InterDigital Inc (IDCC) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the InterDigital, Inc. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Richard Lloyd. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning to everyone, and welcome to InterDigital's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I am Richard Lloyd, Communications Director. And with me in today's call are Liren Chen, our President and CEO; and Rich Brezski, our CFO. Consistent with last quarter's call, we will offer some highlights about the quarter and the company, and then open the call up for questions.

Before we begin our remarks, I need to remind you that in this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding our current beliefs, plans and expectations, which are not guarantees of future performance and are made only as of the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from results and events contemplated by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include those described in the Risk Factors section of our 2021 annual report on Form 10-K and in our other SEC filings.

In addition, today's presentation may contain references to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our financial measures -- financial metrics tracker, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website.

With that taken care of, I will turn the call over to Liren.

Thanks, Richard. This was another strong quarter, underlying our success in converting our growing technology footprint into a strong recurring revenue base and in managing our cost base in a disciplined manner. Among our headline numbers, total revenue increased by 23% year-over-year to $101.3 million, while net income increased to $18 million, up more than 3x from $5.6 million in the first quarter of last year. Rich will provide more details in his section.

Through the course of this quarter, we demonstrated our strength as a leading technology innovator in wireless and video, expanded our patent portfolio, saw several of our engineers appointed to leadership position within standard and industry bodies, and once, again added to our list of 5G licensees. I would like to start with 5G to focus on where we stand, both as a company and in the wider context of wireless industry.

As you might be aware, sales of 5G smartphones have continued to gain momentum. And in January, the market reached a notable milestone with new 5G smartphone shipment surpassing 4G shipment for the first time, nearly 3 years after the commercial launch of 5G devices. We achieved this milestone 2 years ahead of time compared to the 4G device adoption. This is a remarkable achievement for everyone involved. And at InterDigital, we are proud of our foundational contributions to this latest G that is proving such a success with consumers.

While we have been working on 5G for many years, our engineers continue to contribute to the ongoing development of this exciting technology. In fact, in the first quarter, our 5G-related invention disclosures was the highest they have been in several years. In total, our [cellular standard] patent footprint for 5G multiple device has reached nearly 10,000 patents and applications. This reflects not only the considerable investments we make to each generation of cellular technology, but also our extensive work to create one of the largest and most valuable patent portfolios in the industry.

This is an exciting time for those of us contributing to the development of 5G, not only are we seeing the commercial success of the initial releases of 5G, but we are also about to reach a notable milestone next month in 5G evolution with the standards latest technology specification, known as Release 17. I will not go into all the details here, but it is worth noting that Release 17 has been designed to broaden the rate of commercial adoption of 5G through features such as low latency communications for industrial IoT and improved backhaul to better support the new radio using 5G.

This and other innovations show further 5G expansion of cellular communication beyond commercial smartphones, taking enhanced connectivity into new sectors and industries. InterDigital engineers made a wide range of key contributions to Release 17, such as features that improve communications in higher frequency range using advanced in MIMO and beamforming. We also continued to add key technologies in multiple areas, including increased support for new verticals like automotive with V2X technologies.

We expect to continue to be at the forefront of the technology evolution, and I'm delighted to announce that in the first quarter, 2 of our engineers were appointed to leadership role for the next release of 5G, Release 18, which is coming in 2023, and will be the first release known as 5G-Advanced.

Staying on the topic of industry leadership, in March, 2 of InterDigital engineers was elected to -- one of InterDigital engineers was elected to a senior leadership position on an advisory group within the International Telecommunication Union. The ITU is a highly influential body that helps develop technology standards across the communication industry to ensure that consumers can connect seamlessly. The selection of our engineers to the leadership role like this not only reflects the high regard in which our innovators are held, but also the central role InterDigital play within the industry.

As much as I appreciate the actual recognition our engineers received, we feel it is important that we as the company also recognize innovation from our own outstanding inventors. In February, we announced our Inventor of the Year, rewarding a pair of innovators for the critical blend of research contributions, standard leadership and innovation impact in 5G wireless and video. Between them, they have developed more than 250 inventions in areas like dynamic bandwidth and beam switching for 5G, and in the VVC standard in video.

It is because of the countless tireless work from engineers like them and the deep investment we make to calculate our foundational research that we are determined to ensure we receive a fair and reasonable return on our significant R&D investments.

Our strength is increasingly being recognized as evidenced by our new agreement with Sharp to cover our 5G patents. The agreement expands our previous agreement with Sharp that covers our 3G and 4G assets, and is the latest example of our increasing momentum to translate our competitive 5G innovation into new license agreements. As I have said many times before, the cellular, WiFi and video innovations that we have heavily invested in are some of the most important horizontal technologies.

The great thing about our business model is the resulting patenting innovations are integral to products and services across a number of verticals beyond the smartphones. As Rich will detail, this past quarter, we had one of our strongest quarters yet in consumer electronic licensing and we expect additional success in automobile and IoT in the second quarter through both our direct and platform licensing efforts.

As I've noted in the past calls, when companies using our technology are unwilling to sign a license on fair terms after lengthy negotiations and insist on continuing to infringe our IP, we are fully prepared to enforce our right as a patent holder. Let me provide an update on 2 incidences in which we have done so.

In February, our [work] to establish FRAND term for a global license with Lenovo concluded in London. We are very happy with the case we presented and are currently reaching a decision. We remain confident in the strength of our technology, the quality of our IP portfolio and the merits of our case.

Moving on to the second instance. On the last call, I mentioned we filed a series of lawsuits against OPPO, which together with the realme and OnePlus brand, is a top 5 smartphone manufacturer. It is worth remembering that where we have had [related] in the past, we have always concluded a license agreement on FRAND terms.

Before I hand it over to Rich, I'd like to thank all our employees for their hard work. I'm consistently impressed by their dedication and expertise of all the InterDigital team and feel extremely confident that, together, we can continue to execute our strategy.

Thanks, Liren, and good morning, everyone. As Liren noted, we continued the momentum we established in 2021 with another quarter of strong financial performance, including our third consecutive quarter with revenue exceeding $100 million, another sequential reduction in expenses and overall strong profitability. We closed our license renewal with Sharp late in the quarter, pushing our total revenue above our guided range, which topped out at $100 million.

Recurring revenue alone was just shy of $100 million and benefited not only from our Sharp renewal, but also for more than $8 million of recurring CE revenue. Importantly, our CE recurring revenue has more than doubled from the first quarter of last year as a result of signing 7 agreements covering the CE space over the last 12 months and strong underlying per unit sales.

Moving on to expenses. We reported a $15 million sequential decrease in operating expenses. Of this, $7 million was related to lower restructuring charges, with an $8 million sequential decrease across the balance of our expenses. On a year-over-year basis, our total operating expenses were relatively flat. But when you adjust for litigation and share-based compensation, our operating expenses in Q1 of this year were down by $7 million from the prior year. On the whole, we are pleased to see our efforts to reduce our expense base manifest in our latest results.

Strong revenue and cost management leads to strong profit, and we are pleased to report $0.58 of GAAP EPS in the quarter, an increase of $0.40 from the prior year. We talked a lot about our strong business and financial performance in 2021. And looking at our year-over-year results for the first quarter of 2022 really shows how far we have come in this last year.

Looking forward to Q2, we currently expect total revenue to come in between $114 million and $120 million, including recurring revenue of $97 million to $101 million. This expectation is based on license agreements in place at the end of Q1 and license agreements that we currently expect to be executed in Q2. We will provide additional details on these new agreements, which cover automotive, IoT and other products at a later date.

But for now, I will note that we don't expect any incremental expenses from the new agreements. We do, however, expect a slight unrelated increase in recurring expenses going into Q2, plus an additional $3 million to $4 million of restructuring charges. For the most part, the restructuring charges are driven by facility realignment and represent the final step of our previously disclosed restructuring plan.

As a final note, you will see in our press release and financial metrics that we have reported an adjusted EBITDA figure, which is a non-GAAP measure that adds back stock-based compensation and eliminates certain nonrecurring expenses. We believe this metric is a useful measure of the progress and health of our business and plan to continue to report on it in future periods. As this is the first quarter we have reported on this metric, we have presented it for each of the 8 quarters reported in our financial metrics, including, in each case, a reconciliation to GAAP figures.

With that, I'll turn it back to Richard.

Thank you, Rich and Liren. Operator, we will just take a pause for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question will come from Scott Searle with ROTH Capital.

Nice job on the quarter, guys. Maybe just start to dive right in on auto and IoT. It sounds like you're getting more excited on that front as well as Avanci in there. I was wondering if there were some revenue figures that you could attach to that. In terms of the size of CE contribution right now, what video is kind of looking better? How we should be thinking about that? And then specifically, I think you called out this quarter we'll start to see an acceleration in auto and IoT. And it sounds like it's going to be both direct as well as through the Avanci units. I was wondering if you could flesh that out a little bit and maybe the magnitude of the impact.

Yes, Scott, this is Rich. So I did mention in the script that we have about $8 million in recurring CE revenue in Q1. So that's one of the stronger quarters we've had in CE and double from a year ago. The -- now, of course, CE does have a lot of per unit. A lot of the -- overall, we're 90% fixed fee. It's almost the inverse with close to 90% per unit in the CE space. So that is dependent on quarter-to-quarter shipments. But we're really pleased that we've been able to sign agreements in '21, and you see some of those results in Q1. On auto and IoT, we alluded to new agreements already signed in Q2 were expected to close. So we'll have more details there. Through the platform license we participate, GM was announced as a recent addition there, so we expect that to contribute in Q2.

Great. And Rich, just to follow-up quickly on the -- sorry, Liren?

Yes. Scott, the only thing I would add is, as I mentioned in my portion of the script, Release 17 is expected to come out in June of this year. Release 17 has very specific features that we believe will enable our key use cases as well as automobile use cases from the standard development perspective.

Okay. Very helpful. And Rich, one other cost question. OpEx being down in the March quarter, particularly R&D and development was down. Is that a sustainable level that we should think about going forward? Or is there some onetime element going on in there?

Yes. There's -- I mean you have a little bit of seasonality where sometimes some fringe and so forth is higher in Q1, but then there's also some -- we benefited for some things that maybe aren't going to recur in Q2. So I did note and the guidance reflects a little bit of an increase in recurring expense going into Q2. So we think we're at a pretty good level overall, but it always is going to move around just a little bit.

Got you. And Liren, if I could, there are a couple of big customers that have expiring relationships this year. I was wondering if you have any updated thoughts on that progress. Is there opportunity where those could actually be larger contracts than they've been in the past? I mean how should we be thinking about that?

Scott. As we are mentioning here, so we do have the Apple agreement expiring by end of Q3 and Samsung agreement by end of this year here. We are in active negotiations. And so we believe strongly that our technology has been more important than ever. And both of those vendors, they tend to compete in the higher end of the product offering that, frankly, benefit even more from 5G and on the high-level features. So we are feeling comfortable about where we are, and we are in active negotiation trying to get them done, obviously, by the time they expire.

Okay. Helpful. And lastly, if I could, and then I'll hop back in the queue. Some of the relationships with the unlicensed China-based OEMs, more and more it seems like they're relying on exports, I think, for Vivo and OPPO. 50% to 55% of their units in the first quarter continue to be from exports. Given the current global geopolitical landscape, what are your current thoughts on that front? Is there creating more of a sense of urgency given what we're seeing in terms of 5G adoption, particularly in markets like Europe where they're trying to gain share, that it's driving them closer? Is -- the active discussions, are they better? How is that all kind of playing out in terms of the macro landscape? Congrats on the quarter again.

Yes. Thanks, Scott. So yes, you're absolutely right that large vendors, including OPPO, Vivo and also Lenovo are exporting a lot. And more than half of their sales are outside China, and they are targeting Europe as well as India. That's one of their markets. So we are definitely seeing that trend to continue. And our discussions, we are -- as we disclosed in the [litigation] with OPPO and Lenovo, so the litigation strategy, that we factored those in, and we are also currently in active discussions with this [label].

So I see those as helpful trend in our negotiation dynamic. But the most important thing is we really drive value through our R&D and our patent portfolio is global based. And we have already established licensing program with more than 80 current licensees that we can point to that's a very, very favorable comps. So I think all those [trends] is helpful.

And our next question come from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

Congratulations on the good performance in the first quarter. A lot of good questions asked already. I'm just curious for the consumer electronics, you said that had some pretty good growth in the first quarter. Should we expect that trajectory to continue? Or was this something special to happen in the first quarter?

Yes. Yes. Thanks for your question. We -- when we talked about CE kind of closing out the end of '21, we noted that we added a number of significant agreements that -- a number of agreements, including a top 10 TV manufacturer. And we kind of view that at, call it, a $25 million run rate. Obviously, at $8 million for the Q1, that's running above that. So I don't want to say it's going to be $8 million every quarter without additional deals which we're working on. It's going to depend in this business on -- that end of the business on per unit sales and what those reports look like. But in the last couple of quarters, they've been strong.

Okay. And those per unit sales must have been affected then by the supply chain issues, right?

Yes. So obviously....

So further down the road that's really helpful to those units, no?

Yes. So I think particularly strong given supply chain issues. But there also can be a little bit more seasonality in that business than we sometimes see in the cellphone business. So you're looking at -- so that plays into it as well when you look at the last couple of quarters.

Okay. Got it. And then I'm just curious, the fixed fee royalty decline in the first quarter, is there anything to call out there?

The only thing I'd point to is we had disclosures in our 10-K for '21 leading -- a year ago, leading into the '21 calendar year about what was going to expire and then updated that in our most recent 10-K. So you'll note that there were a couple of fixed fee expirations in that disclosure.

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the conference back over to you.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to turn it back to Liren for some final remarks.

Yes. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. I do want to say thank you to our employees, to our customers, as well to our shareholders for the past quarter. We appreciate your support. And I also still hope everyone to stay safe as we continue to navigate the COVID pandemic. Thank you.

Thank you. And that does conclude today's conference. We do thank you for your participation. Have an excellent day.