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Everspin Technologies, Inc. (MRAM)

Q4 2023 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 28, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the conference call to discuss Everspin Technologies Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of today’s conference call instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. As a reminder this conference call is being recorded today Wednesday, February 28, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Cassidy Fuller [ph], Investor Relations for Everspin.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Thank you operator, and good afternoon everyone. Everspin released results for the fourth quarter and full year 2023 ended December 31, 2023 this afternoon after the market closed. I'm Cassidy Fuller, Investor Relations for Everspin. And with me on today's call are Sanjeev Aggarwal President and Chief Executive Officer; and Anuj Aggarwal, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin the call, I want to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements regarding future events, including but not limited to the company's expectations for Everspin's future business, financial performance and goals, customer and industry adoption of MRAM technology, successful bringing to the market and manufacturing products in Everspin's design pipeline and executing on its business plan. These forward-looking statements are based on estimates, judgments, current trends and market conditions and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. We would encourage you to review the company's SEC filings including the annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings made from time to time, in which the company may discuss risk factors associated with investing in Everspin. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call and except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements made on this call, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The financial results discussed today reflect the company's preliminary estimates and are based on the information available as of the date hereof and are subject to further review by Everspin and its external auditors. The company's actual results may differ materially from these estimates as a result of the completion of financial closing procedures, final adjustments and other developments arising between now and the time that the financial results for this period are finalized. Additionally the company's press release and statements made during this conference call will include discussions of certain measures and financial information in GAAP and non-GAAP terms. Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP net income to adjusted EBITDA, which provide additional details. A copy of the press release is posted on the Investor Relations section of Everspin's website at www.everspin.com. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Everspin's President and CEO, Sanjeev Aggarwal. Sanjeev please go ahead.

Sanjeev Aggarwal

Management

Thank you, Cassidy, and thanks everyone for joining us on the call today. We are pleased to report record annual revenue and profitability for 2023 with a strong gross margin, a solid balance sheet with no debt and the highest cash balance in our company's history. During the fourth quarter, we delivered revenue of $16.7 million above the high end of our guidance range of $15.4 million to $16.4 million. This led to a record full year revenue of $63.8 million, which was up 6% year-over-year. We delivered gross margin of 58.1% in the fourth quarter, up from 51.4% in Q4 2022. We recorded our 11th quarter in a row of GAAP profitability, a strong focus for the company. And we ended the year with a cash balance of $36.9 million. On the product side, we had a total of 217 design wins in 2023, up 3% year-over-year. Our pipeline of new design wins for our MRAM products remain strong and exceeded our internal expectations. We expect our existing Toggle MRAM product customers will qualify our new industrial STT-MRAM products this year, while our newer MRAM customers will qualify later in 2025. Additionally, our new industrial STT-MRAM product line has continued to gain momentum in terms of design wins, showcasing the importance of ramping technology from the last few quarters. Looking ahead, we expect to begin translating these design wins into revenue in the second half of 2024. We remain committed to preserving Everspin's position as a leader in MRAM technology and this is reflected in our extensive intellectual property portfolio and the successful licensing of our technologies. As we discussed on our last earnings call, we entered into two new radiation hard program agreements, the first related to Toggle MRAM to develop reliability models for strategic radiation-hard Toggle MRAM…

Anuj Aggarwal

Management

Thank you, Sanjeev, and good afternoon everyone. As part of our fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results, we are pleased to announce that we have achieved record annual revenue of $63.8 million and record profitability with net income of $9.1 million in 2023. Q4 2023 also marks our 11th consecutive quarter of positive net income. In addition, we generated positive cash flow from operations resulting in the highest cash balance of our company's history of $36.9 million. We delivered strong quarterly results above the high end of our guidance range of $15.4 million to $16.4 million, with revenue of $16.7 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.09. We also recorded positive cash flow from operations of $2 million. Our revenue outperformance was preliminarily driven by the success we have seen in our RAD-Hard deals, which have continued to progress well from a technology standpoint. MRAM product sales in the fourth quarter, which includes both Toggle and STT-MRAM revenue were $12.4 million compared to $14.6 million in Q4 2022. Licensing royalties patents and other revenue in the fourth quarter increased to $4.3 million compared to $1.1 million in Q4 2022. Shipments to suppliers for our high-density STT product for data center applications represented 17.1% of revenue in the fourth quarter versus 4.7% of revenue in Q4 2022. Turning to gross margin. Our GAAP gross margin for the fourth quarter of 2023 was 58.1%, up from 51.4% in Q4 2022. GAAP gross margin for 2023 was 58.4%, an increase from 56.6% in 2022. The year-over-year increase in gross margin is a result of being able to offset increased pricing from suppliers with increased yields on our Toggle products and increased licensing revenue to offset the decrease in product sales. GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2023 were…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton of Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Neil Young

Analyst

Hey. This is Neil Young on for Quinn Bolton. Thanks for taking my questions. I first wanted to ask about the gross margin number in the fourth quarter. So you gave some color on the year-over-year change. But I was hoping you could share what drove the sequential decline in gross margin considering that the licensing royalties patents and all the revenue appear to be strong?

Anuj Aggarwal

Management

Yes. It's Anuj Aggarwal. Yes. So the gross margin has performed really well over last year right? So we've been saying we'd be mid-50s in gross margin. I think what you're seeing is as the yields kind of tapered off and we had slightly lower licensing revenue compared to the prior quarter you see a decline in the gross margin, but it's still above our internal model and expectations.

Neil Young

Analyst

Okay. Thanks for that. And then my follow-up is last quarter you talked about some of the weakness in industrial automation in China. It sounds like that continued in the fourth quarter given the quarter-over-quarter decline in product revenues. So did you see that weakness spread across other geographical areas or end markets? And then regarding the first quarter outlook, I was hoping you could share what you're thinking across the two segments products and licensing. And then maybe within products what you're thinking separately for Toggle and STT-MRAM? Thanks.

Anuj Aggarwal

Management

Sure. Absolutely. So it's a couple of questions. Let me try to go one-by-one. So I think from a backlog perspective, right? As you look at the backlog you're seeing challenges within the Industrial and Automotive space. And to your question in terms of geographies, APAC in general has shown some weakness. So Japan and China there's been some challenges there. So we saw that starting in Q4. And we see that in Q1 as well. And then, from a guidance perspective, -- sorry what was the second part of the question for guidance?

Neil Young

Analyst

Yeah. So I was wondering if you could share what you're thinking across the two segments between products and licensing and then, maybe within the product segment what you're thinking separately for the two buckets. Thanks.

Anuj Aggarwal

Management

Yeah. Absolutely. So for revenue we're expecting $13.5 million to $14.5 million. We expect Q1 to be strong again from a licensing and royalty perspective. We do see some decline in product revenue. And so that's why we're guiding to that number. It's again mainly because of the APAC challenges and the challenges in China. We're also seeing customers looking at bleeding down inventory and concern with their inventory. And so because of that we're conservatively setting guidance at those numbers.

Sanjeev Aggarwal

Management

So just to add to that Neil, I think we are still optimistic on the second half of this year are really focusing on a few things. One is the low-density STT-MRAM product that we brought out a couple of years. We are seeing good traction in the industry even in Asia Pac. So we expect that we'll be able to get some traction in the second half of 2024. And as you know with all the supply chain issues that everybody had last year and the year before Everspin actually managed the supply chain very well. And because of that we have some -- earned some goodwill with our customers. So with our Toggle customers so we're actually going back and talking to our customers to see we can actually precipitate some design wins actually win sockets from some of our customers. And those discussions are going well. And giving you color on the Rad Hard deals basically we do expect the project that we are working on for the FPGA to continue throughout the year. And so we will see some -- we expect to see some licensing Rad Hard revenue from there. And then, also our initial project the 64-megabit STT-MRAM will continue through this year. And we will recognize our revenue along the way.

Neil Young

Analyst

Great. Thanks.

Sanjeev Aggarwal

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] One moment please. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Anuj Aggarwal, for any closing remarks.

Anuj Aggarwal

Management

Okay. With that, we conclude today's call. Thank you all for joining us. And we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Operator, you may now disconnect the call. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.