美商海盜船 (CRSR) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to Corsair Gaming's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded, and your participation implies consent to such recordings.(Operator Instructions)

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to David Pasquale with Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Corsair's financial results conference call for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. On the call today, we have Corsair's CEO, Thi La; and CFO, Gordon Mattingly. Thi will review highlights from the quarter and the year. Gordon will then review the financials and our outlook. We will then have time for any questions.

Before we begin, allow me to provide a disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. This call, including the Q&A portion, may include forward-looking statements related to the expected future results for our company, including our 2026 financial outlook and other statements that are not historical in nature, are predictive in nature or depend upon or refer to future events or conditions such as our expectations, estimates, predictions, strategies, beliefs or other statements that may be considered forward-looking.

These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to are described in our earnings release and other SEC filings.

Note that until our 10-K has been filed, these numbers are preliminary and are subject to change. Today's remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Additional information, including reconciliation between non-GAAP financial information to the GAAP financial information is provided in the press release we issued after the market closed today prior to this call.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Corsair's CEO, Thi La. Please go ahead, Thi.

Thank you, David, and thank you all for joining us today. We closed 2025 with strong execution across the business and meaningful progress on the strategy we have been building over the past year. In the fourth quarter, revenue came in as expected, while profitability exceeded the upper range of our forecast. We delivered strong gross margin expansion and meaningful operating leverage despite a very dynamic operating environment. For the full year, revenue grew 12% to approximately $1.47 billion. Gross profit increased 30% and adjusted EBITDA grew more than 80%, reaching over $100 million.

We also delivered our highest full year gross margin as a public company. That combination of growth, margin improvement and discipline is what we set out to achieve in 2025. In addition, I am excited to welcome Gordon Mattingly as Corsair's new CFO. Gordon joined us in December 2025, and he is already making a positive impact with our leadership team. He brings deep experience in scaling global consumer technology businesses and leading successful transition toward platform and recurring revenue models.

Just as importantly, as a public company CFO, Gordon shares our focus on building clear, transparent financial reporting and stronger investor communications for Corsair. You will hear directly from him in a few moments.

Turning to our business performance. In gaming components and systems, we delivered strong growth for the full year, led by memory and core components, supported by solid demand for the segment as enthusiasts continue to upgrade their performance PCs.

Corsair strategically invested in memory inventory to protect consumer demand despite broader market concern about semiconductor supply constraints. In gamer and creator peripherals, we delivered full year growth driven by demand from both creators and sim racing enthusiasts. Fanatec and Elgato were important contributors and both brands continue to strengthen their position in their respective markets.

In line with the broader market, we did see softer holiday demand in North America in gaming peripherals, offset by stronger international performance. We expect demand to improve as we move through 2026, especially with the highly anticipated GTA 6 launch in Q4. Fanatec, in particular, is integrating extremely well. During 2025, we strengthened Fanatec's operations, improved quality and support and advanced our road map with technologies that raise the bar for performance and usability. Product availability has improved.

Channel engagement is increasing and consumer adoption continues to accelerate as we drive growth in one of the fastest expanding areas of our business. Looking forward, I want to spend a moment on what we showcased at CES 2026 because it directly reflects where Corsair is going. We have one of the strongest CES product lineups in our history, and the customer and partner response was extremely encouraging.

At the center of our showcase was Stream Deck, which is positioned as a must-have control layer across gaming, content creation, productivity and emerging AI workflows through voice control Stream Deck. We introduced the GALLEON 100 SD, our CES innovation award-winning keyboard that integrates Stream Deck directly into a high-performance mechanical keyboard to deliver an immersive and customizable experience.

This has quickly become one of the most successful launches in our portfolio and represents early validation that our platform-based strategy can make an impact. We also demonstrated early support for AI-enabled workflows, deeper software integrations and new local AI computing platforms to our workstation and Edge AI systems.

What stood out to us most at CES was how much our ecosystem strategy resonates with customers. We are reducing friction for users and making complex workflows, whether for gaming, streaming, production or local AI easier to access and control. Another very important milestone for us this quarter was the opening of our first Corsair retail store. We opened our first experience-driven retail location at Westfield Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara.

This is not a traditional retail store. We designed a fully immersive and fun experience showcasing the Corsair ecosystem across gaming, sim racing and creator workflows. The response has been outstanding with strong opening day demand and consistent healthy traffic and conversion since. Strategically, this store represents an important step in our plan to deepen consumer engagement and grow brand awareness. Now I'd like to share our top priorities for 2026. First, improving the quality of growth through mix, integrated platforms and innovation.

We are prioritizing growth in higher-margin gaming, sim racing and creator categories and ecosystem platforms, supported by a steady cadence of innovative product launches. At the same time, we will continue to leverage both our scale and execution strength in the Components and Systems segment to drive revenue and grow market share. Our foundation continues to be strengthening each quarter, giving us a diverse platform to scale and capture incremental opportunities.

Second, driving margin expansion through operational discipline and creator marketplace. We are focused on driving margin expansion through smart inventory management to navigate a tight semiconductor landscape, combined with a nimble manufacturing strategy to improve cash flow. We also plan to scale the Elgato Marketplace with the goal of growing recurring revenue for both Corsair and our community of makers while tapping into new sources of revenue as we expand into new industry verticals.

Third, scaling our direct-to-consumer business to deepen engagement. In 2025, we made strong progress expanding our direct-to-consumer business to nearly 20% of our revenue with double-digit growth in web traffic and impactful social engagement alongside the launch of the immersive retail store. These efforts are strengthening consumer relationships, improving conversion rates and generating insights that support product development and go-to-market execution.

With that, I'll turn it over to Gordon to walk through the financials.

Thank you, Thi, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I get into the numbers, I want to briefly say how excited I am to be here. What attracted me to Corsair is the combination of strong global brands, a highly engaged customer base and a clear opportunity to work with Thi and the leadership team to evolve the business into a higher quality, more predictable and increasingly platform-driven company.

Since joining, everything I have seen has reinforced my belief in the opportunities that lie ahead of us. I look forward to working closely with our investors and analysts to provide consistent insight into our business, our brands and our long-term growth opportunities. Transparency and regular communication will be an important focus for Thi and me going forward as we build on the company's history of innovation and product excellence.

Now turning to our results. We ended 2025 in a strong financial position. For the full year, revenue increased 12% to approximately $1.47 billion. Gross profit increased 30% to approximately $426 million and adjusted EBITDA increased more than 80% to approximately $101 million and exceeded the high end of our guidance. These results reflect the strength of our core business, M&A success and growth in our direct-to-consumer business, which we plan to build on in 2026.

In the fourth quarter, revenue increased 6% year over year to approximately $437 million. Gross profit increased more than 30% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA increased more than 60% year over year. These results reflect strong execution across our supply chain and continued operating discipline.

From a segment perspective, Gaming Components and Systems delivered strong double-digit growth in both the fourth quarter and the full year, driven by strength in memory and core components. Gamer and creator peripherals delivered single-digit full year growth, led by continued momentum in sim racing and creator products, including Fanatec and Elgato, while lower demand in the North American market was largely responsible for the low single-digit revenue decline in the fourth quarter.

Turning to the balance sheet. During the fourth quarter, we increased our cash balance by just under $33 million while strategically investing in inventory, which we believe positions us for profit momentum in 2026. Financially, we will continue to focus on 3 priorities: first, margin expansion and profitability through product mix, platform-led offerings and disciplined operating expense management.

Second, working capital discipline, which allowed us to make strategic inventory investments in 2025, which we believe will position us well for early 2026 and which we believe will also enable us to capitalize on other opportunities in the future.

Third, disciplined capital allocation. During 2025, we reduced our debt by over $50 million and continue to strengthen our financial flexibility. Today, we also announced Corsair's first share repurchase authorization of up to $50 million. The repurchase program is effective immediately, does not have an expiration date and is subject to market conditions, applicable laws and regulatory guidelines.

This reflects our view that Corsair shares represent an attractive use of capital alongside continued investment in both organic and acquisition-led growth. Now turning to our guidance. For full year 2026, we expect net revenue to be in the range of $1.33 billion to $1.47 billion, adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $100 million to $115 million, non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $0.58 to $0.74 per share.

For the first quarter of 2026, we expect net revenue to be in the range of $335 million to $365 million, adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $25 million to $30 million and non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $0.18 to $0.22 per share.

For the assumed midpoint of the ranges that we are giving as guidance for both the first quarter and the full year 2026, this reflects about a 5% decrease in revenue year over year with expected double-digit growth in our Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment, offset by a more cautious outlook for our Gaming Components and Systems segment, driven by the current global semiconductor shortage.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to grow year over year as we focus on margin expansion and operating expense management. To close, I would emphasize that Corsair has proven that its model can generate attractive margins and operating leverage. The opportunity ahead of us is to scale that model more consistently through platforms, recurring revenue, stronger execution and clearer communication with the investment community.

Operator, that concludes our formal remarks. You can now open up the call for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions)

Aaron Lee, Macquarie.

Congrats on the strong quarter. I wanted to start with -- starting with guidance. I appreciate you guys giving the full year guidance range. That's helpful. Last quarter, you talked about embedding some conservatism in guidance. Is that something you're -- you've done with the guidance ranges provided today as well? And how much visibility or confidence do you have in the full year 2026 guidance range, just given everything that's going on in the market currently?

Yeah, that's a great question. With respect to the guidance, I would say we -- as we just described, we're looking at double-digit growth in the peripheral segment. We're taking certainly what we consider to be a conservative outlook for the Components segment, just in light of the semiconductor shortages. I think if you look at the guidance ranges, I think the difference between the high end and the low end is really how that plays out. So yes, hopefully, that answers your question. But yes, we're applying a forecast methodology and approach to guidance that I adopted at previous companies that was pretty successful, so, yes.

Perfect. That's helpful. Appreciate that. And then you obviously had really strong components margins during the quarter. Is that mainly reflecting the higher margin you're getting on memory products? Or were there any other drivers to call out there? And how sustainable do you think those margin levels are going forward?

I wanted to, yes, answer this question. So I'm just trying to coordinate a little bit. Thank you. So actually, throughout the year, our components margin segment continued to improve year on year. And we do see benefits from a number of fronts. So we see, especially with the growth of sim racing, that's really helped contributing positively to the margin for the quarter. Memory, of course, was the major contributors to the margin lift in the quarter because the price has gone up substantially starting from October to December.

And every time you see an acceleration like that, we tend to see favorable inventory margin. But on the other hand, we also do see great traction on the rest of the product lines in terms of NPIs, in terms of mix shift between Components and Gaming Peripherals segment.

Anthony Stoss, Craig-Hallum Group.

Just following up on that last question. Maybe can you give us the memory revenue in the quarter? And then I have a couple of follow-ups.

Yeah, sure. Happy to. Memory revenue grew 24% year over year to $156 million, and the gross margin was 35%.

We've had this conversation, I think, over the last couple of months. And clearly, having an inventory memory ahead of the big steep increase in prices helped you folks. How much inventory do you have left of, let's say, cheaper than current market rate memory? And do you have enough maybe to carry you deep into 2026?

I think this situation for us right now, the way that we view our business for memory as we are pretty much running the memory business for the past 30 years now, we believe we have a stronger position than most others in the consumer space to maneuver through challenges or tough market like what we see today. And our goal is really to continue to acquire inventory to support the demands from our enthusiasts as we are probably one of the bigger brands now since the exit of a couple of other brands from consumer memory. And the number is reflected in our forecast for 2026. So that's probably doesn't include any potential upside that we might be able to work through for the rest of the year. So you should just look at our '26 forecast as reflective of where we think we are.

And then last question for Gordon. Maybe you can help fill some of the blanks for your full year guide, what you expect total OpEx to be maybe for 2026, like even a range, same thing. What's the expected gross margin for the full year to kind of get to the midpoint of your EBITDA guide?

Yeah, sure. On the gross margin side of the question, I think we're probably looking at relatively flat gross margin within the actual segments. We're going to see some mix benefit, obviously, because we guided double-digit growth in Peripherals, which is obviously the higher-margin segment.

So we'll see some nice benefit to gross margin there, more than offsetting the tariff headwind, the full year tariff headwind, which is about another $12 million year over year. So I'd see a little bit of upside in gross margin. And then on the OpEx side of things, we're probably looking around 3% to 4% reduction in OpEx year over year. So we're getting some pretty good operating leverage with that incremental gross profit year over year.

Yeah. And I want to add to that, that within 2025, as we shared before, one of the key initiatives for us is really to control OpEx and really optimize all of the M&A that we went through in the past few years. And I think we've done a good job in terms of reducing OpEx and really driving revenue with what we already have within our investment.

Drew Crum, B. Riley.

Gordon, welcome. You discussed accelerating investment to support your peripherals business in Elgato. Is this all organic? Does it contemplate M&A? And with presumably a positive mix shift, is there a longer-term or notional gross margin you think this business is capable of achieving given this approach?

I can take this question. So definitely, the growth for Gaming Peripherals and Creator segment came from organic investment, and that came from just expanding the product categories for sim racing, for example, and growing recurring revenue through the Elgato marketplace.

And the second thing is we will continue to evaluate opportunity for M&A, if it makes sense, and then growing our D2C business. And our D2C business is beneficial from a number of points. First is consumer engagement and getting valuable data to help build better products. The second thing is just generating more margin in general because we control the channel.

And then maybe just one follow-up. Thi, I think in your preamble, you mentioned Grand Theft Auto VI providing a benefit to the peripherals business. Understanding that the majority of your mix is sourced from PC and the fact that Take-Two is yet to announce a PC version of the game. Can you just help us understand what parts of your business should see a lift from that launch in '26?

Yeah. There are two parts of our business. One is the controllers business through the SCUF brand, and that is basically all console-related space. We have PC controllers, but the bulk of the business is console. The other part of the business is video capture to Elgato. For example, with the recent Switch 2 launch in the mid of 2025, we did see a very nice lift for our capture card business because people are streaming more new content, and that's an opportunity for us to leverage that engine and drive more 4K capture cards.

(Operator Instructions)

Doug Creutz, TD Cowen.

Just in terms of the semiconductor situation that's creating pressures across the industry, what kind of forward visibility do you have into that? Is it something where you see it getting better or worse in real time, and that's the amount of visibility you have? Or presumably at some point in the future, things start to loosen up? Are you going to know a few months ahead of time when that's going to happen?

Thank you for the question. For us, the visibility in terms of the bigger pictures, we're getting this very similar information to everyone else in terms of fab capacity and AI data center consumption and current projection, I think everyone probably already see the same data is that the market will continue to be tight for the next couple of years.

But for us, we don't just rely on output of semiconductors alone. We basically have a lot of ways to acquire inventories and produce inventory as we do have a manufacturing center in Taiwan that built DRAM modules. And the visibility that we use is basically just market intel out a couple of quarters, and we continue to operate based on the information that we use for the past 30 years, and that seems to be working so far.

Matthew McCartney, Wedbush Securities.

This is Matt on for Alicia Reese. Just want to clarify a couple of things on guidance, specifically on the memory side. Just am I understanding correctly that you're not embedding a margin lift on the memory side for the 2026 guide?

We are looking at relatively flat margins in our Components segment year over year. So we've got near-term visibility into 2026. We're assuming only kind of modest gross margin lift compared to steady state in the latter part of the year. So we're forecasting what we have near-term visibility into, which nets out to roughly flat gross margin year over year for the segment. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, yeah, I just understood -- I understand the cadence right, it's flattish in the back half. Is that correct? Or is it something else?

Flat for the year.

Flat for the year. Okay. And then just as far as like your inventory position right now and I guess going into last quarter, I know you're pretty strong there. It looks like shortages did increase. Can you just talk about where you stand today in terms of your memory inventory?

We are -- I think we did a Q1 signal and also full year signal, and we're comfortable with where we are right now with the projection we provided.

Great. And then just last question, just on Elgato and the recurring revenue stream that you want to build there. Can you give us a baseline of where that business is today in terms of recurring revenue, what sort of percentages and if possible, targets with where you're looking to get?

Yeah. In terms of recurring revenue model that we're working on, a lot of the visitors that we have on the Elgato marketplace, downloading content and using content, we have over 2 million users actively posting content and downloading content.

Now the (inaudible) in the next six months is really to construct with Gordon's help, basically a recurring revenue model to basically drive that. And we won't be able to get into further details, I would say, until probably in a couple of quarters from now. The current revenue is meaningful to the point where it's what the effort for us to actually kick this off as a longer strategy. We do have a solution that's already selling into the B2B channel today as well and a lot of interest in terms of using our Stream Deck solution. So that is exciting for us.

(Operator Instructions)

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to pass the call back over to Thi for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today and for your continued support. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact our Investor Relations department. We look forward to updating you next quarter. Thank you, and have a good evening.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.