Impinj 召開電話會議討論 2024 年第一季業績,執行長 Chris Diorio 和財務長 Cary Baker 概述了市場表現和財務業績。他們強調了收入超出預期、晶片和企業解決方案的成功以及各個領域的成長機會。
該公司解決了訴訟,收到了許可付款,並預計第二季的收入和收益將增加。他們對標籤類別的進展、消費者需求以及授權技術的潛在機會持樂觀態度。討論也涉及數位產品護照在紡織業的潛力以及行動市場的機會。
該公司專注於提高毛利率、擴大平台效益並監控 M800 產品的進展。
使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the Impinj first quarter 2024 financial results conference call and webcast.
(Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andy Cobb, Vice President, Strategic Finance.
Please go ahead.
Andy Cobb - Vice President, Strategic Finance
Thank you, MJ.
Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us to discuss Impinj's first quarter 2024 results.
On today's call, Chris Diorio, Impinj's Co-Founder and CEO, will provide a brief overview of our market opportunity and performance.
Cary Baker, Impinj's CFO, will follow with a detailed review of our first quarter 2024 financial results and second quarter outlook.
We will then open the call for questions.
Jeff Dossett, Impinj's CRO, will join us for the Q&A.
You can find management's prepared remarks, plus trended financial data, on the company's Investor Relations website.
We will make statements in this call about financial performance and future expectations that are based on our outlook as of today.
Any such statements are forward-looking under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Whereas we believe we have a reasonable basis for making these forward-looking statements, our actual results could differ materially because any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties.
We describe these risks and uncertainties in the annual and quarterly reports we file with the SEC.
We do not undertake, and expressly disclaim, any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements except as required by law.
On today's call, all financial metrics except for revenue, or where we explicitly state otherwise, are non-GAAP.
Balance-sheet and cash flow metrics are GAAP.
Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial metrics to the most comparable GAAP metrics.
Before turning to our results and outlook, note that we will participate in Baird's Global Consumer, Technology and Services Conference on June 4 in New York.
We look forward to connecting with many of you there.
I will now turn the call over to Chris.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you, Andy, and thank you all for joining the call. 2024 started strong.
The momentum we saw exiting 2023 continued through the first quarter, with revenue and profitability exceeding both our fourth quarter results and first quarter guidance.
Our strategic focus on silicon and enterprise solutions helped create that momentum while paving the way for multi-year growth tailwinds, while our recent reorganization and legal settlement pave the way for growing profitability.
Turning first to silicon, the green shoots I cited the last two quarters continue sprouting.
First quarter endpoint IC revenue exceeded our expectations, driven by improving demand in both retail apparel and general merchandise as well as a long tail of other applications.
Looking forward, we expect second quarter to again deliver solid endpoint IC product revenue growth.
We also expect Impinj M800 volumes to double in the second quarter as our production ramp picks up, albeit still a small portion of our endpoint IC volumes overall.
For reader ICs, we expect E-family shipments to accelerate in the second quarter as we near the end of our prior-generation product shipments, buoyed by a healthy number of design wins and burgeoning opportunities.
Turning to solutions, the visionary European retailerâs ongoing rollout of our self-checkout and loss prevention solution is performing nicely, and we expect rollouts at additional brands at that customer to drive modest gateway demand through at least the end of 2024.
Their tagging ramp, which replaces existing hard tags with embedded tags that use our protected mode for consumer privacy, is also on track, driving growing endpoint IC volumes.
In general merchandise, the large North American retailerâs RAIN tag usage has accelerated, driven by additional products being tagged and new product ordering.
We anticipate steady growth in general merchandise tagging for the remainder of the year.
Finally, in supply chain and logistics, we expect the second large North American supply chain and logistics end user to increase their label consumption in 2024.
Taken together, our enterprise-solutions efforts are and continue paying clear dividends in endpoint IC volumes.
Iâd like to now touch on two solutions growth opportunities, Digital Product Passport and food.
On DPP, I recently spent a week in the EU, speaking with partners and end users on how we together advance RAIN as the technology-of-choice for textiles DPP.
RAIN has the apparel penetration, but DPP also requires consumer engagement.
I see DPP making the strongest case, to date, for putting RAIN reading into the hands of consumers and large enterprises are making that need known.
On food, demand is growing at a faster pace than I had expected, with several quick-service food chains talking openly about using RAIN for inventory, shelf life and freshness.
The overall food opportunity is so large that any adoption can drive meaningful endpoint IC volumes.
On the intellectual-property front, in March we successfully settled our patent dispute with NXP, concluding a multi-year litigation during which Impinj prevailed in multiple jury trials.
As Cary will detail shortly, NXP agreed to pay Impinj an up-front amount and a yearly license fee in exchange for a broad patent cross license.
The settlement increases our cash reserves and competitiveness, frees management bandwidth and removes uncertainty from the industry overall.
While we are happy to put this dispute behind us, as the RAIN pioneer and innovator we remain vigilant and committed to safeguarding our patented inventions as well as identifying additional licensing opportunities.
In closing, we delivered a very strong first quarter in every respect, financial, organizational and market leadership.
We see continued strength looking into the second quarter.
And looking further out, we see growing opportunities to drive recurring licensing and services revenue, monetizing our IP, platform and cloud services.
As we continue driving our bold vision to connect every item in our everyday world, I remain confident in our market position and energized by the opportunities ahead.
Before I turn the call over to Cary for our financial review and second-quarter outlook, Iâd like to again thank every member of the Impinj team for your constant effort driving our bold vision.
As always, I feel honored by my incredible good fortune to work with you.
Cary?
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Chris.
And good afternoon everyone.
On todayâs call, I will review our first quarter financial results and second quarter financial outlook.
First quarter revenue was $76.8 million, up 9% sequentially compared with $70.7 million in fourth quarter 2023 and down 11% year over year from $86.0 million in first quarter 2023.
First quarter endpoint IC revenue was $61.5 million, up 14% sequentially compared with $53.9 million in fourth quarter 2023 and down 8% year over year from $67 million in first quarter 2023.
First quarter endpoint IC revenue exceeded our expectations, led by retail.
Looking forward, we expect second quarter endpoint IC product revenue to increase sequentially again led by retail.
First quarter systems revenue was $15.3 million, down 9% sequentially compared with $16.8 million in fourth quarter 2023 and down 19% year over year from $18.8 million in first quarter 2023.
First quarter systems revenue was below our expectations, primarily due to lower channel reader sales.
Looking ahead, we expect a sequential decrease in second quarter systems revenue with increasing channel reader sales more than offset by declining project-based gateway sales.
First quarter gross margin was 51.5% compared with 50.9% in fourth quarter 2023 and 52.4% in first quarter 2023.
The sequential increase was driven by mix within endpoint ICs.
The year over year decrease was driven primarily by lower revenue on fixed costs, partially offset by higher systems product margins.
Looking to the second quarter, we expect gross margin to increase.
Total first quarter operating expense was $32.9 million compared with $33 million in fourth quarter 2023 and $36.4 million in first quarter 2023.
Operating expense was lower than we anticipated due to strong spend management across all major functions as well as lower litigation costs.
Research and development expense was $16.5 million.
Sales and marketing expense was $7.7 million.
General and administrative expense was $8.7 million, including litigation expense of $1.3 million.
We expect a slight sequential decrease in second quarter operating expense as litigation expense declines to immaterial levels more than offsetting investments in our base spend.
First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $6.7 million compared with $3 million in fourth quarter 2023 and $8.6 million in first quarter 2023.
First quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.7%.
First quarter GAAP net income was $33.3 million.
First quarter non-GAAP net income was $6.2 million or $0.21 per share on a fully diluted basis.
Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with cash, cash equivalents and investments of $174.1 million, compared with $113.2 million in fourth quarter 2023 and $164.7 million in first quarter 2023.
Inventory totaled $87.8 million, down $9.4 million from the prior quarter.
First quarter net cash provided by operating activities was $60.1 million.
Property and equipment purchases totaled $6.2 million.
Excluding the $45 million income from the litigation settlement, free cash flow was $8.9 million.
Before turning to our guidance, I want to highlight a few items unique to our results and outlook.
First, NXP paid us a one-time $45 million litigation settlement payment in the first quarter.
We recorded that $45 million in our first quarter GAAP financial statements as other income in our income statement and as cash on our balance sheet.
Next, NXP will pay us an annual license fee each April for up to 10 years unless they design out our IP and exercise an early termination rate.
Earlier this month, we received a first $15 million covering the period from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.
We will recognize the full value of that payment as second quarter endpoint IC revenue, which is reflected in our second quarter guidance at nearly 100% gross margin.
Going forward, the payments will increase annually by a modest fixed rate for as long as the agreement is in effect.
As a reminder for calculating our quarterly diluted earnings per share, when quarterly non-GAAP net income exceeds $12 million, you should add the 2.6 million shares underlying our convertible debt into our diluted weighted average shares and you should remove the corresponding $1.2 million of interest expense from our net income.
Finally, first half of 2024 marks a turning point in our operating margin profile.
We added high margin licensing revenue and reduced operating expense by removing litigation spend and reorganizing our reader and gateway channel business.
As you can see in our second quarter guidance, those actions drive substantial earnings per share accretion and they will also drive significant free cash flow.
Furthermore, these margin improvements accrue before the M800 drives additional leverage.
Turning to our outlook.
We expect second quarter revenue between $96 million and $99 million, compared with $76.8 million in first quarter 2024, a 27% quarter-over-quarter increase at the mid-point, including the license fee payment, and a 7% quarter over quarter increase of the mid-point excluding it.
We expect adjusted EBITDA between $23.9 million and $25.4 million.
On the bottom line, we expect non-GAAP net income between $21.7 and $23.2 million, reflecting non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share between $0.72 and $0.77. In closing, I want to thank the Impinj team, our customers, our suppliers, and you, our investors, for your ongoing support.
I will now turn the call to the operator to open the question and answer session.
MJ?
Operator
Thank you very much.
(Operator Instructions)
Harsh Kumar, Piper Sandler.
Harsh Kumar - Analyst
Yeah.
Hey, first of all, guys, huge congratulations, the settlement of the litigation and then also just the turn in the business.
Chris, what a big difference six months can make.
Thereâs a lot of interesting stuff in your comments.
I wanted to start with general merchandise.
I wanted to start with the large North American retailer that you highlighted in your comments.
I wanted to ask you how this was going.
You obviously talked about some pickup there.
Maybe you could just provide us some additional color.
And then what is the implication of this implementation succeeding?
Is this like a big thing that the entire retail industry is waiting for?
Does this have huge implications for adoption for the rest of the retail?
And then Iâve got a follow-up.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Harsh, appreciate it.
Iâm going to let Jeff lead in here because heâs very close to customer side, obviously.
And so, Jeff?
Jeff Dossett - Chief Revenue Officer
Yeah.
Thank you for your question, Harsh.
Our tagging ecosystem partners who serve this large North American retailers, tagging needs have signaled steady gains in the tagging of additional general merchandise categories, as well as modest uptick in overall consumer demand.
Some of the general merchandise categories are progressing more quickly than others, but we are optimistic that the progress will continue in the year ahead.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
And Harsh, Iâll add historically that end user has significantly led our industry and others have followed their moves.
Of course, there was a setback during the years from 2013 basically to 2019 associated with Round Rock litigation, but thatâs well behind us now.
And so, although we donât have firm data to date, itâs my expectation that this customer being a bellwether for many other large customers and for our industry overall has proven historically, and either size, everything they do going forward, I wouldnât put it, they set the benchmark for other companies to follow.
Harsh Kumar - Analyst
Very well.
Chris, and then for my follow-up guys, I wanted to ask about logistics, again, the second customer that is ramping, do you think youâre in a position to be able to say that this customer will grow with you every quarter, steadily for the rest of the year?
And when do you think you might reach the point where you are sort of call it 100% penetrated at this customer and tagging.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
So Iâm going to start here and Iâm going to let Jeff jump in, on our scale, we guide one quarter at a time.
And with any of these large deployments, there are always teething issues as we go along.
We work with the customer and our partners work with customer to get through those teething issues.
So thereâs always a little bit ups and downs along the way.
So itâs difficult for me to say that at any given quarter, things are going to be consistently up.
What we do see is strength of that customer, a commitment, a real commitment to go forward and to digitize the entirety of their operations, and a commitment to not only have all the items they transport and move, but also to substantively change how they run their business.
And so we see multiple opportunities with this customer and then hopefully with them again, itâs a bellwether for the overall supply chain and logistics industry, others will follow.
Harsh Kumar - Analyst
Fair enough.
Iâll get back in line.
Thank you.
Jeff Dossett - Chief Revenue Officer
Thanks, Harsh.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thanks, Harsh.
Operator
Jim Ricchiuti, Needham & Company.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
Hi, thanks.
Just maybe on that second logistics customer, as you know, Iâm sure they discussed moving into this Phase 2 implementation where presumably it sounds like theyâre going to be putting readers, RFID readers, in the hands of their drivers.
And I assume thatâs going to help your reader IC business.
But Chris, maybe as we think about their deployment, it moving now into their vehicles, what is the significance of this?
Or is this all part of their grand plan that you guys were always kind of aware of?
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Iâm going to let Jeff take the lead here and then Iâll circle back on the impact of silicon.
Jeff Dossett - Chief Revenue Officer
Yes, I think, first, Jim, I want to reiterate that we prefer to have our existing and prospective end customer speak to their own programs and deployments.
But what I will say is that I think we have platform opportunities with this particular customer going forward and importantly, multiple silicon touch points in those opportunities.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
Got it.
And thank you.
A follow-up question, Chris, I wanted to go back to your comment about the food applications, moving faster than you expected.
How should we think about this?
When could this potentially be perhaps a more meaningful incremental driver for the endpoint IC business?
I mean, Iâm sure it dwarfs.
Everything else dwarfs this.
But you seem pretty excited about what youâre seeing.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Yes, Jim, so if you look back in time, what I've said is that food opportunity is so large that it's hard to see it moving really quickly and what I'm actually seeing what our feeling is that it's moving a bit faster than I had expected.
And when we see the fast-food chains talking openly about the thing about inventory, shelf life and freshness, and we see other opportunities out there on the market front, our partners bringing in some opportunities.
Overall, for me a little bit of surprise, it's just kind of flip (inaudible) and I wasn't expecting that.
Now part of the reason since it may be that with the retail is adopting brain.
So successfully about technologies, grow new cases improvements and it kind of paves the way.
But I still think thought things are going to take a little longer.
So I'm rather excited about the opportunities of where they are right now.
And as we learn more going forward, we will bring other opportunities and insights to your attention.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
Thanks.
Congrats on the quarter.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
And the settlement.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you very much.
Operator
Mike Walkley, Canaccord Genuity.
Mike Walkley - Analyst
Great.
Thanks.
My congrats on everything to I guess, Chris, just on the strong intellectual property and your comments about protecting it, what has been kind of the feedback from the RAIN RFID outside the industry post your settlement with NXP?
And are there additional opportunities to license your technology?
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
I'm going to start with the latter part of the question.
First, Mike and there are additional opportunities out there for licensing overall.
So there's opportunities on our IP pumps on cloud services front for our platform overall, we just got a lot of strengths and capabilities in the things that we're doing.
Furthermore, we see opportunities to integrate with our partners and make more partners out of the market interest and provide additional licensing opportunities to generate recurring revenue.
So on that front, and we feel good, which is why I cited it in our in the prepared remarks, although obviously, we didn't give any further details because we can't really say anything until we have any further details.
And licensing is core to our strategy going forward.
In terms of the industry reaction to, selling with NXP the industry less for the most part revealed there was a lot of uncertainty hanging over the fact that there was litigation ongoing between the two largest endpoint IC suppliers and the fact that overhang to the industry is removed.
I'm guarded as we think that a company and as we continue to move forward and it takes away any concerns or any concerns about potential impairment going forward.
Outside of that, of course, carrier side of the details of the settlement and we feel the US and that's good for us and good for the industry overall.
Mike Walkley - Analyst
Great.
And for my follow-up, you Cary this just on gross margins, obviously next quarter will be a high gross margin quarter with some licensing payment.
But as we kind of back that out and think about gross margin trends for the rest of the business with an 800 ramping and potentially a stronger mix of systems later in the year.
How should we just think about gross margin trends for the business?
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah.
Thanks for the question.
I think as you look into the second quarter, we expect gross margins to increase with a strong benefit from the license revenue, if you you're going to remove that, we're modeling gross margins on a product level to be about flat quarter-over-quarter.
And currently we're running below our target of 53% to 54% range for first for a few reasons.
First, we remain a little subscale, but are closing that gap quickly.
And then second, as has been the case, historically, the systems business recovery typically lags the endpoint ICs recovery this has caused our endpoint IC revenue to grow as a percent of our total revenue in (inaudible) carries a gross margin that's slightly lower than our corporate average.
And then finally our lower margin 200 millimeter volume running skews slightly higher as a percent of revenue in 2Q and will likely be so again in Q3.
That product line is two generations old at this point and we're moving it before the M800 ramps.
We'll know more about that pace of the M800 ramp in the next quarter or so but the second quarter volumes remain small from a mix perspective, and we're really not have any physical impacts to our gross margin.
So overall, we remain confident in the gross margin targets that we outlined at our Investor Day.
Mike Walkley - Analyst
That's very helpful.
Thank you very much.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you.
Operator
Christopher Rolland, Susquehanna.
Christopher Rolland - Analyst
Hey, thanks for the question.
The digital product passport, I think you talked to it regarding textiles as well.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
The applications maybe the economics associated with it and how big you think it can ultimately be?
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
So Chris, the application really is the US passed a set of regulations passed regulations that basically require traceability of textile item.
Our cradle to grave to foreign manufacturing all the way through shipment sale, consumer use and recycling those regulations are really be again kicking in in 2027 and a lifecycle for stability.
And I think he wants to give consumers ability to (technical difficulty) and the consumer to make an informed choice around sustainability and it forms part of the products and the buying and accounts.
And in doing so provide the data about the edge to the consumers.
And as I said, recycling and end-of-life.
So the key here for us is that I believe DPP will drive significant opportunities for consumer engagement.
Now main orebody is not issue equity, etc., because there are other data carry.
What we are partners our enterprise end users want is to make the text that already on the retail apparel items and more and more embedded in the ISCI data carrier for DPP.
In order to get there, we need consumers to be able to read those items, which is the impetus for paying readers in the mobile phone.
And I personally think that RAIN reading and mobile phones opens up a world of opportunities and actually the new and transformative use case for the mobile phone suppliers.
So I am hopeful, but I can't go beyond hopeful.
I'm hopeful that this increased pressure are increased incidence, we're putting RAIN reading and mobile phone, maybe will put us over the edge or the talk in terms of getting the readers and [Tom's], which would open up a flow of opportunities beyond DPP.
So that really affected the growth potential already going on.
And we need to get consumers being able to reach them.
And when they can, it opens up a whole new set of opportunities post point-of-sale.
Christopher Rolland - Analyst
That's very interesting.
Just a quick follow-up there.
Would you be selling ICs into the mobile market for that?
Or could they use some sort of existing function there?
And then just a housekeeping on the licensing.
Is there a volume component to royalties for future payments?
And how dependent on volumes are those payments?
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
So, taking the latter question first, but then there's a fixed amount increasing at a modest amount each year.
So and
(inaudible).
Going to the former, it's too early to say whether there's an opportunity for us in silicon in the mobile phones or not.
But putting that aside for a minute, if you think of our platform as the endpoint ICs, BRICs, we're pushing more into some of the services around it.
We already have enterprise-level engagements.
We see a large opportunity for our platform, whether or not it's actually our silicon and ends up in the phones.
Of course, proprietary silicon in phones.
But even if we don't, we're going to be pushing forward that opportunity to leverage our platform and the benefits our platform brings.
And we want to be inside their side-by-side with the retailers and the phone providers and the manufacturers be part of the overall solution.
Christopher Rolland - Analyst
Thanks Chris.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you.
Operator
Scott Searle, ROTH MKM.
Scott Searle - Analyst
Good afternoon.
Thanks for taking the questions.
Nice to see the continued recovery in the core business and the outlook of those key customers.
Maybe quickly on that front on the retail apparel front, it sounds like that drove the upside for endpoint ICs in the first quarter and striving the outlook of the upside into the second quarter as well.
Is the retail apparel market now normalized as we get to the second quarter, are we still recovering and working through some inventory in there?
Are these new design wins and ramp up in unit volumes, et cetera.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
I'm going to start by saying thank you.
And then I'm going to hand off to Jeff because I think Jeff can provide some commentary there, Jeff?
Jeff Dossett - Chief Revenue Officer
Well, we are seeing some restocking taking place in, both apparel also footwear and general merchandise to better match to an uptick in consumer demand.
Whether or not that trend continues, it's too early to call and probably not for us to call that.
But overall, the partners who engage with both retailers signal some strength into the second quarter and optimism, cautious optimism for the second half, but are awaiting more confirmation of the sustainability of that uptick in demand.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
I've got on there a little bit more on here.
So we see multiple drivers as we look out.
We see embedded tagging, which replaces some markets were soft labels and (inaudible) every software itself.
So we see some tailwinds from that and having the general merchandise where we already talked about that going forward, do we see challenging general merchandise has just highlighted the recent revised.
And then our efforts around solutions driving solutions in the market and our strength in those solutions accounts.
All four of those factors we believe, are tailwinds that are driving our endpoint IC volume.
Scott Searle - Analyst
Yeah.
And if I could follow up on the DPP front, Chris, it's a huge opportunity there.
I'm wondering if you could walk us through what's the process and some of the milestones that I look like over the next couple of years, you're talking a lot about retail apparel on the traceability to engage consumers on that front.
But I thought we were going to see tires and batteries kind of starting for some of those recyclable items more so than we think about textiles, has that changed in terms of the implementation of different product categories?
Or is it just because the retail apparel is just such a large unit opportunity and drives incremental feature sets from Impinj?
Thanks.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Yeah.
So from my understanding of where DPP is today and not only the regulations kind of being ironed out with the most agents being ironed out.
Batteries are going first for my understanding, but also quite understanding that it stretched out they gain DPP carrier for those batteries is QR codes.
Textiles is the next one to come along is a much bigger category and the data carrier has not decided yet, so it could be multiple things.
It could be RAIN RFID, it could be QR codes, it could be Arco's BSC RFID experienced a bunch of different things and it's not cited as factors committees working on figuring out what the data carriers are.
RAIN RFID is a big benefit that now visibility's item visibility really great already on apparel items as rates being netted into the assets, that's great, but we're not in mobile phones.
So that's why I highlighted the opportunity in the mobile phones and that there are now large enterprises in Europe that are pushing and leading on (inaudible) now that we need RAIN readers and mobile phones and so on, whether that push will be enough is to be determined.
But it's the first time we've really had a real [flush] from leaders in the market from the enterprises in the market saying we need this capability.
And so I think that your first indicator will be over the next call it one to two years, whether our range is classified as a data carrier for DPP and we hope to make it sense.
Scott Searle - Analyst
Great.
Thank you
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you.
Operator
Harsh Kumar, Piper Sandler.
Harsh Kumar - Analyst
Hey guys.
So lot of us are going to probably struggling with this as being models.
So I thought I would just ask this openly what should be the expected OpEx level going forward?
In other words, I know you were spending $4 million or $4.5 million in legal.
Is that a fair number for us to take out?
And then I'll just ask the second one that's on my mind to do you want us to model the next year's payment in some manner as it will come to in the second quarter of 2025?
Or do you think it's just appropriate to see what that number is and that it could change dramatically.
It just obvious love some thoughts on this.
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Hey Harsh, this is Cary.
So from an OpEx perspective, our Q2 OpEx what we've embedded in our Q2 guidance previously.
There is immaterial litigation spend and the businesses normalizing following the reorganization that occurred in Q1.
And I looked in the second half, I would assume modest growth.
We're going to continue investing in this business and in front of this opportunity.
But you've got a pretty good picture of our OpEx right now.
Harsh Kumar - Analyst
Okay.
And then what about the expected payment next year?
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Good question.
That one is it's early there is an ability for NXP to design out, but that is not something that is easily done.
So I don't expect a huge increase in that payment, but I think it is fair to model that at this point, and we'll keep you up-to-date on where that might grow.
Harsh Kumar - Analyst
Of course.
Thank you.
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Jim Ricchiuti, Needham & Company.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
With the litigation uncertainty behind you and the growing cash position, what I'm wondering you guys have periodically looked at M&A as a means of accelerating parts of the business growth in parts of the business, even though the way I think acquisition, it sounds like it's been it was a nice acquisition for you, small but I think provide some benefits.
I'm wondering if we might see a pickup at all or if you're looking at opportunities that might accelerate the growth in some of the newer markets?
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Yeah, Jim, I'll do my best to answer that.
And obviously, I can't speak to any particular opportunities or anything that might be coming our way. [And it] was an opportunity for us because what they offered was well aligned with our platform, essentially there at the front end of their manufacturing working late testing, quality assurance.
And you have some beta services around the inlays, which, of course use our expertise and leverage our SG&A for the inlet.
So it was a natural addition to our platform that I think will stand us in good stead going forward.
We are always open to other areas that strengthen and augment our platform.
And if some was to come along, we'd be interested and we keep our eyes open all the time.
I don't think the additional cash is going to kind of say, we're actually going to it's going to make a huge difference either way, it's really identifying an opportunity that makes sense for us as a company.
The additional cash is nice because it's easier for us to finance it.
But the key thing is we see an opportunity, it's good for us.
We'll pursue it an [absent] that we won't.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
Okay.
And one final question, if I may.
Just Cary.
I think you alluded to the M800 volumes still being relatively small.
But is there any way you I think you touched on this at the Investor Day, but has your thinking around the impact on gross margins as that scale.
Does that has that changed at all?
And maybe you could just remind us of the impact as used as it becomes a bigger part of the overall bond.
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Jim.
So the M800 benefit from a lower cost basis and that lower cost basis will translate into approximately 300 basis points of gross margin accretion as the M800 ramps and becomes the volume runner in our business.
Now an endpoint IC ramp when we typically launch a new IC takes multiple years to achieve, call it volume running status.
We're certainly pleased with where we are, as Chris alluded to in his prepared remarks, were the M800 is ramping into Q2.
But the volumes are still small and the impact on gross margin is not visible at this point.
With an early gains in the ramp, it's really too hard to project a precise timing of that ramp.
We're encouraged with where we are, and we'll keep you up-to-date as we progress in that ramping throughout this year.
Jim Ricchiuti - Analyst
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
Cary Baker - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you.
(Operator Instructions) Seeing no further questions, this concludes our question and answer session.
I would like to turn the conference back over to Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Diorio, for any closing remarks.
Chris Diorio - Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chair, and Co-Founder
Thank you, MJ.
Thank you very much.
And I'd like to thank all who were on the call today for joining us.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Bye-bye.
Operator
The conference has now concluded.
Thank you for attending today's presentation.
You may now disconnect your lines.