Earnings Labs

Wolfspeed, Inc. (WOLF)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Apr 26, 2016

$25.50

-1.35%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cree, Inc. Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2016 Earnings Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Raiford Garrabrant, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Raiford Garrabrant - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Abigail, and good afternoon. Welcome to Cree's third quarter fiscal 2016 conference call. Today, Chuck Swoboda, our Chairman and CEO; and Mike McDevitt, our CFO, will report on our results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2016. Please note that we'll be presenting both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results in our remarks during today's call, which are reconciled in our press release and posted in the Investor Relations section of our website. Today's presentations include forward-looking statements about our business outlook, and we may make other forward-looking statements during the call. These include comments concerning trends in revenue, gross margin and earnings, plans for new products, and other forward-looking statements indicated by words like anticipate, expect, target and estimate. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. Our press release today and the SEC filings noted in the release mention important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Also, we'd like to note that we'll be limiting our comments regarding Cree's third quarter of fiscal year 2016 to a discussion of the information included in our press release. We will not be able to answer any questions that would involve providing additional financial information about the quarter beyond the comments made in the prepared remarks. Consistent with our previous conference calls, we're requesting that only sell-side analysts to ask questions during the Q&A session. Also, since we plan to complete the call in the allotted time of one hour, we ask that analysts limit themselves to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, please contact us after the call by email or phone at 919-287-7895. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Chuck. Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Raiford. As we…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Brian K. Lee - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just first one quickly, can you quantify the impact on front-end (18:55) utilization from the lower sell through in commercial lighting in the quarter? Just trying to get a sense for the interplay between your component segment and what it feeds into your captive commercial lighting business. And I guess, related to that, just curious if you did see some inventory build in chips here recently given the softness in Lighting. And then I had a follow-up. Michael E. McDevitt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Sure, Brian. So, I think that there's a relatively minor impact on the chip business from the Lighting slowdown. I'm sure there's very slightly incremental, but the reality is that since we restructured the business last summer, that business is pretty well balanced and really driven much more by our external customers than it is by the internal ones. So, I'd say it's minor at most. Then I would say as far as inventory goes, there really wasn't any build in inventory in LED business. In fact, if anything, I think, overall and chips were actually down a little bit quarter-over-quarter. What you're really seeing is, raw materials and WIP is really the vast majority of that inventory. It's in Lighting. And it's really as we were building a supply chain targeting a higher number, and that's really what drove that quarter-to-quarter. Brian K. Lee - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. And a follow-up for you, Chuck, just you mentioned during the prepared remarks, one of the three drivers of the shortfall this quarter was the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Vishal Shah with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Vishal Shah - Deutsche Bank

Management

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Can you talk about your consumer lighting business? You mentioned that you were working on some advanced bulb technology. What kind of margins do you envision in that segment once you launch the product? And also, you've got $350 million of buyback authorization left. Can you talk about your plans around share buyback, the balance sheet items? Thank you. Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. On the consumer, so, we are working on a next-generation bulb that should be launched in the fall. Don't want to give away too much before we get the product out there, but it's really designed around reinforcing our premium market position and really built around the idea of better light. In terms of its financial model, I think we'd better off waiting to kind of share those as we get a little bit closer and give you some targets, but I would expect it to be at least as good, if not slightly better than where we're at today. As far as the buyback goes, we do have about $350 million left. And we're going to continue to evaluate the opportunities in the market. And I would expect that depending on various market conditions, we would continue to target to be active in the market there.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Harsh Kumar with Stephens. Your line is open.

Harsh V. Kumar - Stephens, Inc.

Management

Hey, Chuck. Question for you. Now that the ERP issue is resolved and you said you're seeing some positive signs from your customers on the commercial side. I'm curious what your expectation is with regards to getting back to the level that you were at. How long do you think it'll take to get all of that business back and then start to be on that 20% CAGR number that you guys talk about for commercial lighting. Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, Harsh. Look, I think that we saw the improvement start in March, and it's continued in terms of customer service levels as we get into April. So, I feel like the day-to-day blocking and tackling is back on track. I think we've seen the order rate start to get better in March, and it looks reasonable here in April, but again it's going to take a couple quarters, I think, to get back to the levels we were. Now that being said, I think the new products over the next couple quarters are also going to help. So, I think it's really two things, right. As we get the customer service levels back up that comes back over a couple quarters plus the new products should start to drive the growth in the business. I don't have a specific quarter for you, because honestly, in my mind, it's not when do we get back to a level we were at, but how do we drive it beyond that. So, as we head into FY 2017, we're going to target fairly healthy growth. I think it's going to take three things. It's going to be the new products. We also have to do things like Essentia by Cree to expand that business overall. I think if we do those two things, we'll be at a reasonable growth rate and then we're going to still look to see if there are some strategic opportunities that could be complementary. We're not in a hurry there, but I think that would be the other piece I would think about as we get into FY 2017.

Harsh V. Kumar - Stephens, Inc.

Management

Got it. And as my follow-up, I think, I want to hit upon something that was maybe asked a little bit earlier. You talked about some pressure on the LED side. It's just been, I think, four months, five months since the re-org was completed there. Is it just commentary that you're providing relative to the market and you feel like you're well positioned or is it actually hurting you guys on the LED side? Michael E. McDevitt - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. Harsh, as you saw, I think honestly, our LED numbers probably are a little better than people expected in Q3. So, we started the restructuring last year in end of June, early July; so it's been nine months. I'd say last quarter things came in as good, maybe even a little better than what the expectations would have been. The commentary is really just to provide the dynamic that it remains a competitive marketplace. And so, we're going to keep focusing on innovation. That's what drives that business. But at the same time, I think, it's important that we're just acknowledging that market remains very competitive.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Edwin Mok with Needham. Your line is open is open. Edwin Mok - Needham & Co. LLC: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. First question on margin on your guidance of 41.5%. If your LED business is kind of flat to down, and I think you said margin is flattish, that kind of implied your Lighting margins bounce quite a bit. Does that all come from just no inventory write-down this quarter or what is driving the Lighting margins rebound? And how much was the inventory? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. So, look, on the margins side what we would expect is, is that, if LEDs is in a similar range and then as we start to get additional volume in Lighting, that's going to give us some incremental margin and we're going to also get some better factory utilization. So, keep in mind that one of the headwinds in last quarter was when we had less overall revenue in Lighting, there is some incremental factory underutilization. And that when the revenue starts to come back on commercial, we're going to get at least most of that back in the quarter. So that's what's driving that probably more than anything else. Not sure what your question on inventory or how you want me to address that, as I didn't get quite the full question there. Edwin Mok - Needham & Co. LLC: Yeah. Sorry about that. You guys mentioned there was some inventory write-down last quarter. How much was that? Did that impact your 3Q gross margin? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Edwin, we didn't break it out specifically. I would tell you, the margin was more factory underutilization than anything…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Krish Sankar with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.

Andrew Hughes - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Hi. Thanks, guys. This is Andrew Hughes on for Krish Sankar. Someone touched earlier on the LED restructuring. Just curious, is there more margin tailwind or upside left on that program or do you think most of that is baked in with the margins in that segment essentially starting to recover a little bit? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Look, I would actually say that it's relatively neutral at this point. So, I think early on in our Q1, we got some benefits, probably most of it, from the restructuring. We got some incremental benefits in our Q2. At the same time, Andrew, we were actually reducing inventory in the channel. So, we were somewhat offsetting that. I think Q3 is a relatively reasonable estimate of how the business was. I don't think there's a big swing factor one way or another in that quarter. So, Q4, if demand hangs in there and the market conditions are roughly the same, I would expect it to be in a similar range plus or minus, no tailwind or headwind at this point. But again, the market is dynamic, and so we'll just have to adapt to what's going on there.

Andrew Hughes - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Great. Thanks for that, Chuck. And then just in terms of those market dynamics, can you just give us a little commentary on pricing trends you're seeing in both the high power and medium power categories in the LED product side? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. So, look, obviously, we're a lot more focused on the high power, that's where the majority of our business is. I think the best thing I can say is that right now this quarter and last quarter were similar to the previous two. So, it hasn't gotten better, but it hasn't changed, gotten significantly worse either in the last few quarters. So, I'd say that trend continues to be competitive. Price continues to come down sequentially, but plus or minus a similar range we've seen for the last few quarters. Mid-power, I'd say it's been also similar over the last several quarters. I'm sure there's some fluctuation up and down, and I know that it ebbs and flows a little bit with demand in terms of what the back lighting market is doing. But I'd say, overall, they're both been trending in a similar range for the last few quarters. And again, I'm sure there's quarter-to-quarter variation, but if you look at it over a three quarter or four quarter, I would say, they're both similar trend lines.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Colin Rusch - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks so much. Can you talk about your historical experience with cycle time on product update, both for the commercial lighting as well as with the new bulbs? How long does it typically take from introduction to really seeing a meaningful ramp on the revenue line? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, Colin. So, what I'd say is, on the bulbs, you put a new bulb in the market and it's pretty much a pretty quick reaction, right? It's on the shelf and that's what consumers are generally buying. So, I'd say that impact will be – if we launch in the fall, we'll start to see the effect of that probably in our Q2, but keep in mind, I think we're thinking about a premium bulb positioning there. So, the way I'd characterize that is, we want to be the best bulb out there in the marketplace. We're not trying to make that as – that's not intended to be a significant revenue growth driver year-over-year. On the commercial lighting side, typically what we see is for a brand new platform that's breakthrough, it's going to be two, three quarters before you get significant uptake. There's obviously some near-term projects that you can get early on, but it takes a little while to get those specked in. So, the more of a specification product, think of it as two, three quarter. The more I'd say contractor grade product or something that can be used in a variety of jobs, then you can probably pull that in a quarter. So, example I would give you is that some of our newer stuff…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sven Eenmaa with Stifel. Your line is open. Sven Eenmaa - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. First question, I wanted to ask your visibility on the LED Products business. How does it compare to the same quarter last year? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Last year, Sven, I would say that I don't have a great answer for you right now. I would say that for the last couple quarters, it's pretty similar. So, I'd say, at this point of the quarter, LEDs is roughly about the same place plus or minus as we were sitting in Q2 and Q3. Sven Eenmaa - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: And the second question I have is, in terms of your new product introductions, how do you think using high power chips packages you produce versus using third-party mid-power? Is there a place for mid-power in your new product introductions as well? Or you remain focused on conveying house production? Charles M. Swoboda - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, actually. So, maybe there's some misunderstanding. We've been going with the right product for the right application in our Lightning business here for a couple – probably almost two years now. So, while a many of our high-end products are high-power driven because it gives us some unique advantages, there are other product lines where we have utilized both mid-power. We have products based on the array technology. And so, I would say, we're open minded. We really believe that where the technology drives a system advantage, we're going to do it. And when it's better to provide system advantages through other things, other than the LEDs, we do that as well. And I'd say that's already part of our overall Lighting Products strategy.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Raiford Garrabrant - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you for your time today. We appreciate your interest and support, and look forward to reporting our fourth quarter results on August 16. Goodnight.