Earnings Labs

Xperi Inc. (XPER)

Q1 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 25, 2013

$6.62

-0.60%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Ashley and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Tessera Technologies’ First Quarter 2013 Earnings Call. All lines are placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Thank you. Ms. Moriah Shilton, you may begin your conference call.

Moriah Shilton

Management

Thank you, Ashley, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the call today. This call is also being broadcast live over the Internet. I will now read a short Safe Harbor statement. During the course of this conference call, management will make a number of forward-looking statements, which are statements regarding future events, including the future financial performance of the company. These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those projected. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this call. More information about factors that may cause results to differ from the projections made in these forward-looking statements, can be found in Tessera’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012 especially in the section entitled Risk Factors. The company disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. On the call today from management are Rick Hill, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman; Rick Neely, Chief Financial Officer; Barney Cassidy, President of Intellectual Property Corp and General Counsel; and John Thode, President of DigitalOptics Corporation. During this call today, management may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. The non-GAAP amounts of cost of revenues, research and development, selling, general and administrative expenses, net income and earnings per share do not include the following. Stock-based compensation expense, acquired intangibles amortization charges, charges for acquired in process research and development, restructuring and other related exit cost, impairment charges along with assets and goodwill and related tax effects. After management’s opening remarks we’ll open the call to your questions. I will now turn the call over to Rick Hill.

Rick Hill

Management

Thank you, Moriah. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank for joining our first quarter 2013 conference call. My name is Rick Hill and I’m the chairman and interim CEO of Tessera Technologies Inc. It’s a pleasure to see some familiar names on the call today and I hope I can bring some insights into the business opportunity for our company going forward. People have asked, why did you decide to step in the role of Chairman and Interim CEO. Well the answer is fairly simple everyone knows our company has been traversing some difficult times over the last several years. In August, the Tessera Board recruited me along with another gentleman Tim Stultz to join the Board to bring fresh eyes to the challenges facing our business. Taking my role as a director seriously, I’ve been immersed in understanding our business, helping to shape the strategy for our business going forward which I can tell you is both exciting and promising. In December, as Mr. Stultz and I reported out the need for changes in corporate governance operational execution and corporate strategy. Starboard Value LLP launched their second costly assault on the company. While we remain calm and we continue to carry on the unrelenting personal accusations and bombastic interactions with Mr. Feld of Starboard, began to weigh heavily on several of the new board members. So we accelerated the transition of the board members, which would have more normally occurred as part of our annual meeting. As Mr. Feld increased to slanderous personal attacks to Mr. Bulky and Mr. Yong, these two gentlemen volunteered to step down in order to remove any distractions that could take away from the opportunity we have as a company. Having recently retired from Novellus Systems Inc., where I spent 19 years delivering stockholder value, the new board members asked that I take over to lead us through the proxy five and help communicate the value the new management team is bringing to stockholders and I planned to start doing that this morning. This morning Rick Neely, our CFO, is going to report on our financial results for the first quarter 2013. And while I would like to be carrying the ball over the goal line in the first play from scrimmage, also from coming in – for coming in during the fourth quarter is there are still a lot of points to be put up on the board. And with frank talk that I will talk with you with, I’m – I want to convince you there’s great value to be had from our investment into Tessera Technologies, and we’re in position with a new board and management team that can make it happen. Rick Neely will now walk through our results for the quarter, and I’ll be back on to give some color on the business objectives for the second quarter 2013 and describe new initiatives we have for delivering stockholder value. Thank you.

Rick Neely

Management

Thank you, Rick. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2013 was $31.1 million, which included $25.6 million in revenue from the Intellectual Property segment and $5.5 million from the DigitalOptics segment. Looking at the revenue in more detail, Intellectual Property total revenue was $25.6 million and included $1.5 million in past production payments. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2012, our Intellectual Property revenue was down $17.4 million. The primary component of this decrease was a $24.7 million in past production payments that we received in the fourth quarter, which compares to just $1.5 million received in the first quarter of 2013. The decrease was partially offset by a licensed fee received in the first quarter of 2013 that we did not get in the fourth quarter of 2012. In comparison to the first quarter of the prior year, Intellectual Property revenue was down $13.4 million, primarily due to the absence of royalty revenue from Micron Technology and Powertech Technology Incorporated. DigitalOptics total revenue for the first quarter of 2013 was $5.5 million compared to $10.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2012. The decrease was largely due to sequentially lower fixed focus camera module product sales, which we noted last quarter would stop in the first quarter of 2013 as part of our announced focus on just our core MEMS product. In comparison to the prior year, first quarter of 2013 DigitalOptics revenue was down $2.2 million. The decrease was due primarily to the lower revenues from our image enhancement technologies and weaker demand for our micro optics products. Looking at our quarterly GAAP results, total GAAP operating expenses in the first quarter of 2013 were $95.6 million. As follows, cost of revenues were $7.9 million, R&D was $25.9 million, SG&A was $25.3 million, litigation expense was $14.1…

Rick Hill

Management

Thanks, Rick Neely. I know it may be a little confusing, but I think the tone of our voices are slightly different. At this time, what I would like to do is to be able to talk a little bit about the next quarter and then go into some color on the business. My hope here is to start to give our investors more information, of which they can judge the economic value of our business. Now starting with this quarter, we’re reinitiating financial guidance for one quarter out. And we’re going to quantify the following lines of the P&L statement, the revenue, we’re trying to going to give you our best estimate of revenue, our operating expenses, our assumed tax rate, and earnings after tax and earnings per share. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Krish Sankar who has continued to follow the company and report and hopefully our communications will be such that your reports can fully reflect the value Tessera has for its investors. Another important observation that I think is critical to all of us as investors in Tessera is our ability to have liquidity of our stock. And I think essential to improving liquidity is investor understanding. So as these meetings as well as investor meetings go on, it will be my top priority to continue to more effectively communicate the overall business model and business plan for Tessera in the weeks and months to follow if our investors choose to go forward with this management team after the annual meeting. For the second quarter of 2013, our guidance is going to be as follows. We expect total revenue for the upcoming second quarter of 2013 to range between $42 million and $50 million. Now the Intellectual Property revenue is expected to range…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And you first question comes from Krish Sankar with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Krish Sankar – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Hey, Rick. It’s good to hear your voice again after a while.

Rick Hill

Management

Nice to hear you too Krish. Krish Sankar – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Hey, just a couple of questions. Number one on the IP side, do you guys have any patents around advance packaging like 3D, TFC any of those or is it still in development?

Rick Hill

Management

Well, that’s a great question and the fact is we really do have a very rich patent portfolio with Invensas. And what I’ll do is I’d like to have Barney talk a little bit about what that patent portfolio has already done for us.

Barnard Cassidy

Analyst

Thank you, Rick. This is Barney Cassidy, the President of the Intellectual Property company TIPC, Tessera Intellectual Property Corp. Krish, we have one of the top 10 holdings of patents in the world, in 3D-IC and we’re growing it very aggressively both through internal development and through the acquisition of patents. We believe that is a key step at the next node if you will of development in interconnectology and we are aggressively pursuing it. We’ve already licensed it to SK hynix and we’re very excited about that relationship, which as you know, we announced in January in the first quarter, now has a license that will enable us to collect running royalties for eight years. Since signing that, they’ve been in our offices almost on a weekly basis to learn more about these technologies and we’re excited about that partnership.

Rick Hill

Management

And Krish, as you well know, I am no stranger to vertical reality and TSV technology and this type of packaging technology, and I’m extremely excited about the portfolio that we have. Krish Sankar – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Got it, got it. That’s very helpful, Rick. And then just two other quick questions, in your guidance for the June quarter, the episodic revenue of $19 million or higher, does it include a potential micron in it or is micron not included in that?

Rick Neely

Management

As you well know, just like when I was giving order forecast for the semiconductor capital equipment business, there is no advantage for us to say what’s in that number. Okay, it’s just dollar buckets that we think are high probabilities of coming in during that quarter for sure. For all we know, we could get 200 million in that quarter. But I wouldn’t be on this phone today promising you that number and particularly in this business given the vagaries of the court system that we’re currently plagued with. But more importantly one of the things we can’t afford to do in this business is to not maximize value we’re really doing, just like in the systems business, I’m not going to pull in order in if you will to a quarter just to satisfy – some projection – in the marketplace, if somebody says we’re to have a revenue. What I mean to is maximizing the value for the shareholder, which ultimately is profit and the bottom line cash in the bank, which yields dividends or stock buyback, and that’s the philosophy we’re operating with going forward. Krish Sankar – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Yeah, that’s helpful Rick. And then final question on the DLC side, it was regards to the Samsung Galaxy S4. Is that technology you faced it detection one, is this going to be used in all the S4s across the global, is it really in the U.S. ones?

Rick Neely

Management

I’m going to let John Thode to answer that question, as he has been at the front of that negotiation.

John Thode

Analyst

Hello, Krish. It’s John Thode, President of DLC. The answer is, that it’s going to be in all of the phones for the global supply for the Galaxy S4. It’s -it would be part of their global launch and something obviously we’re extremely proud of and – is a world-class world leading technology capability that we have, and frankly it is one that we’ve been developing for some time and beyond the Samsung Galaxy S4 are in a number of platforms, in fact the large majority of smartphone platforms that are currently being shipped today. Something we probably should promote quite a bit more and is a capability that will be integrating with our MEMS technology to create a very compelling value propositions for our partners and customers.

Rick Neely

Management

Thanks, John. Krish Sankar – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Is there anything that quantifying the opportunities? Is it – is it like a nickel unit are you talking about and royalty, is in more like somewhere in the $0.10 to $0.20, is there any way to figure it out?

Rick Neely

Management

Krish, unfortunately in this business with the agreements we have, we can’t disclose those individual agreements, but keep trying and as we go forward hopefully I’ll remember never to tell you. Okay? Krish Sankar – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: All right, thanks Rick. Good to hear you again.

Rick Hill

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And your next question comes from Mohit Khanna with Value Investment. Mohit Khanna – Value Investment: Hello...

Rick Hill

Management

Go ahead. Yes.

Rick Neely

Management

Yes. Mohit Khanna – Value Investment: Yes. I wanted to ask that the agreement with Samsung that you have got with for the S4 phones, is it possible that you guys can license the same technology to some other company or you have some kind of a binding agreement with Samsung and that cannot go to any other manufacturer across the globe?

Rick Hill

Management

No, our plan is to have it on every phone in the world. Hopefully in the long-term it’s combined with the world class camera technology that will bring SLR camera capability to basically your hand phone. So we’re very excited about it. It is a very, very rich technology with rich IP that we feel has very long-term positive impacts for the company overall. Mohit Khanna – Value Investment: All right. And I of course know that you would remember not to divulge any financial details, but just trying to understand kind of agreement and pricing mechanism that we have under this contract. So, is it some kind of a volume pricing contract that you had with IP business in the past?

Rick Hill

Management

Again, what we can release is what was released in the release and so I just can’t go any deeper for you. But make no mistake about it, if it’s going into every phone last time I checked, old Samsung is making a lot of those S4s. Mohit Khanna – Value Investment: All right.

Rick Hill

Management

So, some of my good friends are still able to visit me even though some of them have retired now. So, they must be getting some pretty good dividends over there in Korea. Mohit Khanna – Value Investment: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I think that’s all from me, Rick.

Rick Hill

Management

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions going forward. Mohit Khanna – Value Investment: You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions at this time.

Rick Hill

Management

Well, thank you very much for joining our conference call this morning. Hopefully, as we go forward on these conference calls that become richer and richer in data, the bracket will go off the numbers. And you’ll see the full effect of the changes that are being made since about September of last year. And I believe it’s very, very positive for the stockholders of Tessera. So, thank you very much and I look forward to speaking to many of you today one on one and to all of you on future calls. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today’s conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.