Impinj Inc (PI) 2019 Q1 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Good afternoon, and welcome to the Impinj First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call.

  • (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.

  • I would now like to turn the conference over to Chelsea Lish, Investor Relations for Impinj.

  • Please go ahead.

  • Chelsea Lish - Diretor

  • Thank you, operator.

  • Thank you all for joining us to discuss Impinj's First Quarter 2019 Results.

  • On today's call, Chris Diorio, Impinj's Co-founder and CEO, will provide a brief overview of our market opportunity and performance.

  • Eric Brodersen, Impinj's President, COO and Principal Financial Officer, will follow with a detailed review of our first quarter 2019 financial results and second quarter 2019 outlook.

  • We will then open the call for questions.

  • Impinj's CFO Consultant, Linda Breard; and Impinj's Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Jeff Dossett, are also on the call and will join Chris and Eric in the Q&A session.

  • Management's prepared remarks along with trended transit financial data are available on the company's website.

  • Before we start, note that we will make certain statements during this call that are not historical facts, including those regarding our plans, objectives and expected performance.

  • To the extent we make such statements, they are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

  • Any such forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this conference call.

  • While we believe any forward-looking statements we make are reasonable, our actual results could differ materially because any statements based on current expectations are subject to risks and uncertainties.

  • Please see the Risk Factors sections in the annual and quarterly reports we file with the SEC for additional information about these risks.

  • We do not undertake and expressly disclaim any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

  • During today's call, all financial numbers we discuss, except for revenue or where we explicitly state otherwise, are non-GAAP financial measures.

  • Balance sheet and cash flow metrics are on a GAAP basis.

  • Also note that in fourth quarter 2017, Impinj took a $3.2 million accounting reserve related to a one-time product exchange for which we recognized an equal amount of revenue in first quarter 2018.

  • Please see the exhibit attached to the written version of these remarks on our investor relations website for first quarter 2018 and first quarter 2019 revenue comparisons reflecting non-GAAP adjustments related to this exchange.

  • Before moving to the financial results, I'd like to announce that the company will attend the Oppenheimer emergency -- Emerging Growth Conference on May 14 in New York City.

  • We hope to see many of you there.

  • I will now turn the call to Chris Diorio, Impinj's Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer.

  • Chris?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you, Chelsea.

  • Thank you all for joining the call.

  • First quarter results were strong, with revenue, net loss and adjusted EBITDA loss outperforming our guidance.

  • Revenue at $33.1 million was a record for a first quarter and led by strength in endpoint ICs, reader ICs and gateways.

  • We continue building on the strong momentum we cited entering 2019 and are excited by the growth opportunities we see entering the second quarter.

  • Endpoint IC revenue posted solid year-over-year growth.

  • In March, the RAIN Alliance announced 2018 industry endpoint IC shipments of 15.4 billion units growing 23% year-over-year.

  • Our endpoint IC unit volume growth rate, subsequent to our 2018 channel inventory correction, is consistent with that number.

  • The Alliance also forecasted their expectation that the industry growth rates will remain strong.

  • As I will cover in more detail in a moment, I believe our new Impinj M700 endpoint IC product family will be instrumental to enabling the use cases behind those growing unit volumes.

  • Our systems business exceeded expectations with record revenue for a first quarter led by project-based gateway sales into logistics and supply chain opportunities in North America.

  • We continue to focus our technology and product development efforts on tracking item transitions, innovating and delivering solutions that our partners sell into logistics and supply chain as well as into other market opportunities.

  • Reader IC revenue also exceeded expectations with another quarter of solid year-over-year growth led by broad-based opportunities in the handheld and embedded reading markets.

  • First quarter industry events included the National Retail Federation show in New York and the RAIN Alliance meeting at the University of Memphis.

  • I talked about NRF on our last call and want to again highlight our growing retail opportunities as the only company with a platform spanning endpoint ICs to software.

  • Turning to the RAIN Alliance meeting, Michelle Covey, the Vice President of Partnerships at GS1 US, said GS1 will focus on driving standards for digital twins and data sharing amongst supply chain partners as well as promoting RAIN as a core technology for item-to-cloud connectivity.

  • I am thrilled about the positive impact GS1's initiatives are likely to have on us delivering our vision of digital life for everyday items.

  • Turning to product developments, in March we announced the technology behind the Impinj's M700 endpoint IC family.

  • This announcement is to me our most significant since we introduced the first ever RAIN IC, Monza 1, in 2005 and exemplifies the technology leadership Impinj is known for.

  • The Impinj 700 leverages Moore's law to enable smaller, higher-performing ICs with advanced functionalities that our customers need and our competition can't easily match.

  • The Impinj M700 300 mm wafers contain more than twice as many ICs as those of others RAIN RFID manufacturers using 300 mm wafers and more than 4x as many as those using 200 mm wafers.

  • The new ICs include technology innovations we have been developing for more than a decade and incorporate significant patented Impinj inventions.

  • They also increase the distance, reliability and speed at which a RAIN RFID system can inventory, locate and engage tagged items while enabling our partners to innovate smaller, high-performing global tags.

  • The Impinj M700 technology represents the pinnacle of our market and highlights Impinj's innovation, competitive advantages and yet again our industry leadership.

  • We demonstrated the first ICs in the Impinj M700 family to key partners and customers in April and their feedback was incredibly positive.

  • I would like to thank the entire Impinj team for their tireless work on Impinj M700 as we drive our vision of enabling connectivity for trillions of everyday items.

  • Even as we introduce the Impinj M700 product family, we continue innovating and developing the other layers of our platform.

  • In March we announced ItemSense 2.0 with improved algorithms for tracking item transitions, deployability and ease-of-use.

  • The transition detection improvements increase the speed and accuracy with which ItemSense identifies a tagged item's direction and path, proving existing use cases and enabling new ones.

  • The deployability improvements continue to build on our goal of automating our platform's setup and tuning, enabling scalable and repeatable solutions.

  • On prior calls we've spoken about our platform deployments at Faurecia.

  • I invite you to view a short but compelling video just posted on our website and on our blog that shows transition detection in action at Faurecia using our platform.

  • On the IP front, we continue advancing the depth and breadth of our patent portfolio to protect new technologies and innovations like those we introduced in Monza R6 and more recently with our new Impinge M700.

  • We ended the quarter with 253 issued and allowed patents as we focused on extending and protecting our technology lead across our entire product line.

  • In closing, I would like to thank the Impinj team for their efforts this past quarter and, as always, in driving our bold vision.

  • With a strong first quarter behind us, solid team execution today and good growth prospects ahead, I remain energized by our opportunity, confident in our market position and excited about the future.

  • I will now turn the call over to Eric for our detailed financial review and second quarter outlook.

  • Eric?

  • Eric Brodersen - President, COO & Principal Financial Officer

  • Thanks, Chris.

  • First quarter 2019 revenue was $33.1 million, above the high end of our guidance and a record for a first quarter.

  • On a GAAP basis, revenue grew 32% year-over-year compared with $25.1 million in first quarter 2018.

  • On a non-GAAP basis, revenue grew 51% year-over-year compared with $21.8 million in first quarter 2018.

  • First quarter 2019 endpoint IC revenue was $21.9 million.

  • On a GAAP basis, revenue grew 13% year-over-year compared with $19.4 million in first quarter 2018.

  • On a non-GAAP basis, revenue grew 35% year-over-year compared with $16.2 million in first quarter 2018.

  • First quarter 2019 systems revenue was $11.2 million, reflecting 98% growth on a year-over-year basis compared with $5.7 million in first quarter 2018 led by project-based gateway sales in North America.

  • Recall that first quarter 2018 revenue was impacted by our APAC business reorganization and reader IC shortages.

  • Endpoint ICs, gateways and reader ICs all contributed to our first -- our strong first quarter performance.

  • Gross margin was 50% compared with 49.2% a year ago and 49% last quarter, with the 80 basis point year-over-year improvement driven by systems representing a larger portion of total revenue and the 100 basis points sequential improvement driven by lower manufacturing overhead expenses.

  • Total first quarter operating expense was $18.8 million compared with $19.5 million in first quarter 2018.

  • The primary driver of the year-over-year decline was lower sales and marketing expense from reduced head count.

  • Research and development expense was $7.1 million.

  • Sales and marketing expense was $7.1 million.

  • General and administrative expense was $4.6 million.

  • Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was a loss of $2.3 million compared with a loss of $7.1 million in first quarter 2018.

  • The $4.8 million year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA reflects our determined and ongoing focus on business execution, cost management and resource allocation.

  • Even as we focus on operating discipline and reducing expenses, we continue investing for growth.

  • GAAP net loss for the first quarter was $7.1 million.

  • Non-GAAP net loss for the first quarter was $2.4 million or $0.11 per share using a weighted average diluted share count of 21.5 million shares.

  • Turning to the balance sheet.

  • We ended the first quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $56.6 million compared with $56.1 million in the prior quarter and $57.9 million in the first quarter 2018.

  • In April 2019, we amended our senior credit facility to consolidate our outstanding term loan and equipment advance, refinancing $23.5 million and extending the maturity date to April 2023.

  • With this amendment, we also amended the maturity date of the $25 million revolving credit facility to May 2021.

  • Inventory totaled $41.2 million, down $3.5 million from the prior quarter and down $13.5 million from first quarter 2018.

  • We continue to make progress reducing our internal inventory, and we expect total inventory to decline further by year-end.

  • We remain confident in our ability to meet the unique needs of our business even as we reduce internal inventory.

  • Before I transition to second quarter guidance, I want to say a few words about how we balance product strategy and investment trade-offs.

  • Particularly in light of our recent announcement of and our deep investments in the Impinge M700 IC family, we make every investment decision through the lens of balancing our desire to achieve adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow breakeven with an equally important desire to invest in our vision and in game-changing innovations, like the Impinge M700.

  • As we and our partners begin the product qualifications that will lead to the production launch of the first ICs and inlays in the Impinj M700 family, we expect the Impinge M700 to begin favorably impacting our business next year.

  • Looking further out, we are incredibly excited about the impact the Impinj M700 will have on our vision of connecting trillions of everyday items.

  • Turning to our outlook.

  • We expect second quarter revenue in the range of $34 million to $36 million, a 23% year-over-year improvement at the midpoint of the range.

  • We expect adjusted EBITDA to be a net loss in the range of $2.1 million to $600,000.

  • On the bottom line, we expect a non-GAAP loss of between $2.3 million to $800,000, reflecting a non-GAAP per share loss between $0.11 and $0.04 on a weighted average diluted share count of 21.6 million to 21.7 million shares.

  • First quarter 2019 represented another quarter of solid execution.

  • I want to thank our team, our customers, our suppliers and our investors for your ongoing support as we drive our vision of digital life for everyday items.

  • I will now turn the call to the operator to open the question-and-answer session.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

  • Craig Matthew Hettenbach - VP

  • Just a question on the M700 product, just expectations around when you might begin to kind of sample that?

  • And then also your thoughts on implications long term for gross margin?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • So Craig, this is Chris, I'll take part of the question and then I'll hand off to Linda a little bit afterwards.

  • So in terms of sampling, so we provided some samples to some of our early partners in March -- or actually in April.

  • And as we said, we will -- we anticipate qualifying that product going forward and it will impact our business next year.

  • Linda Marie Breard - Consultant

  • And I would just add to that, we typically don't, Craig, provide pricing our margin sort of impact for new products that are coming out just because they can take different amounts of time to ramp, so we aren't readily prepared to do that.

  • Craig Matthew Hettenbach - VP

  • Okay.

  • And then just a follow-up, Chris, any update on just some of the tagging initiatives around the airport luggage and visibility into such programs?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Sure.

  • So in terms of the airline opportunities, so we continue to see go-forward opportunities in the aviation space.

  • The IATA Board of Governors announced at the end of last year, in December of last year, that they would be going forward with significant tagging or significant rollouts.

  • And with a goal of by the end of 2019, rolling out 10 major airports.

  • Obviously, the IATA is an advisory body, it's -- they're -- those aren't mandates.

  • But we do see good prospects going forward in aviation, and we expect that rollout, as it happens, the full-scale rollout to take many years and have a good, positive upside for us and for our industry.

  • Operator

  • The next question comes from Scott Searle with Roth Capital.

  • Scott Wallace Searle - MD & Senior Research Analyst

  • Chris, maybe just to follow up real quickly on the M700 again.

  • Could you just kind of take us through the certification process?

  • What needs to happen along those lines?

  • And then help us understand how it will feather into the expectations as we get into 2020 and beyond?

  • Looking back at the Monza example, it take several years, it looks like for this to become a majority of the product portfolio.

  • Could you help us kind of understand how that life cycle would look?

  • And then maybe as well kind of layer that into some of the larger opportunities that are out there, right, whether we're talking about METI and self-checkout in Japan or some of the postal opportunities.

  • Does this get you to those price points that really start to open those trillion unit types of opportunities?

  • And then I had 1 or 2 quick follow-ups.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Okay.

  • I'm going to do my best to go through those, Scott, and to the extent that I come back to you for a follow-up, please feel free to jump in.

  • So we introduced the Impinj M700 technology to enable our partners to design a qualified inlays to this incredibly innovative IC as we qualify the IC itself.

  • So it takes some time for us to do that qualification and for our partners to qualify those products at their end customers.

  • So like we said, we anticipate the M700 to impact our business results in 2020, and we continue to work going forward on it as well as our partners.

  • And given kind of the big advancement that we made, we've given our partners as well as ourselves a little bit of additional time.

  • It's such a big step for the industry.

  • It's such a small-sized IC that not only does it present opportunities, but there's additional work to do because of its innovative nature.

  • In terms of what the M700 represents for us going forward, as we said, we leverage Moore's Law to both drive higher performance and smaller IC size and just really to advance our industry going forward.

  • And one of the benefits of going down Moore's Law is the digital logic shrinks significantly.

  • And so those digital logic shrinks allow us to incorporate over time Nlith with products built on the M700 family additional advanced functionalities that we believe the market needs.

  • We've talked a little bit in the past about item authentication, and we see other significant opportunities to introduce innovative features in the M700 that would have been difficult to introduce in the older generation technologies.

  • And then just in terms of the long-term ramp, given the capabilities and the benefits and the performance of the M700, we're optimistic that we're going to see a fairly -- a fast ramp of that product, but we're not today making predictions about the future of it.

  • And even with a fast ramp, we still expect that the volumes will continue -- as we -- after we finish our call and start ramping, we expect the volumes to significantly increase over time as what has happened with our prior products.

  • And for that matter, our prior products keep selling for extended period of time even as we introduced the new ones.

  • So I'll pause there.

  • And did I catch all the things you asked?

  • Scott Wallace Searle - MD & Senior Research Analyst

  • You got it.

  • That was perfect, Chris.

  • And if I could, just 2 quick follow-ups.

  • Just in terms of the mix of the sales outlook going forward, give us some idea maybe how things are looking from an IC versus system standpoint as we're thinking about 2019.

  • It seems like there are a lot of applications at end markets now that are starting to favor more of the fixed portal type deployments, which could really help drive your business and be front-end loaded.

  • Be curious as to your view on that.

  • And you -- I think you did mention, in terms of your opening comments, some of the end market verticals specifically supply chain, but I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what's going on in some of the different verticals and where you see some of the opportunities in 2019 and 2020?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Sure, thank you.

  • So we don't guide to splits, although as evidenced from the call, we see strength kind of across our entire platform and we're excited about that strength.

  • And as you know also, some of our opportunities are project-based, so for -- in any 1 quarter, there can be a mix one way or the other.

  • And especially, our systems is project-based, but we see growth in the end point opportunities and some project-based opportunities on the end point IC side as well.

  • In terms of momentum, where we see opportunities, I think I'm going to hand off to Jeff a little bit to talk a little bit about kind of where we see some growth opportunities in the overall market.

  • Jeffrey Dossett - Executive VP of Sales & Marketing

  • Sure.

  • Thanks, Chris.

  • Scott, this is Jeff Dossett.

  • And I would say that we're seeing continued growth across a variety of industry verticals.

  • I would highlight the growth and opportunity in supply chain and logistics as well as manufacturing across a variety of different types but in particular, automotive and aviation.

  • Of course, we're continuing to see growth in retail, both apparel and footwear, but also category expansion including new categories such as health and beauty, for example, cosmetics.

  • We're also continuing to see interesting proofs of concepts and pilots in the food distribution industry as well as continuing progress in health care, in which we go to market with strong partners such as STANLEY Healthcare, TeleTracking and Idox Health in the United Kingdom.

  • So it's broad-based growth across a wide variety of industry verticals.

  • Operator

  • The next question comes from Troy Jensen with Piper Jaffray & Co.

  • Troy Donavon Jensen - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • First off, congrats on the nice results, gentlemen.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you.

  • Eric Brodersen - President, COO & Principal Financial Officer

  • Thank you.

  • Troy Donavon Jensen - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay.

  • How about for Eric?

  • I'd like to just dive in a little bit on the system strength.

  • This has been an extended period of strength in this category.

  • I mean it's clearly share gains.

  • But just curious if you think this strength can sustain.

  • Are there any tough comps that were coming up against on a year-over-year basis?

  • Eric Brodersen - President, COO & Principal Financial Officer

  • Thanks, Troy.

  • That's -- you're picking up on some key parts of the systems business.

  • I think it's important just to start with that baseline.

  • As we've said, it's definitely a project-based business, so getting to a point where we can project a normalized trend rate for that business is difficult.

  • And I'd say that in Q1, we're really pleased by our results, but as you noted, we're up against a relatively easy compare when you look back at Q1 of '18, when we had our restructuring and some reader IC constraints.

  • But I'd say, broadly, we continue to be pleased with the team's execution and our work in continuing to pursue those project-based opportunities.

  • Troy Donavon Jensen - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay.

  • And Eric, for you or maybe Linda, just on the gross margin side.

  • So you improved 100 bps sequentially, but systems was a smaller percent of sales in Q1 than they were in Q4.

  • So I think you said there were some manufacturing efficiencies that drove that incremental margin.

  • So if you'd just touch on that.

  • Can you just kind of help us on how you think gross margins will trend throughout this year?

  • Linda Marie Breard - Consultant

  • Yes.

  • So I'll kind of stick with the first quarter.

  • Our manufacturing overhead in the first quarter was lower than it was in the fourth quarter, part of that is based -- we talked about last year.

  • So our margins improved in Q1 over 4Q.

  • As far as guiding forward on margins, we tend to stick a quarter at a time.

  • Troy Donavon Jensen - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • All right.

  • Understood.

  • I mean obviously the new chips aren't going to help till next year.

  • I guess I was kind of piecing this with the system's strength.

  • I mean do you think we continue -- I guess probably you won't answer it.

  • But do you think you can continue to maintain gross margins above 50?

  • Linda Marie Breard - Consultant

  • Yes.

  • I would -- I'm not going to comment on the gross margins above 50.

  • I would also say that we had -- Chris talked about we had a favorable mix, more favorable than expected on our systems business and our reader IC business in the first quarter and that also is reflective of our overall improvement sequentially.

  • Troy Donavon Jensen - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Last question...

  • Linda Marie Breard - Consultant

  • And also I would -- go ahead.

  • Troy Donavon Jensen - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • My last question would be on ItemSense 2.0.

  • I'd just be curious to know what kind of new features are going to make this better than ItemSense 1.0?

  • And to my recollection, did ItemSense hit your objectives previously?

  • Or where were you on the expectations on this?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • So this is Chris.

  • I'll take that one.

  • So the new features in ItemSense 2.0 really focus on algorithm improvements for item transitions.

  • And we see those item transitions and tracking item transitions as being instrumental for supply chain opportunities, for logistics opportunities and then even some retail use cases and others, tracking item transitions as items move around.

  • We talked about our platform delivering the identify, location and authenticity of item's identity, i.e., read the tag, read the item.

  • You get the item's unique identity.

  • Location is just -- tracking item transitions gives you a timestamp trajectory of where the item's moving.

  • That information is incredibly valuable to our end customers.

  • In terms of -- and we also talked -- I also talked about how we improve the deployability and ease of use because we think the ability of ItemSense to improve our platform's deployability is critically important to driving greater and greater adoption out into the market.

  • In terms of just how we view ItemSense overall, it's an essential component and essential element of our platform and allows us to deliver against enterprise scale on enterprise-class opportunities.

  • That's how we're positioning it, and that's really what -- where we see its strength.

  • ItemSense is still a very small portion of our overall revenue, but in terms of its impact on our platform and the salability of our platform, it has an outsized impact.

  • Operator

  • The next question comes from Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity.

  • Thomas Michael Walkley - MD & Senior Equity Analyst

  • ;

  • My congrats on a strong quarter also.

  • Chris, just going back to the M700 family.

  • Can you just give us some color on what do you think will be the end markets or industries that will be the first to adopt the new technology?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • So Mike, to that one, I might just say yes.

  • So we see adoption of M700 as basically impacting all of the opportunities, all of the vertical markets that are currently served by our existing platform.

  • The fastest growth and the greatest opportunity is probably going to be in the retail space because retail adoption is still the primary driver of our overall industry.

  • But Jeff mentioned, opportunities in automotive and aviation, in health care and in emerging parts of the retail market, health and beauty for example, and we see the M700 impacting all of those areas.

  • And then as we introduce additional advanced functionalities targeting specific market segments, we see the opportunity to drive accelerated adoption and overall growth and gains in those market segments based on the advanced functionalities.

  • Thomas Michael Walkley - MD & Senior Equity Analyst

  • And just build on that, I guess I was trying to get to also -- was there certain industry do you think that would pay up for the new technology next year relative to some other industries that might be fine sticking with the Monza family?

  • Just trying to get a flavor of maybe potential industries that would be willing to pay for this better technology versus your competitor products?

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • So I think, Mike, on that one, I think time is going to tell.

  • Our positioning of the product, the new capabilities we bring to market, overall how we position the M700 in the context of our overall platform.

  • We're going to do our best to address as many market opportunities as we can, and you should expect us to leverage the M700 to improve the overall deployability and benefits of our platform.

  • Thomas Michael Walkley - MD & Senior Equity Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Great.

  • And follow-up question for me just going back to the record first quarter systems and gateway business, nice to see that as a leading indicator of adoption in the industry.

  • Can you provide any color?

  • I think you mentioned there was some strong project-based gateway sales.

  • Are those coming up?

  • Or are those pretty good visibility to continue for the next several quarters?

  • Eric Brodersen - President, COO & Principal Financial Officer

  • So this is Eric.

  • I think I keep reinforcing that all of our products grew year-on-year.

  • Within that systems and in particular, the gateway space, there were multiple customers, multiple projects in our Q1 time period.

  • I won't project forward.

  • I'll stay within our current time period.

  • But I think it's fair to say that there was a large project that favorably impacted our gateway business in Q1.

  • Thomas Michael Walkley - MD & Senior Equity Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Thanks, Eric.

  • And last question for me.

  • Just I know Q1 tends to be the first quarter where you get a price reduction on -- to start the year.

  • Just how was pricing relative to expectations?

  • And on the end point side, is this usually the lowest gross margin quarter as volumes build throughout the rest of the calendar year?

  • Jeffrey Dossett - Executive VP of Sales & Marketing

  • This is Jeff.

  • I think the first and most important comment would be that we've not seen any significant changes to the competitive marketplace inclusive of pricing.

  • So I think that I would articulate it as typical and as expected.

  • Linda Marie Breard - Consultant

  • And I guess I would add to Jeff's comment and say, the impact of our annual end point IC pricing negotiation on Q1, on our margin in Q1, was offset by favorable systems revenue and also favorable mix within our end point IC business, too, so...

  • Operator

  • The next question comes from Charlie Anderson with Dougherty & Company.

  • Charles Lowell Anderson - VP and Senior Research Analyst

  • My congrats on a strong quarter and guide.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you, Charlie.

  • Charles Lowell Anderson - VP and Senior Research Analyst

  • Yes.

  • I wanted to ask on the reader IC.

  • I think you guys called out some strength there.

  • Don't know if that was upside relative to your forecast.

  • But maybe just update us on what's going on there.

  • That seems to be a little less project-based, a little bit more ongoing.

  • So that's my first question, and I've got a follow-up.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • So we don't usually guide to -- or we don't guide to reader ICs.

  • But as I said, we see strength in the reader IC business as there's greater and greater adoption of kind of readers across a broad range of verticals.

  • And I specifically cited the embedded market opportunities where we see strength as well as handhelds.

  • And a lot of handhelds go into retail opportunities, so as you see strength in retail opportunities, there's demand for handheld readers.

  • And so we see more and more reader ICs going into those handheld readers.

  • Charles Lowell Anderson - VP and Senior Research Analyst

  • Great.

  • And then sort of a big picture question on M700, Chris.

  • Obviously, there were some use cases you haven't been able to get at I think, in some cases because of price but in others in terms of capabilities.

  • So between those 2, where do you see M700 addressing the need more?

  • Is it more on the price side or more on the capability?

  • And are there any examples of end markets where those have been barriers in the past where you can now break through?

  • It will be interesting to hear some examples of those.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • So initially, our focus is on driving advanced functionalities and advanced capabilities than open up new market segments, for example, like we've talked about the item authentication.

  • Going forward, as you migrate down Moore's Law, you get smaller ICs and smaller ICs allow you to address some economies of scale and thereby, address larger market opportunities.

  • And you see us continue innovating kind of all across the board on those ICs as we introduce more and more products in the Impinj M700 family.

  • Operator

  • The next question comes from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company.

  • Michael Joseph Cikos - Associate

  • This is Mike Cikos on for Jim Ricchiuti.

  • Congratulations on the quarter.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you.

  • Michael Joseph Cikos - Associate

  • A quick question for you guys on the systems business.

  • Wanted to get a better idea of the quarter itself as far as how it came together, whether it was I guess the cadence of the quarter.

  • And I know that there was a large project specifically called out that favorably impacted the results.

  • Did you guys quantify the size of that customer?

  • Jeffrey Dossett - Executive VP of Sales & Marketing

  • This is Jeff.

  • No.

  • We don't disclose the size of any one particular customer.

  • But to your question regarding how the quarter came together, we signaled strength coming out of 2018 into 2019.

  • We entered 1Q '19 with a strong backlog and a healthy and growing pipeline.

  • And so the quarter came together in a well-structured and predictable manner.

  • Michael Joseph Cikos - Associate

  • Okay.

  • And then just a couple of follow-ups there, the first being I guess on the systems again.

  • Again, probably difficult to quantify.

  • But did you guys size up the impact to Q1 of last year from the reader IC shortages and the APAC business reorganization?

  • And then the second question, going back to the M700 now and I know it's difficult to size up the time line with the qualification you guys are currently going through, but maybe you can help us understand prior product launches that you guys have had and what the time horizon is for those, so we can try and get a better sense of how the M700 will come along.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Yes.

  • So this is Chris.

  • I'll let Linda take the first part of the question, and then I'll dive in and talk about the M700 launch and timing.

  • Linda Marie Breard - Consultant

  • Yes.

  • So Mike, we didn't size up the impact, so we -- of the $5.7 million in Q1 of '18 in systems business, so we didn't -- we just talked about -- we had just shared in the earnings call that we had APAC reorganization and some other things that were impacting the systems business in that quarter, but we didn't provide size or magnitude.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • And then turning to our prior product launches, if I look back to Impinj Monza R6, which we introduced I believe in April of 2014, that product also had some significant innovations in it.

  • It took our partners and us roughly through the end of 2014 to qualify it on both our IC itself and into some end customer accounts.

  • We saw it begin impacting our revenues and our business in 2015 and continued growing from there.

  • So our expectation is that rough and tough that our rollout of the Impinj M700 will take -- will follow the same trajectory as the Monza R6 did.

  • Operator

  • This concludes our question-and-answer session.

  • I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Diorio for any closing remarks.

  • Chris Diorio - Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you all for joining the call today and a special thanks to the Impinj team for the solid execution this past quarter.

  • Operator

  • The conference has now concluded.

  • Thank you for attending today's presentation.

  • You may now disconnect.