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Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 8, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Super Micro Computer Inc. fourth quarter and full fiscal 2012 conference call. The company’s news release issued earlier today is available from its website at www.supermicro.com. In addition, during today’s call, the company will refer to a slide presentation that it has made available to participants which can be accessed in a downloadable PDF format on its website at www.supermicro.com in the investor relations sections under the events and presentations tab. During the company’s presentation all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards securities, analysts and institutional portfolio managers will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer-session. But the entire call is open to all participants on a listen-only basis. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, Tuesday, August 7, 2012. A replay of the call will be accessible until midnight, August 21, by dialing 1-877-870-5176 and entering conference ID number 4481991. International callers should dial 1-858-384-5517. With us today are Charles Liang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Howard Hideshima, Chief Financial Officer and Perry Hayes, Senior Vice President, Investor relations. And now, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Hayes. Mr. Hayes, please go ahead, sir.

Perry Hayes

Management

Good afternoon and thank you for attending Super Micro’s conference call on financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2012, which ended June 30, 2012. Before I begin, I’d like to advise you of upcoming investor conferences in which Super Micro will be participating. On August 28, we will attend the Midwest IDEAS conference in Chicago and on and on September 12, we will attend the ThinkEquity’s Annual Growth Conference in New York, where we will present and participate in one-on-one meetings. By now, you should have received a copy of today’s news release that was distributed at the close of regular trading and is available on company’s website. As a reminder, during today’s call, the company will refer to a presentation that is available to participants in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website under the events and presentation tab. Please turn to slide 2. Before we start, I will remind you that our remarks include forward-looking statements. There are a number of risk factors that could cause Super Micro’s future results to differ materially from our expectations. You can learn more about these risks in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, our Form 10-K for fiscal 2011, and our other SEC filings. All those documents are available from the Investor Relations page of Super Micro’s website at www.supermicro.com. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Most of today’s presentation will refer to non-GAAP financial results and outlooks. For an explanation of our non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to slide 3 of this presentation or to our press release published earlier today. In addition, a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results is contained in today’s press release and in the supplemental information attached to today’s presentation. I’ll now turn the call over to Charles Liang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Charles Liang

Chairman

Thank you, Perry, and good afternoon everyone. Please turn to slide four. First let me provide you with the highlights of our first quarter. We’re pleased that our first quarter revenue was $275.9 million or 14.9% higher quarter-over-quarter and 6% higher year-over-year. This result is a record high for Super Micro. Non-GAAP net income was $8.1 million or 7.9% lower quarter-over-quarter and 37.5% lower compared to last year. Super Micro’s non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.18 per diluted share compared to $0.19 last quarter or $0.29 last year. Slide five please. Let me start with our results last quarter as well as our achievement and challenges in the last fiscal year. I will then provide some insights on our plans for upcoming year. Last quarter we achieved record high revenue that sum up to over $1 billion revenue for our fiscal year. We are especially pleased with the strong performance of our complete rack solutions which has grown rapidly over the last year at almost 300% growth quarter-over-quarter. This rack of solutions combined with our server systems contributed to 44.6% of our total revenue last quarter. Furthermore 46.6% of our business last quarter came from OEM and direct customers and especially internet data center which were 15.2% of sales. Geographically, our revenue in North America was 57.4% and stronger than last quarter while Europe was 22.4% and Asia was 17.5% slightly lower from last quarter. Despite the weak global economic conditions that had impacted the rate of our growth, our business have been able to grow overall. Our margins (inaudible) last quarter mainly due to the drop in hard driver price as well as some price drop also happened to our memory team component. However we believe that most of the impact to our margin occurred last quarter and the…

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Charles and good afternoon everyone. I will focus my remarks on earnings, gross margin, operating expenses and similar items on a non-GAAP basis which reflects adjustment to exclude stock compensation expenses. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP is included in the financial statements of the company in today’s earnings and in the supplemental detail in the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. Let me begin with a review of the fourth quarter income statement. Please turn to slide nine. Revenue was $275.9 million up 6% from same quarter a year ago and up 14.9% sequentially. The increase in revenue from last year was primarily due to the growth in our server solutions business from the continuing ramp of our full rack solutions and new product platform MicroCloud. The sequential increase in revenue from last quarter was primarily due to sub systems and accessory sales primarily of hard disk drives and memory as discussed previously and the ramp of our four rack solutions. On a percentage basis four rack solutions MicroCloud and storage were the fastest growing top lines from the prior quarter. Slide 10. Turning to product mix, the portion revenues from server systems was 44.6% which was an increase from 40.4% a year ago and a decrease from 48.5% last quarter. ASPs for servers were $2,000 per unit which is up from $1,800 per unit last year and the same at $2,000 last quarter. We shipped approximately 62,000 servers in the fourth quarter and 1,167,000 subsystems and accessories. We continue to maintain a diverse revenue base with over 600 customers with none of these customers representing more than 10% of our quarterly revenue and our data center revenue 15.2% which was a decrease from 15.7% in the prior quarter. Furthermore, 57.4% of our revenues came from the US…

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you, Howard. While we are pleased that 2012 was another year of success and growth for Super Micro. We now look forward to a stronger fiscal 2013 with the Asia and EMEA facility ramping in production and the growth drive such as the new Fat Twin architecture, the industry’ industry's product nine of Sandy Bridge products, storage, GPU solutions, complete rack solutions, data center software and etcetera. We had never been better positioned to grow our business. In summary, we believe our competitive position and strong brands we’ll deliver good result in 2013 and we expect this result to provide better profitability. Operator at this time we are ready for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen our question and answer session will be conducted electronically. (Operator Instructions) We will take our first question from Mark Kelleher with Dougherty & Company. Mark Kelleher - Dougherty & Company: I was wondering if, I know you guys talked a lot about the pricing effect, the component pricing on gross margin, could you just talk a little bit more about the revenue shortfall to your initial guidance, was there, what came in a little unusual, is it just general economic weakness, was it Europe, was it a slower ramp in Sandy Bridge servers, can you just talk about that a little bit?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yeah, very good question. I guess the hard drive price drop and also (inaudible) to operate that can be a little conservative to gain some lower margin business and that's another reason. And also Sandy Bridge this time ramped up a little bit so that kind of lower our revenue in June quarter, however the September quarter should be much better. Mark Kelleher - Dougherty & Company: So was Europe having any effect, how’s your exposure doing?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Europe was okay. Mark it was down a bit, but obviously we’re still seeing a lot of opportunities over there. Mark Kelleher - Dougherty & Company: And then just as a follow-up, the gross margin plan that you have. Can you just talk a little bit about where that should trend. I know you have given in the past some longer-term goals. Are you sticking to those goals?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Yes we are. I mean the opportunities for the Taiwan facility and the other things that we’re doing still are out there. I think if I had to characterize this quarter, as Charles and I previously mentioned on the memory and hard disk drive, you see, that was the majority of the shortfall between lets say the March quarter margin and June margins.

Operator

Operator

And we will move next to Rajesh Ghai with ThinkEquity.

Rajesh Ghai - ThinkEquity

Analyst

Howard, memory pricing has kind of reached the bottom it looks like and very likely to go up in the future; if one has to have a guess up. What steps are you taking to ensure that you know, this increase in memory pricing does not impact the gross margin going forward and you know, actually they have the advantage because it does happen in that direction?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, in earlier kind of April-May timeframe, the expect that module price will grow and of which based at that time and that’s why we suffered EBITDA as well. But now I rather say that the time should be passed already. So the price for hard drive and module are now much more stable now, so I believe our (inaudible) will become more heavy.

Rajesh Ghai - ThinkEquity

Analyst

If memory pricing goes up in the future, like it reflects to happen, can we expect gross margin stability or could that be again a headwind for you in the future?

Charles Liang

Operator

I guess once the price is more stable, then it is better for us, but again during the hard driver shortage timeframe, we spend a lot of effort to enhance that relationship with our partner. So indeed whole company is in much better position than before.

Rajesh Ghai - ThinkEquity

Analyst

Okay. And can you comment on the competitive landscape and pricing in North America if that was any reason for the gross margin weakness. We are hearing reports of the Taiwanese contract manufacturers getting more active in North America may be selling directly to some of your customers. Can you provide some color on that?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

As I mentioned earlier, the gross margin move that you saw between the quarters was -- I guess majority of it was the hard disk memory pricing. Actually the pricing or the margins for our other products was fairly stable between the quarters. So we didn’t see that impact that you may be talking about.

Rajesh Ghai - ThinkEquity

Analyst

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Well certainly the Nehalem refresh was coming off the eve of that economic time that we are going through back end 2009. This time around it’s not quite -- the economy is still a concern out there, but certainly not at the same level it was back in 2009. So again there is lots of good opportunities out there for us even though you had that economy kind of backdrop. It’s not as bad as it was back in 2009.

Rajesh Ghai - ThinkEquity

Analyst

But no comparative concerns?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Well I think back in 2009 I think there was a lot of shrinkage in the market at that point because of the tough economic conditions there that you saw a very competitive market. I don’t think you see that as much this time around.

Operator

Operator

We will move next to Glenn Hanus with Needham & Company. Glenn Hanus - Needham & Company: So just to make sure I understood the answer to the first question there about the roughly $20 million in shortfall on the quarter, did you say that the Sandy Bridge rollout was a little slower generally than anticipated. Was that the reason, the primary reason for the revenue shortfall?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

That is one of the main reasons, other than the hard driver price drop and [dim] price that could give us more pleasure to gain those best margin deals. Glen Hanus - Needham & Company: I am sorry what does the drive issue has to do with the revenue shortfall.

Charles Liang

Operator

I mean the driver price drop, our margin from hard driver for memory become much lower. That's why we are a bit reluctant to approaching those low margin market (inaudible). Glen Hanus - Needham & Company: Okay. And just kind of geographically can you talk about Europe versus America versus Asia, the kind of that current demand environment what you saw in the quarter and the current demand environment by geography?

Charles Liang

Operator

You know in USA our kind of revenue share continue to be strong. In Europe we start to be very aggressive to grow sales and marketing team in last six months. So we did a higher minimal sales and marketing guidance in Europe. Same thing in Asia, so we believe mostly in Europe and Asia, our revenues should grow strongly in 2013. Glen Hanus - Needham & Company: I didn't quite understand the comment. I thought I heard in the narrative on under utilized capacity, what was that?

Charles Liang

Operator

You know in Taiwan we have a big facility. The production capacity almost as big as our facility in USA. However, the shipping from Taiwan is very small. That’s why we do not will utilize the capacity in Taiwan. And that’s why income scale has stayed very weak in Taiwan. We need to impact higher volume. Glenn Hanus - Needham & Company: And on the model goals of roughly 19% gross margin, 9% operating margin, I think you use to say, you know, the goal was like the second half of fiscal '13. Has that pushed out at all as your goal just given the economic challenges or do you think that’s still a realistic timeframe?

Charles Liang

Operator

I guess we had to push our may be too much but in quarter. Glenn Hanus - Needham & Company: Okay, sorry were you going to comment Howard?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Hello Glen, I think I mentioned earlier the levers are still there. I think we have to address the economic challenges but I think the levers are still there as we talked about before. Glenn Hanus - Needham & Company: Okay, lastly from me. Operating expenses have been running a little higher than we had modeled recently. Can you talk about what happened to make you want like you wanted to ramp up some expenses more? It sounds like more on the sales and marketing side but across a little bit R&D and how we should think about that going forward?

Charles Liang

Operator

Let me stop. I mean I guess because challenge strong competition. That’s why we have spend a more effort in technology For FatTwin is become a very big strong product. We invested a lot on this premium architecture and that created a more expense ratio for June quarter. The other area is because we start to emphasis a lot in Europe and Asia that’s why we haven’t spend all more money in promotion especially Europe and Asia. .

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we will move next to Aaron Rakers with Stifel Nicolaus.

Aaron Rakers - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst

Okay, perfect. So a couple of questions if I can as well and I apologize if some of these were asked already but the Romley cycle or the Sandy Bridge cycle for you guys can you give us any color of where we are at in that cycle are we for you guys is 20% of your shipments on those new platforms, how we think about the progression and ultimately we want to go is how do we think about that in the context of what looks to be a relatively stable ASP trend on a sequential basis this last quarter?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yeah when new product available this year, we were better ASP and better margin, however this time kind of Sandy Bridge because of more technical challenge and also we tried to provide indeed we provide brand new architecture Fat Twin or those made the come to market a little bit better but the product however become much stronger and we expect those (inaudible) should be probably little strong in September quarter and December quarter.

Aaron Rakers - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst

Okay. So I am clear so on a like-to-like basis Romley is neutral to the gross margin right now relative to the Nehalem platforms additive or I am just a little bit confused by that.

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Aaron this is Howard I think Charles mentioned earlier in his presentation so the revenues are still less than 10% of our overall revenues, so we are still at the very beginning of the ramp and it is additive to our gross margins.

Aaron Rakers - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst

And then the follow up question from me, I believe in your 10-Q you guys this quarter $276 million of hard disk drive purchase commitment that carried through, I think it was March of 2014, I guess I want to go back to the hard disk drive discussion understanding that and seeing what’s happening in the pricing environment, I guess is that to be a lingering overhang over the next couple of quarters given how that LTA if you will kind of plays itself out or is that something that you can or does that basically lift you over the coming quarters. Just trying to understand how that LTA kind of forced you model that $276 million number you guys disclosed?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

This is Howard. Like I said the LTA model again it doesn’t cover a 100% of our demand, so there is some buffer out there. For us we do take shipments every quarter based upon it and we do work on pricing with our vendors every quarter on it. So it’s adjusted every quarter with us, we do work with them and it is built in and I think it is a good thing for the long-term for us; I mean we have been growing things with it, but we do I think it is a good thing because as Charles mentioned we are building our relationships with these guys, increasing our importance, so it will support us as we grow our scale going forward.

Operator

Operator

And we will move next to Andrew Storm with Cortina.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

Just wanted to make sure I understood a couple of things. On the OpEx expenses you talked about, you said you are running higher promotions and then you also said you will spend more on R&D for the Fat Twin; is there any one time spending for R&D with the materials and that’s going come out next quarter or promotions or as we think about this new OpEx level as the base rate going forward?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes for factoring in its pretty much one time.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

And so how much was that?

Charles Liang

Operator

I believe we already spend maybe $7 million to $8 million kind of extra money to build the strong product line. So in next few quarters we will continue to make the (inaudible) stronger, but relatively the investment will be much smaller.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

So it’s a couple of million R&D coming out next quarter?

Charles Liang

Operator

Next few quarters.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

Okay. And then also for promotions?

Charles Liang

Operator

Promotion I believe we already done a lot. So the next few quarters should be much less.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

Okay, so you said that on sales and marketing it was $1.2 million so that should come down some by let's say $0.5 million or closer to $1 million?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

We had a trade show out there so again it will come down from the trade show perspective; but we've got other things that will offset some of that like, salary increases at an annual basis. And if you look back, probably back last year, you will see a similar type of growth although maybe not as high in our op expenses due to the salary adjustments.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

And then on gross margins and going to Aaron’s point, should we start to see with the hard disks is this more of a one quarter issue or does the LTA make it that this is a kind of rolling initiative slowly gets better?

Charles Liang

Operator

I would have to say for hard drive impact and also the quarter should be March quarter and June quarter and then we are in better position now.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

I understand but since hard disk drive has gone down and you've entered into a long term purchasing agreement. You didn't fully answered me, you said that you guys work with your suppliers on pricing but should that pricing that you get come down in this quarter, to be more commensurate at the market, or will continue to be a drag?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yeah, indeed the price that we have agreed with our vendors is pretty flexible so we should be able to gather properly adjustment.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

Okay, so there shouldn’t be a gross margin surprise next quarter?

Charles Liang

Operator

Should be much better than (inaudible).

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

And then just to make sure I understood, you said you basically walked away from some lower margin business because of the hard disk drive issue this quarter. Is that right?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes, a little bit.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

Okay, and was there any large deals that might have slipped or switched out?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, there is one deal that we’ve been working on that we had, we thought we were going to recognize this quarter that has slipped out.

Andrew Storm - Cortina

Analyst

And last thing if I could ask is, with the rolling cycle, you are 10% now. So when does that really pick up, I mean is this something that we should be talking about for you guys three or six months out; I mean, when does it really start to dominate the financials?

Charles Liang

Operator

I believe that it have been within next six months for sure.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, we have no further questions in our queue. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Liang for any additional or closing comments.

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to talking to you again at the end of this quarter. Thank you everyone and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude the Super Micro fourth quarter fiscal year 2012 conference call. We do appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you.