Paul Arling
Analyst · Dougherty. Your question please
Good afternoon and thanks for joining us today. Demand for UEI solutions is strong as our advanced wireless control devices for entertainment and home automation continue to gain traction. To further our position and support long-term growth, we remain focused on building our differentiating IP portfolio and providing customers with innovative solutions that exceed their end users’ expectations. Our intuitive 2-way voice-enabled solutions for wireless entertainment and home automation have set a high bar in the marketplace and we are extending our leadership. For example, at CES in January, we unveiled Nevo Butler, our new smart home hub that leverages nearly all our innovative developments, including QuickSet, nevo.ai and smart home sensors, enabling us to enter adjacent markets and expand our offerings to existing and prospective customers. While demand for our solutions is high and orders are strong, our supply has been hampered by the punitive tariffs implement by our government this past year. In response and to mitigate those added costs, we acted quickly to broaden our sources of supply to locations outside China, improve our margins, and put into effect cost-cutting or cost controlling initiatives. However, during the fourth quarter, shipments were delayed and net sales were lower than expected at $169.7 million. Nonetheless, our improved gross margins and our well-managed expenses resulted in EPS meeting our guidance at $ 0.70. We continue to improve our supply chain and expect to see positive results in the upcoming quarter. In 2018 we began implementing a series of strategic initiatives to proactively address macro challenges to our business, as well as taking additional measures, all aimed to provide consistent and profitable growth that has long been a hallmark of Universal Electronics. To tackle the supply side, we are upgrading our manufacturing footprint by moving production for U.S. products from China to our facility in Mexico and to a new manufacturing partner in the Philippines. We expect to complete these transitions this summer and believe we will emerge from this challenge stronger than ever. These types of moves typically take a couple of years, yet we anticipate accomplishing them in a year or less. Further, to more effectively capture the significant market expansion opportunities in front of us, we are streamlining our corporate structure to increase operational efficiency and free resources for strategic investments. Now, I would like to tell you a little bit about our exciting show at CES. As noted, we introduced Nevo Butler, our end-to-end voice enabled smart home hub with built-in white labeled digital assistant that unifies entertainment control and home automation experiences, enabling interoperability across fragmented ecosystems. The remarkable technology platform is designed with nevo.ai at its core to incorporate varying modes of control like security, lighting, energy management and more. Digital assistants that connect consumers to important services such as safety and security or bring joy through better interaction with entertainment devices will play a key role in delivering the enhanced experiences promised. Nevo Butler delivers a versatile monitoring and control assistant solution capable of addressing a wide range of devices not supported by existing platforms and brings voice control to a large and existing installed base of devices through our new cloud services. This platform enables service providers, consumer electronics brands and OEMs to bring voice enabled services to their products and end users, while remaining in control of the data and the consumer relationship. We launched in collaboration with Microsoft on their Azure cloud platform and are marketing directly to major brands worldwide who want differentiation in control. Available as kits that address specific channel needs, Nevo Butler can be bundled with a wide range of certified devices, including safety and security sensors and smart thermostat and temperature sensors developed by our teams at Ecolink and RCS. These kits will be available for introduction later this year and we are working with a number of industry-leading customers who have already expressed interest in this platform. Regarding the home entertainment industry, change is clearly happening and that change creates opportunity for us. As voice enabled automation is becoming more and more prevalent, our proprietary intuitive 2-way voice enabled home entertainment platforms give service providers a means to make the transition to the future. These new platforms make initiating and controlling the home entertainment much more intuitive and easier than ever before, enhancing the consumer experience and increasing subscriber retention. Worldwide providers are invested in this shift and are updating their systems. While this transition continues its inevitable progress, new and existing customers are including significantly more UEI technology in their next-generation systems, lifting demand for our products and services. Likewise, the market momentum continues to expand in home automation. As previously reported, Daikin, Trane, Toto, Ring, UTC, XFINITY Home and others are leveraging our technology to enable home automation and security. We achieved our 2018 goal of over $130 million in net sales and based on current trends we expect to continue to see strong growth in these home automation products. I’ll now turn the call over to our CFO, Bryan Hackworth for a review of the financials.