KVH Industries Inc (KVHI) 2021 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the KVH Industries Inc. Q1 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Roger Kuebel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us today for KVH Industries' first quarter results which are included in the earnings release we published this morning. Joining me on the call are the company's Chief Operating Officer, Brent Bruun; and CEO, Martin Kits van Heyningen.

Before we dive in, a couple of quick announcements. First, if you'd like a copy of the earnings release, it is available on our website and from our Investor Relations team. If you'd like to listen to the recording of today's call, it will be available on our website. (Operator Instructions)

Finally, this conference call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to numerous assumptions and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements.

We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures and you'll find definitions of these measures in our press release as well as reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures. We encourage you to review the cautionary statements made in our SEC filings, specifically those under the heading risk factors in our 2020 Form 10-K filed on March 3. The company's other SEC filings are available directly from the Investor Relations section of our website.

Now to walk you through the highlights of our first quarter, I'll turn the call over to Martin.

Thanks, Roger, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today.

Our strong first quarter sustained the momentum we built during the second half of last year, exceeded many of our expectations and reinforced our confidence for 2021 and beyond.

Total revenues increased 16% in the first quarter to $42.3 million from $36.6 million in the first quarter of 2020. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA in Q1 was $1.1 million compared to a loss of $3.7 million in the first quarter of 2020. Thanks to increasing airtime margins, strong shipments of high-margin inertial nav products and continued cost containment, we were strongly cash flow positive from operations as well.

We also achieved positive results in our key business areas and continue to make progress against our strategic initiatives. We set our second consecutive record quarter for VSAT shipments. Completed this shipment of a significant TACNAV order and made outstanding progress on our photonic chip technology, with the recent announcement of an all-new inertial product line for our IMUs.

So now I'm going to go into some of the details on each of our core markets. Q1 airtime revenue increased 11% compared to the first quarter of last year, driven primarily by a 7% increase in subscribers and almost a 7% increase in ARPU. While our media and NEWSlink business continues to be negatively affected by the shutdown of cruise ship operations worldwide, our revenues for AgilePlans, our Connectivity as a Service program for the commercial market, AgilePlans revenues were up 48% compared to the first quarter of 2020.

The continued strong demand for AgilePlans is a significant indicator of the robust health of our business. Since launching AgilePlans 4 years ago, we've expanded our target market to include smaller commercial vessels. This long-term growth strategy is paying off as AgilePlans amounted to 84% of our total commercial maritime VSAT shipments this quarter and 67% of total VSAT shipments. AgilePlans now represents 41% of our VSAT subscriber base. Remember that we forgo the upfront revenue for the equipment, but now, many years in, we have a growing and recurring subscription revenue business.

During this quarter, we have initiated new incentives to migrate customers from our original legacy network to our new global HTS network. We've seen a very positive response from these customers. Many of them are taking advantage of system upgrades and targeted customer loyalty programs for new HTS terminals. Customers making this move enjoy more affordable data, faster speeds and greater versatility.

We saw the benefits of this effort in Q1 as revenue from the HTS network airtime was up 56% year-over-year due to the mix of migrations, new customers and expanded airtime demand from existing customers. Airtime on the HTS network also has higher margins. So every migration or new customer is worth incrementally more to the bottom line than our legacy subscribers.

We expect to shed roughly $12 million in annual network operating expenses with the termination of the legacy network on December 31 this year. This should further benefit our overall profitability.

Right at the end of the quarter, we introduced the revolutionary new TracPhone V30. It's an ultra-compact Ku-band VSAT antenna designed to deliver data speeds as fast as 6 megabits per second/down and 2 megabits per second/up. It's for leisure and commercial boats. The TracPhone V30's design permits quick and easy installation, and retrofits using a single power data coax cable. And it runs on DC power, which is a big plus for smaller boats. The V30 is the first KVH antenna to incorporate several innovations that we plan to integrate into our future generation of terminals. These include the modem in the dome, which delivers improved signal efficiency, the commercial-grade rotary joint for uninterrupted tracking, as well as high performance stabilization, thanks to dual inertial measurement units.

A streamlined belowdecks unit, called the VSAT-Hub, provides ethernet connections, built-in Wi-Fi, data routing, and a VoIP adapter for phone calls. This belowdecks component is only 10% of the size of the previous belowdecks unit. So it's 90% smaller.

We introduced the TracPhone V30 in late March at the West Palm Beach International Boat Show, where high consumer interests translated into stronger-than-anticipated demand and a backlog of orders in the week since. We expect the V30 to be a catalyst for new competitive migration opportunities as well. Thanks to its ultra-compact size, easy installation and low airtime costs, we believe it's an appealing alternative to the tens of thousands of old, slow and expensive FleetBroadband terminals that are still deployed around the world.

We believe that the V30 will significantly strengthen our position in the commercial market for fishing vessels and offshore work boats around the world.

So in summary, it's smaller, lower power, runs on DC voltage. It's dramatically easier to install and has higher data rates. Oh, and it's also a lot more affordable.

Moving on to our IoT tech -- connectivity initiatives and our KVH Watch product, we continue to expand our ecosystem of watch solution partners during Q1 and anticipate several new announcements in the coming weeks. Our solution partners now include IoT service developers, data analytics firms, technical service providers, vessel informatics companies and more. They're all beginning to actively promote and include KVH Watch in proposals to their existing commercial maritime customers and new prospects. In fact, we've been informed that the watch solution partner proposals that include KVH Watch already represent opportunities for more than 500 vessels.

In our work with these partners, we're seeing how KVH Watch meets the needs for IoT Connectivity as a Service. And we're encouraged by our growing funnel of potential watch solution partners and trials on vessels as well as by new applications like remote surveys and reefer container monitoring.

Turning to our inertial navigation market, our military TACNAV product sales increased significantly in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2020. Fiber optic gyro and OEM product sales also increased by about 16% in Q1 compared to Q1 of last year. More importantly, we completed our transition to an all-photonic integrated chip IMU product line as well as we completed the launch, the integration and production of 3 all-new inertial measurement units, the new P-1725, P-1750 and P-1775 IMUs, which we announced 2 weeks ago, feature new high-performance accelerometers, in addition to our latest photonic chips with our patented PIC technology.

The P-series IMU accelerometers offer greater sensitivity and accuracy and higher dynamic ranges. As a result, the P-series delivers an order of magnitude, better bias in stability and noise performance than our older products.

These new IMUs are offered in the same proven compact IMU housing designs, enable easy integration using flexible power and communication interfaces and deliver outstanding repeatability unit to unit with increased product life.

Using the same new P-1775, we also upgraded our own TACNAV 3D, tactical navigation system. It marks the first time we've integrated our PIC technology and new accelerometers into our military NAV systems. We're pleased to offer the US and allied forces, the same reliability and performance benefits with a field-proven assured position, navigation and timing solution. While we're thrilled to bring the P-series IMUs to market, this is merely the latest milestone in our long-term strategic initiative to reinvent inertial technology.

We expect to update our standalone fiber optic gyros with the PIC inside in the coming months. These new PIC inside systems result from our 3-year strategic initiative to revolutionize fiber optic gyro design through the invention of an integrated planar optical chip that replaces individual fiber optic components to simplify production and increased reliability. We've now accomplished that.

Our new technology also positions us to develop next-generation modular systems that we believe will offer greater flexibility, versatility and performance. This development work is already underway. The PIC enables the future road map of new products, that will target incremental new customers with new applications as we can expand our range of performance. But even as we look forward to those new technology developments, our P-series IMUs are already designed for the most challenging land, sea and air applications, including autonomous trucks, shuttle buses, drones, ROVs, and others.

The industries that leverage these applications include transportation, military, agriculture, construction and mining. While the integration with driverless cars remains the largest long-term opportunity for us, we're excited by the short-term opportunities for autonomous applications that can make use of our inertial systems now.

The commercialization of autonomy is farther along and more prevalent right now in higher value platforms like shuttles, trucks, construction and agriculture. We have a funnel of opportunities with those start-ups and established players in these industries. As an example, we recently delivered P-series IMUs to multiple leading autonomous truck developers for evaluation. And we're very confident that we have the best performing solution for these applications.

So in summary, we entered the year with positive momentum and built on that in Q1. We achieved better-than-expected results and entered Q2 with around $17 million in backlog. In Q1, we shipped a record number of VSAT systems, an all-time record, continued the robust growth of our AgilePlans and airtime subscribers, while also moving closer to the consolidation of our SATCOM customers on a single higher margin global network. We launched an exciting new product in the V30 that's exceeding our expectations for consumer and commercial demand and we have more new products in the pipeline.

Our IoT watch initiatives continues to move forward with innovative and enthusiastic new solution partners. And we achieved a major milestone in our inertial technology strategy that directly supports our autonomous initiatives. And we've carried this momentum into Q2 with a record number of VSAT bookings in April and record backlog.

We've done a good job of securing the electronic components despite industry shortages. And we expect to be able to deliver record units in Q2, once again.

As a result, we're confident that the progress we're making now will deliver sustainable long-term value to our shareholders and other stakeholders.

And now I'd like to turn the call back to Roger, to go over some of the numbers. Roger?

Thanks, Martin. As Martin mentioned earlier, our first quarter revenue came in at $42.3 million compared to $36.6 million recorded in the first quarter of 2020. Our consolidated gross profit margin was 37% even as compared with 32.1% in the first quarter of last year. Revenue from our inertial navigation segment increased $4.1 million year over year, with gross margin increasing about 14.5 percentage points to 44.1%. Revenue from our mobile connectivity segment increased $1.6 million, with a gross margin of 34.2%, up around 1.5 percentage points.

Product revenue for the first quarter was $18.4 million, an increase of $5.3 million or 41% from $13.1 million in the first quarter of the prior year. By segment, product revenue in our inertial navigation segment increased $5 million or 77%. And in our mobile connectivity segment, product revenue increased by $0.3 million or 5%. Within our inertial navigation segment, TACNAV sales increased by $4.2 million this quarter, compared to the prior year's first quarter, while our FOG revenues increased by $0.9 million compared to the prior year's first quarter. The increase in mobile connectivity product sales was primarily due to a $0.4 million increase in mini-VSAT product sales.

Service revenue for the first quarter was $23.9 million, an increase of $0.4 million or 2% from $23.5 million in the first quarter of the prior year. By segment, service revenue in our mobile connectivity segment increased by $1.3 million or 6%. This increase was primarily due to a $2.2 million increase in mini-VSAT Broadband airtime revenue.

Airtime revenue grew to $21.4 million or approximately 11% over the first quarter of last year and the related gross margin was 34%. As Martin noted, this was driven in part by a 7% increase in subscribers, primarily as a result of AgilePlans, with AgilePlans now representing 41% of all mini-VSAT airtime subscribers. The increase in airtime revenue was partially offset by a $0.9 million decline in our media business, which has been significantly impacted by the travel restrictions associated with COVID-19.

In our inertial navigation segment, service revenue decreased by $0.9 million, primarily due to the prior completion of a project for a major US defense customer, which has resulted in lower contract engineering service revenue in this quarter compared to last year. Operating expenses for the quarter were $19.3 million, down 1% from $19.4 million in the first quarter of the prior year, as we have continued to hold the line on operating expenses as revenue grows.

At the operating income level, these changes in revenue, margins and operating expenses resulted in a loss from operations of $3.6 million, a $4 million improvement compared with the $7.6 million loss recorded in the first quarter of 2020. Our mobile connectivity segment generated an operating loss of $0.4 million compared with an operating loss of $2.3 million last year, while our inertial navigation segment had an operating profit of $2.1 million for the quarter, compared with an operating loss of $0.8 million last year. Our unallocated loss was $5.3 million compared to last year's $4.5 million. For the first quarter, our net loss was $4.0 million compared with a net loss of $6.2 million recorded in the same quarter last year.

On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes amortization of intangibles, stock-based compensation and other nonrecurring costs, such as outside legal and advisory fees, foreign exchange transaction gains and losses, the tax effect of those and changes in our valuation allowance and other tax adjustments, after those adjustments, we had a net loss of $0.9 million compared with a net loss of $4.3 million last year. EPS for the first quarter was a net loss of $0.22 a share compared with a net loss of $0.35 a share in the same period last year. Non-GAAP EPS loss for the first quarter was $0.05 a share compared with a loss of $0.25 a share last year.

Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was a positive $1.1 million compared with a negative $3.7 million in the first quarter of last year. For a complete reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures, please refer to the earnings release that was published earlier this morning.

Total backlog at the end of the first quarter was $17 million, of which approximately $13.8 million is scheduled to be delivered this year. Backlog for our initial navigation products and services at the end of March was approximately $16.3 million, of which approximately $13.1 million is scheduled to be delivered during 2021 and includes $10.4 million of FOG products alone.

Net cash provided by operations was a positive $5.0 million compared to $2.9 million used in operations for the first quarter of last year. Capital expenditures were $5.2 million and other cash flows were a net positive of $1.6, resolving in an ending cash balance of approximately $39.1 million. For 2021, we'd expect our capital expenditures will be in the range of $15 million to $20 million, the majority of which is driven by AgilePlans shipments.

This concludes our prepared remarks, and I will now turn the call over to the operator to open the line for the Q&A portion of this morning's call. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) We have a question from Ric Prentiss, Raymond James.

Roger, welcome. Wanted to get a sense of what have you learned in the first few months on the job, that's got you excited or got you nervous?

Next question, please.

Yes, well, I think the company has great products. We're in great markets. I've been really impressed by the team here. I think everyone's doing a great job. I'm very happy particularly on the finance team. When you come in as a new CFO, I think you're always concerned, is everything buttoned up and I think it really is. And so I feel very good about that.

Obviously I'm still learning a lot about the company. Two months is really not a lot of time to sort of learn, but I think there's great prospects. And I think there's a great opportunity here. I think we're in a great industry.

It's not like a situation where you've got an industry that's just in a terrible place and it's tough to make any money. I think we're in good spaces, we're in good markets and we've got really good products. So I think all those things are extremely positive. I think the challenge that we have is sort of executing on our strategy and -- as we move forward, and look at various opportunities, picking the right ones to pursue.

Okay. And the guidance was maintained, but it kind of says, assuming that early third quarter, we get back to a more normal level with customer activity, we're sitting here on Cinco de Mayo, which means 2Q is almost halfway done. How should we think about the visibility of that customer returns activity by early 3Q?

I think overall it's looking better and better. I think that it's been a couple of months since we issued that statement originally, and since then we've seen great uptick in our demand for VSAT products, ARPUs are up, great response to our new product. So it seems like the markets are coming back strongly. The only part of our business that's still down significantly is the cruise business with our media, but rumor is that will start to pick up again in Q3. So I think generally everything that we thought was going to happen is on track. So it looks like we should be in good shape for the second half of the year.

Makes sense. The industry has gone through some interesting items, M&A, JVs, Orbcomm got an offer to go private, Viasat did close its RigNet deal last Friday. How are you thinking about your balance sheet and what you see as far as opportunities in the space, given joint ventures, M&A or other items?

Yes. I think you're mentioning things that we internally think about a lot. I think that the industry is consolidating. A lot of our competitors have gone out of business or gone bankrupt or been acquired and primarily they had too much debt. But we've been growing market share, we're growing revenues, we have a very strong balance sheet with positive net cash. So I think we're in a very strong position and we continue to evaluate opportunities, but unlike our competitors, our entire VSAT business was built with 100% organic growth. So we never acquired a single VSAT subscriber. So we're continuing to gain market share. And we feel pretty good about where we are.

And final one for me is, obviously some activist shareholders are starting to take a look as well. Talk to us a little bit -- I did see the Board refresh announcement. Talk to us a little bit about what you think the pressure points are and what you can do to address some of those.

Yes. So primarily today, I'd like to talk about the Q1 earnings and the great progress we're making there. We did put out a press release announcing we have 2 fantastic new directors. If you haven't seen it, I'd encourage everyone to take a look at that. Really strong backgrounds in maritime as well as in telecommunications. And we've also put out our preliminary proxy, so you can get the details on that.

Our next question comes from Chris Quilty, Quilty Analytics.

Martin, I wanted to follow up on a point that you made in terms of network costs and migration. I thought last quarter you had mentioned cost savings of $4 million to $5 million, and now you're saying $12 million. First of all, is that correct?

Yes. So let me clarify that. So the total network costs that we'll be shedding around $12 million, if every single one of those customers moves over to the HTS, we'll be adding capacity on HTS in the order of, let's call half that. So the net savings, if there were no additional subscribers, if everything stayed status quo, would be probably closer to $6 million than the $4 million to $5 million I mentioned previously as a saving.

But of course we're adding subscribers, we're adding bandwidth, but that's independent of the actual migration. So what I was talking about with the $12 million savings is, come December 31, that network is going dark and those costs go to 0 come January 1, and that's a $12 million difference.

Got you. And so should we expect like a big bump in Q1 of next year in margins, and then they kind of go down a little bit as you continue to add capacity onto the network?

No, I don't expect the margins to go down. I think the margins will go up next year and then they should go up every quarter. We don't anticipate any step function increases in network costs and it'll be incremental as subscribers grow. So we should see a nice bump in margins next year and that should translate into the bottom line.

And again, still sort of longer term trending towards the 40% level from what was it, 34% this quarter?

Yes.

Yes. That's still a good internal metric that we use. And the reason for that is that as we add subscribers, as you know, the costs per subscriber go down for us in terms of whatever the fixed costs are, but also in terms of maintaining our competitive pricing in the marketplace, we probably won't see margins higher than 40%. We'll use that to gain additional market share. We think 40% is a healthy, sustainable margin for us.

Understand. And sticking with the margin theme, product margins overall were up substantially and I guess most of that was product mix with the benefit of TACNAV sales. But more generally as you look across the product lines and certainly with the shift to the new PIC, should we see a sustained lift in margins across many of the product lines?

Well, I'll let Roger answer that in detail, but at the macro level, we have fixed overhead and factory costs, and factory utilization is a big part of our margin calculation. What we're seeing is increased demand, both in our fiber-optic facility, as well as in our SATCOM facility. So that fixed component is going to continue to go down.

Offsetting that is, we want to keep the product affordable so that we get the airtime revenue. So generally, we sell those at margins that are lower than you would for a standalone product because these products have a very long tail. The units that go out, typically, we ended up having the subscriber for 5 to 10 years. And as you know, our ARPU is around $1,200, $1,250, whatever. It's a very nice business model. So we don't focus as much on hardware margins, but having said that, we do expect them to increase generally.

Yes. And I will say, I've really just started digging into this issue and, honestly, really it would be premature for me to make any comments on it yet. But hopefully by the next call we have, I can say more around that.

I understand. And you mentioned ARPU. I mean typically you haven't, for at least the last couple of years, mentioned ARPU. The fact that it was up this quarter, would you attribute that to just a lift in usage patterns or is it the type of service plans that individuals are signing up for?

Well, we've seen a big increase in usage. So that's number one. Number two, we have some new rate plans that are intentionally designed to be more attractive as you go up in plans. Our HTS entry points are a little bit higher than the exiting, old ArcLight legacy network entry points. So I think that helps.

So as I mentioned, it was probably a 6% or 7% increase in ARPU year-over-year. And that number does bounce around a little bit. So I wouldn't put too much importance on that, but the point is, it's going up as opposed to going down, which is a very, very healthy metric for us. Because we're always -- for the last 10 years, we've been watching to make sure that ARPUs aren't going down as you get price pressure from competitors and things. So we're really happy that it's stable and actually increasing a little bit.

And as Martin said, the number does bounce around a bit. And he also made reference to our new V30, which is a 37 centimeter, which typically, the average 37 centimeter customer has an ARPU lower than in the overall average. And as we see some more success with that product, and we hope to see a lot of success, it may have somewhat of an impact on the ARPU number that Martin just spoke about.

Right. That's absolutely right, even though it'll drive total airtime revenues up.

Yes. And total margin dollars up.

Right. Yes, sorry.

Great. Just a question on network capacity as you shift from mini-VSAT to the HTS network, there is somewhat limited global Ku-band HTS capacity. A handful of new satellites coming online over the next several years. Any concerns around capacity constraints and any plans in the future to add a Ka-band type network?

Well, we don't have any plans to do Ka network today. As you know, we also have a C-band network that we use as well as the Ku-band network for our dual mode product, like the V11. We have Ka-band products, like our UHD 7 for the satellite television market.

But where we are today, we've got a lot of capacity available to us. There are a lot of people who want to sell Ku-band capacity. So I think we're in a pretty good spot today. Frankly, we'd love to be in the position where that becomes a major hurdle.

Great. And final question, TACNAV, large orders, pipeline, how's it shaping up this year?

It's, I'd say, okay. We have about, I think 70% of our annual forecast already in backlog, which is good. Still have some to book and ship this year. So I think we're about where we expected to be, but we're not done.

Any major program activity with the DOD or other foreign customers on track?

Yes. There's a lot of different programs that we're pursuing. There's no single program that we have in our annual forecast or budget that we're counting on. So it's really a mix of smaller ones would get us there. Obviously, any large program would push us way over the top.

We have no further questions in the queue at this time.

Okay. Well, we'll follow up with some of the other analysts directly after this call, and thanks everyone for listening.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.