Earnings Labs

Lantronix, Inc. (LTRX)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 30, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Second Quarter Fiscal 2014 Lantronix Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. My name is Patrick, and I will be your coordinator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to E.E. Wang. Please proceed.

E.E. Wang Lukowski

Analyst

Thank you, Patrick. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the Lantronix Second Quarter Fiscal 2014 Conference Call. Joining us on the call today are Kurt Busch, Lantronix' Chief Executive Officer; and Jeremy Whitaker, Lantronix' Chief Financial Officer. A live and archived webcast of today's call will be available on the company's website at www.lantronix.com. In addition, a phone replay will be available starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00 p.m. Pacific today through February 7 by dialing (888) 286-8010 in the U.S., or for international callers, (617) 801-6888 and entering passcode 71047798. During this call, management may make forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause Lantronix’ results to differ materially from management’s current expectations. We encourage you to review the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in the earnings release, which was furnished with the SEC today and is available on our website and in the company’s SEC filings such as its 10-K and 10-Q. Lantronix undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. Also, please note that during this call, the company will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. Today’s earnings release, which is posted in the Investor Relations section of our website, describes the differences between our non-GAAP and GAAP reporting and presents reconciliation for the non-GAAP financial measures that we use. I would now like to introduce Kurt Busch, President and CEO of Lantronix.

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Thank you, E.E. And thank you to everyone joining us this afternoon. We continue to make progress during the second quarter of fiscal 2014, achieving modest sequential revenue growth, primarily due to 11% growth in sales of our Enterprise Solutions product line, offsetting the decline in sales of our more mature OEM Modules. At the same time, our new OEM Modules continue to generate customer interest in line with our expectations, and we are pursuing many exciting opportunities in this area. Overall, we are very encouraged by the opportunities being generated by our new product introductions, as well as our sales and channel expansion efforts. Continuing our commitment to fiscal and operational discipline, we achieved our second consecutive quarter of non-GAAP net income and positive cash flow from operations. Before I go into more detail on our progress and expectations, I'd like to turn the call over to Jeremy to go over our financial highlights. Jeremy?

Jeremy R. Whitaker

Analyst

Thank you, Kurt. Please refer to today's news release and the financial information in the Investor Relations section of our website for additional details that will supplement my financial commentary. Now I'd like to take a few minutes to go over the highlights of our results for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 ended December 31, 2013. Net revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 was $11 million compared to $12.2 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2013 and $10.9 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2013. The year-over-year decline in net revenue was primarily due to a decrease in sales for some of our mature products, which was partially offset by growth in sales of new products in our Enterprise Solutions product line. On a sequential basis, Enterprise Solutions grew by 11%, primarily due to increased sales in the Americas, which included initial orders from new Tier 1 customers for our new SLB and PremierWave XN product families. As expected, OEM Modules continue to be impacted by decline in sales of mature products that make up a majority of sales for this product line. Gross profit as a percentage of revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 was 49.6% and within our long-term target model range of 49% to 51%. This compared with 49.6% for the second quarter of fiscal 2013 and 49.5% for the first quarter of fiscal 2014. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 were $4.1 million compared to $4.7 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2013 and $3.9 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2014. Research and development expenses for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 were $1.6 million compared to $1.7 million for both the second quarter of fiscal 2013 and the first…

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Thank you, Jeremy. Our results for the first half of fiscal 2014 reflect the steady progress we are making in executing on our strategic plan to drive Lantronix towards sustainable, long-term growth and profitability through disciplined and innovative product development, expansion of sales and marketing efforts worldwide and continued fiscal and operational discipline. Revenue from our OEM Modules continues to be impacted by declining sales of mature product families. Today, most of our current revenues in this category are derived from product families that were launched more than 5 years ago and in some cases, more than 10 years ago. While these products still generate new design wins, not surprisingly, the overall trend has been declining. A new OEM Module takes as long as 24 months to move from design win to production revenue. At the same time, these products typically have a long life cycle, often 5 years or longer. Overall, we are pleased with the early progress we have made in our new OEM Module product families, which include the xPico and xPico Wi-Fi. As these new products move into production, we believe that our OEM Modules sales will stabilize and begin to contribute to positive top line growth in the long term. Sales of our new Enterprise Solutions have been increasing as a result of both new product introductions and new customer acquisitions. The 11% sequential growth we experienced in the December quarter was directly related to our disciplined new product development strategy and the worldwide sales and channel expansion efforts we initiated in fiscal 2013. For the same period last year, most of the revenue contribution from our new Enterprise Solutions were derived from the xPrintServer product family. Now we are seeing revenue contributions from across the spectrum of our new Enterprise Solution product family. Specifically…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Krishna Shankar with Roth Capital.

Krishna Shankar - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

I had at a couple of questions. On the OEM Modules side of the business, can you talk about -- you said the majority of it was still older OEM Modules. I just want to get a sense for when the drag factor from those declining world of products might abate so that the new products are starting to contribute to growth in the OEM Module business.

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Sure. So Krishna, thank you for calling in. So from a new OEM Module, I'd like to call attention to the xPico and xPico Wi-Fi product families, those are the ones we're most excited about. The xPico product was actually released about 2 years ago, and we're starting to see first production orders of that product today. And the xPico Wi-Fi was released around 6 months ago, and we're working on a number of opportunities. And we feel that as these opportunities ramp to production, along with our efforts to expand our sales and distribution channels, that those will stabilize the decline in some of the older OEM Modules and allow us to achieve overall top line growth.

Krishna Shankar - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And then can you cite for us the opportunity for the Google Cloud Print opportunity versus what you've done in the iOS market?

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Sure, sure. So the Google Cloud Print product, for those people not familiar with it, it actually offers the same kind of value proposition that the iOS product did with the original xPrintServer, allowing the installed base of printers that are more often than not a copy machine or a large enterprise printer in an office environment or a printer in someone's home. What it does, it allows those printers to be part of the Google Cloud Print ecosystem and people to use Cloud Print to directly print to those printers. We feel the opportunity is somewhat -- is similar to the opportunity of the iOS space -- basically based on the size of the Android smartphone application. So basically, the Android side versus the iOS side is probably pretty similar from that opportunity. But there's another aspect for Cloud Print that we're really excited about, is really the area of Chromebooks. And this is where we think is going to be one of the main applications for the Cloud Print device, is Chromeboooks used in educational environment where people -- where students need to print their applications from their Chromebooks using Google Cloud Print or Google Box.

Krishna Shankar - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And then last quarter, you talked about the wireless M2M cellular connectivity bundle with a service provider. How is that coming along?

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Sure. So a few quarters ago, we announced a partnership with Wyless to provide a sim in our cellular products. So we've released 2 cellular products to production so far, and we're very excited with the out-of-the-box experience. And what this allows people to do is to buy a Lantronix cellular product and use -- and basically light it up on the network immediately as opposed to trying to find an M2M service provider to bring that product onto the network. And we've been working closely with Wyless on a number of opportunities that we expect to become into revenue over the coming quarters or coming forward to a year time frame.

Krishna Shankar - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And then my final question, there's been a fair amount of excitement around the M2M and smartphone connectivity and automation space with Google's acquisition of Nest Labs. Does Lantronix have any efforts in terms of M2M connectivity for smart appliances? And how do you view that transaction? And any sort of similar areas that Lantronix may be working on?

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Sure. So our Lantronix products have been in security and automation applications for quite some time. I mean, the company has been a pioneer in machine connectivity, I mean, probably for north of 15, maybe 20 years of connecting machines and managing them over the network. And that has all been -- primarily focused in industrial commercial applications, and now we're seeing that type of use case showing up in the home. So though we have not announced any products today, it is a -- that type of thing is applicable to the Lantronix products and technology that we brought to market.

Krishna Shankar - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And the how is the macro -- what do you see in terms of demand trends in Europe, Asia and Europe? Can you just talk a little bit about the -- on the macro environment inventory out there and what you're seeing in terms of the longer-term picture for 2014?

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

So I can just comment on just kind of how the last quarter went as we saw a good amount of strength in the Americas and continued weakness in the EMEA region. And then for us, China is really a growth area because we have very small amount of revenue coming out of the China and greater APAC area today, and we just put a new office in China in our efforts to expand our sales and marketing channel. So we definitely see some upside in that area for us today.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I'm showing that there are no additional audio questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Kurt Busch for closing remarks.

Kurt F. Busch

Analyst

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank you all for your participation on our call today. We look forward to updating you on our progress, achievements and actions when we report on our third quarter fiscal 2014 results in early May.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.