Earnings Labs

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (KEYS)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 19, 2015

$331.86

-2.64%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Keysight Technologies Fiscal Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Mike and I will be your lead operator today. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this call is being recorded today, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 1:30 P.M. Pacific Time. I would now like to hand the conference over to Jason Kary, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please go ahead Mr. Kary. Jason A. Kary - Treasurer, Investor Relations & Vice President: Thank you, Mike, and welcome everyone to Keysight's third quarter earnings conference call for fiscal year 2015. With me are Ron Nersesian, Keysight President and CEO and Neil Dougherty, Keysight Senior Vice President and CFO. Joining in the Q&A after Neil's comments will be Guy Séné, Senior Vice President of Measurement Solutions and Worldwide Sales and Mike Gasparian, Senior Vice President of Customer Support Services and Marketing. You can find the press release and information to supplement today's discussion on our website at investor.keysight.com. While there, please click on the link for Quarterly Reports under the Financial Information tab. There you'll find an investor presentation along with Keysight's segment results. We will also post a copy of the prepared remarks following this call. As usual, today's comments by Ron and Neil will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. You will find the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations on our website. We will make forward-looking statements about the financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are only valid as of today. The company assumes no obligation to update them. Please review the company's recent SEC filings for a more complete picture of our risks and other factors. And now, I'd like to turn the…

Operator

Operator

And the first question is from the line of Patrick Newton from Stifel. Patrick M. Newton - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: I have couple questions on Anite, if I may. One is did I hear you correctly that there's four points of growth embedded in the outlook for the acquisition in your fiscal fourth quarter? Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Sorry, in the fourth quarter, it's five points of growth. Patrick M. Newton - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Five points of growth. Okay. Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yes. Patrick M. Newton - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: And then how should we think about the $20 million in cost savings? You talked about it layering in over the next 24 months, but when you provided your $0.14 to $0.17 of accretion, how much of that $20 million is built into fiscal year 2016? Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, the – as we look at our integration plan, not surprisingly, there are a few things that kind of you get quick wins, but then a large portion of the integration plan takes time. Our focus with the integration is really on making sure that we continue to generate the growth that Anite has generated over the past year and we want to continue that trend. So there's a relatively small portion of those synergies will be realized within FY 2016. That $20 million will be really the run rate that we will achieve two years from now. Patrick M. Newton - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. That's helpful. And then I guess where exactly are those cost savings going to be coming from, Neil? Neil P. Dougherty -…

Operator

Operator

We have time for one last question and the question comes from the line of Richard Eastman with Robert W. Baird. Richard C. Eastman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah. So let me ask a couple of questions here. One, Ron, can you just talk to orders the seasonal or sequential strength in orders. Where did that come from? I mean it looks quite good and there was some reference to the fourth quarter looking slightly better, so maybe you could just kind of dive into that order number and why seasonally where the strength was. Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. I'll let Guy give you some color commentary, but as we mentioned, our core orders were down only 1%. All regions were up with the exception of Greater China. So that gives us a very good perspective and that's a substantial improvement from what we had seen in Q2. And Guy, I think you may want to give some more comments. Guy Séné - SVP-Measurement Solutions & Worldwide Sales: Yes, of course. Richard, when you look at the adjusted for currency in orders, mainly this was driven by a stronger wireless R&D, we also had some good business in the components and the semiconductor. We had, for instance, won some large design deals mainly with our high-speed digital solutions there. Europe was up also on strong semiconductor and manufacturing test. We had some good aerospace defense deals, and obviously, we have easier compare now for Russia. And Japan continues to see steady investments in device component manufacturing and we also had some nice investments for 4G wireless in R&D for them. So again, as Ron was saying, all regions except Greater China were positive in all of those. Richard C.…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Couillard with Jefferies.

S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies.

Thanks. Good afternoon. Neil, just back to that last question on the market growth, do you have an estimate for what your $12 billion TAM, what the market did or will do in 2015? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I'll take that question. This year I mean you can look at all the competitors and seeing what's happened during the last 12 months. We see it roughly flat, now again, when you look at the public numbers that exist for the public competitors, we look at the test and measurement portion of Danaher, we look at the test and measurement portion, for instance, of Anritsu, don't look at their total numbers, but look at the markets that we play in. And then we use a third-party source when available to try to fill in some of the smaller competitors. But during the last 12 months, it's been roughly flat.

S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies.

Super. Then, Neil, you alluded to some one-time benefits on the margins in the third quarter, what were those attributable to? And as far as the Anite accretion goes for next year, are you absorbing any – are there any upfront one-time costs or expenses that are embedded in that accretion expectation? Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. So first of all, with regard to the one-time benefits that we saw here in the third quarter, we do an annual true-up of our U.S. benefit costs. It's essentially we accrue expenses based on actuarial estimates, as there were things like workman's comp, disability and medical and then we do a true-up once a year to essentially reconcile between the rate at which we were accruing and actual experience – and our actual experience over the course of the last 12 months was favorable relative to the rate at which we had been accruing. That's not something that you can count on going forward. It only takes one or two events to flip that the other way. So we believe we accrue over the long-term at the right rate, we just had a little bit of good luck over the course of the last 12 months. And then with regard to your question about the costs associated with Anite and delivering those synergies, if you review the 2.7 document, we do talk about kind of integration cost – total integration costs including both the costs necessary to generate those cost synergies as well as some potential IP transactions totaling $100 million. That was what was shared in the original transaction documents. We now believe that, that number would max out at $80 million again and that would be really over the course of the first couple of years you'd see those things – that, that money's spent.

S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies.

Super. And then last one, Ron, you alluded to a slightly improved 4Q outlook. What changed relative to your initial expectation? What are you more optimistic about in particular? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's really the forecast, we do a bottoms-up forecast in our sales organization; we do a bottoms-up forecast in each of the divisions that are out working with customers on big deals. We look at the size of our funnel and we look at our direct channel as well as the funnels from some of the business that we've converted from indirect in the U.S. to direct, and all of those come together in a forecast and where we're glad that we've seen an increase in that forecast going forward. As you know, we also build backlog in Q3, which was very nice.

S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies.

Super. Thank you. Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I would like to turn the conference back to Jason Kary. Jason A. Kary - Treasurer, Investor Relations & Vice President: Thank you, Mike. I'm actually going to turn it over to Ron for your final comments. Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. While market conditions remain relatively soft, we've delivered to our operating model as well as focused on transforming our company to grow. We will continue to leverage our unique formula of technology-leading hardware and software and our large global network of experts to create value for customers and shareholders. In closing, I remind you that our inaugural Keysight Investor and Analyst Meeting is on September 1 in New York City. We look forward to sharing more details of our long-term plan for value creation and providing you a better understanding of Keysight's strengths and market opportunities. I hope you can join us. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.