Robert Matthiessen
Analyst · Ken Nagy with Zacks Investment Research
Thanks, Laura. Welcome, everyone, to our 2012 quarter -- first quarter conference call. While Hugh will review the financial results in detail, I'd like to highlight some of our achievements.
Let me start with financial results for the quarter, which were better than we had expected. What a difference a few months make. Recall that our Q1 guidance provided on March 7 reflected the turbulent macroeconomic environment and resulting softness in semiconductor-related bookings that the industry experienced in the second half of 2011, as well as costs related with the closing of the Thermonics acquisition. At the same time, though, we also noted that we were fairly certain that as we approached the end of the first quarter, we were through the trough in the semiconductor business, and we expected a continuation of the trend, which we have decidedly seen.
To date, our order flow has returned to more robust levels, and Q1 bookings increased 60% quarter-over-quarter, a clear reflection of our customers' commitments to increase their overall test capacity. And I think it bears noting that although the softness in the semiconductor-related business of last year, of course, mainly impacted our Mechanical and Electrical Products segment, I am proud to note that a few weeks ago, that very same Mechanical and Electrical Products groups were recognized for excellence and awarded the Texas Instruments 2011 Supplier Excellence Award.
Our results for the quarter were fueled by a continued recovery of our semiconductor business, driven by the increasing demand for mobility products, and demonstrate our focus and commitment to a differentiated product strategy. Over the last few years, we have been transforming inTEST through the strategic diversification of our Thermal Products segment, and we now address growth markets in both the semiconductor and non-semiconductor areas, including automotive, consumer electronics, defense/aerospace, telecommunications and most recently, the nuclear market.
Q1 revenue of $10.7 million increased 6% sequentially and exceeded guidance by 2%. In addition, our essentially breakeven net income also exceeded our expectations. And although we broke our 9-quarter trend of profitability, we do expect to be profitable again in Q2. So we see Q1's results as only a dip.
Total bookings for the first quarter were $12.9 million, a 60% increase as compared with Q4 2011's bookings of $8.1 million. 13% of first quarter 2012 bookings were derived from markets outside of semiconductor tests as compared with 38% in fourth quarter of 2011 and 17% in the comparable prior quarter. It's not unexpected that our non-semi business, as a percentage of total bookings and revenues, would decline in Q1, largely due to the impact of the acquisition of Thermonics, whose revenues were 100% in the semi space.
The 2011 year-end statistics for the non-semi business were heavily impacted by 2 things which inflated the percentage of non-semi business. One was the second half weakness in the semi business and our Mechanical and Electrical Products segments, which made the non-semis business we had appear as a larger percentage of our overall business; and secondly, the significant order we received in the second half of the year from Emerson Rosemount, which was approximately $1 million. This order related to equipment needed to replace damaged or destroyed equipment in the Thai floods, and that business was 100% non-semi.
We continue to leverage our Thermal division and the Sigma Systems acquisition and expect that, on an overall basis, non semiconductor-related products will continue to play an even greater role on the company's success as we further diversify our end market penetration.
Now let me turn to each of the segments in which we operate. The Mechanical Products, which make the test head manipulators and docking hardware; Electrical Products, who make the tester interfaces, and of course, our thermal products. Within Mechanical Products, we saw a very strong resurgence in bookings in the last few months of the quarter, with increased first quarter bookings of $3.8 million compared with fourth quarter bookings of $1.1 million. In this segment, we continue to develop and refine our manipulator and docking hardware products, which positions us with a well-targeted product mix to develop customer-specific docking solutions.
We have had a number of successes in this quarter. We received an order for $2.2 million from a major domestic semiconductor manufacturer. Some of the order, which includes manipulator, docking hardware and tester interface products manufactured by both our Mechanical and Electrical Products segments, were shipped during the first quarter, and the remainder is shipping in the second quarter.
We secured a multipiece docking order in Shanghai against heavy competition. We understand the business is mobile communications-related and based on new devices for next-generation smartphone. Additionally, we introduced new docking and interface products to support the Advantest T2000 tester and have begun shipping these with no issues. This is a tester family that we have had little previous activity on. Our understanding is that this domestic IC manufacturer had a 5-year exclusive deal with Advantest on that tester that has just -- sorry, that's just become available to other customers in the past few years.
And lastly, as I mentioned earlier, we are awarded the Supplier Excellence Award by Texas Instruments, and there will be a delegation from TI visiting us in mid-May to make the formal presentation. Our partnership with TI has spanned nearly 30 years. Long-standing industry relationships with our suppliers and customers are a hallmark of our success, leading to smooth, new product introductions and helping to ensure that all the elements of our customers' test sets will work together efficiently as a system and be delivered on time. The TI Supplier Excellence Award is public recognition of the ongoing efforts that we have made to provide the highest level of manufacturing expertise to support the industry's highly demanding technology.
Going forward, we will continue to refine and develop new docking solutions, as these are semi-custom products. Our Cobal 500 manipulator is completing its TUV certification, and 2 units are being prepared for customer evaluation, 1 domestically and the other in Southeast Asia. This manipulator is suitable for test heads weighing up to 500 kilograms or 1,100 pounds. A range of popular testers are in this class, including those from Teradyne, Verigy and Nextest.
Turning to the Electrical Products segment. We continue to make substantial inroads. And as we experienced with the Mechanical segment, we also saw a very strong resurgence in bookings in the last few months of the quarter. First quarter Electrical bookings of $3.8 million exceeded our expectations, substantially improving over fourth quarter 2011 bookings of $864,000. Our Electrical segment was extremely busy this quarter. Not only did they record their highest bookings since 2009, they also relocated to a new facility in Fremont, California over a long weekend at the end of March and were back in production on Monday, April 2. This facility is much better suited to our needs and size and cost, and our lease runs for 5 years, with an additional 6 months of free rent.
Electrical segment highlights for the first quarter included: one, a record volume of orders in Q1 for probe towers for Teradyne's FLEX testers. We understand that much of this business is mobile communications-related; secondly, the Electrical segment shared with the Mechanical segment design wins on the Advantest T2000; and thirdly, we successfully installed new interfaces for the Eagle test ETS-200FT system for use in testing high-voltage, high current semiconductors, such as those used in electrically-powered automobiles; and last, but surely not least, let me turn it to our Thermal segment, which remains our strongest segment.
First quarter Thermal bookings were $5.3 million as compared with fourth quarter bookings of $6.1 million. As we had discussed on our last quarterly call, the quarter-over-quarter decline in bookings is attributed to the slowdown in business that began in October and November of 2011, although these months did benefit from the $1.4 million in the Thai flood-related bookings. The slowdown bottomed in January and then a recovery began. Bookings in February were up 38% over January, with March up another 37% over February. And bookings for April continue to be strong. 33% of first quarter bookings for the Thermal Products segment came from non-semi customers. Sigma Systems accounted for 14% of Q1 bookings for the Thermal Products segment.
The industry is definitely heating up, no pun intended, with mobility driving the semi test recovery. Worldwide, there is continued expansion in all forms of technology, and opportunities in the telecom market continue to offer good business potential for us. As the boundaries of telecom and media entertainment continue to merge, an increased demand for bandwidth will drive expansion.
The Semiconductor market improved, and we had increasingly strong bookings from those companies serving the telecom market, including fiber optics, RF and microwave companies. For example, although the fiber optic industry went somewhat quiet in Q4 of 2011, a major Singaporean supplier of optical interface components has increased its fiber optic device testing, buying month-after-month over the last 4 months. Also, a large Chinese manufacturer of mobile computing devices, including broadband modems, wireless gateways and routers and M2M cloud platforms, shows our mobile attempt [ph] solution, which is basically a ThermoStream combined with thermal chambers for production testing of fiber optic components for their latest 3G and 4G technologies, which resulted in almost $500,000 in orders during the quarter.
Truck sales and service bookings were up 21% over Q4 2011 and 7% compared with Q1 2011. On January 16, we closed the acquisition of Thermonics and have fully integrated it into our operations. The addition of Thermonics further enhances our presence in the ATE industry, while at the same time, provides additional leverage in the growth industries outside of the semiconductor industry.
The California operations were shut down on February 17, 2012, and the business was relocated to our Mannsfield, Massachusetts facility, with manufacturing commencing on March 5.
And while we did experience an initial lull in the sales cycle due to some preliminary uncertainty by both the end user and distribution networks surrounding the acquisition, leads and quotation activity have been up sequentially each month since the first quarter. And Q2 was presently forecast back to 2011 business levels.
We shipped over 200,000 in Thermonics products in March, including multiple units built from scratch in Mannsfield, and we expect $500,000 in shipments for April. Thermonics is expected to be creative to our operations beginning in the second quarter of 2012. Clearly, the expansion of our Thermal group presents inTEST with increased opportunities arising from new capabilities and products from the Thermonics brand. We are forging a new path and tapping new markets. In fact, we are identifying markets and creating customers with new products they've never had before.
In summary, we continue to advance our growth initiatives and delivered another strong quarter. We exceeded our guidance and are guiding for a higher Q2. The diversification of our served markets via our Thermal group is a strength we will leverage going forward. The recovery of our semiconductor customers, along with the new non-semi businesses in which we are engaging, give us confidence in the long-term growth prospects for inTEST Corporation. It's a very exciting time for our industry, with ever-changing developments in technology, market conditions and end user requirements driving innovation.
In the test equipment world, change is good as increased ship content translates into more testing, which, in turn, is good for inTEST. In fact, we benefit from both capacity increases and technology advances, as geometry nodes become ever finer. For example, capacity will typically drive or manipulate our business because capacity demand normally means new testers, which, in turn, means new manipulators. However, in addition to that, any changes in devices that require different methods of probing them or different handling systems to move them around require a new docking hardware and new electrical interfaces from us. Additionally, we benefit from ever-increasing need to test products not only in the factory environment but also in thermally-challenging conditions that would apply to handheld electronics and automotive electronics and telecommunications equipment, as well as any component or system that will or could be subjected to a hostile environment.
InTEST is thriving on these changes and the increased need to test that follows. As we look ahead to 2012, we expect these elements to persist, and we are positioned to meet the demands of these changes. Our operations are strong, and we are well-positioned to define the next steps in our expansion to businesses outside of the semiconductor industry.
I'd like to now turn the call over to our CFO for the financial review. Hugh?