Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Aerohive Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jessica Stancil. Please go ahead, ma'am.
HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (HIVE)
Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 31, 2018
$2.32
—
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+2.78%
1 Week
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1 Month
-38.89%
vs S&P
-42.09%
Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Aerohive Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jessica Stancil. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Jessica Stancil
Management
Thank you, operator. Welcome to Aerohive Networks third quarter 2018 financial results conference call. After the market closed today, Aerohive issued a press release through Business Wire. The release is also available on our website at aerohive.com. This call is being webcast live on the Investor Relations section of the Aerohive website and will be available for 30 days. Today's call is being hosted by David Flynn, President and Chief Executive Officer; and John Ritchie, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. During the course of today's call, management will make forward-looking statements including statements regarding our projections, operating results, expectations for future revenue growth, operating profitability and operating margin, plans for future investments, product development, deployment, adoption and performance and expectations of customer buying patterns and the growth of the market for our products and business generally. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties some of which are beyond our control, and the actual outcomes may - and results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements, as a result of these uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that could affect our financial and operating results, including risks and uncertainties included under the caption Risk Factors and Management's Discussion and Analysis of financial condition and results of operations in our recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Aerohive's SEC filings are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.aerohive.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. All forward-looking statements in this presentation and the reference press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof. We disclaim any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they are made, except as required by law. Today, we will be discussing both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures have been adjusted to exclude certain charges and are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP measures and a discussion of why we present non-GAAP financial measures, please see today's press release available on our website. And now, I'll turn the call over to David Flynn, President and CEO of Aerohive.
David Flynn
Management
Thank you, Jessica, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered third quarter revenue within our guidance range and gross margin at the top end of our range. We made excellent progress on our operational efficiency as demonstrated by EPS above the top end of our guidance range and $7 million of cash generation, which has driven our cash balances to a multi-year high of approximately $95 million. We're very pleased with the continued progress in moving our business to a SaaS-like business model. We delivered record high subscription and support revenue and gross margins within this business to account for approximately one-third of our total gross margin dollars in the quarter. Strong subscription and renewal orders also led to a record high increase in deferred revenue bringing our total deferred revenue balances to an all-time of approximately $76 million. Strong growth in deferred revenue as a result of cloud subscriptions hitting record high contribution levels, as new customers increasingly embrace our cloud platform and as existing customers show their confidence in us by renewing and extending their commitment to Aerohive. While, we are pleased to return to year-over-year revenue growth in Q3, the growth was dampened by softness in EMEA late in the quarter as well as our focus in Q3 and continuing Q4 on driving our subscription and renewal business. We can clear that we would be constrained on AX shipments in the quarter, we made this a priority to ensure we cement our customer relationships. And they've been asked to offer these customers a seamless path to upgrade to our new 802.11ax products over the coming quarters. The beauty of our architecture that they can maintain their enterprise wide cloud management subscription and simply swap out individual access points in a phase transition to 802.11ax,…
John Ritchie
Management
Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for joining us here today. Before I begin, I'd like to remind everybody that all numbers discussed today have been adjusted for ASC 606. Now moving on to the quarter, I'd like to highlight some financial and operational milestones, Aerohive achieved in our third quarter. We exceeded our estimates for non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP EPS, we came in at the high-end of our guidance for non-GAAP gross margin. Our subscription and support business set all kind records for revenues and gross margin, and we had a very strong cash quarter in the third quarter of 2018. During the balance of my prepared remarks, I will cover our GAAP, non-GAAP P&L, our balance sheet for the third quarter and provide some related commentary on our business. I will close by reviewing our financial guidance for the fourth quarter of 2018. Now moving on to the third quarter, revenue came in at $40.6 million essentially even with the prior quarter and up $1.3 million or 3% on a year-over-year basis, marking our return to year-over-year growth. Product revenue in Q3 was $28.8 million relatively even both on the sequential and year-over-year basis. Subscription and support contributed over $11.7 million in the quarter and 29% of total revenue, up 5% of sequential basis, and up 16% compared with the same quarter a year ago. Robust demand AX product left us with limited inventory, as such we refocused our sales teams to concentrate on driving our subscription and renewal business, this was a concerted effort to make customer relationships and establish a seamless pact [ph] to upgrade them to our new 802.11ax product families over the coming quarter. We view the growth in our subscription and support business as a vote of confidence by our customers.…
David Flynn
Management
Thanks, John. In closing, in Q3, we strengthen our product line and deliver profitability year-over-year growth and strong cash generation. We are making progress on our growth plan as demonstrated by the sustained growth in our subscription and support revenue. While, we are not yet seen the level of top line growth we aspire to, we still do expect to deliver year-over-year growth both in Q4 and for the second half, and we are encouraged that our improved product offerings are bringing us into more large opportunities, which suggests definite progress towards our long-term goals. I'd like to thank our partners, customers and employees for their support and loyalty as we continue to prove our execution and our return to growth. We'll now take your questions. Operator?
Operator
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first Mark Kelleher with D.A. Davidson.
Mark Kelleher
Analyst
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Hi, guys.
David Flynn
Management
Hello, Mark.
John Ritchie
Management
Hey, Mark.
Mark Kelleher
Analyst
Hey. Just wanted to ask about particularly about the ramping at Juniper, you said that the pipeline was strong, not really seeing that in the Q4 guidance. Is there some start-up time that you have to go before [Technical Difficulty] meaningful contribution from Juniper?
John Ritchie
Management
Yeah. I'd say - I mean, Juniper contributed some meaningful projects in Q3 and there are some in Q4, but we kind of reference a few times is - there were seeing more large projects in new verticals with new customers, and Juniper has certainly been a contributor of that. I think, what we've found is sometimes new channel, new customer, new vertical you have to be a little bit more cautious about your forecast of close on those, there's a risk of getting overenthusiastic, but how quickly things are moved. And that's what we are suggesting that there - we're looking at some of those opportunities with caution in our - as we layout our guidance. But we are encouraged that we are seeing more of those opportunities coming from Juniper.
Mark Kelleher
Analyst
Okay. And you mentioned some inventory issue with AX. Could you just talk about that a little bit?
John Ritchie
Management
So we have - as we're launching a new product inventory comes in fits and starts. The good news is, we just about sold out of everything we had in the AX. That - we've got plenty of AX for the fourth quarter. But we wanted to take advantage of the fact that we could focus the sales folks on the subscription and support business kind of cementing in that relationship, so when AX became more fully available in future quarters, those customers would already be locked in by extending their subscriptions.
David Flynn
Management
But importantly, we - I just said, it was tight during the quarter and John's commented [of its start] [ph], but we're beyond that now and we actually have a good flow of product and our position to capitalize on it.
Mark Kelleher
Analyst
All right. And last question the headwind from K-12, could you size that? What's that as a percent revenue now?
David Flynn
Management
What is K-12 overall?
Mark Kelleher
Analyst
Yes. As a percentage of revenue - yeah. What's that headwind? I know, that's still struggling.
David Flynn
Management
Yeah. So year-to-date K-12 is about a third of the business. It was about 40% a year - in 2017 over the same period. So we've kind of brought down the dependence on K-12. Q3 is usually - seasonally strong K-12 quarter, Q4 normally light. This one is probably - is later than usual, because actually some of the E-Rate stuff funded relatively early this year is in contrast with last year or so. So there's a bit more of a K-12 is softer this Q4 than usual, which is why we needed to grow the enterprise business a little bit more to put up the kind of guy we would have liked to put up.
Mark Kelleher
Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks.
David Flynn
Management
Thank you.
Operator
Operator
We'll now take our next question from [Zack Trucad] with Dougherty.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Hey, guys. This is Zack on for Catherine.
David Flynn
Management
Hi, Zack.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Just wanted to kind of go back into the vertical right down a bit, if you could quantify at all other verticals that your thought were strong in the period or weaker than norm in the period, and where you feel you have to biggest opportunity going forward for growth outside of education?
David Flynn
Management
Yeah. So inside the quarter, as we mentioned, the EMEA had - it was soft late in the quarter. It had been a grower - it's been growing strong double-digit growth rates in the first half, and actually dipped. So that's - and that's our user and strongest enterprise territory. So that actually dampened some of the enterprise results inside the quarter. Actually education was strong, because of the - as I said some of the early funding or some of the E-Rate matter. So that was a bit of an anomaly from where we were in the prior quarters. But year-to-date, as I said, we have substantially reduced that dependence on education, with the year-to-date taking down from 40% to one-third of the business. As we look forward, absolutely, we see enterprise as a great market, we are seeing - mention the cruise line and some other hospitality segments that we are very encouraged with. Universities is growing as well as we have some very interesting kind of retail and health projects kind of the other - some of the other core markets we've been talking about. And so, we expect to continue to reduce our dependence on education over the coming quarters.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Got it. And you said the softness in EMEA, is the fact that rebound in Q4, correct?
David Flynn
Management
That's correct.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Okay. Got it. One of the thing, I think, beyond the Juniper partnership in Q3 is, how was the Dell partnership is progressing? Do you expect any sort of ramp-up from that, say, the next 12 months?
David Flynn
Management
I didn't indicate. We did see Dell grow sequentially from Q2 to Q3, I think on the last quarter's call. I think, we did indicated the Dell that actually been surprisingly down sequentially. So pleased when we saw it turn more positive, and continue to work to grow that relationship. And hopefully we can continue to grow going forward and also very excited about the Juniper partnership and its potential to get us into new types of accounts going forward.
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Got it. Thanks, guys.
David Flynn
Management
Thank you.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from Erik Suppiger with JMP Securities.
Erik Suppiger
Analyst · JMP Securities.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. First off on the tariffs, do you do - you said that only a small portion of your portfolio is going to be subject to tariffs. Do you do most of your manufacturing outside of China or can you talk a little bit about where - what portion is in China?
David Flynn
Management
We do 100% of our manufacturing in China, it's just the categorization of our products fall outside of those products that are categorized as being subject to the tariffs.
Erik Suppiger
Analyst · JMP Securities.
Okay. Would you consider moving the manufacturing to another country or is a small enough that's - what is it?
John Ritchie
Management
No. We're reviewing all options at this point. And even that subset would prefer not to pay tariffs on the - in the subset of products. That are subject to the tariffs, but yeah, we clearly are looking at moving elsewhere. Obviously, the moving target about what future expectations are on tariffs. And so clearly, and we know now where we stand there's talk about higher tariffs and maybe changing categories in the future that could change things and change the dynamic. But for now, we feel we're in pretty good shape.
Erik Suppiger
Analyst · JMP Securities.
Okay. And then, anything new on the competitive front either with Cisco/HP or with some of the low cost vendors like Cambium or Ubiquity?
John Ritchie
Management
Yeah. I don't think, we've seen - I think, there hasn't been a material change in the core competitors in terms of what we see with Cisco. Obviously, more and more mirage [ph] generally as we as we go forward with Cisco/HP unchanged, we don't see Cambium that that's a name that never comes up in a conversation here.
David Flynn
Management
Literally never comes up, did you see Ubiquity on the rare occasion, not - our paths don't cross very often. But our paths never crossed with Cambium.
Erik Suppiger
Analyst · JMP Securities.
Very good. Okay. Thank you.
David Flynn
Management
Okay.
Operator
Operator
And it appears, there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to David Flynn for any additional or closing remarks.
David Flynn
Management
All right. Thank you all for joining us today. We will be presenting at the Needham Conference in New York on November 13, as we look forward to seeing you there or at upcoming conferences on the road. Thank you.