3D Systems Corp (DDD) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and welcome to the 3D Systems conference call and audio webcast to discuss the results of the third quarter and first nine months of 2016. My name is Brock, and I will facilitate the audio portion of today's interactive broadcast.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time I would like to turn the call over to Stacey Witten, Vice President Investor Relations, with 3D Systems.

Good morning and welcome to 3D Systems conference call. I am Stacey Witten, and with me on the call are Vyomesh Joshi, our president and chief executive officer; John McMullen, executive vice president and chief financial officer; and Andy Johnson, executive vice president and chief legal officer.

The webcast portion of this call contains a slide presentation that we will refer to during this call. Those following along on the phone who wish to access the slide portion of this presentation may do so at www.3dsystems.com/investor.

Participants who would like to ask questions at the end of the session related to matters discussed in this conference call should call in using the phone numbers provided on this slide and in the press release that we issued this morning. For those who have accessed the streaming portion of the webcast, please be aware that there may be a few second delay, and that you will not be able to pose questions via the web.

The following discussion and responses to your questions reflect management's view as of today only and will include forward-looking statements as described on this slide. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in today's press release and our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K.

During this call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. In our press release, slides accompanying this webcast, and our filings with the SEC, each of which is available on our investor relations website, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures with comparable GAAP measures.

Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results in the comparable period of 2015.

Now I am pleased to turn the call over to Vyomesh Joshi, our CEO. VJ?

Thanks, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. On September 12 at IMTS, we rolled out the details of market-based strategy for profitable growth. We believe our full 3D printing ecosystem is the source of our competitive differentiation.

With our hardware, materials, software, on-demand solutions, application engineering, and partnership, we are able to provide complete end-to-end solutions for digital manufacturing. This enables our customers to digitize, design, simulate, manufacture, inspect, and manage in a single workflow. We believe these capabilities are key to meeting real customer needs, particularly within production applications.

We are focusing on use cases in the vertical markets of aerospace and defense, automotive, healthcare, durable goods, as well as the teaching and training institutions that support these verticals. Prototyping will remain a critical application for our technology and an important part of our business. However, looking forward to the next three years, we believe the greatest and most disruptive opportunities will come from customers shifting from prototyping to end-use production using 3D printing technology.

As we have began implementing our strategic plans, our third-quarter results are reflective of our progress that we are making 3D production real.

For the third quarter of 2016, we reported revenue of $156.4 million, an increase of 3%. Overall, printer unit growth was 12% with strong sequential and year-over-year growth of production units. In our view, strong demand for our production printers, materials, and software, as well as healthcare solutions during the third quarter, is indicative of our growth potential and market opportunities going forward.

To better focus on the opportunities we see, we are taking decisive steps to prioritize our portfolio and resources. In line with this, we are exhibiting certain products and projects, including CubePro, CubeJet, the ProX 400, and other high-speed continuous jet ink printer known as Project Atlas. We are redirecting resources from these projects to advance and accelerate next-generation capabilities in metal printing as well as Figure 4.

We truly believe our go-forward portfolio of products and services can meet complete range of professional and industrial needs in the market and drive the shift from prototyping to production.

And now I will turn the call over to John to discuss our third-quarter 2016 performance. John?

Thanks, VJ, and good morning, everyone. As VJ mentioned, we reported a 3% increase in revenue for the quarter to $156.4 million.

On a GAAP basis, gross profit margin for the third quarter of 2016 was 44.1%. Gross profit margin was negatively impacted by non-recurring charges of $10.7 million related to prioritizing projects and resources consistent with our recently announced strategic direction.

Total operating expenses decreased $14.7 million to $91 million. The decrease in OpEx was primarily the result of lower amortization and legal expenses partially offset by a $6.1 million non-recurring write-off of assets related to exiting projects.

In the third quarter we generated $7.2 million of cash from operations. We reported a GAAP loss of $0.19 per share compared to a GAAP loss of $0.29 per share in the third quarter of 2015.

For the first nine months we reported revenue of $467 million, gross profit margin of 48.6% and operating expenses of $269.4 million. We reported a GAAP loss of $0.39 per share for the first nine months of 2016 compared to a loss of $0.53 per share for the first nine months of 2015.

As VJ mentioned in his opening remarks, after an extensive review of all projects and market opportunities, we reached the decision to exit certain products and projects. This rationalization of our product portfolio enables us to focus our resources on solutions that directly address the customer needs in key verticals within the ecosystem VJ discussed earlier.

Our reprioritization resulted in $16.8 million of non-recurring charges and a write-off of assets, which increased cost of sales $10.7 million and R&D expenses $6.1 million. We exclude these charges as well as expenses from non-cash compensation, amortization, acquisitions, severance, and litigation settlements from our non-GAAP results.

Non-GAAP gross profit margin for the third quarter of 2016 was 51%. As a reminder, gross profit margin for the third quarter of 2015, excluding discontinued consumer products, was 50.6%.

Compared to the third quarter of 2015 non-GAAP SG&A expenses decreased $2 million to $44.7 million. Non-GAAP R&D expenses decreased $2.4 million to $20.1 million. We reported non-GAAP earnings of $15.8 million or $0.14 per share compared to earnings of $0.8 million or $0.01 per share in the third quarter of 2015.

For the first nine months, non-GAAP gross profit margin was 50.9% and non-GAAP operating expenses decreased 5% to $204.1 million. We reported non-GAAP earnings of $0.31 per share for the first nine months compared to $0.08 per share for the first nine months of 2015.

Revenue in the third quarter benefited from a 23% increase in healthcare revenue to $42.5 million, a 9% increase in materials revenue to $38.1 million, and an 11% increase in software revenue to $21.4 million. We experienced softness in on-demand manufacturing, which decreased 16% to $26.5 million for the quarter. Overall printer revenue decreased 6% to $33 million.

While total control revenue decreased, we experienced improved sales of production printer units, which increased both sequentially and compared to the third quarter of 2015.

Non-GAAP gross profit margin of 51% was flat for the third quarter in a row and improved slightly from the same period of 2015. Consolidated gross profit margin in the quarter benefited from growth in materials, software, and healthcare solutions revenue.

GAAP operating expenses decreased primarily from a 22% decrease in SG&A expense driven by lower amortization and stock-based compensation, as well as lower legal expenses.

Compared to the third quarter of 2015, non-GAAP operating expenses for the quarter decreased 6% to $64.8 million. This includes a 4% decrease in SG&A and an 11% decrease in R&D expenses.

As we seek to reinvest some of the savings from our operational improvements over the coming months, we expect to see quarterly fluctuations in OpEx due to timing of key investments and cost reduction efforts. As a result, in addition to year-over-year comparisons, we believe our progress over meaningful operating periods, including trends over sequential six-month periods, will be helpful in understanding our results and progress.

We generated $7.2 million of cash from operations in the third quarter and generated $38.2 million in the first nine months of 2016. We exited the quarter with $179.4 million of cash on hand, an increase of $23.7 million from the end of 2015, and our $150 million revolving credit facility remains fully available.

Inventory decreased sequentially $9.5 million to $113.7 million at the end of September. Although we continue to see opportunities to improve working capital performance and cash flow over the balance of the year and into 2017, I remain comfortable with our cash balance and overall liquidity position.

Before turning the call back to VJ, I would like to take a moment to talk about the way we are managing cash and balancing investments in quality, infrastructure, IT, and other areas with cost structure changes. With the operational model that we put in place, we believe we have the opportunity to drive significant cost structure improvements while reinvesting back in the key areas of the business and driving profitable growth.

We have started to make changes in the cost structure, both in cost of sales and operating expenses, but as we said before, we do not expect to see much of the impact until 2017. Therefore, consistent with our comments last quarter, on a non-GAAP basis, we expect second-half gross profit margin and second-half operating expenses to be flat to slightly up compared to the first half of 2016. We also expect to have continued positive cash flow generation.

With that I will turn the call back to VJ, for some come concluding remarks. VJ?

Thanks, John. We truly believe our metal technology, Figure 4 technology, and software innovations such as 3D Expert will enable our customers to shift from prototyping to production over time.

The key priority for us is reducing cost of sales so that we can become more aggressive in the marketplace and capture market share. We have spent a lot of time over the past months talking to and getting to know the market. What we have learned is that enterprise customers are looking at these four needs to move from prototyping to production: productivity, durability, repeatability, and total cost of operation.

We believe we are at the inflection point in the evolution of (inaudible) manufacturing, and our technology, our experienced leadership team, our strategy, and our ecosystem uniquely position us to make 3D production real.

With that I would like to turn the call back to Stacey, who will open the floor for questions. Stacey?

We will now open the call to questions. We would like to ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to best allow others to participate in the discussion.

(Caller Instructions).

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session.

(Operator Instructions)

Jim Ricchiuti, Needham & Company.

John, I may have missed it, but did you say printer revenues were down 6%?

Yes.

Okay. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the -- it sounds like you saw a nice pickup in the higher-end printers. So could you maybe give us a little bit more color on that? And I don't know if you can provide what the unit decline was.

I'm going to let VJ talk a little bit and give you some color on the high-end printer.

So James, first of all, overall unit growth was 12%. I just want to make sure. The revenue decline was mainly because of the mix in ESP, especially when we ship more MGPs. That's the reason.

The second thing is, on the production side, as I mentioned in my commentary, we are seeing really good unit growth. The unit growth is coming on all three core technologies, SLA, SLS, and metals.

With respect to the professional printers, first of all, we are not doing any more consumer printers -- the desktop printers, that's the first one. The second reason is our CJP printers. We are seeing actually not as good of unit growth there. MJP we are still doing fine. So as I mentioned, PJP and CJP -- that's where our weakness is in professional printers.

Got it. And VJ, would you talk to the growth in healthcare? That was very strong.

Yes, the healthcare growth. As I always said, where I am really very happy with the way we are doing healthcare as a vertical. That is our, really, formula for our strategy for all the verticals. I want to really replicate and scale exactly the way that we have been doing healthcare.

The approach that we have taken there is to really understand our customers and figure out the solutions. We have software, we have simulation, we have the design, and actually making devices for the healthcare companies. I think that is the right model, and that I have been very consistently talking about how I want to do it.

I truly believe that our healthcare business is going to continue to grow. And software business will continue -- you saw software also growth of 11%.

Okay. Thank you.

Patrick Newton, Stifel.

Good morning, VJ and John. Thank you for taking my questions. Metals, clearly a data for the industry. You've had new product releases throughout 2016 that seemed to have rectified some quality issues, and metals work, clearly emphasized in your prepared remarks, is a key, core driver for the company in the future.

So I guess my question is, given the importance, what is your metals revenue currently, or what level could it be in 2017?

So we don't break down our metals revenue. But I do believe metals is a very big opportunity. As you can see, GE's entry and really acquiring metal companies validates that this is a very important market.

With our both 300 and 320, we have a very unique technology. I also believe, the introduction of 3D Expert, the software that we have developed, really helps the customers to simplify their workflow and drive the right kind of results with our metal portfolio. I believe we have a unique advantage.

The last part I can tell you, consistent with what I've been saying -- because if you think about metals, the two key verticals are very important are aerospace and healthcare. Having this healthcare business and having that vertical focus means that the medical device manufacturers -- they don't come to us just as another metal printer. They come to us because we are the solution provider.

VJ, is it fair to say it's still sub-10% of your revenue?

As I say, I don't want to talk about it. It's a good growth opportunity.

Okay. And then John, I guess a lot of low-hanging fruit to cut expenses across the company, whether through integration of acquisitions, footprint consolidation, or rationalization of your OpEx -- and just focusing on trying to understand what you said on the OpEx side and trying look at it in six months increments and that it will be lumpy on a go-forward basis.

Should we think that your ability to cut OpEx is done, and now we should think about it being relatively stable or growing with revenue as we look into 2017 and beyond?

No. First of all, the focus is also on cost of sales. We have a focus on both cost of sales and SG&A and particularly G&A within SG&A.

So no, I don't think you should think of it as being done. I think the way I would characterize the last couple of quarters is that we have been very careful with our operating expense, and we have been doing a lot of planning relative to the opportunities and cost of sales and OpEx going forward. You will hear us talk about our reduction efforts as we enter 2017.

But you will also hear us talk about some investments that we're making. We are making a pretty significant investment in IT across the company that we just recently kicked off. So it is going to be a plus/minus kind of thing as we go through 2017. We think that the net yield of that positions the company to have the opportunity for profitable growth going forward.

But you shouldn't think of it as done. Actually in some ways you should think of us as really just getting started.

Yes. I think the important part here is to really focus on cost structure, because I truly believe we need to take the cost out so we can create the capacity to invest. That's the first thing.

The second thing is, as I always define the cost, it's revenue minus operating profits, both cost of sales and OpEx. In cost of sales we have a lot of opportunity. This company didn't focus on really looking at how to take the cost out from the cost of sales. My opinion is we got to continue to focus on it and use that capacity to invest, and I also want to go aggressive in terms of gaining market share.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Good luck

Thank you.

Wamsi Mohan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Good morning. When you look at the quarter or maybe if you look at the full-year, can you give us some sense of how much of a revenue headwind these product exits will pose going into next year? And do you think, VJ, that there are more assets in your portfolio that you will exit, or are you substantially done here? And I have a follow-up.

I don't think that -- you know, these exits were really two-fold. The first one was the desktop market because we don't want to participate in that. Because we had taken that kind of a approach, then it is not as much revenue decline that you will see as we move forward in terms of the headwind.

Second part is the -- when I look at restructuring, I think I want to go careful. I think we are going step-by-step process in terms of which assets that are really we are going to invest, which is which assets we are not going to invest.

I think this is the first step. We will continue to look at our portfolio. We are not done looking at all the portfolio, but I do believe this is a significant thing that both John and I wanted to get us behind, because really focus on -- other resources on our metal and Figure 4 technology. It's all about focusing the resources. It's all about getting the right cost out and then invest.

Just three of the four exits that we noted in our materials were not really generating any revenue at this point. So you should not view this as having a revenue impact on us going forward. But you should view it as having us being able to focus more heavily on the things that are important to us going forward.

I think what VJ said is correct. We think we have put a lot of things behind us, and certainly for now we feel pretty good about the portfolio going forward. It's just a question of where do we want to invest and focus more within that existing portfolio going forward.

Okay. Thanks. Appreciate the color. As my follow-up, can you talk a little bit about what's going on in the on-demand part that was down 16%? Was there something specific and episodic just in, maybe, third quarter of last year where it's a tougher comp, or is just the demand environment weaker, or could you just share some color on that? Thanks.

I think this is the one business -- is very strategic for us, first of all. I do believe having these services and solutions are very vital for the shift from prototyping to production, because enterprise customers would like to have a way where they can test out their prototyping to production shift.

The reason that we are seeing this kind of a decline, I believe the business models that we had in our on-demand solutions, which was very conservative -- we were not going after the businesses as aggressive as I would like to go after. I think this cost structure that John and I talked about now gives us the capacity to go after aggressively this market.

You know, this is all about utilization and the fixed assets that we have. I would rather go aggressive and not limit the opportunity that we have in the prototyping market. As we go into 2017, we're going to go aggressive into this particular business.

Thanks, VJ.

Shannon Cross, Cross Research

Thank you very much for taking my question. I'm curious, when we saw you out in Chicago, VJ, you had changed out several for your senior management. And I think when I talked to John out there he had mentioned that you were starting to look at the next levels in that.

I'm curious as to how we should think about where you're at in the process, and I know a lot of the questions so far have gotten around that. Are we in early innings? Did the just Cubs just win? Where do you see where the business is today relative to where you want it to be from an organizational standpoint?

I think the top level is in place now. I feel really very good about the organization structure we have. We now have all of our focus on execution.

There may be some other changes to our organization as we cascade the approach and the operating model that John and I talked about. But I absolutely believe that we have all what we need to really solve our execution.

My opinion is all of our issues our internal. Having this great leadership team now and having a great portfolio, we can focus on execution and go aggressive, as I said, to really get some share.

And, Shannon, we've already sort of operationalized our new team and our new model with the regional execution and the [GVU] structure that we have and have already build that into a planning process for the next year and two to follow. We're already executing against the new structure, and now it is working through what the appropriate cost structure is for new structure, which we're also doing at the same time.

Great. And then just a follow-up. John, you'd mentioned you're deploying the new IT systems throughout the company. Can you give us some more detail on what you're doing there, timing of that, and magnitude, and what kind of cost benefits? I assume if it's ERP, typically -- eventually we get to the promised land and see cost benefits out of it. Thank you.

Yes. You should think about this is a 12- to 18-month project. We have literally just kicked it off. It will be a relatively significant benefit to the Company over time. I think the benefits from the IT work -- and the biggest initiative within that is really the whole quote-to-cash process and how we standardize and automate [Indiscernible] today.

We will certainly see benefits over time from the IT work. I think about cost structure in two phases. We have opportunities as we are, and we will have other opportunities over time with efficiencies from the investments that we're making in IT. So I think we will definitely be talking about this throughout 2017 to give more color on where we are, because it is a big deal for the Company.

Thank you.

Sherri Scribner, Deutsche Bank

I was curious, with the restructuring and the changes that you're making with the company -- it sounds like many of these will continue into 2017. Can you give us some sense of how long you expect restructuring charges and severance charges to continue? Should we expect that to continue through 2017, and what magnitude should we expect?

When I talk about continuing restructure, I'm just mainly talking about cascading the organization structure at my level that I announced in Chicago. What we are doing is -- we need to add just a few things. But this is not going to be a major restructuring that you should be expecting.

Yes, I would not think about this as large restructuring-type charges. I would think about it as us pairing costs where we see the opportunity as we go. And as VJ mentioned, it is not just SG&A and headcount type-related cost opportunities. We see some significant opportunities in cost of sales that -- in our procurement world and so forth. We are just in the midst of starting the executing in some of those.

And I think we talked about this thing. Supply chain is a very big opportunity for the Company. Reinhard Winkler and I are really figuring out what we need to do from cost of sales point of view so that we can save some significant cost for the Company.

Okay. I guess also, how should we think about the categories that you will present to us going forward? It looks like healthcare, materials, and software are categories that you are focused on. Are these metrics that we'll be seeing on a go-forward basis, and are these metrics that management is being evaluated on?

I think those four things are very important. As you can understand, those are their annuity stream. John and I are working on our 2017 plan. Let us come back to you in specifics.

But I think those are very important because, as I said, those are the annuity stream for the install base that we are going to work on.

I think it is fair to expect that we will be providing similar information certainly through 2017, and as we have talked about last quarter, VJ and I want to provide as much transparency as we can and want to be able to communicate as much information over time as we can. But we want to get through the execution and implementation of our new operating model. This will be progressive quarter-to-quarter.

Just a quick clarification, can you give us the breakout between stock comp and amortization this quarter? Thanks.

Stacey, do you have the exact --

Yes, $9.5 million of that -- so then the remainder of that was the amortization.

Thank you.

I think the details actually spelled out in the queue with the reconciliation.

Kenneth Wong, Citi

So healthcare obviously was a very strong vertical for you guys. Any rough sense in terms of some of your other key verticals, whether it's aerospace, autos, and whether or not you're seeing much growth in those particular verticals?

Frankly, we just started that work. Because I really believe, as I said, I want to shift the company from prototyping to production, shift the company from looking at the general market or prototyping market to really understand the use-case by use-case by verticals.

This work has started. And as we move forward into 2017, we're going to build -- because, you know, this vertical approach requires investment and understanding the domain knowledge. Fortunately we started that healthcare work a year and a half ago, and that is why we are seeing the results. I believe as we build it out, the use-case by use-case by vertical, we are going to see a much, much better traction.

The early work really suggests a really significant opportunity for the Company going forward from a lot of the early work we've done

Got it. Flipping to the cost side, we didn't talk much about R&D, and R&D settled into this $20 million run rate. Is that the right levels to be thinking about how to model that going forward?

I think R&D and sales are the two places I want to invest because innovation is our bloodline. That's the only way -- but focused. I don't want to invest everywhere. That's what you're going to hear from me all the time. I want to invest more in sales and R&D.

I do not want to invest a lot of in G&A. Now that's where our opportunity is to take the cost down. I would say that I want to invest more. I don't think that this is something I want to go large-volume investment, but I just want to focus, and I want to invest more in both sales and R&D.

I think we have given you roughly the guidance of half-to-half, so we're not going to go above the OpEx number that half-to-half -- kind of said flattish. And think we want to continue to be in that angle-up for the company. But get that focus on sales and R&D

Got you. [Multiple speakers]

Remember the equation here for us that there's efficiencies in the new operating model to begin with. And that goes across the board. But we also know that from a go-to-market point of view, there's opportunities to invest more into certain areas in sales that we will do, and we will have the capacity to do that.

In the R&D space, it is more around how we take that R&D envelope and prioritize it and where we may want to increment it a bit over time for areas that VJ has talked about, things like application engineering, for example.

I think materials is also very important. Materials and application engineering will allow us to build that annuity stream that I have been talking about.

Great. Thanks a lot, guys.

You are welcome.

Hendi Susanto, Gabelli & Co.

Good morning VJ and John. Thank you for taking my questions.

Good morning.

What is your expectation on Q4 relative to past historical seasonality in Q4? Should we still expect some seasonal sequential strength in sales in Q4?

Yes, Q4 is typically a strong sequential quarter for us. I wouldn't expect anything different. I think that what VJ and I talked about last time was really looking at half-over-half, our expectation that we will continue to have a strong margin performance similar to what you have seen over the last several quarters and that we will do a good job of managing OpEx to be flattish to maybe slightly up half-and-half and then typical sequential revenue trends.

Plus we want to continue to focus on our cash generation because that's very important for the company.

We've done a really nice job -- I think there's much more opportunity, frankly, going forward. But in terms of overall cash flow from operations generation of $38 million year-to-date, $7 million in the third quarter, and absolute cash growth of almost $24 million on a year-to-year basis is a really good thing for us.

Thank you.

Brian Drab, William Blair.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to make sure that I understood the operating expense guide correctly. So adjusted OpEx, if that is flat to up in the second half of 2016 versus the first half of 2016 -- in the first half, SG&A plus R&D was $139.3 million, then we did $64.7 million in the third quarter. That implies that the fourth quarter is $74.6 million or higher.

That is up significantly from the third quarter. I just wanted to make sure I had that math correct.

Yes, we won't go into specific numbers around it, but we guided that we would be flat to perhaps slightly up -- we will see -- half-to-half. It's a little lumpy for us now in terms of where we are making investments and where we are not on a quarter-by-quarter basis, so that plays into it a little bit.

Okay. For my follow-up then, I just wanted to -- if I hold R&D flat from third quarter to fourth quarter, that guidance that you gave implies that we're going to go roughly from $44.7 million in the third quarter in SG&A to $53.5 million, somewhere in that range. I'm just wondering, can you talk about the drivers of --?

I would not look at it that way. I would look at that maybe there's some R&D investments we need to make, and so I would look at the total OpEx rather than trying to break it down that way. Because, look, the Figure 4 technology is very transformative for us. I want to make sure that we invest appropriately there.

So I think you should look at the overall OpEx profile rather than R&D versus SG&A.

Okay. Thank you.

Bobby Burleson, Canaccord.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Just focusing on the metal business a little bit more, I'm curious what the mix has been there in terms of the different markets you are selling into. Obviously there has been some M&A with some other metal companies out there that had good orthopedic implant traction. So wondering how much of the mix these days is healthcare and whether or not implants -- like hip cups, things like that -- help to drive that healthcare growth.

I think metal -- as I said, the two key verticals for metals are healthcare and aerospace. The third one -- the universities because they are -- I mean, including defense into aerospace also, okay? The universities are also really testing it out. This is a new technology. They want to really understand how this will change the metallurgy, how this will change automotive and aerospace.

The last part is the industrial. What we are seeing, a lot of interest now that customers who would like to look at this technology -- especially, as I said, GE's entry is really validating the market and there is a lot of interest right now even from industrials.

The last part is the 3D Expert, the software that we have developed. We are getting tremendous interest into the software because even the install base is basically saying, we want to really play with the software. I think that between healthcare and aerospace and then this 3D Expert software will offer opportunity for growth into 2017 is substantial.

Great. Then just shifting a little bit to professional printers. In order to get back into a nice growth mode overall for printers, I would assume professional needs to deliver growth. And also, I think there's some high margin materials in that segment.

So I'm curious whether or not that's an area of investment? Is it more of an investment in the materials, or is it more of an investment in the machines themselves or some kind of channel realignment or something that percolates through --

Let me describe to you three things that I really believe to accelerate our professional growth. The first one is the new introduction of 2500 and 3600 platforms have been very good. Especially 2500, we are getting very good acceptance in the market.

I believe that as we start talking about our value proposition aggressively -- because this is the product where there is a tremendous improvement in productivity, there is a tremendous improvement in ease-of-use. The software, the 3DSprint that we have introduced now with our professional products is really enabling the customers to drive the prototyping business in a very different way.

I also think that with our cost structure improvement that we are making, I want to use that to aggressively go after the competition. We have a form next, which is the next show in Europe. You can expect us to really drive some significant things that we want to do with our professional printers.

Okay. Great. I know you guys already touched on on-demand parts, but it seems like there are some companies that are really marketing a web-based either injection molding service or 3D printing service. It's a little bit more crowded in terms of those types of companies these days. And I'm wondering if you need to increase or revisit your marketing plan for on-demand parts in order to get growth there.

I think you are asking a very good question. Right? As I said earlier, this is a very strategic business. What I'm doing is having a deep dive to really understand -- I think there are two parts of the business.

The first part of the business, what I call a fast turnaround 3D printing. What I want to do is I want to really look at our assets, look at our website, make significant improvements where the customers can come there, they can get a quote, aggressive quote, as I said because our utilization is very different. And then I want to drive rapid turnaround, and then having -- because there is a real opportunity here to just focus on that part.

An then the second part of the business is what I call high-touch business where what we want to do is we want to be the place where our enterprise customers by verticals can come, and they can fulfill and say, okay can you work with us on a project basis rather than a quick turnaround? And on the project basis, what we want to do is we want to provide all the services so they can prototype it, they can scale, and they can actually shift to production.

So I want to really segment our on-demand solutions business into those two segments and invest appropriately so that we can have a quick turnaround business and then invest properly with respect to the overall market engine so that we can do a project-based approach. I think that's what we want to do.

Right now we were kind of in between, and I want to really segment the market and focus our on-demand business in that way.

Great. Thank you.

Steve Milunovich, UBS.

Great, thank you. How are you doing, VJ? You mentioned the importance of training the channel in order to drive awareness of how to use 3D printing and production. Can you give us a sense of what proportion of the current channel is ready for these more advanced conversations and whether it requires additional investment or recruiting new channel partners?

I think we have a really good channel partner. I think what I would rather do is training. I think the thing that we have not done a good job is to really train our channel.

The second thing is to give them a play book with a very clear value proposition. I think that's the work we are doing right now. What I want to do -- give them training, give them the sales play book, and then really, as I said, come up with the right kind of pricing approach so that which we can go aggressive in the market.

Because I think those three things -- I want to really start talking about our value proposition aggressively. I want to show up in the market aggressively. It's not about recruiting more channel partners to really give them the right tools and training so that we can be successful in the market.

How do you feel about material margins in the longer-term? HP is making a big push about an open platform and kind of arguing that the traditional 2D printer market doesn't work here.

Steve, I just don't agree that that is what they are saying. When they say open [deal] what they are basically talking about is you can work with multiple material vendors. And I just don't buy that.

My opinion is all innovation is going to come in materials. This is just in infancy in terms of where the market is. So HP's strategy -- I think it is a great company, but they are talking about binder is where they want to have the gross margins. But overall, we should look at the part costs rather than whether we do open materials or closed materials.

If we can achieve the right kind of use-of-ease that I talked about of durability and repeatability and of total cost of operation, at the end of the day, that is what we should be thinking about. My opinion is that is the only way the customers are looking at it. They are not looking at it as open materials or not. At the end of the day, what is the part cost that I'm going to achieve.

Once you measure that, I don't think there is going to be any question that the 3D Systems has the right kind of solution. With that in mind, and with innovation and materials in mind, I'm not worried about the gross margin on the materials.

We have talked about riding on the shoulders of giants in the past. I guess what are you doing in terms of increased focus on partnerships?

The question -- the thing that we talked about was the PTC that we announced at the Chicago meeting.

The second thing that I am really interested is not just on the software side, on the material side, because that partnership is also very important because you're not going to invent all the materials. But it's not like an open materials approach. I want to partner with some great, innovative companies who are working on a molecular level on designing new materials. I think that is what I want to focus on.

So you are going to see more partnership as we go into the 2017 on software side, on material side, and even, around the go-to-market side, because we always want to find the right partners. And I absolutely believe in riding the shoulders of the giants.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ananda Baruah, Brean Capital.

Thanks, guys, for taking the questions. A couple, if I could. The first is, VJ, going back to materials, the growth has been pretty solid at last couple quarters, but the comp has been easier, and if I actually track it back -- the run rate the last 12 quarters, the run rate on the materials is 37 to 41 range. And this quarter was 37, down sequentially. I would love to get your thoughts given the context --

Right now I wouldn't say that -- we have a lot of work to do on really getting our install base going. My opinion is -- the work that I'm doing is saying, let's just first of all figure out where the usage is. Clearly I have been saying for the last three quarters to you all that the production printers have much higher uses, significantly higher uses than professional, and then desktop, I don't want to even talk about it, right?

So the approach that I'm taking in saying, let's make sure that we can get our install base of our production printer and the high usage professional printers, like the 2500, so that once we do that, then we will enjoy consistent materials growth. Right now, it is kind of lumpy. In some quarters we do well, some quarters we don't do well. I just want to get that kind of a rhythm into our install base, and then you will see a consistent, significant materials revenue growth as we move forward.

That is really helpful. VJ, as we look out through 2017 -- as we position the higher-quality install base, production, et cetera, is there anything that is inherent to the current material run rate that could push this range down lower before you get the printer mix into the market, or can we expect this range, and then you'd go up from there?

I want to be able to tell you -- I don't want -- let me just start there -- I don't want to see materials revenue declining. But at the same time, right now, because it's all about install base, what has happened in the past I can't fix. So I can just tell you what I can do moving forward.

So I can't guarantee you right now that you are going to see this kind of 9% kind of a growth. I do believe we will have a positive growth, I just want to make sure I set it up so like 2017, 2018, and 2019, we will have a significant materials growth.

Got it. That is helpful. Then just going back to your comment about wanting to get more aggressive in the market, can you give us -- what does aggressive mean to you, your full context --

Stay tuned. I say stay tuned because I really believe we are taking the cost work first, because I always want to do into the, you know, steps. I want to take the cost out and then get aggressive.

Also we have made a lot of improvements in our quality and reliability. Remember I've been talking about it for the last two -- I believe by the end of this year I'm going to feel very good about it. Now is the time to really talk about how do we get more install base.

Got it. One clarification, then I'll cede the floor. I'm sort of putting words in your mouth, does that mean you feel like you'll get to the point where you can be aggressive on price without sacrificing margin?

Just stay tuned.

Okay thanks you. Appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

Okay. Take care.

Troy Jensen, Piper.

Thanks for sneaking me in. I guess I want to focus a couple questions on the Figure 4. VJ had said during the Q&A that some of the R&D investment is going to come for that product. It looks like a great product, but tell me if you're still investing in R&D still for the product. Can you just kind of help us on when the product will be generally available, and what are the sales cycles going to be?

I think I can't tell you specifics about introduction, but let me tell you since IMTS, we are seeing significant interest in enterprise customers for this technology. They are all coming to us, and the approach that I want to take care is I want to get their feedback because their feedback is very vital for us.

We believe the technology now is in place for -- especially for plastics. Up to now the prototyping to production transition was very difficult. I can see now with this technology that we can have an inflection point that I talked about moving into production.

So with respect to productivity, with respect to repeatability and durability of the part, and with respect to total cost of operation, this technology is really a breakthrough technology.

The second thing that I can tell you in all the customers, what we are doing is we can say, okay tell us the use case -- if you have a small custom or a complex part, we absolutely believe that we can move into a light production with this technology. So, working with them, evaluating the kind of a configuration they want -- they want a configuration they want where you have two print engines or four print engines or eight print engines -- and laying it out in a way where we can meet their productivity and the total cost of operations is the approach I am taking.

So instead of a normal, regular way what you are used to in terms of the introduction of another printer, what I would like to talk about is how many customers are interested, how many customers are really now transitioning into where they will be able to move into light production. I think that is how you should be measuring that. The way you want to measure us is how many customers we signed up, and that customer growth is what I want to talk about because this is not an introduction -- printers introduced, and now we can look at that.

I think what I would like to really measure us on Figure 4 is how many customers we signed up.

Right. Understood. Just a follow-up for John. It looks like a majority of the EPS BEAT this quarter was a tax benefit versus a tax expense, so can you just help us out with what we should model for a tax rate maybe in Q4? And then if any color on what the taxes would look like next year would be great.

I think we did have a benefit this quarter. But it's more of a look back, right, on a year-to-date basis.

I think that the guidance -- not guidance, but the direction that has been given of $1 million to $2 million of tax expense is still a reasonable way to think about Q4. We have not finalized everything relative to our 2017 plan, but we will give you an update on that.

I do not expect major changes, but the $1 million to $2 million kind of range is a reasonable assumption on quarterly basis.

So you think that $1 million to $2 million absolute basis will be throughout most of 2017?

Don't have -- it's not going to give you specifics on 2017 yet. We're still completing our plan. But I do not think it's going to be materially different.

Okay. Understood. Thank you.

Paul Coster, JPMorgan.

Thanks. John, I'm used to one-time adjustments to OpEx, but not such substantial ones to COGS. Why is it that there is not an offsetting pro forma adjustment to revenues in current quarter as well? And then I have a follow-up for VJ.

Yes, so this is primarily inventory raw materials-type write-offs and asset write-offs. So it's not a customer crediting kind of scenario where you would pull back on revenue.

[ Indiscernible ]. And it's mainly to do with materials, correct? Or is it the Cube -- [multiple speakers]

Products that we are not going to bring to market --

And the projects.

Yes and projects that we are not going to bring to market.

Right. Okay, thank you. And then VJ, in your introduction you talked to the three-year journey here. Why three years? Maybe you could give us some of the main milestones on that journey.

So I think the reason I'm saying it is because the majority of our business right now is prototyping. What I was talking about is the biggest opportunity is in this disruption going from prototyping to production. That requires a lot of work, working with the design teams of the enterprise, you know, of the verticals that I talked about.

The experience I have with the healthcare now, if you want to replicate that for aerospace and defense and automotive and durable goods, we need to work with the customers, and it's a long-lead thing. The customers are going to say, okay now you have a technology, let me pick certain use cases and go through the parts. And when the parts are then designed all the way and putting into the manufacturing is the lead time that I'm talking about.

So I think what I am basically saying that is the journey that we should be on, and once that happens, you are going to see a significant growth into the both revenue and the bottom line.

Okay. Thank you.

James Kisner, Jefferies.

Thank you. I guess my first thought is can you quantify the cash impact of these charges that have already happened? Is that in front of us maybe in the gross savings charge you took this quarter? Thank you.

There is no real cash impact of this. These are cash already incurred.

Okay. Great. I was just wondering around 3DSprint, I don't know if there's no way to provide any kind of quantitative metrics around the uptake there, even just talk qualitatively about how broad the interest for that is. Are we talking about a handful of folks or --

No. Basically what we are doing for our professional printers with MJP -- all MJP printers and the CJP printers -- we are now bundling that with our printers because that's very important for us.

By middle of next year, we are going to extend that to our SLA and SLS products because those are very important products on the plastics side.

What you're going to see is the 3DSprint will really improve the total workflow. And we already have a lot of beta customers, and now we have actual customers with our 2500 introduction.

Thank you so much.

Okay. The last question.

Ben Hearnsberger, Stephens.

Thanks for squeezing me in here at the very last. I'm looking at printers and then materials and software. I tend to think of materials and software lagging printers as a derivative of printer sales. We have been pretty soft in terms of printer sales over the last four to six quarters or so. Should we think about an air pocket forming in materials and services over the next few quarters or out into 2017?

I want to talk about two things separately. First of all, let's talk about software. The software is an independent -- it is not really tied -- because we are talking about the workflow here. Now, 3D Expert and 3DSprint is exception, but all of that software was very different.

The second part is I think what I am excited about is even with the units which -- our printer business was declining in the last three quarters, but our units are growing. So I think that that unit growth is very important, especially the production unit growth because that's where the usage is.

So I would not say that you're going to see any significant change in the materials kind of revenue. It's just that when my earlier comment was more on year-over-year growth number rather than the absolute materials number. So I would not expect any air pocket.

Okay. That is helpful. And then my follow-up -- can talk about the percentage of your sales that are currently direct versus through the channel, kind of how that has trended?

We don't talk about it. I think both our direct and indirect motion is very important for go-to-market. Our channel partners are extremely important because that is the only way we're going to get the global coverage that we get.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the floor back over to Stacey Witten for closing comments.

Thank you for joining us today, and for your continued support of 3D Systems. A replay of this webcast will be made available after the call on the investor relations section of our site, www.3dsystems.com/investor. Thank you.

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