NVE Corp (NVEC) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to our conference call for the Quarter and Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 2022. I'm Sue Miller, Senior Accountant at NVE. This call is being webcast live and being recorded. A replay will be available through our website nve.com. We issued our press release with fourth quarter and fiscal year results and filed our annual report on Form 10-K in the past hour following the close of market.

On today's call are our President and CEO, Dan Baker; and our CFO, Joe Schmitz. After Dan's opening comments, Joe will cover financial results for the quarter and fiscal year. Dan will cover the business and new products, and then we'll open the call to questions. (Operator Instructions)

Comments we may make that relate to future plans, events, financial results or performance are forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including, among others, such factors as risks and uncertainties related to future sales and revenue, uncertainties related to future stock repurchases and dividend payments, our dependence on critical suppliers and packaging vendors and risks related to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions, as well as the risk factors listed from time to time in our filings with the SEC, including our first trial 10-K. Links to the documents, we've filed this afternoon are available through the SEC's website, our website and our Twitter time line. Actual results could differ materially from the information provided, and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements we may make.

Now I'll turn the call over to Dan Baker, our President and CEO. Dan?

Thanks, Sue. We're pleased to report a 22% increase in net income for the fourth quarter to $0.79 per diluted share, driven by a 15% revenue increase. For the full fiscal year, net income increased 24% to $3 per share, driven by a 26% revenue increase. The strong growth was despite continuing supply chain disruptions. Joe will cover the details. Joe?

Thanks, Dan. As Dan said, total revenue for the most recent quarter increased 15% to $6.72 million from $5.86 million in the prior year quarter (technical difficulty)

I'm not hearing.

(technical difficulty) potentially for several quarters. And just shortages have presented both opportunities and threats. We see new sales opportunities because many of our competitors have longer lead times than us. On the other hand, shortages have impacted our production capacity. We've been quoting 12- to 20-week lead times for most parts, that's longer than before the pandemic was according to the April monthly market update by one of our distributors, the lead time for parts from one of our traditional semiconductor competitors is 52 to 90 weeks or above. That's worse from 52 to 80 weeks or above January report.

We've addressed the threats posed by the shortages by increasing work in process inventory. We invested in additional production and test equipment, and we expanded our production space. We have invested in tooling and materials, alternative packaging vendors, and we had invested at tooling for onshore foundry wafers.

Gross margin was 77% compared to 78% last year. Like most companies in the semiconductor industry, many of our costs increased significantly in the past year, including foundry wafers, chemicals, packaging costs and labor. In response to increased costs, we discontinued both on product discounting and increased prices than the past year.

We believe that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on customer demand was significantly less in the most recent quarter and fiscal year when compared to the prior year. We believe the impact of the pandemic on our supply chain, however, was significantly more in the recent quarter and year than in the prior period.

Expenses for the quarter decreased 2% from the prior year due to a 15% decrease in SG&A expenses, partially offset by a 4% increase in R&D expense. The decrease in SG&A for the quarter was due to staffing changes.

Interest income for the fourth quarter of fiscal '22 decreased 9% due to a decrease in our available-for-sale securities and a decrease in the average interest rate on those securities.

Net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal '22 increased 22% to $3.82 million or $0.79 per diluted share compared to $3.13 million or 65% per share for the prior year quarter.

For the fiscal year, total revenue increased 26% to $27 million from $21.4 million in the prior year. Product sales increased 26% and R&D contract revenue increased 36%. Net income for the year increased 24% from the prior year period to $14.5 million or $3 per diluted share, an increase from $11.7 million or $2.42 per share for fiscal 2021.

Our property metrics continue to be strong. Gross margin was 77%, operating margin 61%, pretax margin was 65% and net margin was 54%.

Capital expenditures were $485,000 in the fiscal year, the most since fiscal 2018. Most of that was for the deployment of 2 new test handlers to increase our production test capacity and alleviate potential bottlenecks.

We repurposed part of the building to make room for the new equipment. Equipment lead times has stretched out considerably recently and a new equipment purchased this year as a result of procurement efforts started a year ago or more.

We believe our stock is a good investment, and we took advantage of buying opportunities in the quarter to repurchase $164,000 of our stock with $4.83 million dividend payment in the quarter, we returned a total of $5 million to shareholders.

In addition to the past quarter's $1 per share dividend, today, we announced that our Board declared another quarterly dividend of $1 per share, payable May 31 to shareholders of record as of May 16.

Now I'll turn the call back to Dan to cover the business and products and marketing.

Thanks, Joe. Business conditions remain challenging. According to the Commerce Department, the semiconductor supply chain is very fragile, which is certainly what we're seeing. Some semiconductor insiders have said global semiconductor shortages could last into 2024, this poses both medium-term opportunities and threats, as Joe said, we took advantage of some of the opportunities by winning business because we have shorter lead times than traditional semiconductors, and we can keep that business by demonstrating we're a reliable supplier with excellent product performance and quality.

I'd like to recognize our Ukrainian distributor Kvazar-Micro Components, which is based in Kiev and has represented us for more than 15 years. It's not significant business from us -- for us from a financial perspective, but it is inspirational. The principal continue to represent us even in the immediate aftermath of the invasion despite hardships we can't even imagine.

FedEx can't deliver to Kiev, but we're doing our best and doing all we can to get them parts. We wish them the best. And they've helped inspire us to do our [dandist] to overcome supply chain shortages. In-person trade shows and conferences are returning. Last month, one of our Japanese distributors, K.K. Rocky, exhibited at the Embedded and Edge Computing Expo in Tokyo, which is billed as Japan's largest information technology trade show.

The booth included several live demonstrations of NVE products. There are links to images and videos from the show on our website as well as our YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn social media sites, will be represented by distributors at 2 major trade shows in Germany later this month. The 2 shows or PCIM Europe and Sensor+Test.

Both shows reach important target markets for us. PCIM is built as the world's leading exhibition and conference for Power Electronics, Intelligent Motion, renewable energy and energy management. Sensor+Test claims to be the world's leading forum for sensor measurement and testing technology.

Capping off the trade show season will exhibit at Sensors Converge in San Jose next month, which showcases the latest sensing technologies. The show is back to its traditional early summer schedule for the first time since June 2019. We'll be demonstrating several new products and we'll have a new mechatronic demonstration using a musical pitch pipe based on one of our smart sensors.

Demonstrating our sensors with musical instrument robots has been effective in attracting attention and demonstrating the precision robustness and simplicity of our sensors. We're proud to supply products to some of the world's most demanding customers, including Abbott's Pacesetter subsidiary. Abbott is a leading supplier of implantable medical devices. In the past quarter, we executed an extension to our supplier partnering agreement with Abbott, the extension runs through the end of 2022 and includes price increases to help offset our cost increases.

The latest amendment was filed on a current report on Form 8-K and incorporated by reference in our just filed 10-K. It is also available via our website or the SEC's website.

Another example of the extraordinary reliability of our parts is our selection for the Europa Clipper mission. We were notified in the past quarter that NASA has started integrating the spacecraft. One of our NASA contacts reminded us that NASA provided research grants to NVE starting in 1990 to help us develop spintronic products and now they're being used for a NASA Level 1 mission, meaning they're required for successful completion of the mission's objectives, which is one of the most demanding applications there is.

The mission will conduct reconnaissance of Jupiter's Moon Europa and investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life. The launch is targeted for October 2024 to arrive at Europa in 2030.

Turning to new products. We introduced 2 new products in the past quarter, a new Current Sensor and high-sensitivity Smart Magnetometer. Pete Eames, our Vice President of Advanced Technology discussed plans for these products on our January call, and he and his team enabled these product launches on schedule.

Current Sensors can be used to operate electric motors more efficiently and motors represent around 50% of worldwide electricity consumption. The new ACT001 is a tunneling magnetoresistance current sensor that can measure lower currents and lower voltages than common semiconductor sensors, allowing control of more motor types and sizes. It also fits in tight spaces and it's less than 1/10 of an inch square. There's a demonstration video on our website and YouTube channel.

The high-sensitivity TMR Smart Magnetometer is a smart version of our most sensitive sensor ever, which we discussed on our last call. Magnetometers measure magnetic fields and can be used for position or current sensing. The high sensitivity of the new part allows more precise position control for a more effective robotics or more precise current measurement for more efficient motors.

Smart sensors are a central element of our Internet of Things strategy because they have smart network interfaces that allow many sensors to be connected easily for advanced adaptive factories with ubiquitous sensors. We demonstrated the new Smart Magnetometer controlling a mechatronic harmonica player on our website and YouTube channel.

Despite challenges posed by shortages and long lead times, fiscal 2022 was a productive year for product development. In addition to the 2 new sensors I just discussed, we introduced several other new products in the past year.

Our most sensitive magnetic sensor ever, the world's first TMR Gear 2 sensors with resolutions in the thousands of a degree for ultraprecise motor control and robotics, ultra-low power magnetic switches for medical devices and hearables and more parts that transmit power as well as data.

In addition to new products, business highlights for the past year include we made significant investments to increase capacity and diversify our supply chain. We maintained an aggressive dividend and repurchase some of our stock. We extended our supplier partnering agreement with Abbott. We resumed in-person trade shows, which we view as an investment to facilitate future sales. We completed a spruce up of our building with more production space and a more pleasant and efficient work environment. The cost of the improvements was mostly covered by a build-out allowance as part of our 2020 lease renewal.

And finally, we welcome Joe Schmitz as our CFO and Jim Breakey to our Board of Directors. We're fortunate to have extremely dedicated employees. We make things. So working from home isn't an option. Our employees have worked through the personal challenges of the pandemic, industry shortages and supply chain problems. I look forward to thanking them in person tomorrow at our first in-person employee meeting in more than 2 years. We're planning a barbecue to welcome spring here in Minnesota and to celebrate the foundation we built for a bright future.

Now I'd like to open the call for questions. (Operator Instructions) Are there any questions?

Dan, it's Jeff Bernstein from Cowen. Yes, so I had a bunch of questions. We've talked about some sizable markets that you guys have the potential to penetrate and just like to kind of get an update on where you stand? We've talked about isolators for hybrid high voltage and low voltage systems, including EVs, but increasing kinds of applications with electrification of all kinds of things. What kind of traction are you getting there?

Yes. So we are getting a lot of traction, particularly in our isolators, our new isolators that convert power as well as transmit data. So those are being used for smart grids and for power supplies. We've got some additional part types that we've introduced in the past year that I mentioned in the prepared remarks, and we've got more that we're working on that we hope to introduce in the coming quarter and year.

So it's opening up a new market segments for us for power control, smart grids. And right now, the parts are relatively new. So the revenue contribution is modest, but we see that having excellent growth potential.

That's great. And then we talked about in the quarter the potential for replacing milli and micro-ohm resistors in current sensing applications for very low voltage systems. And that sounds like it's actually a huge market. So can you give any kind of background on that and how you might penetrate that?

Yes. So that's a great question. Sub-milliohm resistors for the general audience are used for current sensing and the lower the resistance, the lower the losses, but they still have resistance, which means that the waste energy in order to measure energy. So the whole idea of current sensing is to make motors and the other current consuming devices more efficient and wasting the power to measure the current is, of course, counterproductive. So we see this as a great opportunity. We make noncontact current sensors, which avoid the problems of temperature variation, self-heating, losses and noise that you have with those resistor sensing elements.

And they have no resistance and they're much easier to use they're inherently isolated. If you put a resistor in the circuit, and it's hooked up the line voltage, it's still hooked up the line voltage. So you can't hook up computers and things like that to that, it would be dangerous. And our devices -- our new device that I talked about will actually isolate the signal so that you can safely hook it up to line voltage on one side and then hook it up a computer or a control system on the other side.

And in fact, I demonstrated that. We demonstrated that on a YouTube video with a tester that we got from a hardware store showing that we've got dangerous line voltage on the import of the sensor, but everything is perfectly safe on the output of the sensor, and you can't do that with sub-milliohm resistors. If you put unsafe voltages on them, the output is unsafe. So we have significant advantages, we see it as an excellent market opportunity.

Any idea, order of magnitude, the size of that market?

Yes, that's hard to say. I don't think we have numbers that we'd be able to cope with any kind of reliability. Current sensing is a very large market. This is a subset of that market. But we see current sensing as a very fast-growing market as more and more energy mandates kick in and more efficient appliances and motors are being mandated and higher electrical efficiency standards are being implemented.

So it's a market that's got a great deal of potential. And as you could tell from your research on some of the alternatives, the conventional alternatives such as sub-milliohm resistors and companies are seeing this opportunity. And we think with our technology, we have a unique benefit proposition that can't be matched with other technologies -- conventional technologies.

Got it. Great. Great. Then can you talk a little bit about MOSFET drivers for GaN and silicon carbide MOSFETs. That market seems to continue to grow and get more traction.

Yes. That's another important market for us. A lot of those are used for motor control. And the challenge there is to switch those MOSFETs as quickly as possible. The faster you can switch them, the lower the losses are. And our isolators can drive those types of MOSFETs either directly or with another driver and do it faster and therefore, more efficiently than conventional alternatives to drive the MOSFET.

So we provide a bridge between the control system or a link between the control systems and the MOSFETs themselves that are actually controlling the high power. And we can enable more efficient control of those types of motors that are also used for battery chargers, they're used for the systems, the onboard charging in electric vehicles.

As we talked about on previous calls, we are on a platform called BeFAST in cooperation with one of our distributors that uses next-generation MOSFETs also on that platform, and they use our isolators, our couplers, data couplers to drive those MOSFETs faster than would otherwise be possible while continuing to provide electrical isolation, which is essential for that type of high voltage control.

So we see that as another excellent market in the Internet of Things, the industrial Internet of Things to yield more efficiency and power conversion.

Got it. And are you referring -- is that BeFast Angst and Pfister onboard charger design?

Exactly. So their trade name for that is BeFast.

Got you. okay. And then I know this has become so drawn out the over-the-counter hearing aid issue that now they want to put out a law to make sure that the FDA follows the existing law and puts out regulations on over-the-counter hearing aid.

Do you see growth there regardless of what happens here with these regulations ever coming out? Or is that an important catalyst for you that's being delayed? Or how do we think about the hearing aid and hearables market?

Yes. So as you point out, it's been difficult to predict when over-the-counter hearing aids will be formally approved, but it seems inevitable. We're prepared for that, and we've been working with our customers to make sure that we have components that are well suited to the over-the-counter market. And then we're also looking at the broader market where for in-the-ear audio devices, so-called hearables, that's estimated to become a $93 billion market by 2026, growing very quickly.

So the broader market is of hearables, that's ongoing regardless of the FDA regulation of over-the-counter hearing aids. So a lot of the things that we developed for over-the-counter hearing aids are also applicable to the broader hearables market.

As you may recall, we've begun offering sensors that are compatible with the rechargeable batteries that are often used in consumer wearables rather than disposable batteries, which are generally used in traditional hearing aids. So we have design wins in that space. That's for the consumer wearables that are in the ear and our new parts have received very positive feedback.

So we see it as an excellent market. We're watching closely what the FDA we'll do -- but we're -- we think that we're well positioned for the broader market, whatever happens with the over-the-counter hearing aid market.

I wanted to ask about the R&D, which looks like it's rebounded -- it had been sub-$700,000 a quarter for a couple of quarters and had been higher earlier. What's going on there exactly?

This is Joe. Yes. In this quarter, you saw a ramp-up of spending for chemicals and supplies related to current and future business. So I think while we're not setting a target at it, I think it's just a reflection of the activity we have going on in our R&D team.

Got you. Okay. And then the tax rate was only 13% this quarter. Can you just talk about what's the kind of normalized tax rate here?

Yes. I think the tax rate is down a little bit. I think that's due in part to some of our tax breaks we get for foreign sales. I think that was probably the biggest driver. We had a little bit of a change in mix in some of our business, a little bit more foreign income, foreign sourced income than we've seen in prior quarters.

Okay. Great. I'll let somebody else ask some questions.

Thanks, Jeff. Are there any other questions? Yes, go ahead, please.

Tom Cochran at Lake Road Partners. Congratulations on a good report.

Yes, we were very pleased.

Yes, I should think. Over the past year or so, Dan, you have mentioned a couple of times that you were hoping to penetrate the automotive market, how is that doing?

So we have been making some good headway, particularly in the automotive market, particularly in hybrid electric vehicles. So I mentioned the onboard charging system where we are part of a reference design. So that is -- that the system can be used onboard charging, meaning it's converting the electricity, if you plug in a hybrid electric vehicle to a wall outlet or a charger, that voltage has to be converted from high voltage to low voltage and charge the battery. So that gets into the MOSFET drivers, the advanced GaN and silicon carbide MOSFET drivers that we talked about. So that's one area.

Our sensor technology is being investigated in several automotive applications for rotational or position sensing. And then finally, our data couplers are used to transmit information between modules in a car, and we have some activity in those areas. So the challenge, particularly in hybrid electric vehicles is that the voltages can be several hundred volts. And of course, you can't hook up that kind of voltage directly to a controller. The data needs to be isolated.

And so our isolators allow the transmission of data without a direct electrical connection, which is important in high voltage systems such as hybrid electric vehicles. So we see that as a -- it's not a real near-term market, but there are some promising activities going on there. And particularly with the rise of hybrid electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles, we see excellent opportunities there for the sensors and couplers.

So are there any other questions?

Well, if not, I'll wrap up, and we were pleased to report a 24% increase in earnings for fiscal year -- for the fiscal year, driven by a 26% increase in product sales. We look forward to speaking with you again in July to discuss results for the first quarter of fiscal 2023.

Thank you all for participating in the call, and you may all disconnect.