GoPro Inc (GPRO) 2015 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day and welcome to the GoPro 3Q 2015 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Peter [Sirkowski], Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to GoPro's third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. With me today are GoPro's CEO, Nicholas Woodman; our President, Tony Bates; and our Chief Financial Officer, Jack Lazar.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that statements on this call including but not limited to those about our projected future and financial results, including revenue and expenses, economic and market trends, our future plans, prospects and growth opportunities, the continued adoption of our products, the anticipated benefits of our long-term strategy, our customers, competitive position, market share and leadership position in various markets constitute forward-looking statements.

This forward-looking statements and all other statements that may be made on this call that are not historical facts, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. These forward-looking statements speak only to today's call, and we do not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. We refer you to our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2014, which is on file with the Security and Exchange Commission. In particular, to the sections entitled risk factors, and to other reports that we may file from time to time with the SEC for additional information on factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.

We report net income and basic and diluted net income per share in accordance with GAAP and additionally on a non-GAAP basis. We believe that non-GAAP information is useful because it can enhance the understanding of our ongoing economic performance. We use non-GAAP reporting internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We have chosen to provide this information to enable investors to perform comparisons of operating results in a manner similar to how we analyze our operating results.

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial data can be found in the earnings press release we issued today. We ask that you review this information in conjunction with this call. All numbers that are discussed in today's conference call, other than revenue, are non-GAAP unless otherwise noted.

In addition to the earnings press release, we have posted slides containing detailed financial data and metrics for the third quarter of 2015. These slides and a link to the webcast for today's earnings conference call are posted on the events and presentations page of the GoPro Investor Relations website for your reference. In the interest of time out like to remind those participating in the Q&A portion of the call to please limit yourself to one question each.

Now I'll turn the call over to GoPro's CEO, Nicholas Woodman. Nick?

Thanks, Pete. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. As we head into the important holiday season, GoPro continues to execute against our long-term vision and strategy. As GoPro's founder and the largest shareholder, I'm very excited about the foundation we've established and the investments we are making to scale GoPro into its next phase in 2016 as an expanded ecosystem that includes a broad portfolio of hardware, software and Entertainment products.

To begin, I want to address our performance in the third-quarter. We generated revenue of $400 million, which equates to 43% growth year-over-year and non-GAAP EPS of $0.25. While we experienced strong year-over-year growth, this quarter marks the first time as a publicly traded Company that we've delivered results below the expectations that we outlined in our guidance. We take this situation very seriously.

I want to explain three factors we believe led to our underperformance for the third quarter. Factor One, initial sellthrough of HERO4 Session was weak. In retrospect, we believe we priced the product too high at $399, which caused consumer confusion because they were asked to decide between the HERO4 Session and one of our best-selling products, HERO4 Silver, also priced at $399.

Given the popularity of HERO4 Silver, initial sales of Session were not in line with out expectations. On a positive note, this experience taught us how hard it is to sell against GoPro and our premium HERO4 Black and Silver products.

Factor Two, after receiving strong feedback from consumers and retailers, combined with our recognition that Session's underperformance was likely to continue, we took action to price adjust Session to $299 in September. This resulted in $19 million of price protection and MDF which is reflected in our reduced revenue for the quarter.

Since the price adjustment, we've seen an increase in sellthrough as a percentage of product mix. Session is now selling in line with what we would typically expect for a product at this price point. Translation, while it got off to a slow start, Session is now performing as a full-fledged member of the HERO4 lineup.

Factor Three, marketing. Looking back, we now believe we underfunded marketing in the second and third quarters of this year which impacted demand. To address this, we are taking a more aggressive advertising approach in the fourth quarter which includes a return to television following a one-year hiatus. We are also expanding digital out of home and in-store initiatives globally. To check out a couple of the inspiring television spots we have slated for this holiday season, visit gopro.com/intheworks. Conclusion, we made some mistakes and we have taken corrective action.

While the effect of these actions will take some time to be fully realized, we believe we are in approaching the holidays with a strong product lineup, priced appropriately and backed by a world-class global marketing campaign.

Next I'm going to cover strategic investments that will in 2016 evolve GoPro into a broad-reaching ecosystem of products, software, services and Entertainment. We continue to be excited about our pace of innovation and our track record speaks for itself. Over the past 12 months, we have released six new capture devices that span strategics price points and feature sets.

According to NPD, in the third quarter GoPro accounted for five of the top 10 products on a unit basis in the combined digital camera and camcorder category in the United States. On a dollar basis, we have four of the top 10 products and seven of the top 10 accessories. And we are excited to take our hardware know-how into exciting new product categories, starting with the rapidly growing market for consumer quadcopters. We remain on track to launch in the first half of 2016 and current development and product performance are delivering terrific results.

We thought it would be fun to share some recent footage from one of our development units showcasing the quality of content we are already able to capture. Check it out at gopro.com/intheworks, which I should mention is a section of our website where we provide behind-the-scenes updates on some of the projects we are working on. As we draw closer to launch, we will share more about our quadcopter's unique value proposition as well as our plans to leverage GoPro's powerful brand, marketing and global distribution network to support this important new product.

Another exciting new product category slated for 2016 is spherical capture for virtual reality. In the first half of 2016, we will be launching a six-camera rig that will enable high-quality spherical photo and video capture resulting in some of the most engaging VR footage the world has ever seen.

To get a taste of the immersive VR experience that our cameras are already enabling, visit gopro.com/intheworks to watch a video that puts you on the back of a superbike as it battles for the lead. I would like to add that the talented racer featured in the video is, in fact, one of our own, GoPro employee, Martin Schwartz.

And finally the category that is the core of our business, capture devices. As you can imagine, there is no shortage of passion or focus as we develop the Next Generation of GoPros for 2016.

In software we continue to invest and are making significant progress with a laser focus on reducing the amount of time it takes our customers to, one, offload content from their cameras; two, access it; and, three, create engaging short edits. While our new software platform is still in development, I made a short video this weekend to demonstrate our progress and we've posted it to gopro.com/intheworks for you to take a look.

My wife was out of town and I had the rare chance to be solely responsible for my three boys, ages five, three and one. We decided to carve a pumpkin, the first ever for my one-year-old, and I was able to document the experience on the fly with my HERO4 Session and later that day I used our development software to create a short video in less than three minutes.

Two points I'd like to stress about this experience are, one, that without GoPro it would have been impossible for me to on-the-fly self-document this very special experience. And two, thanks to our innovative software, I was able to quickly condense roughly 40 minutes of footage into a 30-second piece of content that is extremely valuable to my family and goes well beyond the Smartphone Snapshot or third-person video clip. Given that our customers are already exporting on average over 50,000 videos a day using our studio desktop software, imagine their productivity when they have access to this powerful new experience.

Another area where we are making significant investments is GoPro Entertainment. GoPro is a content-driven business and we can credit much of our global brand strength and sales success to the incredible photos and videos shared by millions of our customers. GoPro is in the number one brand channel on YouTube and earlier this month the GoPro channel surpassed 1 billion cumulative views. Google informed us that we are one of only four brands to have reached this milestone.

We continue to believe that there's a strong correlation between the quality and quantity of our customer-shared content and the growth of our business. And with GoPro Entertainment, we are now taking a more aggressive approach to stimulating this aspect of our business.

We've recently announced GoPro Awards, an ongoing program that rewards the GoPro community for sharing their best GoPro photos, raw video clips and video edits for inclusion in GoPro channel programming, licensing and more. GoPro Awards will grant up to $5 million annually to creators of GoPro content that emotionally engages, amazes or excites, from extreme to mainstream moments, professional to consumer. GoPro excitedly encourages all GoPro customers, be they enthusiasts or production professionals, to participate by pursuing their interests, capturing their experiences with a GoPro, and submitting their most compelling moments to gopro.com/awards.

We formally announced the campaign earlier this month and in the first week we received more than 27,000 submissions, a 550% increase from the week prior. Content is being submitted from a spectrum of customers that includes families, enthusiasts, film students and entertainment professionals. The first awards have been granted and they are their terrific samples of how GoPro user-generated content stands on its own as entertainment. We've posted three of our favorites to gopro.com/intheworks. Have a look.

In addition to driving GoPro Entertainment programming initiatives, we expect GoPro Awards to also serve as a terrific content aggregator for GoPro licensing. Licensing.gopro.com is a tool which creative professionals can use to discover and license compelling GoPro photo and video content. We launched this service in July and we are excited to scale it with the help of GoPro Awards.

In 2016 we plan to announce several new GoPro Entertainment initiatives, new products and services for our customers and new revenue streams for GoPro. As a major shareholder, one of the things that I'm most excited about is the incredible talent we've recruited in recent months. We've always benefited from exceptional people being attracted to our business and as we continue to execute against our vision, we are attracting an increasing number of industry-leading professionals.

Last week we recruited Bill McCulloch, the former Vice President of Creative Development and Operations from HBO Sports. A producer with 11 Emmys under his belt, Bill will serve as GoPro's Executive Producer for team and motorsports programming. And yesterday, Claude Ruibal, the former Head of Global Sports Content for YouTube joined GoPro as Head of Global Sports Content Partnerships.

Also this quarter we hired Sandor Barna, the former Chief Technology Officer of Aptina to our Lead Core Technology Team within the Consumer Devices Group which also includes our Optics and Image Science Teams. These people bring enormous talent and experience to GoPro. Each is focused on new initiatives aimed at producing new products and new services. And I want to emphasize they are all recent hires. They recognize exactly where we are in our growth trajectory and they joined GoPro because they believe in our vision and the potential of our business.

Before I hand it over to Jack, I want to revisit what I outlined on our last conference call. I continue to believe GoPro is very well-positioned at the center of four of today's most exciting consumer mega trends: User-generated content, social media, quadcopters and virtual reality.

In my 13 years of leading GoPro, I am now more convinced than ever that we are on the right track and that the investments we're making will scale GoPro as an expanded ecosystem with a broad portfolio of hardware, software and entertainment products that take advantage of these megatrends and strongly position us for growth.

With that, I will hand it off to Jack.

Thanks, Nick, and thanks, all of you, for joining us today. If you've not already done so, I'd encourage you to download from the investor section of our website the financial slides we posted concurrently with our press release earlier today. Detailed financial data is provided in these slides, as well as our press release, so I'll be focusing my remarks on the Q3-related business trends and our guidance for the fourth quarter.

Third-quarter revenue, gross margin and EPS represented strong growth on a year-over-year basis. On a year-to-date basis, all of our key metrics, revenue growth, gross margin, EPS, adjusted EBITDA and unit growth clearly demonstrated the success of our products and business. Year-to-date revenue of $1.2 billion was up 55% and is already 85% of our full-year 2014 revenue.

Third-quarter revenue of $400.3 million was up 43% year-over-year, but below our guidance range of $430 million to $445 million, due primarily to weaker-than-anticipated demand for HERO4 Session, a $19 million offset to revenue for price protection and NDF related to the Session price change and overall sellthrough trends, particularly domestically that were seasonally weaker than the prior year. Year-to-date units shipped of $4.6 million were up 64% and the 1.6 million capture devices shipped in the third quarter increased 46% year-over-year.

Regionally, both EMEA and APAC revenue were up over 175% each year over year as our international expansion strategy has been working well. In China we localized both our apps and firmware, and China was once again a top 10 region in terms of revenue. However, our APAC revenue was down sequentially, due almost entirely to weak demand in Australia and New Zealand, which we believe is a result of a stronger US dollar and higher recommended retail prices in those regions.

In the Americas, our revenue was down 7% year-over-year. Lighter-than-anticipated Session revenue, coupled with sellthrough trends that were worse than seasonal unfavorably impacted this region. Looking at our channels, both direct and distribution revenue, were up year-over-year, 2% and 126% respectively. However, this revenue was less than anticipated in our guidance, particularly in the direct channel, primarily due to the lighter-than- anticipated Session demand and unfavorable sellthrough trends in the United States.

On a product basis, revenue from our HERO4 Black and Silver products made up over 50% of our camera revenue. Q3 ASPs were relatively flat and overall we did not experience any noticeable pricing pressure during the quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was 46.8%, compared with 44.5% in the third quarter of 2014, representing a 230 basis point increase year-over-year and 80 basis points greater than the midpoint of our guidance. Session price protection and MDF impacted gross margin by a bit over 200 basis points, reflecting the continued strength of our premium products and supply chain efficiencies.

Q3 gross margin was above our long-term target model range of 42% to 44%. Operating expenses of $139.8 million were up 44% year-over-year and slightly below our guidance range of $140 million to $145 million. Sales and marketing was once again -- increased at a rate lower than year-over-year revenue growth. R&D investments drove the overall expense increase and were up 54% year-over-year, reflecting our long-term commitment for the development of Next Generation capture devices, our recently announced quadcopter and our software and Entertainment initiatives.

Operating income for the third quarter was $47.5 million or 11.9% of revenue, an increase of 72% year-over-year. And adjusted EBITDA was $56.7 million or 14.2% of revenue, up 57% year-over-year. Both of these metrics demonstrate the significant leverage in our model over the past 12 months. Earnings per diluted share for the third quarter were $0.25, up 108% year-over-year but below our guidance of $0.29 to $0.32. The price protection and MDF accruals related to the Session launch impacted our third-quarter EPS negatively by approximately $0.10 on a tax-effected basis. GAAP net income for the quarter was $18.8 million or $0.13 per diluted share, up from $14.6 million or $0.10 per diluted share for Q3 2014.

Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $513 million, up $275 million year-over-year representing 42% of GoPro's total assets. Inventory increased by $70 million sequentially and turns were 3.4 times. We were building inventory for the upcoming holiday season, so lighter- than-anticipated demand resulted in inventory terms that were below our target levels. Over $80 million of this inventory relates to new products introduced this year.

Accounts receivable were essentially flat and DSOs increased by two days to 27. Additionally, our Board of Directors has recently approved a stock repurchase plan of up to $300 million. Our newly authorized Class A share repurchase program runs for 12 months, allowing us to remain opportunistic buyers and return cash to shareholders.

I will now move on to our guidance for the fourth quarter. Our performance year to date has been strong with revenue and operating income growth up 56% and 145% respectively. As we've noted throughout this call, Session sellthroughs has been weaker than anticipated and our overall sellthrough in the third quarter underperformed. Additionally, we are heading into a fourth quarter with channel inventory levels that are at our targets, with the exception of Session and, to a lesser extent, the HERO+ LTD, which are higher.

Comparatively, in 2014, overall channel inventories were low, as we were launching new products. Additionally, our revenue visibility for the upcoming quarter is less clear than in previous years, given that we do not have the benefit of a fourth-quarter launch. Accordingly, we anticipate revenue of between $500 million and $550 million. At the midpoint of our guidance, this represents a decrease of 17% year-over-year for the fourth quarter and an increase of 23% for the full year of 2015.

We expect the Americas region and our direct channel to be the strongest in Q4. On a product basis, HERO4 Black and Silver will be the largest contributors to our fourth-quarter revenue. We expect our product and channel mix to remain favorable and for our gross margins to continue to be above our long-term target of 42% to 44%. For the fourth quarter, we anticipate our gross margin will be 46%, plus or minus 50 basis points at the midpoint.

We will continue to invest in the people, products and infrastructure necessary to pursue our growth and our vision. In particular, as Nick noted, we are increasing our marketing spend significantly going into the fourth quarter to stimulate additional demand in this important holiday season. We expect to continue increased level of marketing spend going into 2016.

Additionally, we are ramping our spending related to our software and Entertainment initiatives to continue executing against our long-term vision. To partially offset this incremental spending, we are reducing some of our other variable expenses. We anticipate our operating expenses in the fourth quarter will be between $160 million and $170 million, with the majority of growth coming from sales and marketing and R&D. We estimate our effective tax rate to be approximately 23%, with fully diluted shares outstanding of 147 million. Accordingly, we anticipate EPS to be in the range of $0.35 to $0.45.

So with that, Operator, we are ready to take questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Paul Coster, JPMorgan

Thanks very much for taking my question. So we can't attribute the slowdown just to the Session, right, it does sound like, sellthrough has slowed across other product categories relative to prior expectations. And so, Nick, I guess I'm trying to figure out whether we are experiencing some kind of maturing of the market or you expect the S-curve of adoptions -- for a second phase of S-curve adoption as a result of innovations that will be coming to market. Perhaps you can help us here, because it feels like we've lost momentum.

Paul, this is Jack. Let me handle the Session piece of this. We shipped in product obviously in the quarter, a significant amount, and it didn't sell through at the rates in which we expected. However, our guidance going into the quarter was actually for a significant additional amount of Sessions to ship in.

So that's really the -- so what you got in the third quarter was Session didn't sell through as well as we anticipated and we did not get to put the second tranche of Session into the channel, because we were trying to maintain our channel inventory levels. I think that Session's a really good product and, as we've noted, we all use this product quite a bit. And it is the beginning of a product cycle for this product. We think that we can -- that we will see increased adoption of Session going forward and that's one of the reasons why we changed the price.

As far as the sellthrough reduction, I think what we saw were some unfavorable trends from late July, early August through the August, September time frame. That's traditionally a very slow portion of the year. It is seasonally one of the weakest parts of the year.

So we are relating to you what we saw. We are holding out to see how Q4 is going to play out. We are still very confident we have a very good set of products, but we are going in with a channel that is a little more -- a little more at its target levels than it was in the prior year which makes for a tougher comp.

Okay, so is the channel, which is the main issue here going into the fourth quarter --

I want to be clear, though, Paul, on the channel. It is not that the channel is got too much inventory in it. It is that the channel had very little inventory in it last year. If you look at the full year, we are going to be up 23%, 24% for the year on our overall revenues, so we've got very good year-to-date numbers.

We are confident, we've seen a business that's growing. We've already shipped 85% of what we ship[ed all of last year. So I think it is just we have a little different timing of launches, Session was a little weaker than we thought. And then going into Q4, there's a little more inventory -- there's a normal level of inventory in the channel that's comparing to a lighter level last year.

Okay. One other question. Entertainment revenues were [lightly] material in 2016, do you think?

We're not giving guidance in terms of whether (inaudible) material or not. I think what I would say is that we, as we talked about, we are hiring an amazing team. We have strategy that we are executing, I think, well against. You saw what just happened with (inaudible). We're really, really, really pleased with the content that we gained and that's a big part of what we thinks going to be very critical for the Entertainment strategy that we are laying remain out internally.

But it's not up to where I can really give you any numbers around that, Paul. But we are making large investments in this area, so we clearly see an opportunity there, and it's really a big part of our ongoing investment story as Nick laid out.

I will add that we plan to launch new Entertainment-related products and services in 2016, so it is not just a matter of scaling what you are already seeing from us, but we are excited about innovation that we have in that area as well.

Okay. One last question, Nick, or whoever. The Session, how are we to conceptualize this? You are obviously depicting something other than your traditional product category? Can you help us understand that?

Sure. I think it speaks volumes about our appetite for innovation at GoPro and as well that we are not resting on our laurels. We've got a terrific historical performance in the form of our HERO3 and 3+ and then HERO4 Black and Silver products.

And while we know those products resonate with consumers, we also don't know what we don't know about what could even resonate with a broader market and even be a better GoPro than we are currently making today. So Session is the result of us trying to blow everything up. And if we were to start all over again, what type of a GoPro would we develop and that is Session.

I stand by it. It is my favorite GoPro. It is the one I always pick off the shelf when I am chasing my kids out or doing something -- filming something I'm personally interested in. I recently, over a weekend, the waves were so good, I surfed for 8.5 hours in one day. I filmed every single wave I did and did not catch with my Session and I only used 20% of my battery life.

If this was another one of the GoPros, I would have had to paddle in and swap out batteries several times, so this product is incredible. I think that a combination of the time of year that we launched it, which is maybe a little bit snoozy as it relates to consumer purchasing habits, combined with the fact that we are selling against the strength of HERO4 Black and Silver. We are learning how hard is it to compete with GoPro.

But that said, as we noted, since the price change, Session is selling in line with what we would typically expect for a product of that price point, so while it is not the outperformer that we may have anticipated it to be at launch, it is a healthy member of the HERO4 family.

Thank you.

Joseph Wolfe, Barclays.

Hey, guys, it is Brian Finneran on for Joe. I just had a quick question. The press release lists multiple launches that target the user experience in the content side of the business and the only hardware launch with immediate revenue potential is the Session.

Is there any way for us to track or if you guys track these launches on the software and content side, about how they are driving hardware sales or uploads from users who may have been frustrated by earlier tools? I guess, more simply put, just how are you measuring the success of the non-hardware investments?

That's a good question. We definitely track usage rates of both the app and desktop software. With each earnings call, we are happy to report that we've seen video exports from GoPro Studio, our desktop application, handily increase. It is now over 50,000 uploads or exports from GoPro studio daily on average.

So that we see that while we can't necessarily make a direct correlation to increased product sales, that hardware sales, we are seeing increased levels of activity amongst our customers which you could extrapolate and lead one to believe that they are having a better overall user experience, which ultimately is in the long-term going to lead to people thinking more favorably of our products and services, which ultimately should help drive sellthrough.

I think the only other thing I would add is that, obviously we take consumer and customer feedback very seriously, whether it is in the form of survey data, as well as the way we're rated. (inaudible) is a great example of a feature that is clearly something that folks wanted. We were able to enable it and it solves a [pain] point that is absolutely paramount.

So the question -- and it directly attributes, like this (inaudible) that said they sold X amount of cameras, probably not. What we know is (technical difficulty) apart from that long-time strategy, the more to make it easier for folks to upload the content, manage it, hopefully get a clear [clear] like Nick alluded to, with his new development software in under three minutes. It's really a- professional looking clip, and then get that shared out. We believe that will lead to more camera sales.

Yes, please do take a look at gopro.com/intheworks to see the video I edited this weekend. It is really indicative of what's very different about the GoPro value proposition and how we are really transforming the content creation experience for the everyday consumer.

Okay. That's really helpful. Then I guess my other one is just on the margin. I know you had said margins are pretty high here, even with the 200 basis point impact of the Session. Is it just stronger-than-anticipated sales of Black and Silver or is there any other dynamic that I'm missing there?

We sell premium products and people pay for them. I think that one of the benefits we really have is a great brand and that brand is what gets people to continue to flock to things like [keerful] Black and Silver. Realistically look at -- we have now shipped over $1 billion worth of Black and Silver since it was launched. That's a lot of product. And it is a lot of product that comes with very good margins.

So I think there's other credits. The Ops team deserves a lot of credit for getting supply-chain efficiencies. The engineering team is constantly looking for ways to pull costs out of the products and we continue to optimize over the year, but we get a good mix of products and we sell at decent price points. One of the things you don't see is ASP erosion.

One of the things we did not point out in the script, for example, is if you take into account the impact of the MDF on what we commonly refer to as the street ASP (technical difficulty), the revenue divided by the units. It's not the true reflection of our ASPs, but it is what you guys see. And if you take that into account, there was a $10 reduction to get down to flat ASPs this last quarter. So that's taking into account the entire impact of the Session price protection and MDF.

So I think what we've learned over the years is we design products really well. We've gotten much better at manufacturing them. And fortunately our marketing and our brand is what helps us sell these premium products at very good margins.

Great. Thanks, guys.

Jeremy David with Citi.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted a little bit more clarity on some of the product launches that we are going to see. I thought the VR rig was supposed to launch in the second half of this year. So is that pushed to the first half of next year or is that a different launch that we are talking about?

Then on the timing of HERO5, I'm sure you don't want to give too much comment on that, but you obviously have learned a lot from launching product at different times of the year. [At story creek] over the holiday season this year, earlier in the year, what's the best time of the year to launch a product at this point in time? A product like the HERO5? Thank you.

Hi, Jeremy. So maybe there's some confusion as to our roadmap for releasing our multi-camera rigs for VR and spherical and surround 360-degree capture. Earlier this year, we did launch Odyssey, which is our 16-camera rig that we developed for Google for limited distribution to support their 360-degree content jump platform. And we are currently selling those products.

And then we have been slated for a 2016 first-half launch of our six-camera spherical rig that we announced earlier in the year, so we are on track with that. Then as it relates to the best -- well, HERO5, if that's what you want to call it, I think, and the best time of year to launch new products, I think that the challenges we face this year were related to two things: One, that Session did not go as well as we had anticipated. And then on top of that, we did not have an additional significant new product launch for the fourth quarter. And those two things combined have created a challenging situation for us.

Independently, though, if Session had been more successful when we launched it in July, we would not be having this challenge right now. So it is another way of saying that we can successfully launch new products outside of the fourth quarter. This current situation does not mean that we will always now be bolden to a fourth-quarter launch of new products.

I would like to add one thing on top of this. It is important to take a step back and look at year-over-year growth. With the guidance that we just gave, we are still growing at a little less than 25% on a year-over-year basis. So I think that's a pretty respectable number for any Company with well over $1 billion in sales. And what it shows is that you're going to get into these timing issues and comp issues and all of that, but really on a year-over-year basis, the revenue growth is pretty quite strong.

Good. And if I can have a follow-up on the buyback plan, you said you'd be opportunistic. What does that mean in practice and with your stock at $25, does that mean you would be actively buying back shares (inaudible) or how should we think about the timing of the cash [component]? Thanks.

I would say that we have been authorized to repurchase up to $300 million in the next 12 months and we're going to be opportunistic about it. I don't think we're going to give any guidance to the levels that we're going to be buying at, but obviously we felt strongly enough about it where we actually sought Board approval to go and do it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jeremy.

Simona Jankowski, Goldman Sachs.

Hi, thanks very much. Can you help us quantify the impact of the channel inventory that you referenced? I think it would be helpful if you maybe tell us how many weeks of inventory you saw in the channel a year ago versus where that is today? And then how many weeks of inventory you think you might be exiting the fourth quarter with?

Just as a reminder, we are at -- with the exception of Session and HERO+ LTD, to a much lesser extent HERO+ LCD, we are at our target levels right now. We have not disclosed what our target levels are, but I will make a comment on this in that I personally believe that we are looking at at least a month of inventory difference in the channel.

So if you do quick math on that, based on a month out of what we just guided to at midpoint of $5.25 million, you're looking at a pretty significant amount that would actually would've turned into an increase in revenue year-over-year. That's speculation, so I can't, obviously, ground it in anything other than my speculation, but based on what we know that is basically what we are seeing.

We launched very, very late in Q3 and then into Q4 last year. So we really just not have a chance to have the channels in -- full up at the time of the launch. The other thing I would point out is I'm sure there are questions on some of the domestic stuff. You have to remember the launch last year was very heavily tied to the domestic regions. In fact, one of our largest channel partners received the vast majority of the HERO4 launch product, so it does distort the domestic numbers a little bit too.

But to basically to answer your question, I think there's probably about a month that we are talking about here. And that's one of the reasons why I stressed that it is important to look at it on a year-over-year basis.

Got it. So another way to think about that is that if we were just looking at it on a normalized basis in terms of sellthrough, instead of looking at a 17% year-on-year decline, which is where you're guiding, it would've been something maybe up the low double digits in terms of sellthrough if there wasn't that difference in the channel fill.

That's exactly right. And look, we're not sitting here trying to make excuses for this guide -- I think -- we're not making excuses for growing revenue 23% year-over-year. We think that's pretty good. But there are a lot of strange nuances that are in the comps. It is like that for every Company, so we are just trying to explain it for everyone.

Okay. And in terms of the ASP trends into the fourth quarter, any guidance you can give on that? It sounds like the mix of product is going to be a little more skewed to the low end because of the Session price cut, and then the lack of a high-end product and then you've got FX as well. So what would you expect for ASPs in terms of Q-on-Q or year-over-year ranges?

First, FX doesn't so much affect us on the ASP side. We have very few countries where we actually operate in the local currency. In those places we're usually shipping to a distributor in US dollars, so they are taking the risk, so we can't really use that one. Overall ASPs, I think what I would point out is basically what we said in the script, which is that when you look at the gross margins for the upcoming quarter, we are still looking at 46% gross margins, which is pretty healthy, which means the mix has to be pretty good.

But the ASP should come down on a sequential basis?

We didn't comment on the ASPs, and we just didn't give any guidance on it. But if they were coming down materially, I think it would have probably affected gross margins, right?

Okay. No, I just thought more from a mix perspective, but that's fine. Thank you.

James Faucette with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to just dovetail with a couple of Simona's questions. First, so just a clarification, Jack, so your planning assumption right now is that on a sellthrough basis that your sales will be up year-over-year in the December quarter kind of teens-type range? Did I understand that correctly?

I don't think we gave that specific guidance, but what I would say is that we certainly expect sellthrough to outperform sell-in this quarter.

Okay. And then as far as looking at next year, clearly you'll have new product launches, a few new platforms that should help encourage incremental camera attach rates, et cetera. How should we be thinking or how should we be planning for that? Once we get past this channel fill, are you expecting that will be on a more normalized basis and expect to return to a similar growth rate as what we saw this year for the full year?

And part of that, I guess the second part of that question is where are we on the international expansion? Clearly 2015 was a big year for international expansion. How much further do you have to go from a distribution standpoint at least to feel like you are where you want to be on international distribution? Thanks.

As far as 2015, we are really not going to get into specifics of what we think the year is going to look like. I think we've given enough clues and hints of things we are working on at this point where, I think if we all fall under the trap of comparing quarter over quarter and all that kind of stuff, it will get confusing.

Overall, I think we are very excited about the product lineup we have for the upcoming year. I can tell you we all smile when we think about it. And that means that clearly we will be looking to be -- continue to be a growth company. Getting into more specifics than that I think is probably not the right time to do it right now.

And this is Tony. I'll talk about the international. I think that you're going to continue to see us invest, I think, certainly in Asia-Pac, there's definitely more to go. I'd highlight China. We touched on it. If you look in the last quarter, we actually doubled the amount of [drawers] that we've (inaudible) from the previous quarter.

Overall, China is in the top 10. And if you look at it on a revenue basis for the first nine months we've actually been in China, it is actually our fastest growing country launch that we've ever done in GoPro's history. So that just gives you one example of market -- that what we see continued market expansion. But I think we do see broad opportunity in A-Pac and the EMEA.

Couple that -- we will continue to invest selectively on the south side, but couple that with what we're doing on the marketing. And I want to stress that, very importantly, that the increased marketing spend that we talked about in terms of a demand generation is really a global play. It is not just a US phenomena. Obviously, a lot (inaudible) will see US TV ads, but it's really [books] on global. So we see the opportunity as still very strong on a global basis, not any change (inaudible).

Great. Thanks.

Thanks, James.

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, please limit yourselves to one question.

Alex Gauna, JMP Securities.

Thanks very much. You've been really helpful in terms of describing the puts and takes around what happened with the Session. I'm wondering in touching on not having a new high-end flagship for the holiday season here, how that came to be? Because it seems rather intuitive that Apple has set a consumer expectation for a one-year cadence. And I'm wondering why that did not happen for this holiday season? Thanks.

Hey, Alex, that's a great question and maybe comparison to draw. As we've noted in the past, we are going to come out with new products when we think that we have meaningful advancements in terms of performance and value proposition for consumers. And if we don't have that, then we are not just going to release a new product just for the sake of releasing a new product and selling our customer something they don't really need.

But that said, to revisit Session, that's what we anticipated Session to be. Session is a terrific product that's maybe just slightly ahead of its time here at GoPro and that, if it had performed within line of our expectations, we would be having a very different call right now.

So is virtual-reality at the point where it is not too far ahead of its time that we can think about that helping you for 2016? You are on the vanguard of making that happen for the industry. And how can we think about how that might contribute in terms of rigs, in terms of a multiplier effect on cameras and in terms of what's happening with [Kalour] on the software side?

I think you are right to think of virtual-reality as being a future opportunity for GoPro and one we are terrifically well-positioned to take advantage of. We are a leader in the space of spherical capture for virtual-reality. And the leading platforms like Facebook and Google and Microsoft are looking to us to enable incredible user-generated and professionally captured spherical content to help make virtual-reality a success.

But it is early days there and so our developments there are to keep us well-positioned in the front. And, frankly, we see a lot of the same opportunities in virtual-reality that we're currently enjoying in non-spherical content capture. We think that users -- consumers are going to be excited about this form of capture in the future, but I would be conservative in terms of how much credit you give us for on a revenue basis. We are more in a positioning phase now as we develop our new products for that category.

Erinn Murphy, Piper Jaffray.

Great, thanks for taking my question. Jack, I guess I have a question for you. Maybe just going back to the dynamic between the direct and indirect channels, with direct growing about 2% and the indirect, as you've talked about, obviously up triple digits. I guess one clarification on the guidance -- so with the slowdown in direct in the Americas in Q3, I guess what gives you confidence that those are the two regions that will be the strongest within the fourth quarter?

Then with the big [sell it] into the international channels, just help us think about how we should think through the sellthrough piece of the international channels in the fourth quarter? Thanks.

Hey, Erinn, thanks for the question. And I think it is important to keep in mind what we are comping to. Last year in the third quarter we basically did not launch HERO4 into that channel. So there was a pretty easy comp, quite frankly, in the -- versus the third quarter of last year, whereas we were coming against the initial sell into some of the largest big box retailers in the third quarter.

So I think that's part of what makes the difference here. We were expecting the business, obviously, in the direct channel, primarily big-box US, to be better in this past third quarter. And obviously that was part of the miss that we had on the revenue side. As we go into the fourth quarter and the sellthrough that's required for international, I think we've just got demonstrated performance. We track this stuff on a weekly basis.

Think of it this way, we did not hit our expectations for the quarter for revenue guidance, but yet we also did not -- for products that had been already released, we ended up with channel inventory levels that are at the level that we want them to be at. So we're pretty careful. And I think from that perspective, we have a pretty good insight into what the sellthrough will actually look like.

On the domestic side, one of the reasons why we think it will be significantly more positive in the fourth quarter is primarily because, again, we have pretty good visibility in there -- not as good as maybe we've had in the past, but we have pretty good visibility into the domestic channel. And I think that as you dig down deeper into the domestic, it is just a more seasonal channel.

So domestic direct is a more seasonal channel than any other channel that we have and so we see a nice sequential change there. So it's a combination of a lot of factors there. But I think we have a pretty good handle on what's actually happening.

Charlie Anderson, Dougherty & Company.

Thanks for taking my question. I have a two-part on Session. It noted that Amazon took the price to $275 a couple weeks ago and Best Buy has a price-match guarantee. I wonder how that impacts on the dynamics as it relates to price protection?

And then secondly on Session, I wonder on the specs you mentioned you felt like price was the issue, but I wonder on the spec sheet if you felt like anything was the issue in terms of why it didn't sell the way you wanted it to?

Regarding price protection, price protection has nothing to do -- the price protection we offered in the last quarter, the $19 million, was actually simply related to us changing the manufacturer's suggested retail price. So that's going from $399 to $299. And then effectively we give a credit to the folks who took product and had it still in their channels.

As far as Amazon selling products or Best Buy selling products, they are free to price things within certain policies. What I would say is these guys run programs all the time and, frankly, they are funding them They are funding them in ways where when you walk into a Best Buy and they offer you an SD card maybe with a purchase of a GoPro.

They believe that the margin that they are getting from that sale is worth actually giving an extra incentive sometimes to get you to actually buy the product. So I don't really view any of those as, frankly, either atypical to what's happened in the past or out of the ordinary.

As it relates to your question about the performance specs for Session, and if that has had any impact on the demand for Session. I think that, as we noted on the call, that we did -- we do believe we caused some consumer confusion with the $399 price point, selling against HERO4 Silver, which is such a strong member of our lineup is no easy task.

The size and convenience of HERO4 Session clearly was not enough to help it sell well against Silver. And that I think calling a spade a spade, sure, if the specifications, the speeds and feeds, if you will, of Session were stronger relative to Silver, it would have done better. But it is important to note that the image quality of that product is outstanding, as you see in the video that I produced and we put on gopro.com/intheworks. We would not have released it if it wasn't an outstanding product that was up to the quality of the GoPro brand name.

And I think that as we look to future models of future releases of Session, that we will see it fit more in line with our premium products from a -- at a specification, on a specification basis. But I do think that you are right that that did play into it somewhat.

Will Power, Robert W. Baird.

Great, thanks for sneeking me in there. I guess a couple questions, maybe just on the geographic split. I saw that EMEA was up sequentially which obviously stood in contrast with the Americas and Asia Pac. I know you cited Australia and New Zealand as part of the Asia-Pac weakness. But I guess I just want to make sure I understand what the difference was in EMEA versus the other two regions.

And then within Australia and New Zealand, have you seen improvement, I guess, over the last couple of months?

Regarding Australia and New Zealand, I would say we have seen some improvement lately. The currency has really worked very unfavorably against us there. It's resulted in a very high recommended retail price and that, in turn, has affected demand. And, again, since we don't sell in the local currency, really our only option to address currency changes is to change the recommended retail price so the distributors that we work closely with can still get their margin that's required to sell the product.

I think that we are seeing some favorable trends there. I think it's going to take a while though. The dollar is strong there, and I think the products are good. We're in the holiday season, so we are hoping that we will continue to see some upticks. As far as the other part of the question, which was EMEA related?

You've got to watch the comps, I think, is the discussion there.

Yes, I think that's a story about comps. EMEA obviously had a strong quarter. And this has been a big part of our story this year has been the growth and the rollout in various different regions, so I feel like we've made really good progress there. The regions have come up nicely and the comps are very good this quarter, probably less favorable next quarter because domestic will be so much significantly better. But overall, if you look at the grand scheme of what we're trying to accomplish, its working.

Also I wanted to ask you on the quadcopter opportunity in the first half of 2016. Distribution in particular, I wonder if you can frame how you feel about distribution? Have you had those discussions with Best Buys and others? How do you think about shelf space for that product? Want to get a sense for confidence, I guess along those lines.

And the second part of that is, given we are getting closer to that launch period, any updated thoughts with regard to how you are sizing the market? Is that something that could be a couple hundred million dollars of revenue in, say, 2017? What are some of the parameters we might think about?

Those are good questions. I think in terms of distribution, we can't speak to our strategy specifically, but, as we have shared, we believe that our global distribution network is something that gives us a distinct advantage. And it is an advantage that we are looking to exploit. And our distributors are excited about the product; our retailers are excited about the products, so we think we've got a terrific opportunity there.

And as relates to the TAM, today we see the overall quadcopter TAM as a subset of GoPro's existing TAM. Given the cost of quadcopters today, the complexity, the compromised user experience, we think that's they are appealing to a subset of customers that we have today, but for the same reasons they are appealing, because they enable incredible content from new perspectives that enable really immersive and engaging viewing experiences.

So this is why we think we have such a significant opportunity in this space. GoPro and aerial capture go hand-in-, and so as we bring our product know-how and engineer a terrific user experience for quadcopters, we think that we can help expand the overall TAM over time.

And on that note, please do to remember to visit gopro.com/intheworks to see some footage that we just released. This is the first ever video footage that we've released from our development program, so this is a sneak peak of what you can expect from GoPro in the air and more in 2016.

That concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to GoPro's CEO, Mr. Nick Woodman for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. Before we go, I want to let everybody know that we will be at the NASDAQ, Raymond James, Barclays and Wedbush conferences in December. And on behalf of now more than 1,500 employees around the world, many thanks for your ongoing support. This is Team GoPro signing off.

That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for your participation.