Clearone Inc (CLRO) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the ClearOne second-quarter 2014 earnings results conference call. This call is being recorded.

At this time for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to PondelWilkinson's, Mr. Roger Pondel. Mr. Pondel, please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Karen, and welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss ClearOne's 2014 second-quarter financial results.

On the call today are Zee Hakimoglu, President and CEO, and Narsi Narayanan, Senior Vice President of Finance.

First, some housekeeping matters before we begin. Please be advised that this conference call is being broadcast live on the Internet at www.clearone.com. Playback for the call will be available for at least three months and may be accessed on the Internet at ClearOne's website.

Before we begin, I would like to make a cautionary statement and remind everyone that all of the information discussed on today's call is covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Litigation Reform Act. The Company's discussion today will include forward-looking information reflecting management's current forecast of certain aspects of the Company's future, and actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied.

With that said, I will now turn the call over to Zee. Zee?

Thank you, Roger, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss our second-quarter 2014 results.

We are pleased to report record revenue for the second quarter of 2014 and our eighth consecutive quarter of revenue growth. Revenue for the second quarter reached $14.1 million, representing an exceptional 21% year-over-year growth. In fact, while we don't want to get into too many stats, this is our fourth consecutive quarter in which we have achieved highest or record quarterly revenue. not a bad statistic that indicates the market momentum we are experiencing.

ClearOne's impressive record revenue growth in this quarter was made possible due to contributions from our acquisitions and also from our flagship professional audio products. Our non-GAAP net income for the second quarter also increased by 10% year over year.

We continue to maintain our strong focus on gross profit and achieved a healthy 57% margin. Gross margins in the quarter were within the lower end of the Company's expected range. Gross margins were impacted by the periodic revision of overhead allocation, as well as the ongoing integration of Sabine manufacturing operations.

During the second quarter, operating costs were higher, reflecting the full cost of our investment in internal operations and our recent acquisitions. Our results include operating expenses for the entire second quarter for Sabine acquired on March 7 and Spontania acquired on April 1 of 2014. We believe the full benefits of these investments in the form of higher revenue and higher profitability will be realized in the quarters ahead.

During Sabine's first full quarter as part of ClearOne, we successfully integrated Sabine's sales channel into the ClearOne global channel that included North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific. In the second quarter with the acquisition of Sabine, revenue from ClearOne's full suite of wireless microphone products more than quadrupled from a year ago and reached $1.3 million.

On April 1, we closed the acquisition of the Spontania cloud-based media collaboration solution from Spain-based Dialcom. Spontania, unlike our current legacy business, offers multiple revenue streams for us, as well as our channel partners. These revenue streams include annual subscriptions for cloud services, the sale of permanent licenses for on-premise solutions and annual support and maintenance contracts.

During this first quarter, after acquiring the Spontania business, ClearOne achieved bookings of $216,000, of which we recognized revenue of $151,000.

For clarification, bookings reflect amounts contractually accepted by customers and billed by ClearOne. However, a portion of bookings is not recognized in the current quarter as revenue and will be recognized over the life of the customer contracts in accordance with US GAAP requirements.

We believe that reporting bookings provides valuable information to our investors about the recurring revenue stream that Spontania business is expected to provide.

Looking to the second half of the year, we expect to achieve an additional $750,000 to $1 million in bookings for Spontania-related products and services.

During the second quarter, our media collaboration sales and marketing team, strengthened recently by the addition of industry veterans, focused on introducing Spontania solution to our global channel. As anticipated, at the end of the second quarter, we also began shipping our new COLLABORATE Room Pro Media Collaboration product and VIEW Pro, our enterprise streaming system. We received positive market response to both solutions.

We also began shipping at the end of the quarter our new CONNECT Dante product, which enables easy connectivity of our flagship Pro audio products to the fast emerging Dante-enabled network ecosystem. For those not familiar with Dante, Dante is a highly interoperable, self-configuring, true plug-and-play digital audio networking technology. It uses standard IT-based networking and components such as ethernet cables, routers and switchers to carry high capacity and high resolution digital audio over a standard ethernet network. Some of the largest live events and sophisticated Pro audio installations worldwide use this technology, making audio signal distribution more cost effective and user-friendly.

Finally, at INFOCOM 2014 in Q2, we launched the newest ClearOne Pro audio platform, the CONVERGE Matrix, our new sound reinforcement and distribution system. This new professional audio system opened new market opportunities for ClearOne and will complement our existing audio conferencing solution. We expect to begin shipping the CONVERGE Matrix product at the end of this year, 2014.

With this wrap-up of our recent highlights, I would like to turn the call over to Narsi for a detailed discussion of our second-quarter 2014 financial performance. Following Narsi's discussion, we will take questions for the remainder of the available time.

Thank you, Lee, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I would like to point out two things. First, I will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to reported GAAP measures is included in the earnings release that went out this morning.

Now, turning to our financial totals for the second quarter of 2014, please note the following comparisons refer to second quarter of 2014 versus the same quarter of 2013. Net revenue for this quarter increased to $14.1 million, making this quarter the strongest ever second quarter in terms revenue. The revenue for second quarter increased by 21% compared to $11.7 million in 2013 second quarter. Gross profit was $8.1 million or 57% of revenue compared with $6.9 million, 59% of revenue. The decrease in gross margin was primarily due to periodical allocation of overhead inventory, which reduced the value of inventory and lower margin on wireless microphone business which is undergoing integration. These decreases in gross margin were partially offset by direction in (inaudible) charges.

Turning to operating expenses, since the marketing expense increased by 43% to $3 million from $2.1 million, the increase was mainly due to increased commissions to salesperson and independent reps, increased headcount and increase in tradeshow-related expenses. Research and product development expense increased by about 26% to $2.3 million from $1.8 million. The increase was mainly due to increase in R&D project costs and increase in headcount due to acquisitions.

Non-GAAP G&A was flat at $1.2 million. Direction and legal expenses was offset by increase in headcount due to acquisitions. Total non-GAAP operating expenses increased by 27% from $5.1 million in 2013's second quarter to $6.5 million in 2014's second quarter. Non-GAAP operating income reduced to $1.6 million from $1.8 million, a reduction of 10%. Non-GAAP net income increased by 10% to $1.4 million or $0.14 per diluted share from $1.2 million or $0.13 per diluted share for the prior year period.

Net income for 2014 second quarter was positively impacted by lower taxes. The lower taxes were due to the anticipation of more income from the enterprise streaming products, media collaboration products, Spontania solutions and wireless microphones happening in low tax jurisdictions outside the US. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA reduced slightly by 8% from $2 million to $1.9 million.

Let's turn to our financial results for the six months ended June 30, 2014. Please note the following comparisons refer to first half of 2014 versus the first half of 2013. Net revenue increased to $26.8 million from $23 million, an increase of 17%. Gross profit was $15.8 million, 59% of revenue compared to $13.9 million or 60% of revenue.

Turning to operating expenses, sales and marketing expenses increased by 31% to $5.7 million from $4.4 million. R&D expense increased about 23% to $4.6 million from $3.7 million. Non-GAAP G&A expense reduced by 4.3% from $2.7 million to $2.6 million. Total non-GAAP operating expenses increased by 20% from $10.7 million in the first half of 2013 to $12.8 million in 2014 first half. Non-GAAP operating income reduced to $3 million from $3.2 million, a reduction of 6%. Non-GAAP net income was flat at $2.2 million or $0.23 per diluted share. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA reduced slightly by 3% from $3.6 million to $3.5 million.

Turning briefly to the balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains strong. At June 30, our cash investment balance was $32.3 million, and we remain debt-free. The cash balance reduced from $42.7 million at the end of December 31, mainly due to cash payments for both acquisitions, Sabine and Spontania, happening in the first quarter of 2014.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back to Zee.

Thank you, Narshi. You can see the momentum of our performance and the value of our acquisitions reflected in our revenue growth and in our revenue expectations shared with you today. Our results reflect our continued plan to prudently leverage our profits from current growth to fuel future growth by making complementary and balanced investment in sales and marketing and research and development.

At the same time, and importantly, we will continue to integrate operations of the acquired businesses. We are confident that these timely and essential steps will create increasing value for ClearOne and its shareholders.

With that and for the time available, we would now like to address any questions you may have. Operator?

(Operator Instructions). Les Sulewski, Sidoti & Company.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. So looking at gross margin, how soon can we expect that to normalize following some of the additional costs you mentioned as far as the inventory of adjustment and Sabine integration?

I expect the gross margins to be back in the same region it used to be from next quarter. Of course, we will have the Sabine gross margins being less that will impact us, but it is not going to be a three-point lift (inaudible) that you saw this quarter. I cannot exactly give you what it is going to be, but it is going to be better than what happened this quarter.

Okay. That is helpful. And then can you provide a little bit more guidance towards R&D spending and any further efficiency that can be recognized to reduce total OpEx?

Yes, I can do that, Les. Last quarter, as we mentioned several times, we were committed to finish the research and development of our enterprise streaming. We have accomplished that. Made some modest shipments at the end of last quarter. I think that will be one price where we will do some reductions. Associated with research and development, of course, is our Spontania, and really the way research and development will show a decrease is to, as we have explained, increase revenue for those corresponding products.

We are not going to have an ultimate large cut in research and development. It is core to the success of ClearOne, but some of the projects are completed, and more importantly the projects that are completed, we anticipate good revenue growth there, and that will sort of I would say have an impact on the relative research and development percentage relative to revenue.

Okay. With regards to Spontania, and you had a $216,000 in bookings recognized a $151,000 in revenue on that, was there other revenue recognized outside of those bookings?

No. Those are the entire revenue streams that you are looking at with Spontania actually.

Yes. So you are expecting to achieve an additional 750,000 to 1 million bookings, plus the remaining 50,000 or 60,000, right?

Yes, 50,000 or 60,000 it will -- that is it. The bookings was 216,000, already revealed in the earnings release. On top of those 216,000, we expect additional bookings to be in the range of $750 million to $1 million. I do not have the model to translate that bookings to how much it is going to be in terms of revenue because timing makes a big difference at what time the invoice comes in, that makes a huge difference on how much it will be recognized as revenue, but the bookings, we think, will be $1 million plus for the entire year from Spontania from bookings actually.

So is it safe to assume maybe 75% will get recognized over the next two quarters or 100%, or is it higher? I mean just kind of a ballpark figure, if you could.

It could never be 100%. It is going to be less than 100%, but I'm not able to tell you exactly how much it is going to be because it depends on what time we seal the deal actually. If we do it at the end of the quarter, we will not recognize a single dollar for the deal. But if it happens at the beginning of the quarter, you're going to see 23% of the revenue recognized. Therefore, it is not going to be easy for me to tell you how much after future bookings will be recognized actually.

No, I understand completely. That is helpful. I just wanted to get the gist of how it worked.

It should be noted that we are paid -- you know, contracts are signed, and we are paid upfront. However, even though we are paid upfront, we still recognize the revenue as we provide the service.

Okay, Zee. Thanks. Can you also provide a percentage of revenue breakdown -- do you have that handy -- of audio?

Yes, yes, I have it. Pro made up 78%, UC was 17%, and the rest of it was video. Okay?

Audio was 70%?

78%.

78%. Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Pro audio was 78%.

78%, 17% UC and the remainder in video. Okay. And then one other thing. With microphone revenue, without Sabine, do you have a number? I mean from what I gather, it is around $1.3 million, including Sabine. Do you have something that is without what it was organically?

No, actually, Sabine is $1.3 million, and we said in the earnings release it quadrupled. The same amount on the wireless microphones in the previous quarter was less than $250,000 actually. $250,000 in 2013 Q2 actually, that is the comparison. Everything else is organic, actually. You already have Spontania that we broke it out. Therefore, what you are seeing, everything else is organic actually. Okay?

Okay, okay. I see. Thank you. And then just one one for me. Any tax guidance that you can offer?

Tax guidance. We think we will be in the low 30%s for the entire year, but really 30% to 35%, that is what we think. We took a lower tax rate this quarter because of the -- now the better anticipation of revenues coming from certain products, which give us lower tax rate since they are good to be shipped more outside the US actually. We have those tax rate benefits on those products when they ship outside of the US. Okay?

Okay. Thank you. I will jump back into queue.

Austin Hopper, AWH Capital.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Most of them have already been asked. Can you just talk about the buyback? There is some commentary in the press release about you are buying back stock. I couldn't figure out what you actually bought back in the quarter.

Yes, we did close to $1.4 million worth of buyback. I do not have the exact number. But if I was going buy to regular numbers, we bought up to $4 million. Our delivery target was $10 million. We have been slowly moving towards the target, and even though our volume is not that much, we are subject to all the volume restrictions and everything. And based what we can do here, I think we did $1.2 million, $1.3 million this quarter.

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then you talked a fair amount about operating spaces, but the sales and marketing were almost $3 million in the quarter. So it was up about 42% year over year. How can we think about sales and marketing either in dollars or percent of sales kind of going forward as you have made these acquisitions? I know you have a new sales team.

I have explained it before, but I will explain it again. And that is why I'm here. One of the big components of our sales and marketing expense is the commissions we paid to our independent reps actually. Independent reps are all over the country. They are the big, very important part of our sales force. And the more we sell on Pro audio, we'll be spending more on those commissions actually. And that is why since we are heavily growing on the Pro audio side, you will see the expenses on (inaudible) reps also going up and even reflected in our sales and marketing expense.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). George Melas, MKH Management.

Hi. Good morning, guys. A question on Spontania. The company came with a book of business because it was an ongoing business. Did you have to right off of was it in deferred revenue and you had to write it off because of the acquisition? I'm just puzzled that there is not -- that the revenue is not more than just what you from what you booked in this quarter?

Actually the way that we structured the deal, we are going to recognize only the revenue that we started billing. Whatever they billed, they keep for themselves. That is how we structured the deal. And we're not going to get any comps from the previous business actually.

Okay. But you still -- if it is done on a SasS basis, do you still provide the service?

Yes. That will be shown as a liability that we acquired when we got the business.

Okay. Narsi, can you give us a little bit more detail on the gross margin? What specifically impacted it, and if there was an inventory reserve, how much was it?

No, it is not to do with inventory reserve. It has to do with overhead allocation. Last year we had a benefit on order allocation. We do a periodic review of how our overhead allocation pool looks like when compared to how much we have already allocated to inventory, and this is an exercise that takes into account many factors, including the future activity levels, it is how much we will be purchasing, how much we will be manufacturing, and what is the level inventory we expect and if the current overhead that is allocated to inventory is applicable to the expected overheads included in there, and then we do this analysis. And depending on other factors, sometimes you allocate more to inventory that is due to reevaluation. Sometimes it grows less actually. When you allocate more, you get delivered in the quarter, among that inventory goes up actually. When you reduce allocation to inventory, you get charged in the quarter actually. And based on how our future activity and how much our overhead that we have been spending, this time the allocation tended to be lower through its inventory, which is actually good for the future because the inventory costs are going to be lower for the future. If you charge up the inventory in the future, it is going to be charged up for the lower rate, which will increase your margin in the future. But it is a timing issue actually. This quarter you will get a little bump in terms of gross margin, not bump upwards, a bump downwards actually. And in the future, you are going to get the benefit actually.

Can you quantify that? Is it quantifiable?

It is hard to quantify. That is why -- it is a mixture with all the other cost of goods sold and everything, and it is harder to do that actually.

Again, our target and where we have been maintaining ourselves in terms of gross margin has been around the 60% rate plus or minus.

Plus or minus 2% or 3%. We have explained it several times. It is harder to separate the various things that go into this allocation actually.

Okay. And then can you talk about sort of the impact on gross margins from the Sabine, I think, manufacturing integration?

Sabine is currently contributing not at the same levels we get from similar professional products, from ClearOne's legacy suite of professional products. Sabine, due to many reasons, their margins are lower actually. We are trying our best to bring our -- mostly because of the economies of large scale, we have better procurement deals with our plastics, metals, electronic manufacturers, all of those because of our loggings. We are trying to bring those same deals to Sabine, and once we tighten that part that is participating in logistics, then we will be able to see better margins for Sabine actually. And we expect that to happen by the end of the year. By the end of the year, we think all these things can be implemented. We will be able to get the benefits of higher margins from Sabine actually.

Okay, okay. And then maybe one more. I think you said the last that the Pro audio was 78% of total revenue. So that part of the business is -- does that include microphones?

Yes.

Okay. That includes microphones, okay. That is extremely strong. On the video side, clearly you are introducing these new products, COLLABORATE Room Pro, VIEW Pro, Spontania. Maybe, Zee, can you help us understand what kind of progress you are making in terms of introducing these products to your channel and how you measure your own progress there?

Okay. On the video products, as we mentioned, we began the shipping of the next generation products, and actually what we are seeing is a good value of quote activity. We see we are getting good feedback on the streaming. We see some good successes on quotes and some wins this quarter. Of course, again, it is not a product that you just buy at a whim and install it. We believe we have a competitive product. Our channel is seeing good opportunity. I think we are going to see the streaming product, which is a significant revenue product because it is a system. Unlike selling small bits and pieces, it is a substantial system. It is an investment that companies make when they install a streaming system, and I would say that we have had some very, very nice interest, and we had some wins on some important, I would say, important customers. So we are feeling very optimistic about the streaming.

On the video products, with our new team, what we are seeing is good quoting activity as well. We are seeing good new channel pickup of the product. And we have already expressed that we think the numbers that we have put in front you just on the Spontania alone, we see a good future ahead. We are conservative in our views, but I would say the COLLABORATE Pro and the Spontania are making a very good match. We are further integrating these, and we are as optimistic ever, and we see actually the evidence of good market interest in these products last quarter as we ship them at the very, very end, and this quarter is looking promising.

Okay. And when you talk about good, new channel pickup, what -- you probably have some kind of target of what -- your current channel and how many will pick up COLLABORATE and Spontania. And how far are you there in terms of getting the channels to even pick up their products?

Okay. Well, we have made good progress on signing on some new channels for the Spontania because that one is slightly different. We will be -- in some cases, we haven't made announcements of them, but we have new channels picking them up globally. There is a very good interest in Spontania.

The COLLABORATE Pro is also part of that suite, and some of these new channels are also picking up Spontania.

Interestingly, the channels that have been selling Spontania overseas have an interest in picking up some of our other products, including COLLABORATE and some of our audio products. So it has really generated some good interest.

On the COLLABORATE Room Pro, we introduced at INFOCOM and are shipping today a very unique solution. It is the COLLABORATE Pro with the Beamformer Microphone. Nobody makes anything like that in the world. It has very, very nice interest. And as always in the Pro world, these things are quoted, you know specked, quoted and then delivered. So our standard Pro channel, our Pro audio channel, has a particular interest in the COLLABORATE Room Pro with the Beamformer. That is a new SKU that we introduced.

Okay. Great. Thanks.

Thank you, George.

Ian Corydon, B. Riley & Company.

Hi, it is Kara Anderson actually chiming in for Ian. Most of my questions have been answered, but can you give the year-over-year revenue growth for the segment?

Can you please repeat your name? I'm sorry. I missed your name.

Kara Anderson.

Kara Anderson. Hi, Kara. Pro went up by 36% in Q2. You see it went down by [15%], and video went down by 9%.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And I see no further questions at this time. I would like turn the conference back for any closing comments.

Okay. We appreciate your interest in ClearOne joining us today in our call. If there's any other questions, please do not hesitate to call ClearOne Investor Relations. That concludes our call for today. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect. Everyone have a good day.