Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Dolby Laboratories Conference Call discussing Fiscal Fourth Quarter Results. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded, Thursday, November 16, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Peter Goldmacher, Vice President of Investor Relations. Peter, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, welcome to Dolby Laboratories' fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me today are Kevin Yeaman, Dolby Labs' CEO, and Robert Park, Dolby Labs' CFO. As a reminder, today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including our fiscal 2024 first quarter and full-year outlook and our assumptions underlying that outlook. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made today, including among other things, the impact of current macroeconomic events, ongoing supply chain issues, inflation rates, changes in consumer spending, and geopolitical instability on our business. A discussion of these and additional risks and uncertainties can be found in the earnings press release that we issued today under the section captioned Forward-Looking Statements, as well as in the Risk Factors section of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K. Dolby assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements made during this call as a result of new information or future events. During today's call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is available in our earnings press release and on the Interactive Analyst Center on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin.

Thank you, Peter, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Today, I'd like to cover three topics. First, I'm going to make some brief comments on the macro. Second, I will revisit the fundamental premise underlying our business model to help you understand why we remain so bullish on our opportunity. And third, I'll make a few comments about our fourth quarter and share our outlook and priorities for fiscal year '24 before turning the call over to Robert. I know the macro is top-of-mind for many of you. The demand environment hasn't changed noticeably since the last time we spoke in August. Our partners and customers still want to bring the best audio and video experiences to their consumers and we continue to have strong engagement. At the same time, many of our partners and customers continue to rebalance their priorities to reflect the current economic realities. The impact on Dolby from a top line perspective is that some new partnerships and design wins are taking more time. And when you layer-in the amount of time it takes to go from an agreement to a Dolby-enabled device reaching the market, things are just taking longer. I'll talk more about our outlook and the progress we're making on our long-term growth opportunities in a few minutes. But before I do that, I'd like to spend a few minutes revisiting our business model to help you all understand why we remain confident in our long-term growth opportunities. We generate over 90% of our revenues from licensing. Today, roughly two-thirds of our licensing revenue comes from our foundational audio technologies, which includes our branded audio codecs and our audio patent licensing. These technologies have broad penetration across a diverse set of devices and end markets and we continue to strengthen our…

Thanks, Kevin. Before I dig into the numbers, I'd like to share three thoughts. First, results for Q4 and the full year came in as expected from both the top line and bottom line perspective. Second, we're streamlining the business to best support our top line priorities, which will deliver margin expansion. And third, despite the economy, we feel good about our long-term prospects as our value proposition remains strong and our financials are solid. Q4 revenue was $291 million, up 4% compared to the year-ago quarter and just above the midpoint of guidance we shared with you on the last earnings call. Licensing revenue of $265 million was up 6% year-over-year. Products and services revenue was $25 million, down 13% year-over-year driven by lower cinema product sales. For the full-year 2023, we grew the business 4% to $1.3 billion. Our foundational technologies revenue was down approximately 5% year-over-year. Revenue from our Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and imaging patents category was up 20% year-over-year and represented just over one-third of our licensing revenue. We break our licensing revenue into five markets. Broadcast, which includes TVs and set-top boxes, mobile, consumer electronics, PC, and other. Detailed performance by category is on our IR website. But I'd like to point out some noteworthy details. Broadcast, our largest end-market, was down 6% year-over-year in the quarter, but was up 4% for the full year with Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision and imaging patents, more than offsetting declines in foundational revenue due to lower shipments. Consumer electronics was up 15% year-over-year in the quarter, but was down 9% for the full year, primarily due to lower device shipments. PC sales remained sluggish. And our other category grew 52% year-over-year in the quarter and was up 35% for the full-year, driven primarily by growth in imaging…

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question this afternoon from Steven Frankel at Rosenblatt Securities.

Hi, good afternoon. So, Kevin, let's explore a little bit this notion that you're going to have much lower growth in Atmos and Vision. Is that both a function of the deals that you had in the pipeline that are taking longer and your penetration has leveled out and here you get another slug of larger customers, kind of, where are we in the adoption cycle?

Yeah. Thanks, Steve. So it varies by type of content and type of device. But what I would say is our confidence in the growth in Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision is really founded and we continue to see, tremendous growth in the content across each of our focus areas. We continue to see more and more content available. And we do continue to have strong engagement across our pipeline. And Steve, you've been with us through many adoption cycles and we've done that through many different economic environments. And even in the best of times, it's difficult to predict the timing of those adoption cycles, rarely does it go in a straight line and that's particularly true in this environment where it could take a quarter or two longer to get a device win, it could take a quarter or two longer to get -- for a customer to get from a device win to a device in market. And so we continue to have confidence in our ability to grow at a 15% to 25% CAGR in the mid-term. And that's because of the strength we see in the amount of content coming to market in the distribution of that content and we continue to get design-wins and have great engagement with our partners.

Again, I'm just trying to dig into this a little more. So the traffic jam, so to speak, is that primarily in new customers or new device areas or are you seeing even in your current device area of customers saying, I'm going to stop spreading Atmos and Vision deeper in my product line for now maybe, because they are cost conscious.

So. I'd be hard-pressed to paint a broad brush across the entirety of our growth opportunities. But if you look at automotive, for instance, we continue to win partners. We announced BYD this quarter. That's our tenth partner over the last couple of years. Some of those devices are in-market, some of the devices are yet to come to market. And it's a growing part of the business, but coming off a relatively small base. In the TV space, there's a couple of things going on. One is that while overall TV units were largely flat, as you know, we have very-high penetration at the high-end of the market. We did over the last year see a shift from high-end to lower and mid-tier, which is where we continue to work to increase our attach rate. We did see some increases this year based on some of the announcements we've made throughout the year like TCL moving to 4K, moving to Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision on all of its North American 4K TVs and also looking to move that to India as well, but I think that that's an area where we see a lot of opportunity ahead of us. And one of the things we're excited up there is the continued momentum you see in sports content. That's a really important value proposition, which I think represents a new energy behind our value proposition for the low and the mid-tier. So those are some of the -- some of the dynamics within the -- within each of our focus areas.

Okay, let me stick to one last one. I appreciate the details on IO and focusing in on this streaming market, what's the timeline to get to meaningful revenue, does this help you ramp that business faster or is this still kind of a multi-year drive to get to where you need to go?

Well, so -- I think it helps us drive revenue growth faster. I think that ultimately Dolby IO stepping back is about bringing the Dolby experience to a far broader range of experiences and audiences and with a goal of increasing the TAM for Dolby. As you know, we've tried a number of things through our developer platform over the last few years. And what we've done is looked at where we're seeing the greatest opportunity and the greatest demand and that is for companies that are looking to build more immersive, more real-time, more personalized digital experiences and they are drawn to things like our ability to stream high-quality audio/video content in ultra-low latency, meaning that there is almost no discernible difference between what's going on live and when you're seeing it on your screen. And we're also seeing, Steve, that shifting toward demand from larger enterprises that want to do this at larger scale. So that's also a shift in the sales model, one that we feel well-suited to go after. And so that's why we've been able to kind of consolidate our activities, but more importantly, come out with a more focused organization.

Great. Thank you. I'll jump back in the queue.

Thank you. We'll go next now to Ralph Schackart at William Blair.

Definitely. Thanks for taking the question. Kevin, you talked about the partnerships and design wins maybe they are lengthened or delayed because of the macro. I just wanted to get some more context on that, is that something that you've seen a little bit more pronounced this quarter and perhaps last, just any more color you could give, sort of linearity of extension of these partnerships or designs throughout the last fiscal year.

Yeah. I think as we as we said at the top, I wouldn't say that we've seen a significant change in the macro since last time we talked, but obviously we've been operating in this environment for some time now. So there is kind of the cumulative effect of those things and we do continue -- I do want to emphasize that we continue to bring on some great partners like BYD, like the wins we on mobile this quarter adding Honor and a number of smart speakers and headphones partners. But you'll remember, Ralph, we were seeing some deals push out about a year, year and a half ago. Then we saw some of them land this last year, it's just a little bit harder to predict the timing in this environment. And like I said and as you know, in the best of times, these adoption cycles are not always linear. But when we have the level of momentum we have with content and the amount of adoption we have through distribution, we develop a very high degree of confidence that we can and will get on a much higher number of devices. But predicting that trajectory is not always easy, and it's a little bit harder in this environment that could take the form of design win taking longer, it could take the form of once we get the design win, the customer is waiting for a chipset to launch that product. It could be that they are moving the launch around, how the external environment is affecting them.

Great. And then one for Robert. Sounds like there is some further cost initiatives in the quarter. Maybe just kind of revisit your philosophy around operating expenses or how you're thinking about them for this fiscal year and kind of maybe your philosophy going forward and I guess really you’re focusing on OpEx. Thank you.

Yeah, in terms of operating expenses, as Kevin said, we're always looking at ways we can be more efficient and more effective in meeting our topline priorities, which is growing revenue in the most efficient way possible. You've seen that, what we've done in Q3 and in Q4, and finishing those actions here in November. And we're going to continue doing. I don't think you ever stop looking at it and make sure that you can be as effective and efficient as possible and the results of that as you see is expansion of the operating margins between 1 and 2 percentage points for the year. And that's how we're looking at it for this next year.

Okay, thanks Rob. Thanks. Kevin.

Thank you. We'll go next now to James Goss at Barrington Research.

All right. Thank you. I was wondering, first on televisions, if you think there's enough runway in terms of greater penetration with Atmos and Vision in the domestic markets, domestic manufacturers, for that to be our priority or do you think to the extent you've mentioned a couple of international television makers that could provide some opportunity that could rival whatever you're doing domestically.

Yeah. I think that we have had some great wins internationally over the last couple of quarters. I think the way to think about it, Jim, is that we have a very-high penetration across the high end of the market. And there is a larger amount of televisions in the low-to mid-tier and we're really confident in our ability to bring the Dolby experience to those devices given the momentum we have with movies and TV and given the increasing momentum we have with live sports. And that part of the market is going to be also about getting more of those international providers like the ones we've won, it's also quite a bit of big box retailers and white-label brands and we've had design wins coming in, but the opportunity is still in front of us.

Okay, but international probably is still significant to be a meaningful factor dollar-wise?

No. I would say it is the way to think about it is that we have high penetration at the high end. And so where that -- where that falls geographically is largely about consumption. We have high penetration in the high-end in Europe, in China, and in many other markets. So, you have seen some wins from us in the last couple of quarters in India this quarter and in Indonesia, so certainly there is more opportunity there, but I think in terms of the growth opportunity that we're excited about, we're really thinking first and foremost about increasing our penetration on the low-to-mid-tier devices and sports is a really important value proposition for that and we really increased our presence in sports and we're excited about where that's going forward.

Okay, and to the extent that Dolby's revenue generation has tended to be a sort of a rolling cycle of new initiatives over time with Atmos and Vision and the key ones at the moment and to the extent that IO has taken some came to gain some traction, do you think there is a chance that there are some royalty initiatives, they're not in the mix that we noticed right now that could wind up being emerging as significant for you before IO becomes significant.

Yeah it's a great question. I mean, we've been clear I think about our top focus areas. But yes, we continue to see -- we continue to innovate, we continue to bring new technologies to market, and there are other areas that certainly in the mid-term could produce growth in Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision.

Okay, I'll leave it right there for now.

Thank you. And gentlemen, it appears we have no further questions this afternoon. So we would like to thank everyone for joining the Dolby Laboratories fourth quarter results conference call. We wish you all a great. You may now disconnect.