Tom Edman
Analyst · Stifel
Thank you, Sameer. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter fiscal year 2022 conference call. I'll begin with a review of our business highlights from the quarter and a discussion of our second quarter results, followed by a summary of our business strategy. Todd Schull, our CFO, will follow with an overview of our Q2 2022 financial performance and our Q3 2022 guidance. We will then open the call to your questions. The quarter's highlights are also shown on Slide 3 of the investor presentation posted on TTM's website. In the second quarter of 2022, TTM delivered an outstanding quarter with revenues and non-GAAP EPS above the high end of guidance despite a challenging supply chain and labor environment and the continued impact that COVID-19 is having on our business. Revenues were up 10.3% year-on-year, the second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth as our commercial markets drove the year-on-year increase. We saw a significant jump in our profit margins in Q2 as many of the cost headwinds that we have faced over the past year turned into tailwinds. Specifically, we saw improved product mix globally, favorable foreign exchange rates as the Chinese RMB weakened against the dollar, lower metal prices and improved productivity in North America. We also enjoyed very strong levels of quick-turn business that contributed to our profitability. I am extremely proud of our employees for delivering outstanding results this quarter. We had previously discussed pay adjustments that we made in the first quarter of this year in North America to increase our competitiveness. Since then, we have seen a general improvement in our ability to attract and retain talent, though the labor market is still tight in specific regions. The price increases that will offset these higher compensation costs are still anticipated to have a positive impact on our margins through the balance of the year. We expect that the elevated high margin quick-turn business, realized in Q2, will normalize in Q3 and will offset the margin improvements from price increases on a sequential basis. However, our margins are expected to be up on a year-on-year basis. Finally, I would like to mention that TTM published our first corporate, social responsibility report or CSR. And it is available on our website on the Sustainability page under the About TTM section. The report highlights TTM's commitment to CSR and the environmental, social and governance or ESG initiatives that are an integral part of the way we do business. I would now like to provide a strategic update. TTM is on a journey to transform our business to be less cyclical and more differentiated. As part of this strategic transition, near the end of the second quarter, we closed the acquisition of Telephonics. Over the past several years, TTM has consistently emphasized that a key part of our strategy is to add value to the product solutions that we deliver to our customers, particularly in the aerospace and defense market. In 2018, we acquired Anaren, which broadened TTM's product portfolio into highly engineered RF components and subassemblies as well as adding critical RF engineering capability and resources. Telephonics builds on Anaren and TTM's customer-driven culture and disciplined approach to engineering and manufacturing by further broadening TTM's aerospace and defense product offering vertically into higher level engineered system solutions and horizontally into the surveillance and communications markets, while strengthening our position in radar systems. Going forward, the aerospace and defense end market will be approximately 40% of revenues, which will provide growth and stability in a potentially uncertain demand environment for commercial markets. In addition, over 50% of A&D revenues will be from engineered and integrated electronic products with PCBs being less than 50% of the overall contribution. Finally, the transaction will be immediately accretive to EPS. Adding another element of our differentiation strategy, on April 28, we broke ground on a new state-of-the-art, highly automated PCB manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia. The decision to build this new factory is a direct response to our customer's increasing concerns about supply chain resiliency and regional diversification, and in particular, the need for advanced multi-layer PCB sourcing options in locations outside of China. The new facility in Malaysia will assist customers in our commercial markets, such as networking and telecom, data center computing and medical, industrial and instrumentation. Lastly, I would like to update you on our COVID situation. Earlier this year, COVID-19 impacted our employee base with increased cases in North America. However, this was meaningfully reduced in the second quarter, which contributed to our increased productivity. In Asia Pacific, we saw COVID-related disruptions in one of our smaller facilities in Shanghai, but this was more than offset by stronger growth from our larger facilities in Southern China. We understand COVID cases are growing again in China and North America and we are closely monitoring the situation and will adjust our protocols accordingly. Now I'd like to review our end markets, which are referenced on Page 4 of the investor presentation on our website. The aerospace and defense end market represented 30% of total second quarter sales compared to 33% of Q2 2021 sales and 30% of sales in Q1 2022. This market performed better than our expectations and we continue to experience a positive defense climate, with our A&D program backlog at $737 million, excluding Telephonics compared to $671 million a year ago. With Telephonics included, our program backlog is $1.04 billion. The solid demand in our defense market is a result of a positive tailwind in defense budgets and our strong strategic program alignment and key bookings for ongoing franchise programs. During the quarter, we saw significant bookings for several programs, including the Joint Strike Fighter and other space and airborne programs. We expect sales in Q3 from this end market to represent about 39% of our total sales, including a full quarter of Telephonics as the acquisition closed near the end of our second quarter. The medical, industrial, instrumentation end market contributed 21% of our total sales in the second quarter compared to 19% in the year ago quarter and 21% in the first quarter of 2022. The MI&I market set a new quarterly record, as it was up 27% year-on-year, exceeding $100 million in revenue for the fifth quarter in a row and performing much better than expected with broad-based strength across all segments. For the third quarter, we expect MI&I to be 17% of revenues as the elevated quick-turn business in Q2 normalizes in Q3 and select customers face component shortages. Due to the strength in this market year-to-date, we expect this market will be above the long-term third-party projections of 2% to 4%, which is better than the in line growth rate expectations we had at the start of the year. Automotive sales represented 18% of total sales during the second quarter of 2022 compared to 18% in the year ago quarter and 20% during the first quarter of 2022. Automotive grew 8.6% year-over-year and exceeded $100 million for the third quarter in a row. We continue to see year-on-year growth for automotive PCBs, despite the combined impact of supply chain and demand disruptions caused by COVID, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and semiconductor shortages that are all impacting automotive OEM production. However, growth rates are moderating somewhat and we expect our automotive PCB business to contribute 16% of total sales in Q3. Sales in the data center computing end market represented 17% of total sales in the second quarter compared to 14% in Q2 of 2021 and 16% in the first quarter of 2022. This end market was up 29% year-on-year, due primarily to growth from our data center customers. We expect revenues in this end market to represent approximately 15% of third quarter sales as strong data center demand continues to drive year-on-year growth. Networking, communications accounted for 14% of revenue during the second quarter of 2022. This compares to 15% in the second quarter of 2021 and 13% of revenue in the first quarter of 2022. We saw relative strength on a year-on-year basis in networking as compared to telecom as we continue to allocate capacity for high layer count boards to our data center computing and networking customers. In Q3, we expect this end market to be 13% of revenue. Next I'll cover some details from the second quarter. This information is also available on Page 5 of our earnings presentation. During the quarter, our advanced technology and engineered products business, which includes HDI, rigid flex and RF subsystems and components, accounted for approximately 33% of our revenue. This compares to approximately 31% in the year ago quarter and 33% in Q1. We are continuing to pursue new business opportunities and increase customer design engagement activities that will leverage our advanced technology and engineered products capabilities in new programs and new markets. Capacity utilization in Asia Pacific was 88% in Q2 compared to 88% in the year ago quarter and 85% in Q1. Our overall capacity utilization in North America was 42% in Q2 compared to 49% in the year ago quarter and 46% in Q1. This lower rate was caused by the additional plating capacity that we have added in North America, bottlenecks in non-plating processes and direct labor shortages in certain regions. Our top 5 customers contributed 30% of total sales in the second quarter of 2022 compared to 33% in the first quarter of 2022. We had one customer above 10% in the quarter. At the end of Q2, our 90-day backlog, not including Telephonics, which is subject to cancellations, was $635.7 million compared to $553.1 million at the end of the second quarter last year and $605.3 million at the end of the first quarter. With Telephonics included, our 90-day backlog at the end of Q2 was $703.7 million. Our book-to-bill ratio was 0.89 for the 3 months ending July 4. As we look forward to the fourth quarter and beyond, we will continue to closely monitor global economic influences on our commercial business. To date, we have seen minor impacts as specific customers focus on managing inventories to line up with expected semiconductor chip deliveries. Our backlog continues to be robust however and we expect the aerospace and defense market to provide a strong countercyclical element to our commercial business, if conditions should weaken. I'd like to conclude by again highlighting the significant strategic moves that we made in the quarter with the groundbreaking in Malaysia and the completion of the Telephonics acquisition, both of which will further differentiate TTM and our technology solutions. I also want to thank our employees for continuing to contribute to TTM and our critical mission of inspiring innovation for our customers. Our business performed much better than we expected as a direct result of our employees and our supply chain partners' concerted efforts to support TTM and our customers. Now Todd will review our financial performance for the second quarter. Todd?