Earnings Labs

GigaMedia Limited (GIGM)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Fri, Apr 12, 2013

$1.46

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 and full year 2012 GigaMedia Limited Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) I must advice you that this conference is being recorded today, Friday the 12th April 2013. And I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Brad Miller. Thank you, please go ahead.

Brad Miller

Analyst

Thank you this is Brad Miller, Investor Relations Director of GigaMedia. Welcome to our conference call to discuss GigaMedia’s fourth quarter and full year 2012 financial results. With me today are Collin Hwang, CEO, and Dirk Chen, CFO. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that a number of forward-looking statements will be made during this conference call. Forward-looking statements are any statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of GigaMedia and there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, GigaMedia’s actual results could differ materially from these statements. Information about factors that could cause, and in some cases have caused, such differences can be found in GigaMedia’s Annual Report which is filed on Form 20-F with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This presentation is being made on April 12, 2013 in Taiwan. The content of this presentation contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the time hereof. If any portion of this presentation is rebroadcast, retransmitted, or redistributed at a later date, GigaMedia will not be revealing, or updating the material that is contained therein. After today’s prepared remarks, we will respond to questions we received by email and we’ll also be taking live questions. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to our CEO, Collin Hwang.

Collin Hwang

Analyst

Hello everyone. Thank you all for joining us. Today, I would like to provide an overview of what we are doing now to grow Gigamedia and build shareholders’ value. I will then turn the call over to Brad for a look at our financial and operational details. So let me begin with our online game business and summarize for you three things. One, our view of the market, two our vision for the games business and three what we are doing to grow. So one is the market, in our market Taiwan the strongest demand is for casual browser mobile games. Revenue clearly shows this trend. Revenue for publishers of licensed PC-based games in Taiwan were basically flat in 2012 and profit declined. In contrast, revenue for companies focused on browser games grew at healthy double-digit rates. Driving this trend is a large smartphone market that is growing very fast. There are about 7 million smartphone subscribers in Taiwan at a penetration rate of 24% of all phone subs. That is more than the US market which is about 172 million subs and less than the US penetration rate of 48%. But smartphone subs are growing at 80% year-over-year in Taiwan. This is one of the fastest growth rate of any of the top-30 countries in the world for smartphones. People in Taiwan also commonly purchase games on their phones, Taiwan ranked 14th in the world by revenues for apps mobile games, despite the fact that Taiwan ranked only 29th in the world for total number of smartphones. And it’s not only changing the landscape of our existing game business but same for the cloud business which I will address later on. So in sum the casual browser and mobile games market is growing quickly fueled by very strong smartphone…

Brad Miller

Analyst

Okay, thanks Collin. Today, I will start with a shareholder question then I will summarize our Q4 results and end with our short-term and medium-term outlook for our business. Let me begin then by addressing a question that we’ve often received from shareholders, what is exciting about your business? Or what is great about your business? In online games, we are, for the first time in position to benefit from the sector where market growth in strongest, browser and mobile games. By opening up our platform, we can benefit from the many different devices that are used for games now and new ones that are being developed. We can make one app, port it to smart TV, a tablet, et cetera. There is a growing opportunity here and it’s not nearly as expensive to develop and operate games in this market. By creating a common back-end across platforms and building social features into our products, we can benefit from increased player activity and community effects. Our focus on self-development will allow us to create products designed for our market, it will give us the ability to quickly capitalize on events and trends and it will help ensure we can sustain healthy margins. And while our current PC-based casual games business is not a growth market, it does continue to provide us with benefits, gross margins for our self-developed casual games run close to 80% and ARPU for certain games run over $100 per month. Fun Town has developed strong expertise in creating, building game communities and monetizing casual games. The performance of our PC-based casual games and the expertise developed to grow and support it are solid assets and it will help us build our new games business. In cloud computing, we are in the right place at the right…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And it appears we have no questions at this time.

Brad Miller

Analyst

Okay operator, we have actually received a few questions by email. The first question that we have received and our CFO Dirk Chen will address this regarding goodwill impairment that was recorded in Q4. Dirk?

Dirk Chen

Analyst

Hi, everyone, this is Dirk Chen, the CFO of GigaMedia and (indiscernible) we record a goodwill impairment in our today's release for the 2012 financial results. Regarding the goodwill we carry it on our balance sheet, related to the acquisition of Fun Town game business in 2006 that’s about seven years ago. And the last time I think our game strategy was to license major MMO games. But however, due to outside game environment change we also changed our gaming strategy as well. Our forecast right now has changed and with a more conservative focus. We expect our strategy of focusing on self-development of casual game and we hope this strategy change can be successful in the future. So, we expect not further impairments on this goodwill. However if this cannot achieve moderate growth based on our new strategy on games development. I think the further impairment maybe necessary however I think the management will prevent this happen and we will do our best – based on our new strategy on gaming. Thank you.

Brad Miller

Analyst

Okay, thanks Dirk. Operator, I will turn it back to you if there are any more questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And it appears there are no further questions at this time. (Operator Instructions)

Brad Miller

Analyst

Okay, operator we have a couple of questions from investors on our cloud business. Could you talk more about the opportunities that you see for the business in the government sector? Collins has a few comments he like to share on this question.

Collin Hwang

Analyst

Yes, in Greater China, we are seeing a growing number of government related cloud initiatives and this program ranging from incentives offered by local government to SMEs to adopt cloud technology to government mandates for government agency themselves to implement cloud technology to increase their internal efficiency and we believe this market presents a good opportunity for us. However, investors normally concerned about the security of investment in China. But this time, we are taking our IP, or intellectual property and working with the government in China, which is no hardware involved in the business and we are working with international partners there, like hardware partner Asus. So therefore, I think our risk is minimal and growth potential is big. Thank you.

Brad Miller

Analyst

Another question that we’ve received on GigaCloud, will you need to make many investments in the business in 2013 to support growth? I’ll answer this question. Initially, there will not be heavy investments. We outsourced a lot of the development of this business. So that eliminates the need for heavy investments at least initially. As we scale up, we may need to make some investments, but not at the present time. Operator any questions?

Operator

Operator

There are no questions at this time. (Operator Instructions) And it appears there are no questions at this time.

Brad Miller

Analyst

Okay, thanks very much. That’s all we have for today. For further information about the company or if you have questions and would like to contact us, please visit our website at www.gigamedia.com. That concludes today’s call and thank you again everyone for joining us.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.