Earnings Labs

Power Integrations, Inc. (POWI)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 28, 2015

$65.54

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Power Integrations Third Quarter 2015 Results Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. Joe Shiffler, you may now begin your conference. Joe Shiffler - Director-Investor Relations & Communications: Thanks, Connor. Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us to discuss Power Integrations' financial results for the third quarter of 2015. With me on the call are Balu Balakrishnan, President and CEO of Power Integrations, and Sandeep Nayyar, our Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will refer to financial measures not calculated according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Please refer to today's press release available on our website at investors.power.com, for an explanation of our reasons for using such non-GAAP measures, as well as tables reconciling these measures to our GAAP results. Our discussion today, including the Q&A session, will include forward-looking statements reflecting our forecast of certain aspects of the company's future business and financial results. Such statements are denoted by words like will, would, believe, should, expect, outlook, estimate, plan, goal, anticipate, forecast and similar expressions that look toward future events or performance. Forward-looking statements are based on current information that is dynamic and subject to abrupt changes. Our forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in our statements. Such risks and uncertainties are discussed in today's press release and in our most recent Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on July 31, 2015. This conference call is the property of Power Integrations, and any recording or rebroadcast is expressly prohibited without the written consent of Power Integrations. And now I'll turn the call over to Balu. Balu…

Operator

Operator

. Your first question comes from the line of Tore Svanberg. Your line is open. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yes hi. This is Evan Wang calling in for Tore. Thank you for taking my question. You talked about industrial being a little softer, but then you also balanced that with maybe some high-power business coming back, looking good in the pipeline in 2016. I was wondering if you could talk about high-power, whether it's dependent on a sound macro or are those decisions already made. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi Evan, this is Balu. Yes next year, we believe that the high-power market is poised to comeback for multiple reasons. Obviously, the macro being weak in China is kind of a headwind. However during the difficult times, typically China tends to invest in infrastructure and there are number of infrastructure projects that are coming up both in renewables area and also in transportation. And in transportation specifically, locomotives and electric buses are going to do really well. We have number of designs going on not only for the buses in China, but also locomotives in other countries that China ships to. So that's why we feel that the high-power will come back next year in addition to LED. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Great. My second question is about your Quick Charge 3.0 product. We know that the Quick Charge 2.0 had a little bit of trouble in the beginning ramping up and I think it was known that the customers had trouble making the decision which scheme to adopt. How do you see Quick Charge 3.0 ramping up versus 2.0 and how much of an overlap will there be between these two standards as 3.0 gets adopted?…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ross Seymore. Your line is open.

Matt Diamond - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hey, guys, this is actually Matt Diamond on Ross's behalf. Congrats on the solid results in this environment. We talked a lot about the internal inventories, but forgive me, I didn't get any color on the channel inventories. I am hoping that you could give some color there. Sandeep Nayyar - Chief Financial Officer & Vice President: Yeah, our channel inventories are slightly down from the prior quarter. They are roughly around 6.5 weeks. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: 6.5 weeks.

Matt Diamond - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, excellent. And we heard a lot about the GM from a mix point of view, but I'm curious. It sounds like InnoSwitch is penetrating the mobile device market really well and it's poised to penetrate into other end markets too. Curiously, about the direction of gross margin for next year, given those puts and takes, what do you see for the gross margin directionally for next year? I don't want to have you guide – you're obviously not going to guide, but any sort of directional color for gross margin for 2016 would be helpful. Sandeep Nayyar - Chief Financial Officer & Vice President: So, it's pretty early. We still haven't done our planning and mix is a hard one to tell. But as Balu talked about that, we are expecting LED and high-power to come back. Along with that, we believe that our communication business will do very well with the InnoSwitch business. So directionally, I think for modeling purposes at this point of time, I would say gross margin in next year would be somewhere in the 51% to 52% range.

Matt Diamond - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, excellent. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Steve Smigie. Your line is open. J. Steven Smigie - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Great, thank you. I was hoping if you could comment a little bit on InnoSwitch in terms of, as you mentioned, taking it to other markets. Have you seen much adoption outside of the Quick Charge at this point? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Actually, we have won two or three designs already, but the big one that I mentioned is the one we won at a large appliance manufacturer who has qualified InnoSwitch as a platform for all new designs. And the first one of those designs is going to be a dryer that goes into production in the second half of next year. We think it's just the beginning. There will be a lot more designs coming not only from that particular OEM but also from number of other OEMs who are, as we speak, evaluating and designing with InnoSwitch-EP. J. Steven Smigie - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great, thanks. I know you don't really guide two quarters out, but just how should we be thinking about March? It seems like you might have some handset business that might ramp up, but – and excuse me – might have some handset customers that might ramp down then, but at the other hand, it's a typically strong quarter for industrial. So just curious any thoughts on directionally where March might go? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Historically, March has been kind of a flat-to-slightly down quarter relative to Q4. But I really don't believe in historical seasonality anymore, because if you look at the last few years, every year it has been different. So it's…

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Shiffler. Joe Shiffler - Director-Investor Relations & Communications: Okay, thank you. I know there's people with one ear on our call and one ear on another call and maybe wishing they had a third ear. So if anyone does want to jump back in, we'll pause for just a moment. Do we have any additional questions, Connor?

Operator

Operator

Another question has come in from the line of Steve Smigie with Raymond James. Your line is open. J. Steven Smigie - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Great, thanks. So just on the LED business, I apologize I missed your comment there. Did you say it had still been a little bit soft in Q3? And what kind of growth do you think you can get in that in 2016? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, once again, as you know, we've had headwinds there because of the way we've repositioned the business. We have decided to walk away from the real low end of the bulb business. But I think all of that is behind us now. So we think that 2016 we should be able to grow that revenue nicely. I should add that there are three new products that we'll be introducing over the next couple of quarters that should give us a nice boost in revenue next year. J. Steven Smigie - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. And as far as the growth for next year, is that just going to be European and North American markets or any chance that China has changed its standards there to require the more I think we'll call it the safer solutions for the power grid? Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think it will be across the board. I mean we have some design wins in India, we have some designs we're working on in China that will be both for internal and external market but this is on the higher end of the internal market. Mostly I would say the China designs are for export as they'll be going into U.S. and Europe. J. Steven Smigie -…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Your line is open. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hi, this is Evan Wang calling in for Tore again. You mentioned about your backlog being up slightly this quarter and I would like to ask to see if you can give a little more color about not just the backlog but also the quarter that we're entering now. Could you talk a little bit above what the linearity was like and together with the backlog what that might imply for this coming quarter? Sandeep Nayyar - Chief Financial Officer & Vice President: Well, we ended a little earlier, but the bookings if you look in the last two months or three months have been fairly linear. And that's why you've seen why we have guided what we have guided. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: What do you think might be the drivers for revenue this quarter, in the December quarter, what might be...? Sandeep Nayyar - Chief Financial Officer & Vice President: For the December quarter, we said we are expecting slight favorability in the mix, so we think the high-power will be slightly better along with LED, which typically is better in the fourth quarter. And of course the InnoSwitch is continuing to do well and I believe that will continue to help us. Balu Balakrishnan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And the other thing is that the Q4 usually is strong for air conditioners, which comes under appliances for us. So we think that the mix will be slightly in favor in terms of gross margin in Q4 and that's why we have guided accordingly. Evan Wang - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: I see, okay. And on…

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Shiffler. Joe Shiffler - Director-Investor Relations & Communications: All right, thank you. We'll leave it there. Thanks everyone for listening on this busy afternoon. There will be a replay of this call available on our website at investors.power.com. Thanks again for listening.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.