Silicom Ltd (SILC) 2024 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.

Welcome to the Silicon third quarter, 2024 results conference call.

All participants are at present in listen-only mode following management's formal presentation instructions will be given for the question and answer session.

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 EK Global Investor Relations at 12123788040 or view it in the news section of the company's website www.silicon.com.

I would now like to hand over the call to Mr Kenny Green of EK Global Investor relations.

Mr Green.

Would you like to begin?

Thank you operator.

I would like to welcome all of you to Silicom's quarterly results conference call.

Before we start, I would like to draw your attention to the following safe harbor statement.

This conference call contains forward-looking statements.

Such statements may include but are not limited to anticipated future financial and operating results and Silicon's outlook and prospects.

Those statements are based on management's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions which may be affected by subsequent business, political, environmental, regulatory, economic and other conditions and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors.

Many of which are outside of silicon's control, which might cause actual results of different material from expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking statement.

These include but not limited to silicon's increasing dependence for substantial revenue growth on a limited number of customers.

The speed and expense and extent to which Silicon solutions are adopted by the relevant markets, difficulties in the commercializing and marketing of Silicon's products and services, maintaining and protecting brand recognition, protection of intellectual property competition, disruptions for manufacturing and sales and marketing development and customer support activities.

The impact of war in Israel and in Ukraine rising inflation, changing interest rates, volatile exchange rates as well as continuing or new effects resulting from the COVID 19 pandemic and global uncertainty, global economic uncertainty which may impact customer demand through customers exercising greater caution and selectivity with their short term.

It investment plans, the factors noted are not exhaustive.

Further information about the company's businesses, including information about factors that could materially affect silicom's results of operations and financial conditions are discussed in Silicom's annual report files in form 20 f and other documents filed by the company that may be subsequently filed by the company from time to time with the securities and exchange commission, the SEC.

Therefore, there can be no assurance that actual future results will not differ significantly from anticipated results.

Consequently, investors are reminded not to rely on these forward-looking statements.

Silicon does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events or developments except as may be required by law.

In addition, following the company's disclosure of certain non-GAAP financial measures in today's earnings release, such non GP financial measures will be discussed during this call.

Such not such nongaap 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 GP financial measures are useful to investors', understanding and assessment of the company's ongoing core operations and prospects for the future.

Unless otherwise stated, it should be assumed that financials discussed in this conference call will be on a Nongaap basis.

Nongaap financial measures disclosed by management are provided as additional information to investors in order to provide them with an alternative method for assessing the company's financial condition and operating results.

These measures are not in accordance with or a substitute or GAAP.

A full reconciliation of Nongaap to GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings release which you can all find on silicom's website.

And with us on the line today, we have Mr Leon, President and CEO and Mr I Gilats Leon will begin first with an overview of the results followed by Iran 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 now like to hand the call over to Iran.

Iran.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kenny.

Welcome everyone to our conference call to discuss the results of the third quarter of 2024.

We are pleased that the third quarter came in as expected.

More importantly from a strategic perspective, we made continuous progress towards our mid and long term goals to generate shareholder value while carefully managing the short term challenges we are facing.

As we previously discussed, our sales continue to be impacted by the excess inventory of our product built up in prior years by our customers in response to the worldwide supply chain disruptions with a few specific customers.

This issue is being further hampered by the fact that those customers of ours have seen slower than expected sales of their new products and services, which includes our products, those customers are therefore consuming their excess inventory of our products at a slower pace and this continues to impact us in the near term.

However, those issues are gradually being resolved and we anticipate improvement continuing through 2025 with full resolution expected by the end of that year.

Despite those headwinds, we remain on track with our strategic plan to create shareholder value targeting an eps above $3 with revenues of 150 to $160 million as we approach the end of 2024 we believe the business is appropriately sized to support long term growth with expenses well aligned to our plans objectives.

At the same time, we continue to maintain tight control over expenses with only minimal increase planned in 2025 and beyond.

Our recent sales and R&D activities are aimed at expanding our pipeline, acquiring new customers and driving future long term revenue growth.

This effort has resulted in a broad and deep pipeline of opportunities with the potential for a faster ramp up than expected, which could accelerate our progress towards our financial goals.

In terms of our financial performance.

For the third quarter, we reported a revenue of $14.8 million with a net loss of $1.7 million.

I want to specifically highlight that our strong balance sheet built up over many years ensures we can maintain adequate investment in our business and its growth engines without compromise.

Just to highlight that strength at the end of the third quarter, our working capital and marketable securities amount to $125 million including $77 million in cash deposit and highly rated bonds with no debt.

All this represents approximately $21 per share.

During the first three quarters of 2024 we generated over $14 million in cash with $8.6 million.

Well, over half of that used to repurchase our shares as part of our ongoing buyback plan which is aligned with our long term strategy of shareholder value creation.

In terms of our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2024 revenues are expected to remain similar to those of the past few quarters between 14 and $15 million.

Looking further out to 2025.

We expect low single digit revenue growth due to some lingering impact from customers access to inventory issues for 2026 and beyond its orders from our pipeline materialize and customers ramp their new products featuring silicon's offering.

We expect to gradually see strong annual compound growth of between 20 30%.

I want to provide some more color on our long term prospects.

As our broad and deep pipeline of opportunities continue to convert into design wins and revenues.

In particular, I will highlight two significant milestones affirming the potential of our core server adapter and edge system product to drive significant revenue growth in 2026 and beyond.

First, a service provider, customer selected a range of our edge products for all its deployment scenarios.

This customer plan to consolidate the silicon as its sole source hardware provider.

Instead of working with multiple vendors for different type of equipment.

The product selected by the customer represent the latest and greatest of our low end and high end edge device offerings.

They combine two of silicon's main product lines into a single product.

A silicon edge device equipped with a silicon network adapter the capability of silicon to deliver this synergy from one source provides us with a significant competitive advantage.

We believe that this trend will expand to more and more customers and we already have several other accounts in the pipeline.

Looking to take the same approach.

We expect early deployment to start in 2025 ramping to a potential of several million dollars in business in 2026.

From those products only, the customer is already in the process of evaluating additional products of ours for other various use cases and equipment enhancements.

And second, a network equipment OEM selected our high speed 400 gig F PGA smart card for deployment within its core network architecture.

Initial deliveries we expect to take place by the first quarter of 2025 which ramp up starting in 2026 driving potential multimillion dollar annual revenues.

This design influenced by several of our customers demonstrate the deep technological relationship we maintain with our customers.

This smart card provides a unique combination of 400 gig ports with an FPGA and high bandwidth memory which creates a unique smart card that can really handle 400 gig speeds at line rate.

Our already successful capture which accelerates networking, network monitoring and security applications is supported by this card providing our customers and potential customers with a path to a capture solution at 400 gig speeds.

We are already engaged with several other customers who will start testing this card very soon.

From a broader perspective, our long term growth is supported by an increasingly diverse pipeline of designings including both new and existing customers.

This pipeline includes leading names in the networking service providers and cyber security industries, highlighting the strength and the feel of our technology offerings as we increase the number of those strategic engagements, we believe they will lead to more sustainable revenue growth by reducing our reliance on a few large strategic accounts.

The recent broadening of our pipeline highlights some of our successes to date.

With our strategic plan.

We plan, we are seeing the impact of our focus on small to medium design wins which have, which has greatly expanded the pool of future opportunities.

At the same time, we continue to put emphasis on winning high potential deals with the potential for double digit million dollars in annualized revenue.

If the strong opportunities in the pipeline ramp faster than expected, we could achieve the goals of our strategic plan sooner than currently projected.

In summary, we are pleased with our progress this quarter towards executing our strategic plan.

Beyond that, we are very optimistic about our ability to continue to successfully executing on that plan and fully focus fully focused on meeting our goal of creating value for our customers, the market as a whole and especially our shareholders.

We have a very dedicated and loyal team.

Many of them have been with us for decades with some of the broadest and deepest experience in the hardware business pursuing ambitious yet achievable goals.

We are operating from an extremely solid financial platform with a very strong balance sheet including an exceptionally high level of working capital for our needs.

We have a strong design win roster full of tier one customers coupled with a support product and a robust pipeline of opportunities.

With that.

I will now hand over the call to Liron for a detailed review.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Eran and good day to everyone.

Revenues for the third quarter of 2024 were $14.8 million.

A decline from revenues of $30.1 million.

As reported in the third quarter of last year, the geographical revenue breakdown over the last 12 months was as follows North America, 78% Europe and Israel, 16% far east and rest of the world.

6%.

During the last 12 months, our 3 10% customers together accounted for about 36% 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, options and RSUS granted to directors, officers and employees acquisition related adjustments as well as lease liabilities, financial expenses for the full reconciliation from GAAP to Nongaap.

Numbers.

Please refer to the press release we issued earlier today.

Gross profit for the third quarter of 2024 was $4.2 million representing a gross margin of 28.8%.

And compared to a gross profit of $9.3 million a gross margin of 31.1% in the third quarter of 2023.

As discussed previously in the near term, our gross margin is expected to be at the lower end of our 27 to 32% expected range.

And as our revenues grow from current levels over the longer term, it is expected to increase towards the upper end operating expenses in the third quarter of 2024 were $6.5 million.

A decline from $7.4 million reported in the third quarter of 2023 operating loss for the third quarter of 2024 was EUR2.3 million compared to operating income of EUR1.9 million.

As reported in the third quarter of 2023.

Net loss for the quarter was $1.7 million compared to net income of $2.1 million in the third quarter of 2023 loss per share in the quarter was 28¢.

This is compared with diluted earnings per share of 30¢ as reported in the third quarter of last year.

Now turning to the balance sheet as of as of September 30th 2024 our working capital and marketable securities amounted to $125 million including $44 million in high quality inventory accounts receivable, net of accounts payable of $6 million.$77 million dollars in cash, cash equivalents and highly rated multiple securities with no debt.

During the first three quarters of this year, we used eur $8.6 million for the repurchase of 560,000 shares.

That ends my summary.

I would like to add back to the operator for the questions and answers session operator.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen.

At this time, we will begin the question and answer session.

If you have a question, please press star one.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two.

If you're using speaker equipment, kind of lift the handset before pressing the numbers, your questions will be pulled in the order they are received.

Please stand by while we pull for your questions.

The first question is from Ryan Koontz of Needham and Company.

Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for the question.

Nice to be on the call.

In terms of your current revenue run rate.

What, how is that?

Can you comment on the mix across different verticals in terms of that?

The current revenue run rate?

Is, it service provider still the main vertical?

Are you seeing enterprise or other traction there?

So I think in general we see we don't see a huge difference to what we've seen in the past.

I don't have the exact percentage in front of me, but it's a mix, a mix of O ems and service providers in the OE MS.

We see strong segments like cyber security is very strong network monitoring.

Obviously, we have the S and SD one markets for, for our edge boxes.

So I think that that's kind of the mix we're seeing and we see, I mean, both opportunities in all of them, but also actual revenue coming from all of them.

I can add to that, that in terms of market segments, cyber security was about 31% over the last 12 months.

Platforms and infrastructure was also approximately 31% network appliances, 26% and the rest is 5 7% and other 5%.

Great.

That's, that's helpful.

Thank you.

And in terms of your inventory at your key customers here, you know, any, any progress on orders and what, what, what's driving your, your, your confidence in you know, rebound, you know, in, in as we exit 25 there.

And is there any risk to obsolescence from your product that's on hand with your customers?

Thanks.

So, yeah, I mean, we, as you said, it's, it's a process that we will continue seeing in 2025 as well and the way we are monitoring it, it's simply speaking with the customers and they're sharing with us the numbers and we see sometimes we see the orders come in.

So we understand that, okay, now they're done with this part number.

They need more of that.

So as we see more and more come in, we speak with the customer.

So we know how it goes, as I mentioned previously on this call, some of them are selling slower than they expected.

So we, so we, but they still sell, I mean, it's not that they're, they're not selling the product.

It's just that due to the shortages and in previous years, they had to buy more and they thought they would sell it faster.

The overall situation is they're still selling but slower than expected.

And I'm assuming that most of it will be done in 2025.

That that's our assumption.

Okay, makes sense.

And in terms of modeling here, how should we think about your, your cash burn through late next year?

And are the current OpEx levels what you think you need to maintain to sustain the business?

So from an OpEx perspective, we expect to be pretty much flat, maybe a slight, slight increase, not something significant.

We think we have the right team, the right size of the team in order to support our future growth.

So we don't think we will need to make significant changes to that, not up or down.

And, and in terms of revenue, we mentioned, we expect a very slight increase, maybe single digit growth next year.

We expect GP also to remain the same.

So I think from that we know pretty much where we expect to be.

Got it really helpful.

Great guys.

That's all I have.

Appreciate the questions.

If there are any additional questions, please press star one.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two.

Please stand by while we pull for more questions.

There are no further questions at this time before I ask Mr Eisenman 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. silicon usa.com.

Mr Eisenman, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Thank you operator.

Thank you everybody for joining the call and for your interest in Silicon.

We look forward to hosting you on our next call in three months.

Good day.

Thank you.

This concludes Silicom's third quarter, 2024 results conference call.

Thank you for your participation.

You may go ahead and disconnect.