Earnings Labs

CSP Inc. (CSPI)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Dec 16, 2014

$10.16

-1.84%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.80%

1 Week

+2.13%

1 Month

-3.47%

vs S&P

-5.56%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome, everyone, to CSP's Fourth Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. The financial results news release is posted on the website at www.cspi.com for those of you who did not receive it by e-mail. Later, we will be conducting a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] With us today are CSP's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Victor Dellovo; and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Gary Levine. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call to Mr. Levine. Please go ahead, sir.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. With me on the call today is Victor Dellovo, CSPI's Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during today's call, we will take advantage of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 with respect to statements that may be deemed to be forward-looking under the act. The company cautions that numerous factors could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements made by the company. Such risks include general economic conditions, market factors, competitive factors and pricing pressures and others described in the company's filings with the SEC. Please refer to the section on forward-looking statements included in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During today's call, I will discuss our fourth quarter financials. Then Victor will provide an update on our business segments and on our strategic progress. Then, we will open it up to your questions. As a reminder, early in 2014, we renamed our reporting segments to more accurately and clearly reflect the operating businesses in those segments. Our Systems segment is now called the High Performance Products & Solutions segment. This segment includes our MultiComputer business, as well as our new Myricom acquisition. Our Service and Systems Integration segment, which includes our Myricom business is now called Information Technology Solutions. Let's take a look at the financials for the quarter, starting with the income statement. Revenues were 19.7 million compared to $21.9 million a year ago, reflecting lower sales in the Information Technology Solutions segment. Foreign-exchange had a negative year-over-year effect of about $42,000. Our total cost of sales for Q4 was $14.6 million, down from $17.1 million in the prior year, as a result of the lower volume. Gross…

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Thanks, Gary. We made excellent progress on our growth strategy in fiscal 2014. We are excited by the promise of growth and customer diversity from Myricom, which we acquired and integrated into the High-Performance Products & Solutions segment during the year. We also took great strides in positioning CSP to increase margins and recurring revenue by growing our managed service business. From a financial perspective, we grew net income by 263% in fiscal 2014 to $1.3 million and a 3% decrease in revenue. We are pleased with the bottom-line accomplishments, especially given the significant investment we are making in the business for future growth. With that, I will get right to segment review, starting with the High-Performance Products & Solutions segment. Revenue in the segment was up $1.5 million to $4.2 million in the quarter. As Gary mentioned, this growth was driven by revenue contribution from Myricom, which we acquired in first fiscal quarter. Our Myricom acquisition is performing well as a result of continued success of its legacy products. We are seeing greater potential from Myricom, and we are making significant investments to capitalize on these opportunities. For example, we have established a product roadmap based on extensive market research and we are developing next-generation products to target new vertical segments. We expect to begin shipping beta products around the mid-fiscal 2015, with the products really beginning to get into the channel as we proceed during the year. Meaningful revenue should begin in fiscal fourth quarter, in line of this effort, we hire an additional High-Performance Products and Solutions sales person to cover New York area, where we see potential opportunities in the high-frequency trading market. As Gary mentioned, we expect that our continued investment in Myricom will result in greater penetration of the commercial space and will help…

Operator

Operator

Yes. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] We can take our first question from Brett Davidson with Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Brett Davidson

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Good morning, gentlemen. I have a couple of quick questions for you. The first one is, Mr. Dellovo, maybe you could add some color to the R&D spending. I will just throw out my second question. The second is regarding the E-2Ds. Do you guys have any kind of color whatsoever as to whether the Japanese plane orders are going to filter down to CSP?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

No. On the second question, we have no insight on that. On your first question, the R&D increases as we a acquired Myricom, the product that we acquired along with the inventory was a legacy product, has it been checked there had been no changes of the last two to three years, so with that being said the market space for that is in the tens of millions, so we are investing on the next-generation and trying to capture that with the customer that we currently have an opening up to new ones both, here in the U.S. and overseas.

Brett Davidson

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We can take our next question from Joseph [indiscernible]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Hello? Joe

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We can go next to Joseph [indiscernible]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes. Let me follow-up on that first question. I am assuming that Brett meant, there are some orders for Japanese planes E-2D planes. Is that correct? Do you know anything about that?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

No. We don't have any information on that at all.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Well, okay. A follow-up to this then, if - because I do know they are trying to solicit foreign orders for the E-2D planes…

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Yes.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I am assuming that any E-2D plane that is delivered, we would be in line for the royalties, whether it is a foreign or U.S. order. Is that correct?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

That would be correct.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Conceptually, yes, but have not been - our customer has not told us anything.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Well, I understand, but I do know they are soliciting orders from foreign countries.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Yes.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

All I want to know if we are in the mix for sure. Let me just ask one other follow-up question. That is - weakness in your IT group in the U.S., maybe I am mistaken, but are you not - with all hacking that has been going around and the problems with the major corporations being hacked by from wherever in the world, are you not being solicited at all to help a lot of these companies and maybe securing their data centers? Why are we not getting more activity from that or are we pursuing that at all?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

We are developing more in that security area, where Germany in that location has been security-centric for years. Hiring talent in building their practice is something that we have been doing over the last six to nine months. As you know, those sales cycles are not short by any means. The pipeline is good. Right now, our strongest practice has been in the wireless area, which we continue to invest in and also the recurring revenue model and the managed service piece of it. We had a staff up for that, but those sales cycles are not short either. You know, it can take anywhere from three to nine months - an opportunity there, but the good thing is once you close those deals, they are usually multi-year deals and you have that recurring revenue model.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Just one more follow-up, the eight engineers that are employed, are they all U.S. are they all over the world, the eight new engineers that you said you just added.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Both places, both in the U.S. and Germany.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

All right. Thank you very much.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

You are welcome.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We can take our next question from William Kidston with North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Good morning, gentlemen. Just a couple of quick questions regarding Myricom. Can you break out the revenue from that acquisition of the last quarter as well as the gross profit dollars that he has realized?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Yes. Well, the revenue for the year was $6.7 million and the margin was approximately 47% on that. In the fourth quarter, the revenue was $2.1 million.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

What is the operating profit in that segment, if you have it for the year as well and for the quarter that would be great?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Well, we don't break it. I mean, we keep. It is a product group and it is part of the High-Performance group. We don't really break it out at as a segment from that side. It is included. We are now running as a separate company, so it is basically just a product on that the CSPI name.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Okay. Can you then an break what the operating profit for both segments would be for High-Performance and for the IT Solutions?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Yes. The operating for, what, the fourth quarter or.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Yes. That would be great.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Okay. For the IT segment, the operating profit loss was the $26,000 and for the High-Performance group that was $69,000 in the fourth quarter operating.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Yes. Thank you. Can you just talk a little bit about - I know you don't provide guidance at all, but can you discuss a little bit about what you are seeing for both segments kind of three to six months here. I know you guys are not going to realize any royalty revenue set for the next two quarters it sounds like related to E-2D for the HPPS segment, but if you would just a little color on kind of the industry outlooks for both of those.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Myricom side of the business, the pipeline is good. We are making a big shift to where it is more service-driven. We have been doing that. We see that in the numbers. With that being said, the sales cycles are a little longer and the revenue recognition pieces of it are coming more into play now, where until the projects are completely signed off. We can't recognize that revenue, but the pipeline overall is strong. We brought us some sales people that have been targeting the managed service piece of the business. On the Myricom side, our customers are currently still sending us purchase orders and they are waiting the new generation of products for beta, so we are optimistic that once the beta goes out, that it will keep the revenue that Myricom has been driving, you know, it will continue in the future.

Gary Levine

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Yes, but there will be some run-off in the legacy business over the period of time, so there is going to be a be a ramp up period, so there could be a little bit of the degradation within the High-Performance group. Most of the MultiComputer business is backhanded as we said.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Right. All right, so the elephant in the room, are you guys going to make money next quarter and the quarter after that, because you are not realizing any royalty revenues?

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

We are going to do our damnedest, but it is going to be difficult.

William Kidston

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

All right, I will back out. Thanks guys.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · North & Webster LLC. Please go ahead your line is open

Have a good one.

Operator

Operator

It appears, we have no further questions at this time, so I will turn the program back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Victor Dellovo

Analyst · Investletter. Please go ahead. Your line is open

Thank you for joining us today and for your support of CSPI. We look forward to speaking with you again in the New Year.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today program. Thanks for your participation. You may now disconnect.