CEVA Inc (CEVA) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the CEVA Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Kingston, Vice President of Market Intelligence and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks [Rako]. Good morning everyone and welcome to CEVA's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Amir Panush, Chief Executive Officer, and Yaniv Arieli, Chief Financial Officer of CEVA. This is Amir's first earnings conference call with CEVA and I wish him all the best in his role as CEO.

Before we start, I would like to remind you that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that if they materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of CEVA to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding market trends and dynamics, including projected declines in the global semiconductor industry in 2023 and the long-term demand opportunity for our technology; our market position, strategy and growth drivers, including with respect to licensing and royalties, Wi-Fi, 5G and software; demand for and benefits of our technologies; expectations and financial guidance regarding future performance, including our belief in our long-term royalty growth prospects; guidance for 2023; and our plans for hosting an investor event in the second half of the year.

For information on the factors that could cause a difference in our results, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These include: the scope and duration of the pandemic, including continued restrictions in China; the extent and length of the restrictions associated with the pandemic and the impact on customers, consumer demand and the global economy generally; the ability of CEVA's IPs for smarter, connected devices to continue to be strong growth drivers for us; our success in penetrating new markets and maintaining our market position in existing markets; the ability of new products incorporating our technologies to achieve market acceptance; the speed and extent of the expansion of the 5G and IoT markets; our ability to execute more base station & IoT license agreements; the effect of intense industry competition and consolidation; global chip market trends; and our ability to successfully integrate Intrinsix into our business.

CEVA assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide a more meaningful analysis of the our core operating results and comparison of quarterly results. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release we issued this morning and in the SEC filings section of our investors relations website at investors.ceva-dsp.com.

With that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Amir, who will review our business performance for the quarter and provide some insight into our ongoing business. Amir?

Amir Thank you, Richard. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today. I want to start this call by sharing how truly excited I am to be part of CEVA, and to lead this incredibly talented organization through its next stage of growth. Although I have only been with the company for a little over 6 weeks now, I have been highly impressed with three important factors:

First, the people. This team is passionate about their work and the success of the company, fostering a great corporate culture of collaboration and drive.

Second, a world-class portfolio of innovative, wireless connectivity and smart sensing IPs. There is no greater indicator of the success of CEVA to date than to realize that more than 50 CEVA-powered devices were sold EVERY SECOND in 2022 and reaching a record 1.7 billion devices over the course of the year.

Third, I believe the market opportunity for CEVA's technology has never been greater. The markets that we serve, including Wireless IoT, 5G and Edge AI are some of the fastest growing in the semiconductor industry.

We are conducting a review of each of our product lines to ensure that we are investing our resources in the areas with the highest potential for growth. Once I have this in place, I look forward to sharing the details of it with you at an investor event, which is planned to take place in the second half of the year.

Turning to our performance for the fourth quarter. We reported another solid quarter despite the weak economic backdrop, with continued strong momentum in our licensing business and resilience in our royalties. We signed [22] licensing agreements in the quarter, with notable strength in 5G, where we signed 3 agreements, and Wi-Fi 6 with four agreements. We also signed a strategic deal for our Ultra-wideband IP with a global leader in automotive semiconductors for their digital car key initiative. Other customer agreements signed in the quarter target AI for in-memory computing, smart audio, connectivity for smartphones, TWS earbuds, wearables, sensor fusion software for set-top-box remotes and more. Royalty revenue was down compared to last year reflecting the broad macro/consumer weakness and elevated inventory levels.

For the full year, we delivered record total revenue of $134.6 million, an increase of 10%, driven by strong licensing demand throughout the year across our extensive IP portfolio. Revenue from licensing, NRE and related for 2022 reached $89.3 million, an increase of 23% year-over-year, the fourth sequential year of growth. We signed 76 new licensing and NRE agreements, up from 73 last year. Licensing is a precursor for royalty revenue and this record licensing year further reinforces our belief that the royalty revenue opportunity for CEVA continues to expand. I will elaborate shortly on what I believe the drivers for CEVA's business will be in 2023 and the royalty opportunity ahead.

In terms of full year royalties, our annual royalty revenues were down 9% year-over-year to $45.4 million, with the largest decline was in our handset baseband royalties, which were down 24% year-over-year, primarily due the continued ramp down by a customer of ours who was replaced by a competitor for 5G chips at a large U.S.-based handset OEM. To a lesser extent, smartphone sales in emerging markets, a stronghold for our China-based customer, were impacted by the global slowdown. Moving to our base station and IoT category, despite the weak global consumer demand in the second half of the year, we still managed to achieve record royalty revenues generated by a record 1.4 billion devices. Bluetooth royalties grew 11% year-over-year, generated from a record 1 billion unit shipments. Base station RAN royalties also grew, up 14% year-over-year, while lower shipments and royalties from PCs, robot vacuum cleaners, cameras and other consumer related technologies, affected many of our customers. Overall, I'm encouraged by the strength and potential of our royalty business and believe that our diversified customer base and end markets ensure that CEVA is on a positive trajectory with promising long-term royalty growth prospects.

In terms of future growth drivers, I would like to highlight three important areas where CEVA

has an excellent opportunity in licensing and royalties, Wi-Fi, 5G and software.

The first is Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is one of the fastest growing connectivity standards and the most in-demand

technology for IoT. The Wi-Fi 6 standard was architected with low power IoT in mind, enabling even battery-powered devices to remain working for up to years at a time. This coupled with higher throughput at lower power and increased robustness has brought unprecedented demand for Wi-Fi for many end markets and use cases.

Accordingly, the overall Wi-Fi 6 IoT TAM is expected to exceed 4.4 billion units annually by 2024, according to ABI Research and continue to grow at a CAGR of 9% through 2027.

CEVA is the industry's dominant Wi-Fi 6 IP provider, with more than 30 licensees to date. Wi-Fi expertise today is a scarcity, with few companies possessing the majority of the knowhow. We are one of the few with this expertise and through our licensing model, we are successfully lowering the entry barriers for companies to develop Wi-Fi 6 chips. Moreover, the royalty opportunity for Wi-Fi 6 is still ahead of us - many of our customers are expected to come to market in 2023 and 2024 with their Wi-Fi 6 chipsets. And in licensing, we have already started to sign up Wi-Fi 7 lead customers, for what will soon become another Wi-Fi upgrade cycle.

The second area is 5G. While 5G has been deployed in developed markets in the last few years, the main use case up until now has been in smartphones. However, the scalable throughput, low power and low latency of 5G means the technology is applicable in a much broader set of end markets and use cases. There is a lack of expertise in cellular, and at CEVA we have this in-house, built over decades. We already have licensed our 5G DSPs and platforms to many companies for 5G macro base stations, Open RAN, Active Antennas, Fixed Wireless Access, 5G-V2X and 5G RedCap for cellular IoT. The most recent Ericsson Mobility Report highlights Fixed Wireless Access and cellular IoT as two areas with tremendous growth opportunities in the coming years.

In addition, much of the world's 5G network coverage has yet to be built out, and soon we will see the 5G-Advanced rollout beginning in mature 5G markets. In the next few years I believe CEVA has the opportunity to license our 5G IP even more broadly, being capable of helping any company who wishes to develop a product to capitalize on the market opportunity brought about by 5G. The third is software. Over the past number of years, CEVA has increasingly been investing in the development of software IP, in order to move up the value chain and to further differentiate our solutions. Our software portfolio today includes some highly-sought after technologies including spatial audio, AI-based environmental noise cancelation, voice recognition, and IMU-based activity detection. Our strategy is to license these software IPs directly to OEMs and ODMs for their end products, rather than to the semiconductor chipmakers. This is where we can unlock the true value of the software

and generate incremental royalties for CEVA with higher ASPs.

We already have strong presence in the smart TV, PC and robot vacuum cleaner markets with our

sensor fusion software and will continue to invest and look for strategic market opportunities to drive strong growth in our software business. An excellent example of this strategy at work is from CES last month, where boat, India's leading wearables brand, ranked #1 for wearables in India and #5 for wearables worldwide, launched new premium spatial audio wireless headphones. These headphones are powered by a Bluetooth Audio SoC featuring our Bluetooth 5 IP and our audio DSP.

In addition, we also licensed our MotionEngine Head Tracking software directly to boAt, which is used as part of the spatial audio solution. We believe that spatial audio will become mainstream in the mid/high end TWS market segments, which according to Techno Systems Research (TSR) will surpass 400 million pairs annually by 2025. We are currently running evaluations with many headset OEMs to demonstrate the capabilities of our spatial audio and other sound-related software packages with this market in mind.

So, in summary, CEVA delivered a good year against a tough macroeconomic backdrop. We reached record revenues, driven by strong licensing demand for our products. We signed a record number of deals in the year and shipped in a record number of devices. My thanks predecessor Gideon and the entire CEVA team worldwide for their great contribution in 2022. I would also like to thank our partners, suppliers and to our shareholders for their confidence and support.

As I look ahead into 2023, I see many opportunities ahead for the company. I have full confidence in, and believe, that we have the people, the technology and the processes in place to drive CEVA forward and be even more successful. Our comprehensive IP portfolio is in high demand and we will continue to develop outstanding products that our customers rely upon us for. Once myself and the team solidify and define what our future strategy will be, I look forward to taking you through this later in the year.

As for our expectations for 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the global semiconductor industry is projected to decline by 4% in 2023. Also, many public semiconductor companies that reported earnings in the last two weeks have taken a muted view on 2023, particularly with regards to the first half of the year. We also see these trends, but I want to reinforce my belief that CEVA's long term growth potential remains strong, as the continued digitalization of all things electric will continue to drive long term demand for semiconductors.

Finally, I want to sincerely wish you and your families a successful and joyful 2023. I look forward to meeting many of you at conferences and non-deal roadshows throughout the year. Now I will turn the call over to Yaniv for the financials.

Thank you, Amir. Welcome on board. We're glad to have you here. I'll now start by reviewing the results of our operations for the fourth quarter of 2022.

Revenue for the fourth quarter were slightly down 2% to $33.4 million, as compared to $34.1 million for the same quarter last year. The revenue breakdown is as follows: Licensing, NRE and related revenue was $22.5 million, reflecting 67% of total revenues, up 5% from $21.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2021.Royalty revenue was $10.9 million, reflecting 33% of total revenues, down 14% from

$12.7 million for the same quarter last year.

Quarterly gross margins came in better than expected on GAAP and non-GAAP basis. Gross margin was 82% on a GAAP basis and 85% on a non-GAAP basis compared to our 80% and 82% guidance on GAAP and non-GAAP, respectively. Non-GAAP quarterly gross margin excluded approximately: equity-based compensation expenses of $0.4 million and amortization of acquired intangibles $0.4 million. Total GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter was above the high-end of our guidance at $29.1 million due to $1.3 million associated with retirement expenses of executives, impairment cost of $0.3 million associated with the closing of an office, lower allocation of Intrinsix's NRE costs from R&D into cost of revenue and higher compensation-related expenses.

Our GAAP tax benefit for the quarter came at $1.7 million, mainly associated with adjustment as a result of [implemention] the U.S. tax reform rule 174, and non-GAAP tax expense was $1.7 million,

representing 24% of pretax non-GAAP income. U.S. GAAP net income for the quarter was $1.9 million and diluted EPS was 8 cents for the fourth quarter of 2022, as compared to net income of $3.9 million and diluted EPS of 17% for the fourth quarter of 2021.

With respect to other related data Shipped units by CEVA licensees during the fourth quarter of 2022 were 375 million units, down 10% from the fourth quarter 2021 reported shipments. Of the 375 million units reported, 67 million units, or 18%, were for handset baseband chips. - Our base station and IoT product shipments were 308 million units, up 10% sequentially but down 8% year over year. - Bluetooth shipments were 220 million units in the quarter, up 10% sequentially, and cellular IoT units were up 75% sequentially, to 25 million units. WiFi shipments were also up 5% sequentially to a total of 37 million units.

As for the year, our total shipments increased 3.5% year-over-year to 1.7 billion devices, an all-time record high. Annual shipments of handsets were down 14% year-over-year to 328 million devices -- line is attributed to a socket loss by a customer at a key OEM who was replaced by Qualcomm for 5G modem chipsets and overall weak smartphone demand globally in the second half of the year. Our base station and IoT product royalty revenue continued to grow and reached a new record level of $29.2 million, up from $28.6 million in '21 and $22 million in 2020.

In terms of units, base station IoT product unit shipments were up 8% year-over-year to almost 1.4 billion devices. Despite the macro events and economic turmoil, our non-GAAP net income from 2022 increased 23% to $18.8 million from $15.3 million reported for 2021. As for the balance sheet items. At the end of the year, our cash, cash equivalent balances, marketable securities and bank deposits were approximately $148 million. In 2022, we repurchased approximately 219,000 shares for around $7 million, and we still have around 280,000 shares available for repurchase.

DSOs for the fourth quarter continued to be lower than the norm at 34 days. And during the fourth quarter, we generated $3.4 million from cash from operating activities. Ongoing depreciation and amortization was $1.7 million and purchase of fixed assets was $0.6 million. At the end of the fourth quarter, we have 485 people on board, of whom 403 were engineers. Now turning to our outlook. As Amir discussed earlier, the smartphone and consumer electronic markets continue to suffer from soft demand and elevated inventories. Also, the technology sector is undergoing project expense adjustments and realignments.

We expect this softness to continue into the first half of 2023 and anticipate that both our licensing and royalty revenues will be lower sequentially while picking up the pace in the second half of the year. Due to this uncertain economic outlook and reduced visibility across the industry, we will refrain from giving annual guidance for 2023 at this time. We will revisit this topic and do our best to provide more information when visibility improves. In general, our licensing NRE related revenue business continues to generate good customer traction across our diversified portfolio. In royalties, we believe that strength of our base station and IoT customers will see this category continue to grow in 2023, primarily in the back half of the year. Handset based royalties are anticipated to decline further in 2023, offsetting partially the growth in our base station and IoT royalty.

On the expense side, we implemented cost control measures and make [stentors] measures as we monitor the market. However, we also plan to continue to invest in our growth drivers and we'll update further on this topic in our upcoming investor event planned for later this year. Our overall expected GAAP cost of goods expenses for 2023 to increase by $0.5 million to $1.5 million in our non-GAAP COGS expenses to increase by $2.5 million to $3.5 million. GAAP OpEx for 2023 is expected to decrease by $3 million to $4 million, and our non-GAAP OpEx for 2023 is expected to increase only by $1 million to $2 million.

Our non-GAAP tax rate for 2023 is expected to be just over 30% due to the utilization limitation of withholding taxes in our Israeli subsidiary. Specifically, for the first quarter of '23. Based on what we're seeing across the industry, the soft macro consumer weakness is expected to continue in the first half of the year. And for the first quarter, our expectations are in line with industry trends. We continue to monitor our licensing pipeline and our royalty business closely so we can respond to the changing market dynamics.

Gross margin is expected to be similar to the fourth quarter of last year, approximately 82% on a GAAP basis and 85% on non-GAAP basis, excluding an aggregate $0.4 million for equity-based compensation expense and $0.4 million for amortization of acquired intangibles. OpEx for the first quarter is expected to be lower than the fourth quarter of 2022 and in the range of $26.8 million to $27.8 million including an expected $3.6 million of equity-based compensation, $0.3 million for the Intrinsixs holdback related expenses and the same amount for amortization of acquired intangibles.

Our non-GAAP OpEx is expected to be just slightly higher than the fourth quarter of last year and a range of $22.7 million to $23.7 million. Net interest income is expected to be approximately $0.7 million. Taxes for the first quarter, 30% on non-GAAP basis and share count for the first quarter, 24.3 million shares. Rocco, you could now open the Q&A session.

(Operator Instructions) today's first question comes from Matt Ramsay with Cowen.

First of all, Amir, congratulations and welcome. I think all of us look forward to working with you going forward. I guess the first question I would have is sort of a big picture one for you. And you mentioned in your prepared remarks that sort of giving a broader strategic update later in the year, but I wonder if you might share a few thoughts of first impressions as you sort of taken over as CEO, just areas of focus, impressions of the traditional license royalty business versus Intrinsix and the strategy there, just any big picture thoughts? And then I have a follow-up on the model.

As for my observation from -- since I joined the company for the 6 weeks within the company, I would say, generally speaking, first, -- it's really great to see the diversified technology and portfolio that we have overall. I think that our technologies are really addressing the key market trend in the semiconductors. And more specifically, as I mentioned in the remarks is that if you look at WiFi, if you look at 5G, if you look at our software capabilities to adding on, all those things are really contributing for a very good potential long term in terms of the growth for the company. And then with that, of course, I'm looking really how we are investing our R&D and activities in order to really foster the potential growth long term for the company.

I wanted to ask a few questions on the model and realizing that it's volatile times out there. But you guys sort of mentioned in the script that you think the first half of the year revenue-wise for the company will follow industry trends. And I think it's maybe worth spending a little bit of time and double clicking on that and just given your view of what industry trends are. I mean we follow the semis market broadly, the industry trends right now in auto and industrial are quite different than any of the consumer-facing markets. There's some -- certainly some inventory corrections that have happened in certain places, there's the potential for disruption and then reopening in China. So I guess to ask the question bluntly, I don't know what that normal trends are right now. So if you could kind of give us a little more on thoughts of how you're thinking about the first half of the year. That would be really helpful?

Excellent question and no doubt that you help me partially address that as well. Let's start -- let's back off for Q4. If you look at some of the royalty trends in Q4, we were up sequentially in Bluetooth units were up sequentially and WiFi were up sequentially and sell our IoT. We were up in most of our core markets other than handsets and then 5G, which is -- has their own dynamics. If you look at the markets for the first half of the year and some of the commentary that was addressed in the -- by public companies and earnings, and you exclude the industrial and automotive because those are markets that for now, at least we don't have any meaningful royalties at all. We have life design wins in automotive, but with no royalties yet. In industrial, this is a market that we're working on. But again, it's not one of our existing royalty drivers.

Most of our markets are coming from consumer. It could be laptop studies down with sensor fusion, it could be consumer devices that are now down in the beginning of the year or at least the first part of it of the year, it could be vacuum cleaners and alike. These are the -- some of the -- and of course, handset. Handset is something we still have the headwinds for handset and the market themselves are soft across the industry. You could hear that from multiple players, big ones in the 5G, but also in the low and mid-term play, which we are much more focused on in this area. So taking all that into account, we are probably looking at high single-digit type of sequential lower revenues, again, from a high -- very high level because we're -- we have so many different market segments in consumer, we did see the softness in Q4, which will probably prolong into Q1 as well in cameras and these types of more -- really more consumer type of device.

So I think that for now, with the inflation concerns with the macro with all the things going on, we're taking a more prudent/industry but more focused approach and the royalties. The licensing is still robust, a lot of interest, but we are seeing downsize in companies downsizing and refocusing the R&D efforts. So that's something that we want to be aware of and cautious if we encounter that in Q1 or in the beginning of the year. And as soon as companies align and get out of that mode, being an IP company could also help out come out of -- I don't know if you're in a recession or a slowdown, but even if you cut R&D groups or teams, there is an option to outsource, whether it's services from Intrinsix or IPs from CEVA on the combination to help you bootstrap and get a bit quicker to the market.

So these are the trends. We want to be a bit more careful like most of the industry in our domain, and that's where the guidance is coming from. And I think everybody looks in a quite optimistic way in the second half of the year.

No, I think lots of color there, and you really appreciate it. Just really last quick one for me, and then I'll jump back in the queue. Visibility on any growth acceleration from the 5G infrastructure space. I know that's been a market that is important to the company and on the come for a while, but also one that, on a quarterly basis, has some volatility to it. So those back half of the year comments that you make about a reacceleration. I assume that's mostly consumer-driven, but are the trends in the wireless infrastructure space any different than that?

Sure. The trends are different. The trends are different. And from our experience, there's no real seasonality in 5G. It's really spending of operators and decisions of when to implement new networks. We had a nice year. 2022 was one of the highest peers we had higher than '21 on 5G base station. And if you look at some of the commentary and the design wins that Nokia is discussing and talking about the Indian market opportunities and maybe some other sockets that they're gaining back share in to, it could be an exciting year. Unfortunately, we don't know the timing and when we'll see those royalties exactly kick in, and that's from our experience in the past. But the trends for 2023 should be positive because of those design wins. Yes. And I would add to what Denis said. I believe our 2 lead customers, we expect them to gain some market share. And overall, this market to do well this year. But as Yaniv said, on one hand, there's no seasonality there. On the other hand, it's hard to predict exactly how the rollout will look like. But generally sticking, we're looking at that optimistically.

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Kevin Cassidy of Rosenblatt Securities.

Welcome, Amir. And just a follow-up on Matt's question. Just to clarify it. Was that royalties that you're saying would be down high single digits? Or does that include licenses? Is there a slowdown on licensing also?

We're taking right now everything in that respect. The royalty is due to the consumer slowdown and handset weakness that we are seeing around us. And I can take more from a conservative approach of -- some of the companies that have been lowing off or readjusting their R&D investments. We don't know yet the outcome. We don't know how quick they will be back in business of new design starts. We haven't seen too many examples of that yet. We are reading the news of the different layoffs of the bigger companies and the readjustments of the projects. So I think we're right now looking at all of the numbers altogether with that single digit, and that's how we are looking at. Licensing is still strong. We started in Q4 that didn't happen yet in Q4, although those trends may have played a little bit started already a while back. So we hope we don't bump into them, but that's some of the macro that we see around us.

And maybe I'll add a little bit more color on that. I would say that fundamentally, the business is as strong as it has been on the licensing. So really, we -- I don't see and we don't see basically anything fundamental that drive so-called different outcome in terms of our ability to drive licensing in the market. It's just that with the many kind of project changes and realignment of investments that just our customers across the semiconductors are going to. There are projects that can change in terms of timing on one hand. On the other hand, there are projects that may potentially could have been done internally and now coming out so called to work with us on those opportunities. So just that there is a mixed bag so-called of things that can move as we go through the quarter, and that's why we are looking at it that way.

And maybe just what's interesting is the software licenses and it looks like you're going into a new customer base of the end products. What's the go-to-market strategy there? Are you hiring a new sales force for that? Or I guess, just how do you address those new customers?

I would say 2 things. First, as part of a previous acquisition that we have done, we got capable people to go and drive this type of so-called business models. But in addition, we are putting so-called more dedicated team to go and drive those activities as we see it as a meaningful growth opportunity for us, again, to diversify our product offering and also how we offer those products in the market to drive stronger and longer-term royalty-based loss.

And our next question today comes from Suji DeSilva with Roth Capital.

Richard and Amir, Best of luck in the new role. So maybe to follow up on the last question there on licensing and a longer-term question perhaps. In the past, if you look back, aside from the recent sort of volatility, the licensing run rate, if we think about licensing and software kind of growing, what kind of -- would that be a similar revenue run rate? Or what kind of multiple effect with adding software up to your licensing run rate longer term?

Yes. It's a great question, obviously, and we have demonstrated for many years, the licensing business, which is a precursor for royalties and a nice mark that your technology is relevant in the different markets that you play in. I don't think that has changed. We didn't give annual guidance this year like we normally do, at least this at the beginning of the year, and we want to look at it as we move along. But when we look at the consensus that are out there for CEVA, we're not too far off from our internal planning. That's one thing that I would say. We don't know the ins and outs of is it licensing going to be stronger. Is it royalties when exactly which one of them will pick up. But from a macro perspective, licensing is strong. We have seen that throughout 2022, including Q4, which wasn't -- for some companies, it wasn't that easier, was a different environment. We're still increasing and investing in R&D, less -- a bit less this year, maybe refocusing, maybe fine-tuning. I don't remember here that we have only guided $1 million to $2 million of non-GAAP OpEx increase. So we're really looking also conservatively on the expense line. But with that said, all the different markets and all the different trends that Amir talked about that we said in the prepared remarks, are still very, very relevant to the different geographies and the different segments in the licensing space.

And if you're referring to calendar '23 revenue consensus was that what you're referring to in your remarks?

Yes. Overall.

And my follow-up question is another long-term question. If I do the math in your calendar '22, base station IoT royalty and units, so it seems to be about $0.02 ASP. I know Bluetooth is lower and the others are higher. I'm wondering if longer term, if there's opportunity for that ASP to uplift or whether Bluetooth and that kind of lower ASP would continue to dominate the units and keep that ASP around $0.02?

So what we try to avoid is coming to come up with our price list on earnings calls. I think it's not something that is typical. But we would say from the chip price and the industry and the complexity, WiFi chips are probably 2 to 3x more expensive than the Bluetooth one, and therefore, the ASP for us needs to be in that type of magnitude anywhere between 2 and maybe sometimes 3 depends on the end market. So that's a big potential. I think we have talked about reaching 1 billion Bluetooth devices.

Last year, WiFi hopefully or should get there in a very short period of time, 2, 3 years, we should be at the same run rate with higher ASPs. So the opportunity for us in the IoT space and a lot of solutions today are coming out of combo solutions, both Bluetooth and WiFi. So that could be as well a very interesting offering. That's part of the growth in our base station and IoT. That has not changed, not necessarily with the I don't want to put a stent to it, but the magnitude of those numbers are very applicable today as well.

Yes. I would tend to add to that. If you really look at so-called moving from Bluetooth to WiFi and then from there to 5G and then from there to our AI technologies and more comprehensive the core DSP on its own with additional hardware accelerators and so on. And as we move also to software, overall, you can see an increased so-called ASP per device that, again, in terms of the long-term perspective of our loyalty base, and I'm very, very optimistic about how we see this moving forward as we go through the coming few years.

Our next question today comes from Chris Reimer with Barclays.

You mentioned the decline in consumer demand affecting your customers and the fact that you're looking at conservatively and taking away the guidance that you previously used to give. My question is, is there something that makes you think that the second half of the year will be stronger -- just from -- I think you mentioned that currently, it's just very weak right now, but potentially the second half will be stronger. Is there something in customer behavior that you've seen maybe from last quarter to this quarter that's changed? Or is this something that your customers are telling you that you get back to us in the second half or I'm just wondering if there's anything concrete to that?

Yes, sure, sure. It's not coming from CEVA. It's really coming from the industry and many, many different customers. If you look at some of our -- even Sales customers, whether it's [CyrusLogic] or NXP or (inaudible) or peers like Rambus, Silicon Labs, Skyworks, a lot of players that we have managed to gather first did not give guidance and also believe that the second half with all them, just macro economics, not necessarily whether it's inventory build outs, whether it's the consumer software, we'll clear out that cycle that everybody has been talking about for the last maybe 6 to 9 months will clear off in the second half of the year. And then we're in a good position to gain royalty, much higher royalties than the second half than the first half. And that's where we are coming from. Nothing specific that our customers told us so that we realized just now. Again, you saw the numbers are seeing the numbers for Q4. We are coming from a strong point. But with that said, this is where the trends in the markets are.

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Yes. And I would tell us like we're looking across the semiconductor industry and inventory levels and all that. We expect those to go down as we move forward through the year, and that would help in terms of volume shipments as well as the expectation in China and other regions so-called things will open up and consumer will come in a stronger demand after several quarters that were more challenging. And that's in terms of that.

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Got it. And just one more. How are you looking at M&A in this environment? Is it something that's on your radar?

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Yes. So definitely, as I just came on board, that's definitely a focus for me, generally speaking, to look how we drive our growth strategy moving forward. M&A is important tool as part of the other thing that I'm looking at. We are strongly positioned in terms of our cash and our ability to go and drive strategic activities. And definitely, that's something that I'm looking at as we drive our strategy for the year.

And our next question today comes from Martin Yang at Oppenheimer.

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My first question is on licensing. Can you maybe comment on whether you see any geographic concentration for licensing activities last year? And is there any tailwind positive effects from China's reopening into '23 regarding your licensing activities.

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No, -- let's look at China overall, both royalties and licensing because I don't recall top of my head, the percentage of licensing on a worldwide basis. China is about 50% of our revenues. And that means that in order to get royalties and some of the big royalty payers for us, whether it's 5G, whether it's handsets, whether it's Bluetooth, WiFi, are coming from China. That means that the licensing activity has been robust there for many, many years, plus/minus COVID shutdown. But even in those months or quarters, we saw that many companies around the world, including China know how to work from home, and it all works out well, and we closed deals also from remote. So that has been the case. And I'm not sure anything has changed around that.

We have a new sales team in Europe. So one of the bigger opportunities for us is to focus on the European market in licensing. This is something that we'll probably give more focus this year. And the U.S., I think, also is something that we've been doing for the last 3 years. It started with (inaudible) and the team that we acquired and added the sensor future technology 2 years ago was we added Intrinsix. So we have about 100 people today, mostly R&D in the U.S. with new markets and new opportunities and enhanced business model. So I think Amir has a lot of in place. We'll try to help them make it, but there's no doubt that it's not just China. We don't see any big changes right now, but it's the overall macro environment, layoffs are happening everywhere and companies are just trying to call their next steps and maybe make do things a little bit more efficient. And that's the real concern that we are sharing with you guys, nothing specific other than that. Amir ?

Yes. But I would say all for licensing, again, for license take, I would say, again, as we look at the first half of the year, I see across Europe, the U.S. and some Asia Pacific multiple very nice opportunity coming. Specifically on the comment on China, I share that believe that as, again, the economy will open up more and more that, that investment into this type of technology will enhance as we go into the second half. So overall, again, fundamentally, we believe that licensing is overall in a good place, and it's quite diversified across the globe.

Got it. I have one more question on licensing. When you look at the share of the deals you've signed, particularly the sheer connectivity, Bluetooth, WiFi and ultra live versus vision cell and AI. Do you expect some of the mix shift changing among those larger components within the deals within your licensing agreement in the next, let's say, 2 to 3 years?

Indeed, I'll start with the easier one, which is the AI. AI, we've been talking about for a while. AI is not just a generic self-contained processor, but it's really part of all our product lines these days. And you could find it in a 5G base station or you could find it in a vision camera-based device, and that's something unique that CEVA could add is the AI on the edge, and we have lots of different processors and technologies that we're offering. So that's one aspect of it.

The other is the combination. When we talk about some of the high-end audio solutions that are coming out to the market. It both has -- and we showed it at CES, there was a nice demo there. We're probably whoever joined us and come visited in Mobile World Congress will have the same solution. You can have the special audio. You could have Bluetooth connectivity, you could have head sensors. So we have different technologies combining some of them is processor-based, -- some of them is software based. The more we could add, the higher ASPs, both on the licensing and further down on the royalties that is part of our trend. And if you could add every once in a while and help our customers with services or NRE, what we call co-creation, that's part of the CVA offerings into the semiconductor space.

Our next question today comes from David O'Connor at BNP Paribas.

Amir. Maybe , just to start, you talked about the portfolio review in your opening remarks. What's the kind of potential outcome of this portfolio review? I mean is there areas of the business you may think that's a more noncore than previous? That's my first question.

Second question is on the uptick in the second half. Is there any big new designs coming to market that can help in that uptick in the second half? And a final question, also band on the strategic deal there. Can you give us an indication of what geography that was in and what the licensing pipeline for Ultra-Wideband looks like?

Yes. So in terms of scale, looking at our portfolio of investments and what I would like to make sure and I'm working with the team is basically to make it the most efficient into the growth areas that we see with the most potential in terms of the business model potential and the market potential with where we can basically be the most competitive with our technology. So that's the portfolio analysis that I'm doing with the team. And of course, with that, I would like to make sure that we are putting the investments in, again, the highest potential in (inaudible) as well as where we can mostly differentiate.

And UWB –

Yes. In terms of the UWB, actually, this is a very exciting technology that for many, many years, haven't been able to really take off now with the penetration into some of the lead smartphone OEMs. We see that nonpopulating into multiple use cases across the whole IoT domain, things related to interpositioning, to security to car keys and automotive and also very secured and low power type of connectivity that will complement very nicely also WiFi and Bluetooth. So we have a very strong portfolio of IP and technology to enable our partners to go very quickly to market with this type of technology. Of course, how big that market will be is still to be seen. But overall, I see considering the fundamental values of this technology and now that the ecosystem is really supporting to take that off. I'm very bullish on the potential of this technology, but time will tell. And I believe we really have a very strong technology to support our partners as that takes off.

This was an APAC region type of deal. Automotive one.

And the question on M&A, the first question was -- what was that, Davin?

Yes. There was just the third part. Just on the H2, the second half uptick. I understand that the markets may swing back. But just is there any other new design wins coming that are ramping? Any big ones there that may help accelerate that uptick in the second half?

Yes, I would say a few potential new customers that have been designing, whether it's a WiFi 6 design that can go into production, whether it's some of the ramp-ups in the 5G design wins that our customers want. We showed at CEVA's those very nice headsets with one of the India's top OEM brands in wearables, that could come in nice volume as soon as that picks up. So there are obviously quite a few. We have north of 30 WiFi deals and hence, fall only in production. So lots of customers potentially could get in. I think we talked about this year, next year, but those are all minor.

Yes, I think what I would summarize the ante potential that we see a stronger growth or stronger volume coming into the second half of the year is really as you look at the combination of what we talk about, the WiFi, the 5G and so calling the non-handset domain and base stations as well as the software, right? All those things we've already licensed to many, many customers, and we have many more in the pipe. And we see that really with very good, strong potential as we go to the second half.

Okay. Our next question comes from Gus Richard with Northland.

Welcome aboard hopeful goes well for you. Just a quick question on licensing NRE. I know you don't split those out, but could you give us a sense of the growth trends of those 2 different business -- 2 different segments of that business is licensing growing a little faster or is NRE.

I think it varies on the design wins. And you could sometimes see it also in the gross margins just from a technical point of was relatively high margins. We're starting the year as well. I would say that probably the later part of the year, there are some very interesting deals that we're lining up on the NRE side. So those 85% non-GAAP margins would probably slip a bit, but then that would be the contributor to the top line service revenues. So we're seeing that as a very nice combination that, especially today, the opportunity for companies that laid off R&D step, but still want to get into connectivity, but still want to get help to get a product out when the market picks up, whether it's 6 months from now or 9 months from now, that's the time to invest. And instead of internal headcount, they could use outsourcing. These are the opportunities also in the service business that we are focused. And obviously, the co-creation, which is a combination of the IT and services.

So I don't think we have a seasonality in this business. It's just based and driven on deals that we signed. But there is a very good interest across that side of the business as well. And we think that, that should be picking up anywhere from the second quarter onwards, specifically for 2023.

And then on the royalty side, [Arm] has been lifting pricing on their latest version of Arm 9. And I'm just curious, is there either any pricing pressure? Do you have any ability when you sign these contracts to modify your royalty rates and sort of -- or is it just the royalty rates go up with increasing content?

There are 2 things that help us with royalty rate, either it's what we offer and the combination of more IPs or higher-end devices versus lower-cost devices or end markets. If you are targeting a Bluetooth for a more advanced hearing aid device versus the consumer device, which is much more high quality. Those are obviously true for any TV or true for any consumer device that differs in the pricing. So I would say end markets is number one. Number two is the offerings, software processor type that also. Customers -- we are partners of our customers. We want them to succeed because that's the only way we could succeed. So from time to time, they talk to us, we try to offer them newer technologies at different rates -- royalty rates and enhancement. So that's an ongoing process. The win-win situation is the customer gets the right technology to be successful and sell products, and we move from one product to the product to the other to a newer one and then we're able to also get higher licensing fees and get a higher start in royalties. So I think those are the 3 aspects that really determine the ASPs for us.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Richard Kingston for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in CEVA. As a reminder, the prepared remarks for this conference call are filed as an exhibit to the current report on Form 8-K and accessible through the Investors section of our website at investors.ceva-dsp.com. We will be -- with regards to upcoming events, we will be participating in the following conferences: Mobile Work Congress, February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona, Spain and the 35th Annual Roth Conference, March 12 to 14 in California. For further information on these events and at all events we will be participating in can be found on the Investors section of our website. Thank you, and goodbye.

Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.