Ambarella Inc (AMBA) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ambarella second-quarter fiscal year 2014 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Deborah Stapleton. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much and good afternoon everyone and welcome to Ambarella's second-fiscal-quarter financial results conference call. Thank you for joining us today. Our speakers will be Dr. Fermi Wang, President and CEO, and George Laplante, CFO. The primary purpose of today's call is to provide you with information regarding our fiscal second quarter.

The discussion today and the responses to your questions will contain forward-looking statements regarding our financial prospects, our market growth, and demand for our solutions, among other things. These are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Should any of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should our assumptions prove to be incorrect, our actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update these statements. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as well as other information on potential risk factors that could affect our financial results, are more fully described in the documents that we file with the SEC, including the annual report on Form 10-K that we filed on April 4 for the 2013 fiscal year, and the Form 10 Q, which will be filed shortly. Access to our second-quarter results press release, historical results, SEC filings, and a replay of today's call can be all be found on the Investor Relations portion of our website. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Fermi Wang. Fermi?

Thank you, Deborah, and good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased to report our Q2 revenue was $37.7 million, up 35% from the $28 million we reported in the second quarter a year ago. Q2 non-GAAP net income was $7.7 million, or $0.26 per diluted share. This compares with a non-GAAP net income of $6.2 million or $0.23 per diluted share for the same period in fiscal 2013. I would like to discuss some of our products and the market highlights, and then I will turn it over to George for more in-depth discussion of our second-quarter financial performance and our guidance for Q3.

The second-quarter results were supported by strong performance in all of our core camera markets, while the infrastructure market continued to reflect market softness. Our camera growth in the quarter was led by strong performance in the IP security camera market, and for the first time, we estimate that IP security camera unit shipments exceeded all other individual camera categories. We continue to benefit from the migration of analog CCTV to a high-definition digital IP design, as well as our [wrench] and the feature-rich product offerings. Successful customer penetration with the A5s family of SoCs is fueling our current growth while the introduction of the S2 family of SoCs that enables 4K resolution and advanced analytics is maintaining our technology leadership position in this market.

In the second quarter, we saw sales growth in our security business across all regions. But in particular, we experienced significant positive momentum for our business in China. This was driven both by professional high-definition IP camera, as well as a consumer camera designed for home monitoring use. Additionally, Chinese manufacturers are increasingly providing solutions not only to domestic markets, but also on the OEM basis to customers in other geographies. In July, Hikvision, the China-based growth leader of video surveillance products announced availability of its new [9-watt] IR speed dome camera family, offering 2 million pixel and a 1.3 million pixel resolution with 30X optical zoom capability. These cameras provide a long range of visibility even under challenging lighting conditions and are based on Ambarella's A5s SoC solution.

In the consumer IP camera market, we see new opportunities driven by cloud-based Internet services and remote smartphone monitoring. This category includes both [stereo low] Wi-Fi cameras, as well as security systems that include a manual video recorder, bundled with high-definition IP cameras to provide leading recording for multiple locations. Swann's recently introduced a platinum, full-HD security system based on Ambarella's A5s chip -- an excellent example of this product category. Swann is a global leader in the security monitoring systems and it is based in Australia. We believe Ambarella is well-positioned to benefit from the growing trend towards higher resolution, increased analytics, and better video quality. Ambarella's A5s SoC family has seen widespread adoption, providing an excellent combination of high-quality full-HD encoding, with very low power and excellent low light performance. Additionally, Ambarella's new S2 SoC family enabled resolution 4K and supports advanced analytics capabilities.

In the consumer camera market, sales of the wearable sports and automotive aftermarket cameras continued to be strong in the second quarter. The sports camera market continued to push for higher resolutions and faster frame rates to meet the performance demands of the sports camera user. Revenues in the quarter were led by GoPro, with its Hero 3 camera family that includes the white, silver, and black models, which use Ambarella's A5s and A7 SoCs. All models support full HD recording and Wi-Fi connectivity, while the black model introduced last November, is the first consumer sports camera to support both 1080p60 and the 4K for ultra-HDV resolution.

In July, JVC Kenwood Corporation of Japan introduced its GC-XA2 ADIXXION action sports camera based on Ambarella's A7L camera SoC. The camera supports 1080p60 video, 60 megapixel still pictures, and a Wi-Fi connectivity to smartphones. In addition, there is increasing demand activity in wearable cameras outside of the sports category. The benefits of our hands-free recording combined with wireless connectivity to the Internet are driving new video sharing applications. Ambarella's A7L SoC family enables full HD recording with wireless connectivity and extremely low power, making it ideal for small form factor wearable cameras.

In the automotive aftermarket, Ambarella provides camera SoC solutions for video camera recorders or dash cams. These cameras are sold primarily in Russia, China, Taiwan, and South Korea. During the second quarter, we saw continued design wins momentum for our A7L-A SoC family, driven by consumer demand for higher quality video; two general cameras supporting front and back views; and advanced analytics such as a lane departure warning system. During the quarter, we launched a support for developing on our A7L-A platform, which allows the use of wide-angle lenses for better viewing coverage. At the recent InterAuto automotive industry exhibition in Moscow, a large number of leading automotive camera brands were demonstrating new Ambarella-based products. Many of these customers feature Ambarella logo prominently on their promotional materials and the products as we have become known for outstanding video quality.

Although the market continues to move toward higher resolution and more features, the low end of the market in China has become more competitive. While we continue to sell into the lower end, we expect to see more erosion of our low-end camera revenue in Q3. With that said, we are seeing a strong adoption of our A7L-A products across all regions, including China. That should drive our growth in these markets from Q4. In addition, we have successfully penetrated customers in Taiwan and added new customers in Korea that will begin to benefit revenue in Q4 as well. We also believe that demand for higher-end features like two-channel solutions and the wireless connectivity will further expand the market in all regions.

In the video infrastructure business, Ambarella provides solutions for television broadcast, hand-held encoders, and the transcoders, as well as video contribution systems. As expected, during Q2, we saw lower demand for traditional broadcast [hand-held] markets, while continuing to see opportunities for transcoders and the leading contribution systems. Based on our customer forecasts, however, we expect demand for traditional hand-held equipment to improve in the second half of this year.

In summary, we are very pleased with our Q2 results. We see continued growth opportunities across all camera markets -- IP security, sports, wearable, and automotive -- and a forecast improvement in the broadcast hand-held market. Ambarella is continuing to invest in new solutions leveraging the latest process technology and advanced architectures to extend its leadership in each of our markets. With that, I will hand it over to George to discuss our financials.

Thanks, Fermi, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start with a discussion of the financial results for the second quarter of our fiscal year 2014 that ended on July 31, 2013, and then review the financial outlook for Q3. During the call, I'll discuss non-GAAP results and ask that you refer to today's press release for a detailed reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. For non-GAAP reporting, we have eliminated stock-based compensation expense as adjusted for income taxes. As we've discussed in the past, the Company has seasonality to both its revenue and gross margin, so I will include year-on-year comparisons for certain key operating metrics to assist in the understanding of changes in our Business. With that in mind, let's start with a review of revenue.

For our second quarter of fiscal 2014, the Company had net revenues of $37.7 million. The Q2 revenue represented an increase of 35% over the $28 million in revenue for the same period in the prior year. Camera market revenue was estimated at 90% of Q2 revenue, as compared to 77% for the same period in the prior year. Our year-over-year growth continues to be fueled by our professional and consumer IP security, wearable sports, and automotive camera markets. The professional and consumer security markets demonstrated both strong sequential and year-over-year growth due to the successful ramp of several new customers, as announced in past earnings calls. The automotive market continued its sequential growth, although we see increasing competitive pressures at the low-end of the China market. The market growth in our security and automotive in the quarter were offset by sequential declines in sports cameras and infrastructure markets. The sequential decline in sports cameras was expected due to the strong Q1 revenues associated with the launch of several new GoPro cameras, with Q2 returning to anticipated revenue rates.

As discussed in our last two calls, Q2 infrastructure revenue continues to be negatively impacted by macro market conditions in the US and Europe, recording lower revenues both sequentially and year-over-year. In addition, infrastructure revenues in Q2 of the prior year were positively impacted by the release of approximately $1.4 million of deferred revenue as a result of renegotiation of a large customer's contract. Recent customer forecasts lead us to believe that infrastructure revenues will experience some improvement in the second half of the fiscal year.

Ambarella uses WT Microelectronics as its logistic partner for distribution to the majority of our ODM and OEM customers. For the quarter ended July 31, 2013, sales to WT represented 59% of our revenues, as compared to 72% of our revenues in the same period in the prior year. Chicony Electronics company, a manufacturer of camera products for multiple OEM customers, as well as for their own distribution, represented 28% of revenue for the quarter compared to 11% for the same period in the prior year. WT and Chicony were the Company's only 10% customers.

Non-GAAP gross margins for Q2 of fiscal year 2014 was 61.9% as compared to 64% in the immediate preceding quarter and 69.2% in the second quarter in the prior year. In comparison to the preceding quarter, Q2 gross margin declined, primarily a result of lower infrastructure revenue as a percent of total revenue for the quarter, as well as a small decrease in camera market margins due to the product mix. As I previously mentioned, gross margin in the prior year second quarter was positively impacted by the release of $1.4 million in deferred infrastructure revenue, as well as a higher percentage of infrastructure revenues even excluding the deferred revenue impact.

Non-GAAP operating expenses for Q2 2014 were $14.8 million, compared to $14.9 million for Q1 of 2014 and $12.5 million for Q2 of the prior year. R&D expense in Q2 of this year was reduced by $1 million as a result of a one-time payment from a customer for the development and delivery of a custom software development kit, or SDK. As the SDK will remain under customer evaluation for an extended period of time, we have no forecast or commitments of future product revenues or development projects with this customer. Total headcount at the end of Q2 2014 was 470 compared to 457 at the end of the previous quarter, with about 342 employees dedicated to engineering. Approximately 76% of our total headcount is located in Asia, primarily in Taiwan and China.

Non-GAAP net income for Q2 2014 was $7.7 million or $0.26 per diluted ordinary share. Compared with non-GAAP net income of $6.2 million or $0.23 per diluted ordinary share for the same period in the previous year. The non-GAAP effective tax rate in Q2 2014 was 9.5%. In Q2 2014, the non-GAAP earnings per ordinary earning share are based on 29.8 million diluted shares as compared to 9.1 million diluted shares for Q2 2013. The Company is required to apply the two-class method to calculate earnings per ordinary share. In periods prior to the IPO, the two-class method allocates a portion of our earnings to preferred stock, as well as eliminates the preferred shares from the outstanding share count prior to computing basic and diluted earnings per ordinary share. This accounting treatment makes it difficult to compare our currently reported EPS to those periods where preferred shares were outstanding for all or a portion of the period, as in Q2 of the previous year. For fiscal 2014 and beyond, quarterly EPS will be computed on a basis consistent with that used since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013.

Looking at the first half of fiscal year 2014, our revenues of $71.7 million and non-GAAP net income of $13.9 million represents increases of 33% and 45%, respectively, over the results of the same period in the prior year. We ended Q2 with cash of $118.3 million, adding $12.7 million of cash from operations in the quarter. Total accounts receivable at the end of Q2 2014 were $21.9 million or about 53 days sales outstanding. This compares to accounts receivable of $23.5 million or 62 days sales outstanding in the prior quarter. Net inventory at the end of Q2 was $9.9 million, up from $9.3 million at the end of Q1. Accounts receivable and inventory remain in line with the Company targets. I would now like to discuss the outlook for Q3 and fiscal year 2014.

We expect revenues for the third quarter ending October 31, 2013 to be between $43 million and $45 million. This represents an increase of between 21% and 26% over Q3 of last year. The Q3 camera revenues are estimated to be between 87% and 89% of total revenues for the quarter, as compared to 81% in the same period in the prior year. Q3 revenues are being positively impacted by the growth of our consumer camera market such as wearable sports and consumer IP security cameras, adding to the ongoing strong revenue in our professional security markets. We anticipate a sequential decline in revenues from the automotive market in Q3 due to the competition at the low end of the China market, as well as delays associated with customer transition to Ambarella's new A7L-A based products. We expect our automotive market to return to growth in Q4 across all markets as a result of the successful customer penetration in Korea and Taiwan and the adoption of our advanced A7L-A chip, which supports the demand for more advanced features.

We estimate Q3 non-GAAP gross margins to be between 60% and 62% compared to 61.9% in the preceding quarter and 64.5% in the same period in the prior year. Gross margin in Q3 will reflect a normal seasonal increase in the lower gross margin consumer product revenues, which is expected to be partially offset by some near-term recovery in higher-margin infrastructure business. We expect non-GAAP net income for the quarter to be between $8 million and $9.5 million. We forecast that operating expenses will increase by approximately $2 million in Q3 as compared to Q2, reflecting return of R&D cost to normal levels as the positive impact of the one-time non-recurring $1 million R&D reimbursement in Q2 is eliminated and increased costs associated with amortization of NRE expense of our chip development programs.

We are using an estimated non-GAAP and annualized effective tax rate of 10% for net income amounts. If you are tracking GAAP net income, Q3 will reflect an increase of approximately $800,000 in stock-based compensation expense over Q2 as a result of the grant to employees of restricted stock units, or RSUs, under our annual evergreen stock program. We estimate our diluted share count for Q3 to be 30.7 million shares.

In summary, our Q2 revenue, gross margin, and profitability continue to meet our expectations as we focus on increasing our customer and market penetrations in our core camera markets, while at the same time investing in our technology to retain our competitive advantage. Operator, we will now take questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Ross Seymore, Deutsche Bank.

Congratulations on the strong results and guidance. Just a little bit of the questions on the automotives commentary that you are talking about. Can you go into a little bit more color on the competitive dynamic that you mentioned at the low end? How severe is that? Is it something that you expect to spread? And then any color on the magnitude of the decline in the quarter and the rebound that you expect in the fourth quarter, please?

Hello Ross, this is Fermi. As we said before that in the automotive market, are main competitor coming from the Chinese and Taiwanese companies like Novotech and [Samplus], they have been competing with us on the cost base and we are seeing them continuing to use that and so that we are expecting more and more severe price competition from them. Saying that, that is why we believe that our low-end market, our -- we're going to see some revenue erosion, but at same time, we are transitioning over our customers from our current A2s and A5s product line to our A7L-A, which will provide a lot of advanced features like I said in my script. And we believe that we are continuing to sell [a department and mid-stream] and the high-end market of this market so that we are seeing that the revenue will stabilize again and start growing again in Q4.

Great and -- sorry, go ahead George?

All I was going to say is the decline quarter-on-quarter, I would guess in the low double-digits.

Got you, and then the potential rebound in the next quarter? Do you get back to where you started or will that take a little bit longer?

Yes we get back to somewhere around our average for the first half, yes.

Got you. And then just the segment guidance that you gave, it looks like both segments will be up nicely, but the infrastructure side seems like it's going to snapback pretty nicely, at least $1 million up, or 30% to 40%. What is going on there? How sustainable is that? I know it is a small dollar amount, but that will mark the first up quarter in that segment in just about a year. So it is nice to see?

Yes, we see near-term strength and to be honest with you, we are not sure if it's a permanent market directional change or just a project-based change at this point. So we are really holding off on our optimism at this point and we are looking really at the second half as being what we call reasonably strong and then we are still have not had a -- we don't have a firm opinion on next year yet.

Great and then my last question really quickly, the color you gave on your two main customers, if I do the math on that, your distribution partners seem to be up very, very strongly while your fulfillment one -- or ODM is what you call it -- Chicony -- was also down strongly. Can you just talk a little bit about what is going on behind the scenes on that, especially relative to some of the concerns from a competitive and inventory perspective that others have brought to bear in the last few weeks?

Yes, as we said, the -- if you look at -- the total revenue for Q2 is up and the majority of that increase and we had a very strong quarter in IP security, a lot of that business or the majority that business goes through WT. So you see them as becoming a bigger percentage of the revenue. But on the Chicony side, they are still in a main supplier to a lot of our camera customers and as you saw there -- some of GoPro's business goes through there, but that is not a significant down quarter for them from a dollar standpoint.

Great, thank you. And, congrats again.

Kevin Cassidy, Stifel.

Thanks for taking my question and congratulations also on the great results and nice outlook. But speaking of outlook, George, could you explain to us a little bit about how you come up with your forecast? Is it a backlog and what percentage of that on backlog and how much is forecast from your customers?

Yes, is in the past what we've said is in the near-term we have reasonable visibility, both from a backlog standpoint, as well as the cameras that are actually in the marketplace shipping. So we entered the quarter anywhere between 50% and let's say 65% or 75% in backlog, the rest is turns business, but it is based on models that are already in production. So our visibility is reasonably strong in the quarter in which we are in and actually, probably the following quarter I have reasonable visibility, also. After that, what we look at is product launches. So we will have anywhere from 6 to 12 months in design activity in process. So we are forecasting our -- off the projected launch dates there. And as you would guess, we don't have exact volumes, but we have a history in the market and we are able to give reasonable estimates out past that.

Okay, great. And I recall, last quarter when you gave guidance, you said it was a particularly wide revenue estimate, because of some IP security that were coming into the market and now it looks like that came in at the high end of your expectations because of the successful ramp or -- is there more to that coming or has everything ramped that you expected or can you just give us a better feel of that comparison of what expectations were versus where you are now?

The expectations were at the high end and, as a run rate, we feel comfortable going into Q3. We have no really significant launches during the quarter, so our base run rate from these customers is coming out of Q2. So as we exited. So the security business for the next couple of quarters will be reasonably strong, but not at the same growth rate.

Okay, and just one other. It was also wearable category seemed to me that it was going to be further out and maybe that is coming in faster than expected. Could you comment on that and is maybe Samsung and QUALCOMM's announcements today, do you think that will -- does that have an effect on the wearable camera market?

Well probably those announcements will continue to encourage people to participate in this market. And like we said, we have been engaging in several of these activities, but our exercises -- and we don't announce anything until our customer announce their products. So we will hold back on that, but we do believe the wearable market is continuing to be a main focus of our engineering development.

We still -- we've said in the past, Kevin, that's really next fiscal year for revenue.

Okay. Great.

Let's call it meaningful revenue.

All right, thank you. Congratulations, again.

Quinn Bolton, Needham & Company.

Hello, Fermi and George. Congrats on the results and the strong guidance. Was wondering if you could comment, some of the concerns over the last couple of weeks as you were in a quiet period centered around both competition and some of the ODM revenue trends in the sports camera market. We saw the Verb camera from Garmin being introduced and wondering if you could just address the competitive landscape as you see it? And then secondly on the ODMs, especially for sports cameras, are you seeing the major sports camera brands diversifying their ODM supplier base or does -- are they sticking with one primary ODM partner in your opinion?

Okay. So first question is about that competition that -- on the Garmin announcement. When that camera come out to be on the market, we're going to buy one to compare to our cameras. Based on the published spec, we believe those cameras at least one generation behind to the camera already in the market, in terms of the performance and the [ED] resolutions. And so that we believe that the cameras that are in the market already will continue to sell to well. At least that's our opinion. In terms of the other -- there's other rumors around the Company, our Company policy is we don't address and comment on the rumors and we'll saying that -- I will let our financial performance to speak for itself. In terms of [your filler], our OEM will start looking for multiple ODMs. That is a natural next step for all of our big OEMs. And, in fact, for example, we have been talking about GoPro has multiple ODMs working for them and we believe they are going to continue in that direction. And most of our big OEMs customers are looking for secondary suppliers, so that is a natural assumption.

Okay, great, thanks Fermi. And then just, I asked this the last couple of calls, but just any updates on design activity and the timing of the ramp of the A9 silicon, is that still on track for early calendar 2014?

Well, we are continuing to work with our customer on A9 and A9 development still there. And we should expect the revenue next year.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Joe Moore, Morgan Stanley.

Great. Thank you and thank you for taking the question. If you think about the sports camera market, there's been some questions about product refresh and do you think you can get product refreshes around the A7 family or do you think people will wait for the feature set of the A9 to do a complete refresh of their camera lines?

Well, Joe, we don't usually comment on our customers' product lines and their plans, but I do believe that A7L is a brand new chip and also have a new function and a better quality and lower power numbers. It is natural for customer to consider those options for their upgrade.

Okay great that is helpful. And then the other thing -- I think I know the answer to this but just to clarify -- should we look at the Chicony business as being a measure of your biggest -- of GoPro -- of the bigger end customer? Or you mentioned that they are going to be diversifying? As we look at those Chicony commentary over the course of the next few quarters, how should we think about that and should we not -- should we try to read into your business in some way or can you just give us any context to help if this comes back up again?

Yes. Chicony builds for multiple OEMs, first of all. And second of all, the comment on GoPro that we've been reading, GoPro has consistently use multiple ODMs. So by focusing on Chicony and trying to relate that into GoPro could cause you difficulty both from a historical standpoint and even more so going forward.

Great, thank you very much.

Thank you, and with that, that does conclude our time for questions. I'd like to turn the program back over to Fermi Wang for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, and I want to use this opportunity to thank our employees worldwide for their dedication to making this a world-class Company and I also want to thank to all of you for joining us today.

Thank you. Thank you, presenters, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Again, this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day. Attendees, you may now all disconnect.