Earnings Labs

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (KEYS)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 18, 2016

$331.86

-2.64%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Keysight Technologies Fiscal First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tracy, 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, Thursday, February 18, 2016, 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, and welcome everyone to Keysight's first quarter earnings conference call for fiscal year 2016. With me are Ron Nersesian, Keysight's President and CEO; and Neil Dougherty, Keysight's Senior Vice President and CFO. Joining in the Q&A after Neil's comments will be Mike Gasparian, Senior Vice President of the Communications Solutions Group; Gooi Soon Chai, Senior Vice President of the Industrial Solutions Group; John Page, Senior Vice President of the Services Solutions Group; and Guy Sene, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. 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. 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 today. 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…

Operator

Operator

And your first question comes from the line of Richard Eastman from Robert W. Baird. Your line is open. Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. Yes. Ron, could you maybe speak a little bit to the Communications business? And excluding Anite, which looks like it came in from a revenue standpoint about as expected, just speak to the core decline in Communications. I think math suggests maybe around 12%. Just a little bit of color on the pieces there. And maybe on the order side, how did orders fare in the quarter for the Comm business? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure, Rick. I'll turn this over to Mike Gasparian who leads that business, but let me make a couple of comments. You're right, on a core basis, we were down 11%. There are a couple things that are going on in the industry. First, there is consolidation of some players, there's restructuring, also and both of those things lead to a rationalization of spending. On top of that, you've heard about some of the contraction in the smartphone supply chain that's going on from some big players. So that's the macro picture of what's going on in the market overall. Our strategy has been, and it's been a multiyear strategy and we continue to make progress on it, is to move from wireless manufacturing to more of our business in wireless R&D. Wireless R&D has higher gross margins. It is a business that is more differentiated than manufacturing and is less cyclical or has less volatility than manufacturing. And I'm glad to report that our wireless R&D business is bigger than our wireless manufacturing business now by a good bit. And we'll continue to move towards a larger and larger percentage of our business being in wireless R&D with Anite being added. Our wireless R&D business with Anite grew, our wireless manufacturing business contracted and our other Communications which leads really into a lot of the fiber and a lot of the backhaul Communications also grew on a revenue basis. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Mike for a few comments.

Michael C. Gasparian - Senior Vice President and President, Communications Solutions Group

Analyst

Yeah, let me just add little color to that. I think, Ron, outlining a number of short-term factors that will put the Communications market under pressure. Nevertheless we believe there are still excellent long-term growth opportunities in the Communications segment, people will continue to invest in the evolution. As we go from 4G to 5G, there will be many points at which we'll get additional investments. And then we're seeing a really good uptick in the 5G research space. Our 5G orders have doubled in this most recent quarter, it's still on a small base, but it does reflect a number of engagements we have with research institutions around the world, and we have delivered a number of very unique solutions which will be showcasing at Mobile World Congress next week, where several of us will be there interacting with our key customers. Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And one other comment, a question that you asked Rick was, how our orders in the Communications sector with Anite? Our orders were up slightly in total. So our comps business is up slightly, but that includes an acquisition. Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. And just maybe Ron, one other thought. On the modular test side, again good double-digit growth. Is the growth coming heavily or is the growth heavily slanted towards the Communications business (22:33)? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. The Communications business is one significant part, plus also if you look at not only wireless R&D in general, but what we call other Communications, we're seeing a lot digital applications move over to modular. So, we have both of those areas or both of those subgroups in Communications that are moving. But as we expand our portfolio, you'll see more and more solutions in the industrial space too, which will allow us to make some traction against some competitors. Richard Eastman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. Very good. Thank you. Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome. Thanks, Rick.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Couillard with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Thanks, good afternoon. Ron, just sort of a big picture question for you. You've been with this business obviously a long time, been through several cycles over the past decade or so. How do you view the macro environment today relative to let's say the past few cycles? In terms of demand picture and what's different today versus what this business was like ala 2009 or prior? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. I have seen many cycles over the last 35 years, this one is pretty typical. And to be very honest, we don't have very good visibility on this cycle. There's a lot of things that are being created from the overall macro environment of the markets which is causing folks to hold on to their wallet. But let me give you some color commentary on to what happened this quarter. Our orders were tracking to expectations right through mid January. And as you know, a lot of the compares that you see, they report results or have reported results through December. But in January, in the middle of January, we saw a market slowdown in our incoming orders, and that's not inconsistent of what you've seen from some other larger players in the overall electronics markets. This macro uncertainty that is there, has caused people to pull back on CapEx and has caused customers to be much more cautious. So, if you look at that, if your revenue growth for the quarter was 4%, but if you look at our order growth it was minus 2%, but on a core basis it was minus 5%. And given this macro uncertainty, it's probable that the 2% market growth that we saw before this real, let's say, disconnect in January will probably not play out. Now what we're doing about it is we're taking action. We have an operating model, because we know our business has some cyclicality and this model allows us to deliver strong cash flow and solid double-digit operating margin throughout the cycle. And as you see, and as Neil mentioned in his script even in Q2, we're planning to deliver upper teens operating margin. And this is all why – while we continue to invest in growth and continue with our strong R&D programs in modular, software, wireless, and services. And we're getting great traction on all of those fronts. So, bringing it back, this cycle is not that untypical. I think when the markets stabilize, you may see some performance begin to return. So little unclear how quickly it will return, but again, we're talking about minus 5% core revenue growth in Q1.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Thanks, that's helpful. And just to be clear, do you have a revised market growth outlook for the year? And would that be simply a function of comms, and do I understand your comments that suggests that ICS and the aerospace and defense orders actually held up pretty well through January? Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. We don't have a revised market forecast for the full year. Actually, we'd expect with the kind of inflection point that we saw in orders in mid-January, our visibility out beyond, really beyond more than one quarter is increasingly limited. And so it's very difficult to call. I think as Ron said, it's highly unlikely at this point that we see 2% growth. But we do not have an updated forecast based on the 5% order decline, the core order decline that we saw in Q1. Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And when we see some of these big macro cycles and while we continue to generate great cash, sometimes it provides great opportunities for us to create value for our shareholders by doing share repurchase programs. We've talked in the past about still, number one, our priority is to fund strategic M&A, but we will be opportunistic when we can create value for our shareholders with buybacks such as we're doing right now. So I really believe we know how (28:08) to manage this business through the cycles to deliver profitability and to create shareholder value for the long term.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Super. And then one more for Neil, just on the CapEx side, was there something one-time in the front-end loading in the first quarter? And do you have a target that we should expect for the full year? Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. I wouldn't read more into that than it should. Some of the equipment that we buy is longer lead time and the actual cash flowing is a function of acceptance and installation and the rest. But we still intend to manage our overall CapEx budget to the year to the same $90 million to $100 million range that we put out in the past. And so just a little bit of a timing difference caused that to be more front-end loaded this year.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

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

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Newton from Stifel. Your line is now open. Patrick Newton - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yeah. Good afternoon, Ron and Neil. Thank you for taking my questions. I'm sorry if missed this in the prepared remarks, but just kind of looking at the Customer Support and Services gross margin below 40% for the first time in our historical model. I'm curious if you could talk through some of the impacts and maybe the duration of some of the pressures there. Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. Happy to do that. If you think about our services business, it's a higher fixed cost business when you compare it to the rest of Keysight. As you can see, our Q1 revenue was – were down in that segment, but that's as compared to kind of the run rates over the second half of last year, they were flat to Q1. But compared to the second half, when profitability was much higher, revenues were down. But you'll notice that the costs in that business are very stable. As we noted in prior quarters, we're still navigating through a change in our standard warranty from one year to three years, and that impacted the sale of extended warranties in that business and we're still essentially working through the impact to deferred revenue. We're losing about $7 million per quarter in deferred revenue as those previously sold extended warranties work their way through our P&L. This quarter, incidentally, will be the last quarter and we'll be through that, although it'll still be in our compares for remaining year. But the underlying growth rate of the business is strong. We mentioned the 11% growth rate if you adjust for that…

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Vijay Bhagavath with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Anjaya Shrestha - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Hi. Can you guys hear me? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Hi, Vijay. Neil P. Dougherty - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Hi.

Anjaya Shrestha - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Hi. This is AJ Shrestha in actually for Vijay Bhagavath. Just had two questions really. The first one was trying to get your thoughts on the product mix for the rest of the year. Should we expect a higher percentage in software mix? And the other one is the OpEx, how should we think about that for the rest of the year? Ronald S. Nersesian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, let me try and address those questions. I think we are making a concerted effort over time to shift the mix of our business towards more R&D solutions and more software. But if you put that in the scale of the rest of the year, our markets – our markets don't move that quickly, you're not going to see fundamental shifts in our mix. Based on those efforts, over that short of period of time, it's a bit more of a methodical slog than that. With regard to our OpEx, again, we'll be working hard to manage our spending as we move through this economic cycle. But our Q1 results, now reflect a full quarter of Anite spending and you could view those as representative of what we expect for the remaining quarters of the year.

Anjaya Shrestha - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Got it. Okay, appreciate it guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That was our last question. That concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I would like to the turn the conference back to Jason Kary. Jason A. Kary - Treasurer, Investor Relations & Vice President: Thank you, Tracy. That's all we have for today. So thank you everyone for joining the call and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.