second quarter due to a very favorable product mix. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $142 million compared to $138 million in the second quarter. The delta was driven by LitePoint sales expense and onetime corporate items. At the operating line, we posted a 26% profit. Our non-GAAP net interest expense and other expense was $2 million. Cash tax expense for the quarter was $16 million and our full year cash tax rate is expected to be 13%. Cash from operations generated $122 million after capital additions. We ended the quarter with a gross cash balance of $1.159 billion, DSO was 44 days, down from 48 days in the second quarter. We expect cash and marketable securities to be flat in the fourth quarter as we are staging long lead-time inventory for 2014 surge demand. As noted in the press release, sales for the fourth quarter are expected to be between $260 million and $285 million, and the non-GAAP EPS range is $0 to $0.07 on 194 million diluted shares. The diluted shares are lower than normal because at this profit level including interest and excluding the convert shares is more dilutive. Q4 guidance excludes the amortization of acquired intangibles, the noncash imputed interest on the convertible debt and includes taxes on a cash basis. It also excludes an expected pretax gain of $33 million from the sale of an equity position in a private company. Our GAAP EPS range is $0.04 to $0.08. The operating profit rate at the midpoint of our fourth quarter guidance is about 4%. Now moving to the P&L percentages in the fourth quarter. We expect non-GAAP gross margins to be about 55%. R&D and SG&A should be 25% to 27%. Non-GAAP net interest expense is expected to be about $2 million. So as 2013 gets closer to entering the record books, it's shaping up to be a good year for us by a down test equipment market. We have a fresh product line-up, and expect to post solid market share gains in SOC, memory and Wireless Test. Across the company, we have a rich engineering pipeline to drive future growth. We are well positioned competitively in entering 2014 and expect higher capital equipment spending for test than in 2013. And our operating model is generating the necessary cash to offer us a broad range of options to grow shareholder value. Now I'll turn the call to Mark for a few comments on some of the technology trends impacting our business.