Silicom Ltd (SILC) 2020 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Silicom Second Quarter 2020 Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

You should have all received by now the company's press release. If you have not received it, please contact Silicom's Investor Relations team at GK Investor and Public Relations at 1 (646) 688-3559 or view it in the News section of the company's website www.silicom-usa.com.

I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Ehud Helft of GK Investor Relations. Mr. Helft, would you like to begin, please?

Thank you, operator. I would like to welcome all of you to Silicom's Second Quarter 2020 Results Conference Call. Before we start, I'd like to draw your attention to the following safe harbor statement. This conference call contains projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company. These statements are only predictions and may change as time passes.

Silicom does not assume any obligation to update that information. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected, including as a result of our increasing dependence or substantial revenue growth on a limited number of customers in the evolving ground-based SD-WAN, NFV and Edge markets; the speed and extent to which solutions are adopted by these markets; the likelihood that we will rely increasingly on customers, which provide solutions in these evolving markets, resulting in an increasing dependency on a smaller number of larger customers; difficulty in commercializing and marketing Silicom's products and services; maintaining and protecting brand recognition; protection of intellectual property; competition; disruptions to our manufacturing and development, along with general disruptions to the entire world economy relating to the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19; and other factors identified in the documents filed by the company with the SEC.

In addition, following the company's disclosure of certain non-GAAP financial measures in today's earnings release, such non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed during this call. Such non-GAAP measures are used by management to make strategic decisions, forecast future results and evaluate the company's current performance. Management believes that the presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investor understanding and assessment of the company's ongoing cooperation and prospects for the future.

Unless otherwise stated, it should be assumed that financials discussed in this conference call will be on a non-GAAP basis. Non-GAAP financial measures disclosed by management are provided as additional information to investors in order to provide them with an alternative method for assessing our financial conditions and operating results. These measures are not in accordance with or substitutes for GAAP. A full reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings release, which you can find on Silicom website.

With us today on the line are Mr. Shaike Orbach, the CEO; and Mr. Eran Gilad, the CFO. Shaike will begin with an overview of the results, following by Eran, who will provide the analysis of the financials. We will then turn over the call to the question-and-answer session.

And with that, I would like now to hand over the call to Shaike. Shaike, please.

Thank you, Ehud. I would like to welcome all of you to our conference call to discuss the second quarter results of 2020. I hope that you and your family are staying healthy during these unprecedented times.

We reported revenue of just over $23 million for the quarter, which is an improvement over the prior quarter. Furthermore, we reported our 62nd quarter of continued profitability and cash generation and continued our share buybacks, bringing increased value for shareholders. We achieved this despite the second quarter seeing the brunt of the global spread of the corona pandemic.

During the quarter, we all experienced unprecedented working and logistical challenges as well as various levels of economic shutdown in the countries in which we operate. At Silicom, we managed to maintain business continuity, overcoming supply chain interruptions and component shortages, demonstrating the resilience of our business. But all this was down to the professionalism and flexibility of our entire workforce, which I wholeheartedly thank for their efforts in this past quarter.

While we have all been adjusting to the new current reality, the good news is that as we move through the third quarter, we see improved visibility with expectations of sequential double-digit revenue growth, and I will discuss the guidance in a few moments.

While the current market environment may still see short-term delays in telco and cloud infrastructure investments, the rapid global shift to work from home and streaming video over the Internet has led to a booming demand for network capacity. This is leading to an accelerated growth of SD-WAN, NFV, security and 5G network build-out plants.

We believe that these recent trends represent a fundamental market shift that ultimately increases long-term demand for our innovative enabling solutions, which increase network flexibility and capacity while reducing network costs. The increased demand for capacity is already having an impact on our target markets, both new and traditional, and we're seeing it in a deepening pipeline and via continued design wins even in the hardest of times.

In early April, when many markets around the world had shut down, a major systems integrator placed a $15 million purchase order for our Intelligent Bypass unit due for delivery within 12 months. While coming at a tough time, this design win actually culminated a long process, which began in mid-2019 that concluded with a thorough evaluation, demonstrating the superiority of our technology and products. Standardizing on our products, this integrator will use our unit for a major government infrastructure project. Furthermore, the integrator expects additional similar projects over time, and we see this as a strategic relationship with potential to bring us further revenue growth in future.

It is one more demonstration of the continuous pipeline of opportunities that we see in each of our target markets. This win is also a demonstration that our business operates over long-term processes and even in one of the toughest quarters, enables us to be resilient, allowing business at Silicom to continue almost as usual.

We continue to invest much time and effort in bringing new design wins in all our target markets, and the flow of such wins is indeed reflected in our results. While the environment remains uncertain, the underlying fundamentals of our target markets continue to be attractive and present high-growth potential in post-pandemic world. Throughout Silicom's history spanning over decades, we have successfully navigated through many market cycles.

Our foresight and investments in the right area, especially in the past few years, and positioning ourselves ahead of the various technology trends as they appear, have enabled us to consistently emerge each time a better and a stronger company. We believe that this will be the case again as the world emerges out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would like to spend a few moments discussing our guidance. If you remember, following first quarter 2020 results released in April, we decided to withhold providing upcoming quarter guidance because visibility at that point was very limited. While remaining cautious due to the continued uncertainty of the market environment, current improved visibility enables us to project sequential double-digit growth in revenues for the third quarter of 2020 as compared with the second quarter of 2020 with revenues expected between $26 million to $27 million.

Given our long and growing list of design wins generating orders, a healthy cash balance, solid baseline activities and strong market fundamentals moving in our direction, we are well positioned and increasingly optimistic about our long-term prospects. As such, we continue to project that once our markets return to normal, we will achieve ongoing revenue growth at a double-digit compound annual growth rate for several years ahead.

Before summarizing and moving over to Eran, I note that as of Q2 end, Silicom has a record of $93 million in net cash, which was an increase of $13 million during the quarter, providing us with significant financial flexibility. It gives us more than enough capital to continue our internal investment in R&D to maintain and build our competitive lead.

It also allows us to continue our business development activities as we originally planned, ultimately fueling the long-term growth of our business. At the same time, it gives more than enough working capital to weather the current environment. Furthermore, it also allows us to share the rewards of our continued profitability and cash generation with our shareholders.

During the quarter, we completed our first $15 million 1-year buyback plan, meeting the target set by our Board, which was announced on May 2, 2019. We also made progress on our new second buyback plan of a further $15 million within a year, which was approved by our Board and announced on April 30 this year.

In summary, while the second quarter was not easy for anyone. For Silicom, we believe the worst is now behind us. And given the improved visibility, we look forward to double-digit sequential growth in the third quarter. Furthermore, the pandemic and work-from-home trend has had the impact of significantly accelerating the SD-WAN, NFV, security and 5G network build-out plans as telcos and cloud providers or ex telcos and cloud providers are markets where Silicom is centrally positioned.

Our optimism has increased. And I reiterate that once markets return to normal, we expect the coming few years for Silicom will be much greater than what we have achieved over the past few years.

With that, I will now hand over the call to Eran for a detailed review of the quarter's results. Eran, please go ahead.

Thank you, Shaike, and hello, everyone. Revenues for the second quarter of 2020 were $23 million. This is compared with revenues of $25.4 million as reported in the second quarter of last year. Our geographical revenue breakdown over the last 12 months were as follows: North America, 70%; Europe and Israel, 23%; Far East and rest of the world, 7%.

During the last 12 months, our top 3 10% customers together accounted for about 40% of our revenues. I will be presenting the rest of the financial results on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the noncash compensation expenses in respect of options and RSUs granted to directors, officers and the employees as well as acquisition-related adjustments. For the full reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP numbers, please refer to the press release we issued earlier today.

Gross profit for the second quarter of 2020 was $7.8 million, representing a gross margin of 34% compared to a gross profit of $8.8 million or gross margin of 34.6% in the second quarter of 2019. Operating expenses in the second quarter of 2020 were $5.9 million compared with $5.9 million in the second quarter of 2019.

Operating income for the second quarter of 2020 was $2 million compared to operating income of $2.8 million as reported in the second quarter of 2019. Net income for the quarter was $1.8 million compared to $2.9 million in the second quarter of 2019. Earnings per diluted share in the quarter were $0.26 compared with $0.38 as reported in the second quarter of 2019.

Now turning to the balance sheet. As of June 30, 2020, the company's cash, cash equivalents, bank deposits and marketable securities were at all-time high and totaled $93.2 million with no debt or $30.12 per outstanding share.

That ends my summary, and we would be all happy to take any questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) The first question is from Alex Henderson of Needham & Company.

So there's certainly some countervailing directions in the broader macro environment here. Clearly, the stuff that you highlighted that -- such as SD-WAN, 5G, Edge compute and the like are very robust and are benefiting from some of the trends from work from home and the like.

Conversely, a lot of the traditional appliance products that go into what I would describe as your traditional business are under pressure. For instance, the ADC market looks like it's seeing a decline of roughly 10% in terms of appliance sales.

Can you talk about what portion of your business is coming from the newer segments and what portion is coming from more traditional businesses and what the trajectory you're seeing in the traditional piece is to give us some baseline to work with?

Okay. I'll try to give some color over the situation. We do not provide specific information about traditional versus new, especially as they begin, in some ways, I would say, to merge together in a way.

I mean just as an example, if you're talking about customers, then some customers that used to be ADC or so, they're now doing SD-WAN. And sometimes, the same product, from our perspective, are being used for both. So it's a little bit difficult to say.

But I mean, I still would like to respond to your question, giving you some, I would say, information or color about what's happening in general. So what is happening in general, you're right with what you described right now. I mean, overall, the standard appliance business seems to be decreasing. And on the other side, obviously, the SD-WAN, NFV and the mobile networks deployment seems to be increasing. That's obviously accurate and we see this decline.

However, that being said, I would like to say that even in the traditional markets, we do have opportunities because sometimes specific projects are being launched as an example, the one project that we have been awarded to, the design win that I was talking about. So this actually belongs to our traditional line of products. But still, I mean, it is an opportunity. And the fact that the overall demand for capacity in the network is growing, has some influence in some areas even when our traditional products are being used.

So while in general, I would say, yes, there is a decline, but we are looking for these opportunities. And once we, for example, deliver against this design win that I mentioned before, so we may see here and there opportunities where this decline is compensated by these new opportunities that we're seeing.

So overall, yes, there is a decline, and we base our growth on the growth of the growing markets rather than on the traditional market, which is declining. But we're still finding opportunities even within the traditional market.

Great. That's very helpful. So can you talk a little bit about whether there was any implications from the consolidation that's going on in the SD-WAN market? There's been a number of companies that were acquired over the last couple of months that -- changing the landscape a little bit.

As you've been pulled -- maybe pulled into some of these larger enterprises, does that give you an opportunity to build out some relationships with those companies in a way that would get you into some of their more traditional businesses that you might not have penetrated before? Has it changed the momentum in those businesses that were acquired?

Yes. I would say that for us, the impact is not significant. I wouldn't say that there is no impact at all because -- I mean, for example, one company which was acquired, the relationship there was not that, I would say, deep, while if you look at the company that acquired this company, that we have a better relationship with this company.

However, I would be hesitant to say that this is really significant that, due to these acquisitions, things for us will change dramatically. I think that we do have quite a solid pipeline with SD-WAN and for -- and also for UCP, mostly towards SD-WAN. But I don't think that these acquisitions or whatever would have a significant impact. It would be more tactical rather than something that I would define as strategic.

One more question, if I could. The U.S. Tier 1 service provider market, there are indications that those companies are, in fact, seeing some pretty good growth in their SD-WAN business. Can you update us where you are with the 2 Tier 1s that you've been trying to penetrate?

So I would say that with one of them, we are growing and we're doing better and they are ramping up, even though I would tell you that -- even this one is not ramping up at the rate that we were hoping for, and we hope that this would improve as we move forward. But one of them is pretty significant for us right now. The other one is still going forward but very slowly.

I would also say, that being said that, on the other side, we're getting, I would say, smaller design wins even as we -- not as we speak, but we're getting more design wins, which are related to SD-WANs. Not all of them are that dramatically big. We do not announce any design win that we get, but SD-WAN is definitely something which is growing internally.

(Operator Instructions) The next question is from Alex Henderson of Needham & Company.

Well, I couldn't let it pass. If we're not going to get other questions, I could certainly add a few more. One of the obvious questions is on the interest income line, to the extent that rates have fallen to near 0 globally, even as you're building cash, should we be expecting continued contraction in interest income net? And how should we think about that line?

Question on finance. Okay. Eran?

I'm not sure I understood your question. Can you repeat it, please?

Sure. As interest rates globally are falling towards 0, even as you're building cash, should we still -- should we, therefore, expect that, that line continues to trend lower on a year-over-year basis for the full year?

First of all, what you are saying is correct. The interest rates are lower compared to a year ago and 2 years ago. Currently, it does not affect our financial income. But definitely, it will impact our financial income, I would say, from 2021. In other words, I expect that the -- our financial net income in 2000 -- as of next year will be -- will start to be lower compared to this year and the previous year.

Similarly, can you talk a little bit about where you are on exchange rates? Obviously, at the end of last quarter, it was a very nice situation when the exchange rate plummeted. But it looks like it's recapped virtually all of that decline and is back to pretty much where it was, at its highs. So how does that impact the numbers? And how are you thinking about that relative to your cost structure?

Okay. First of all, indeed, the differences in exchange rates affected us. In quarter 2, the effect was negative, but not dramatically, definitely, not dramatically. The net effect on our operating expenses -- the net negative effect on our operating expenses was less than $100,000, which is indeed not a dramatic number. And in addition, there was a net negative effect on our financial income, but again, not a dramatic number. I would say, about $100,000, more or less.

So going forward, given the rebound in the exchange rates, do you expect to moderate hiring? How do you see your spending intentions going forward in terms of staffing levels?

Okay. If the exchange rate remains more or less as it was in quarter 2 or in 2020, it means that we will see similar effects on our next few quarters, which means nothing dramatic. We do not hedge our expenses. We do not hedge anything. And again, in most quarters, the effect, whether positive or negative, is not something dramatic. It can be $100,000, $150,000, not more, not less than that. Nothing dramatic.

Again, coming back to the question, the question was how do you expect to think about your hiring prospects for the back half of the year?

No, no impact.

So can you give us some sense of what your hiring expectations are as we go into the back half, which is really what I'm trying to ask?

Well, first of all, I mean, the hiring expectation is not going to be dramatic anyhow. And OpEx, operational expenses, as we see them right now, may go higher a little bit, but it's not going to be dramatic in any event.

Looking back at the guidance for the third quarter and the improved visibility, normally, your fourth quarter is the seasonally strongest quarter of the year. It looks like you've gotten back to growth in the third quarter.

Is it reasonable to think that given all of the macro uncertainties that the improvement in SD-WAN and these other areas, the new projects in the traditional market that it's a more normalized kind of environment by 4Q? Or should we still be quite conservative in our assumptions for that for the full year?

I think this is what we're hoping for.

And any commentary on the mix relative to gross margins?

What is that?

And any commentary on the mix relative to the gross margins?

I mean gross margins were still -- I think we will -- we are still within the 32% to 36% boundaries, not being able to tell in advance where exactly we would be within these boundaries. But revenues, yes, I mean, we believe we are on the right track right now, and we believe that the fourth quarter would indeed be better.

The next question is from Harris Leviton.

Just a few questions. First of all, on the buyback, how many shares did you buy back? And what was the average price during the quarter? And then on the -- on working capital, can you just talk a little bit about what normalized levels are for some of the line items? Because it looks like inventories were up sequentially and then payables, one of the payable line items was up quite a bit as well. But then the payable line item looked like it was unusually low last quarter. So maybe you could just give us a little color in terms of where your working capital should be on a more normalized basis?

Okay. I will start with your first question about the buyback. In quarter 2, we repurchased approximately 133,000 shares. Altogether, it amounted to $4.1 million. It's important for me to say that part of the buyback was related to closing the first plan. And the second part is related to the new plan, which we announced at the end of April. So altogether, the 2 plans together were, at the number I said, 133,000 shares, $4.1 million in total, which means approximately $30, $31 per share.

As to your question about the balance sheet, yes, there was one significant reason for the increase in that balance sheet item. It is connected to an advanced payment we received from a customer in the amount of approximately $15 million.

Okay. So that's -- you'll work that number down as year goes on basically?

Yes, definitely. Definitely, yes.

Okay. And then the last question I have was on -- obviously, we've seen a lot of news the last few days about Intel and the problems they're having. And they're obviously part of the ecosystem to many of the markets you participate in. Are you fairly agnostic in terms of who that processor design goes to? Or how do you look at them versus AMD versus ARM or some of these other players? Or does it really not have much of a direct impact on you?

Well, I think that Intel's issues right now are not meaningful to us at all, and we're agnostic to that. Now it is true that we consider Intel as a strategic partner. But what I'm saying is that the areas in which we are partnering with Intel are not such that would be -- that would suffer from any impact from what is being discussed in the news and this is not relevant for us right now.

Now if you look, I don't know, many years ahead, then this situation may be different, of course, because we cannot know what's going to happen for the very long term, which is why I would say that Silicom is not only working with Intel. Intel is our most strategic partners right now. But we do have designs, we do have solutions, we do have thoughts and processes, both with AMD and obviously, solutions which are based on ARM processors as well. And this is done indeed to mitigate any potential risk that may happen in the future.

There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Orbach to go ahead with his closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call will be available by tomorrow on Silicom's website, www.silicom-usa.com. Mr. Orbach, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Mr. Orbach, there is additional question. Would you like to take it?

Yes, sure.

The next question is from [Sergi Mascaro].

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, perfect. So this is the first quarter that you have not secured a new design win. Is this due to the pandemic impact? Or I mean does the impact has or could have in the future an impact in your ability to secure new design wins?

Okay. Let me -- I may have not made myself clear enough. We definitely have secured design wins during this quarter, more than one. And -- but I mean our policy right now is that we do not necessarily announce all the design wins that we're securing. We only announced those, which we consider to be strategic, a very important, something which is, I would say, entitled to an announcement.

So we have secured design wins during the quarter, but none of these was such at this point. By the way, some design wins begin small and then they become more important, at which time, we announce them. So that could happen as well.

Perfect. And about the second part of my question?

Which was?

Yes, does the pandemic have, or could happen in the future, an impact in your ability to secure new design win?

I saw that was a part of the first question. Okay, I understand. So I would say that there is a certain impact. I wouldn't say that it's -- there is no impact at all. Where we see this impact mostly is when there is a need to do physical evaluations on our products and sometimes the company to which we -- or the organization to which we send these evaluation units are instructed to work from home, et cetera, in which case, such evaluations are delayed.

So I wouldn't say that there is no impact at all. But I would say on the other side that while things may be delayed here and there, but we don't see any impact on the overall demand. And I think that, therefore, eventually, all these design wins that -- hopefully, we will guess, it may happen a little later, but eventually, we'll get them.

Okay. And more specifically, 1 month ago or so, Intel posted a paper where you discussed -- where they discussed the project between you, Telefónica and flexiWAN. So can you speak about this project?

No. Right now, I mean, we are not allowed, and we cannot elaborate or provide any details about that.

Okay. Okay, perfect. And my final question is, are you worried about the coronavirus outbreaks in Israel because...

Well, I wouldn't say that this is impacting us significantly at all. I mean I am -- as a citizen of the state, obviously, I would like the situation to improve as much as possible. But on day-to-day life, the impact on us is negligible.

Mr. Orbach, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Yes. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everybody, for joining the call. We hope you're all safe, and we look forward to hosting you on our next call in 3 months' time. Good day.

Thank you. This concludes Silicom's Second Quarter 2020 Results Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.