Adeia Inc. (ADEA) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Adeia's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Chaney, Vice President and Investor Relations for Adeia. Chris, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we share with you details of our quarterly financial results. With me on the call today are Paul Davis, our President and CEO; and Keith Jones, our CFO. Paul will share with you some general observations regarding the quarter, and then Keith will give further details on our financial results and guidance. We will then conclude with a question-and-answer period. In addition to today's earnings release, there is an earnings presentation, which you can access along with the webcast in the IR portion of our website. Before turning the call over to Paul, I would like to provide a few reminders. First, today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that are predictions, projections or other statements about future events, which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and therefore, subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances. For more information on the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from what we discuss today. Please refer to the Risk Factors section in our SEC filings, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Please note that the company does not intend to update or alter these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after this call. To enhance investors' understanding of our ongoing economic performance, we will discuss non-GAAP information during this call. We use non-GAAP financial measures internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We have, therefore, chosen to provide this information to enable you to perform comparisons of our operating results as we do internally. We have provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the earnings release, the earnings presentation, and on the Investor Relations section of our website. A recording of this conference call will be made available on the Investor Relations website at adeia.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Paul Davis.

Thank you, Chris, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm pleased to share our results for the second quarter of 2026 and our strong performance in the first half of the year. Our second quarter results were in line with our expectations as we delivered revenue of $96 million (sic) [ $96.1 million ] with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 59% (sic) [ 58.7% ]. We had another excellent quarter of cash generation, producing $55 million (sic) [ $54.6 million ] in cash from operations. We ended the quarter with $137 million in cash while executing on all 4 pillars of our capital allocation strategy. We closed 6 license agreements during the quarter and added a record 12 new customers in total. Our first half performance included solid execution across all aspects of our business: closing license agreements with Microsoft, AMD, Google and our recent deal with RPX that further accelerates our e-commerce business. We also continue to invest in growing our leading media and semiconductor portfolios and believe we are well positioned for the long term. The progress we've made to date is in line with our expectations. So we are reiterating our 2026 revenue guidance of $395 million to $435 million. Our non-Pay-TV recurring revenue is strong and thriving, growing 54% year-over-year in the second quarter and is now nearly double the size of our Pay-TV recurring revenue. Despite the known headwinds in Pay-TV, including recent litigation matters, our pipeline is robust, and we are confident in our long-term trajectory. The timing of resolution to any litigation, however, is difficult to predict and thus could impact us in the short term. As we look at the remainder of the year, our diversified and growing pipeline continues to provide multiple paths to achieve our revenue goals for 2026. As we have stated before, we tend to do big deals. And operationally, we lean towards being a relatively small volume, high dollar shop. As always, we will remain disciplined in closing deals that are in the best long-term interest of the company and its stakeholders. Our range of outcomes for the year reflects this approach and will be impacted by the ultimate timing of when we sign license agreements which we continue to have the utmost confidence in being able to do. Importantly, as we have seen in the past, to the extent any opportunities move out of 2026, they provide a springboard for us in the following year. One of our most significant license agreements in the second quarter was a multiyear renewal with Google for access to our media portfolio. Google has been a valued customer for approximately 15 years, and this renewal reflects the continued relevance and strength of our media portfolio for Pay-TV. YouTube TV, which is operated by Google has become one of the most important players in the Pay-TV market with subscriber growth that has dramatically outpaced many of its peers. Its scale and trajectory are a clear demonstration of the ongoing migration from traditional Pay-TV to virtual MVPD services, and our portfolio is well positioned to capture that shift. With the renewal of Google, combined with our Disney agreement signed last year, which includes Hulu + Live TV, we now count 2 of the largest and fastest-growing virtual MVPD platforms in the country as our customers. Also in the second quarter, we made excellent progress in e-commerce, closing the seminal multiyear license agreement with RPX, a leading patent risk solutions company. This unique deal includes 10 participating member companies in a single agreement, giving them a term license to our growing media portfolio of approximately 10,900 patent assets. This deal was driven by our e-commerce technologies, including intelligent search, virtual shopping experiences and consumer engagement across connected platforms. The RPX members include a broad consortium of market leaders across the digital commerce ecosystem spanning apparel, beauty, online marketplaces, delivery networks and enterprise technology platforms. With the progress we've made in the past 2 years. We believe this business can grow over the long term to a size similar to our consumer electronics business, which has been approximately 10% of our total revenue. Other deals signed in the second quarter include a new multiyear license agreement with L'Oreal, a leading cosmetics and personal care company. A new multiyear license agreement with a leading provider of streaming documentary programming and renewals with a leading European Pay-TV provider and a consumer electronics manufacturer in Japan. Renewals are a cornerstone of our business model. With our renewal rate at over 90%, the vast majority of our customers renew with us because we continue to innovate and build positive relationships with them. I am pleased to announce that given the optimism in the trajectory of our business and particularly the semiconductor market, we are raising our long-term revenue target to $600 million from $500 million annually. Let me begin briefly with media and then provide more color on semiconductors. Our growth objective for our media business over the long term remains unchanged at $400 million annually, bolstered by our success in growing market adoption of our technology, we see key verticals such as OTT, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and social media as catalysts for growth. Moving to the semiconductor industry. We continue to see rapid evolution in the market and the increasing demands from AI have induced an unprecedented acceleration in the development and production of highly advanced logic and memory devices. This new super cycle is driving the semiconductor market to reach over $1.5 trillion this year. Hybrid bonding has become a critical enabler of next-generation chip architectures, helping to solve density, performance and thermal management challenges. We are very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for our semiconductor business given these industry dynamics and increasing need for our technologies. We had previously estimated this opportunity to be $100 million annually, driven by the broader and faster adoption of hybrid bonding we now expect our long-term semiconductor opportunity to reach $200 million annually. Custom and general-purpose logic providers are already or will soon be incorporating hybrid bonding in both enterprise and consumer-related products. Apple, Intel, and Broadcom, all have products ramping into production using hybrid bonding, further building on the momentum from our recent license agreement with AMD. And according to industry reports NVIDIA's Feynman will also incorporate hybrid bonding beginning in 2028. High-bandwidth memory and flash for both enterprise and consumer markets are also incorporating hybrid bonding. We believe hybrid bonding will be a requirement in HBM with 20 or more layers, if not sooner. 3D NAND leaders, SanDisk and Kioxia, both customers of ours, began using hybrid bonding for NAND in 2023, and we believe others will follow as layer counts approach 400. We know broad adoption of hybrid bonding is coming because the capital equipment required is being ordered. To meet demand for these next-generation devices, leading foundries, memory companies and OSATs are planning to spend approximately $125 billion in the near term for advanced packaging, including hybrid bonding. Our investments in semiconductor innovations are coming to fruition and the opportunities in front of us are very exciting. Let me now turn to our efforts to further diversify and grow our recurring revenue. As noted earlier, our non-Pay-TV recurring revenue grew an impressive 54% year-over-year in the second quarter, continuing a multi-quarter trend. I could not be more pleased with this progress. and it is a result of our execution and focus since our separation from Xperi almost 4 years ago. We knew Pay-TV would remain a core part of our business, and we have continued to invest in it. But we also knew, given the secular trends of that industry, we needed to find other avenues of growth. Our teams across R&D, sales and patent portfolio development have executed extremely well to this vision, maintaining our relevance and strength in Pay-TV, while at the same time, impressively growing our business well beyond it. Our IP portfolios are at the foundation of everything we do, and we continue to invest in them strategically. In the second quarter, we completed 6 tuck-in IP portfolio acquisitions for $9.5 million, focused primarily on e-commerce, OTT and imaging. Our portfolio grew to over 14,250 patent assets in the second quarter, up approximately 4% from the first quarter. In total, we have grown our patent portfolios by almost 5,000 patent assets since separation. The vast majority of this growth generated organically. Consistent with our commitment to defending our IP, earlier this quarter, we filed patent infringement claims against Fubo, asserting 4 patents from our media portfolio. We are disappointed we cannot reach acceptable terms for a new license agreement. Our goal, as always, is a business resolution, a license agreement that reflects the underlying value of our IP. I want to be clear that this matter is completely separate from our license agreement with Disney. Fubo represents a distinct opportunity and the litigation has no impact on our license agreement with Disney. I also want to provide a brief update on the CEO search we announced in connection with our first quarter results. The Board's search process is going well. We have engaged a nationally recognized search firm and the Board is actively evaluating candidates. As a reminder, we anticipate announcing a successor by the fourth quarter of this year. In the meantime, I want to reassure our stakeholders that it is business as usual at Adeia, the same strategy, same team and same goals. Our team remains energized and focused on executing our business plan and our pipeline remains strong. I remain fully committed to driving the business toward our goals for 2026. And to position the company for continued long-term success. I am proud of what we have built together, and I remain excited about what lies ahead. Our execution in the second quarter was great across the board and our revenue was in line with expectations. As we look to the second half of the year, our pipeline remains strong across both media and semiconductors, and we are committed to achieving our full year objectives. Our team is building something special at Adeia. And with the tremendous progress we've made, I am confident in our trajectory towards our newly revised long-term $600 million annual goal for revenue. With that, I will turn the call over to Keith.

Thank you, Paul. I'm pleased to be speaking with you today to share details of our second quarter 2026 financial results. During the second quarter, we delivered results that were in line with our expectations. Revenue of $96.1 million was driven by the execution of 6 license agreements across a diverse mix of customers, including OTT and e-commerce, consumer electronics and Pay-TV. Our second quarter was highlighted by our renewal with Google and a new license agreement with RPX in all, we added a record 12 new customers in the quarter. Now I would like to discuss our operating expenses for which I'll be referring to non-GAAP numbers only. During the second quarter, operating expenses were $40.2 million, a decrease of $2.7 million or 6% from the prior quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower litigation and personnel-related costs. Research and development expenses were essentially flat compared to the prior quarter. Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased $2 million or 10% from the prior quarter, primarily due to lower personnel-related expenses. Litigation expense was $5.3 million a decrease of $639,000 or 11% compared to the prior quarter, primarily driven by lower spending on AMD due to the resolution of litigation in the prior quarter which was partially offset by new litigation matters. Interest expense during the second quarter was $8 million, a decrease of $511,000 primarily due to our debt repayments and due to lower favorable interest rates during the period. Our current effective interest rate, which includes amortization of debt issuance costs, was 7.1%. Other income was $1.7 million and was primarily related to interest earned on our cash and investment portfolio and due to interest income recognized on revenue agreements with long-term billing structures under ASC 606. Our adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $56.4 million, reflecting an adjusted EBITDA margin of 58.7%. Depreciation expense for the second quarter was $480,000. Our non-GAAP income tax rate was 21% for the quarter. Our income tax expense consists primarily of federal and state domestic taxes as well as Korean withholding taxes. Now for a few details on the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter with $137.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and we generated $54.6 million in cash from operations. We made $6.1 million in principal payments on our debt in the second quarter and ended the quarter with a term loan balance of $392.6 million. We repurchased approximately 353,000 shares of our common stock for $10 million bringing the remaining amount available for future repurchases to $140 million under our current stock repurchase program. Our strong financial performance in the second quarter once again allowed us to execute on all 4 pillars of our balanced capital allocation approach. This includes paying down our debt, repurchasing shares, paying our dividend and making tuck-in portfolio acquisitions. We paid a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of common stock. Our Board also approved payment of another $0.05 per share dividend to be paid on September 14 to shareholders of record as of August 24. For 2026, we are reiterating our prior revenue guidance range of $395 million to $435 million. Our pipeline remains strong and reflects the widespread adoption of our technologies across both the media and semiconductor markets. Operating expenses are expected to be in the range of $184 million to $192 million. We expect interest expense to be in the range of $34 million to $36 million. We expect other income to be in the range of $5.5 million to $6.5 million. We expect a resulting adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 55%. We expect the non-GAAP tax rate to be 21% for the full year. We also expect capital expenditures to be approximately $2 million for the full year. I am truly excited about our future. The increase in our long-term revenue outlook to $600 million annually is a clear reflection of this enthusiasm. We find ourselves at the right place at the right time with the right assets, and our entire team remains dedicated to executing on this goal. That brings it end our prepared remarks. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to begin our question-and-answer session. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Scott Searle with ROTH Capital.

Nice job in the quarter. Nice to see the semi momentum starting to build. Maybe quickly on that point, Keith, I'm not sure if I heard a number in terms of mix between media and semis. I'm wondering if you could provide that. And then, Paul, just in terms of the opportunity pipeline on the semi front, it seems like it's really started to broaden post the AMD deal as you start to see hybrid bonding being pulled into a lot of different areas within logic that previously hadn't been contemplated. I'm wondering if you could expand upon that in terms of vertically integrated hyperscalers, AI inference, other edge devices that are starting to pull in to give us a little bit more color and understand what the level of engagement is on the semi front.

So just to kind of start off with the breakout between media and semiconductor. Semi was about $14.8 million in revenue for Q2, and if you look on a year-to-date basis, I'm just pleased to say that semi year-to-date is about $48 million of that $200 million number that we posted, so about 24%. So just really good growth. If you compare that to what we were in a full year last year, about $26 million you can clearly see our semi business is headed in a great direction.

Yes, Scott. And then on the pipeline, you got it right. I mean it's really across the board that we're seeing hybrid bonding adoption. I noted some of it on my call with logic players really beyond AMD. AMD was ahead of the curve. As we mentioned before, they started shipping hybrid bonded logic devices in 2022. But now we're seeing it with Broadcom and Intel is ramping, even Apple has chips in production as well. And then there's industry reports that NVIDIA's Feynman in 2028 will incorporate hybrid bonding. So we're very excited about that opportunity. And then you mentioned hyperscalers as well. I've said this publicly a number of times that these hyperscalers are semiconductor companies now. And I believe that they're all focused on differentiating their own products and services with their semiconductor chips. And that's going to create additional opportunity for us. And then lastly, what we're seeing in the NAND market in HBM, the proof is really in what we're seeing in the CapEx build-out. I mentioned $125 billion CapEx build-out for advanced packaging, including hybrid bonding. But also there's reports that Samsung has ordered 50 bonding tools. And so all of this just lines up with what we have been anticipating, which is tremendous adoption of hybrid bonding, which is giving us that confidence in formally increasing our target to $200 million annually, for the semiconductor business, which we are very excited about.

Great. That's very helpful. And maybe shifting gears into the media side of the equation. We've gone through a transition here with DIRECTV and DISH kind of coming out of the numbers. But now it seems like you've got a broadened opportunity pipeline that's more diverse across different customers, different categories. And so I guess the question is, given what you're seeing in the non-Pay-TV revenue and growth, should we expect to see recurring revenue within media now on a growth trajectory that we've kind of absorbed the hits on DIRECTV and DISH?

Yes. I think we are really proud of our non-Pay-TV recurring revenue growth. We -- it's something that we were very strategic about since our separation. We knew, like everybody else knew where the Pay-TV industry was going. We have had some more headwinds because of some of this litigation that we might have not anticipated a few years ago, but this is the diversification play coming into fruition, and you're seeing that really across the board. I think the highlights, I would say, is obviously, OTT, and then e-commerce are big contributors to that growth. but even consumer electronics and social media are contributing as well to that growth. And then we have plans to continue to expand into different adjacent markets on the media side as well, and those are starting to ramp in addition to what we already have contributing with e-commerce. So we're really pleased across the board on that. And I do think we're in a continued growth phase. We've had continued consistent growth since our separation from Xperi where we have built on our non-Pay-TV recurring revenue really quarter-over-quarter. There's occasionally dips just because of deal timing where you'll see that and structure our deals, and then it will ramp back up. But if you look at just a line across the board over the last 4 years, it is up into the right, and we expect that to continue.

Great job.

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities.

Congratulations on the great results and the better outlook. And speaking of the better outlook, the $100 million extra in semiconductors, I know you haven't given a time frame, but were you thinking that this is within the same time frame that you thought you could get to $100 million in that same time frame, you can get to $200 million?

Yes. That's right, Kevin. I think we talk about -- we call it long term. I think broadly speaking, we think about that in about 5 years, right, is what we think about when we do our long-range planning, and we think that, that is achievable, right, in that time frame now for that $200 million semiconductor target. Again, it's really the catalyst that I just mentioned to Scott, it's both logic and memory. And by memory, I really do mean NAND and HBM. It's not just HBM, which we continue to be very bullish on as we get to 20 layers or so. But NAND, as we get to 400 layers, there's a real need, right, for hybrid bonding for the big 3 memory guys, and we think they're all ramping to get there. And so it's on both sides of their memory businesses, and that's what excites us as well in addition to all the CapEx build-out that we're seeing.

Yes, I'd agree with that with SK Hynix on their second quarter earnings call, they even said that they're preparing next generation in like say -- in addition to hybrid bonding, but they also said at iHBM, they mentioned this as -- and having thermal dissipation, is RapidCool ready for licensing? Or is this something that might be in discussion?

When you think about RapidCool, yes, we think it is part of this catalyst as well. Again, we license on a portfolio-wide basis, right? But 1 of the things that differentiates us from other licensing companies is really the innovation story. And RapidCool is a great thing for us to showcase, right, on that innovation. It's new, it's solving a big problem that the industry is trying to deal with right now. Thermal management, as you know, Kevin, is at the heart of a lot of what these companies are worried about. And we're showing a solution that is -- can be adopted, right? That is not so wild that it creates some totally new ecosystem. It's -- as I've mentioned before, it's plug and play in these current data centers, right, and it uses existing equipment. And so yes, we think it can be also a really important element to our relicensing efforts with the memory players, but also in logic as we've talked about before. And so yes, it's part of that story. Hybrid bonding is kind of now. So we focus on that. But RapidCool is definitely an element of that relicensing effort as well as we talk to customers about how our portfolio continues to grow and evolve.

Okay. Great. And maybe I could just ask 1 other question about the tuck-in acquisitions of the IP portfolio. For -- What [indiscernible] IP in semiconductors or media? And did they include any employees or whether it's just patents?

Yes. So as I think we've mentioned before, we're focused on our tuck-in acquisitions really being in all of our growth areas. And so this quarter, it was media focused. So e-commerce, OTT and imaging were the primary technology areas that we acquired in. But we are evaluating semiconductor portfolios in addition to other media growth areas as well. We've got a strong pipeline in our acquisitions. These particular ones were patent focused, but we do remain open to looking at inventive teams and doing acquihires as well as patent acquisitions. That's part of what we evaluate as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Hamed Khorsand with BWS Financial.

Could you just talk about -- a little bit about your sales pipeline or potential deals? And if anything makes you uncomfortable as far as the timing not happening this year, if there's any of those possibilities?

Hamed, first of all, thanks for the question. I think our pipeline is quite robust. I was mentioning to someone just recently. I feel really good about where we are. And if I think about even comparing it to years past, I think we've got an incredibly robust set of opportunities to deliver on our commitments for this year. And it can come from various different avenues, right? And then I think the momentum we are seeing in e-commerce on the heels of our RPX deal is tremendous, for example. But in addition, obviously, the OTT and semiconductor momentum continues on as well. And so when I look forward, there are a number of ways for us to get there. And they include even potentially some of the Pay-TV items that we've got in dispute, which obviously can move the needle quite a bit. But as you know, we are a small volume, high dollar shop, right? And so the good news is this year, we've got more in our path to get there than we have in the past, as I mentioned last quarter, and that continues on.

I guess what I'm trying to get to is, right now, you're on pace for the low end of your revenue guidance range. I'm just trying to understand like what's the outlook to get to the high end? Are you depending on 1 or 2 deals?

One or 2 deals? Sure. I think we've got a number of ways to get within our range. If I look at last year, for example, right, we were at about [ 170 ] at this point. We had 2 quarters of [ 85 ], right? This year, we're at the midpoint, we're at [ 201 ]. So we're in better shape than we were last year. We always tend to be a little back-end loaded in terms of when deals tend to come to fruition. And that's no different this year. It's a little better than it has been in the past, quite frankly. And so we continue to have really good discussions with customers, both on the renewal and new deal front.

And Hamed, I would also add to that, that when I took a look at our internal forecast, our internal forecast looks a lot like the consensus models out there as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Galinko with Maximum Group (sic) [ Maxim Group ]

Maybe, firstly, I think your 2Q operating cash flow number was historically relatively high, and I think it brought you a relatively high cash balance as well. Can you maybe talk about how you are feeling with your current cash balance and cash flow that kind of reached year-to-date and what we might expect through the balance of the year.

Yes. Matt, great question. So actually, if you take a look at that cash where we ended at $137 million, it's actually pretty consistent where we ended at the end of December of last year. And really, we got a couple of things. We had a great start to the year. Typically, Q2 and Q3 are pretty light for us in cash generation from cash from operations. But as you can see, Q2 was very, very, very strong. For the full year, our outlook still is the same in terms of about $150 million or give or take, for the full year, which, once again, kind of going back to Q3 being relatively light. So we'd anticipate cash from operations in Q3 to be fairly modest and then have a resurgence back in Q4. And we also have a good number of commitments as we go through an operator of our business. We have a dividend program we paid down our debt. And last but definitely not least, we are acquisitive. So we built up probably a little bit higher bit of cash, knowing some of those things were coming in light of having a softer or a lighter cash from operations in Q3. So with that being said, our targets are still the same when we -- in the year, in 2026, we anticipate cash being at that $100 million number that we typically target to get to.

All right. And maybe as a follow-up, RPX is an interesting counterparty. It's, I think first time I can remember, you announcing a license with RPX. So can you talk a little bit about how the negotiation was there? And do you think there is additional opportunity to license to portions of RPX's client or subscriber base or how should we think about that as a counterparty?

Yes. Thanks, Matt. Yes, we're really pleased with the RPX deal. We do think it is one that we can potentially replicate going forward. It is important to note, though, that it's consistent with our licensing program, right? And so it's term based, right? It is something that we see though as really helpful in terms of when you're looking at so many customers and potential customers that we have in the e-commerce space to really reduce friction potentially, right? And I think RPX was a great partner for us in that regard. I'm not going to get into the details of what the negotiations were, but we're really pleased with our conversations and relationships with RPX. And then we do think that this -- I'll just say the style of the deal can be potentially replicated going forward. I think getting 10 companies essentially under license at 1 time is fantastic for us, right? And something that I think when you look at e-commerce in particular, we started really this business in e-commerce about 2 years ago. We got our first license agreement just at the end of 2024, right? And now it is a significant meaningful contributor to our business and our revenue, and we see it growing pretty significantly from here. And so yes, it's a great deal for us, very pleased with the relationship with RPX and see the deal structure as one that we could replicate moving forward.

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Chief Executive Officer, Paul Davis, for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Once again, I would like to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication and also our shareholders, partners and customers for their ongoing support. Over the next several weeks, we will be participating in the Oppenheimer Annual TMT Conference; the Rosenblatt Age of AI Conference, the Needham Annual Semi and SemiCap Conference and the BWS Investor Conference. We look forward to speaking with you at these and other events. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.