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Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 6, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to today’s Super Micro Computer Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal 2013 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 has been made available to participants which can be accessed in a downloadable PDF format on its website at www.supermicro.com, in the Investor Relations section 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 6, 2013. A replay of the call will be accessible until midnight August 20th by dialing 1-877-870-5176 and entering conference ID number 1121163. 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'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Hayes. Mr. Hayes, please go ahead, sir.

Perry G. Hayes

Management

Good afternoon and thank you for attending Super Micro's conference call and financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2013, which ended June 30th, 2013. By now, you should have received a copy of today's news release that was distributed after close of regular trading and is available on the 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 Presentations tab. Please turn to slide two. Before we start, I’ll 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 2012 and our other SEC filings. All of these documents are available from 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 three 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 fourth fiscal quarter. We are pleased that our fourth quarter revenue was $322.3 million. It's 15.9% higher quarter-over-quarter and 16.8% higher year-over-year. This result was a record high for Super Micro. Non-GAAP net income was $11.3 million or 12.6% higher quarter-over-quarter and 39.2% higher compared to last year. Super Micro’s non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.26 per diluted share compared to $0.23 last quarter, or $0.18 last year. Slide five, please. In my comments today, I would like to discuss our results last quarter as well as our achievements during the past fiscal year, before providing some insights on our trend, or upcoming year. Last quarter, we achieved record high revenue which was 16.8% higher than last year. This strong first quarter performance helped to push our full year revenue to $1.16 billion representing 14.7% gross over last year. Although our gross occurred this year is a bit slower than past years, neighbor cities it was about three times higher than the industry average, this way our growth indicates that we continue to take much share consistently. Last quarter, our server systems contributed 47.4% of our total revenue, 43.3% of our business last quarter came from OEMs and direct customers. Moreover internet datacenter account for 9.5% of sales. This result indicated that more and more of our partner choose our complete server solutions due to the overall quality and performance optimization. Geographically, revenue in North America was 56.2%, Europe was 23% and Asia was 18.6% of total sales. Our growth in North America continue to be strong and very consistent as we broaden our space in key regions in U.S. and especially the east coast. Europe had been…

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Charles. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. I will focus my remarks on earnings, gross margins, 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 Release, and in the supplemental details in the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. Let me begin with the review of the fourth quarter income statement. Please turn to Slide Seven. Revenues with a record $322.3 million up 16.8% from the same quarter a year ago and up 15.9%, sequentially. The increase in revenues from last year was primarily due to our high-density energy-efficient storage products. We are confident that our rich platform of storage solutions we’ll be able to take full advantage of this segment’s growth. Also our FatTwin platform continues a strong ramp. It offers a high-density energy-efficient solution geared toward HPC cloud and hybrid market. A sequential increase in revenue from last quarter was primarily due to seasonal strength, especially incubated by the growth in our twin platform such as 2U Twin2 and FatTwin which have been optimized for the HPC Cloud and hybrid market, as well as our Blade products in the HPC market. We also saw a good launch in our UP Haswell based product late in the quarter. We saw strength in all GL with business ending strongly in the month of June and we continue to ramp our Taiwan facility. Slide Eight, Trends and produce mix. A proportion of revenues from services sums for 47.4% of total revenues, which was up from 44.2% the same quarter a year ago, and up from 41.8 % last quarter. ASPs servers was $2,400 per year which is up from $3,000 last year and up from…

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you, Howard. The first quarter was a record high [indiscernible] with a gross of 16.8% higher year-over-year and which again outpace the industry gross rate. With the new fiscal, we should have strongest product line in our history and our global operation ready for gross. We believe that with these stronger inventions, we will continue our gross trend in fiscal 2014. Operator, at this time we are ready for questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We'll take our next question from Mark Kelleher with Dougherty & Company. Mark Kelleher –Dougherty & Company : Great, thanks. Congratulations guys, great quarter. I wanted to look at the gross margins. You had a fairly strong server results for the quarter. Of course that carries the higher gross margins. You have got some better utilization going on in the Taiwan manufacturing. You renegotiated some hard disk drive pricing during the quarter. And yet, only had a couple maybe 20 basis points and improvement in gross market, I’m just wondering if you can kind of give the puts and takes on gross margins and remind us what your longer term goal is for gross margins?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Hi Mark, this is Howard and thank you first for the comment. With regards to gross margins puts and takes, again, some of them was still to comparing from sequential basis, you saw basically have a high risk of some of the storage products which typically have a higher cut from the pass through component pieces that kind of weighs in on the overall type of server solutions type of margin. That was probably the biggest item in that particular point because as we indicated we had a pretty strong quarter with regard to our server products, our storage products. With regards to our guidance it is 16% to 18% in the next 9 to 15 months. Mark Kelleher –Dougherty & Company : Okay. And, just as a follow up question, in terms of the product roadmap that you’re expecting this year as Intel rolls out some new products, can you maybe give us some hints on where your product roadmap is going to go over the next couple of quarters?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes, we have a very strong new product IX already like last month we just launched hot wheel UP product IX and that was a really big product IX and as you may know Intel heavy bridge, we have the official launched released in basically next month. So, we have a complete product IX already for that as well as FatTwin continue to grow, and our MicroCloud also continues to grow rapidly. So, in demo product we are in strongest position in our history. Mark Kelleher –Dougherty & Company : Okay, great. Thanks.

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our next question from Aaron Rakers with Stifel. Aaron Rakers – Stifel Nicolaus: Yeah, thank you for taking the questions, you know, first just a clarification or maybe a longer term module input, you’re guiding 29% gross margin for the September quarter, how do we think about the progression, I’m sorry, tax rate, how do we think about the progression of the tax rate beyond the September quarter?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

I think, Aaron, we don’t give the full guidance, but if you look back historically, I think you will probably see it within that range we’ve got the RD credit is probably going to expire the latter part of December, but again, we got the Taiwan facility also give me some benefits going forward too. So, first quarter 29% seems like a reasonable rate. Aaron Rakers – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay. And, what is the current utilization on the Asia facility?

Charles Liang

Operator

Indeed they have been improving steadily, last quarter I guess was about 25% and this quarter was about 35% and next quarter I believe will be even better. Aaron Rakers – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay. And then, also on the internet data center protocol, looks like you’ve declined about 20% the last two quarters on a year-over-year basis, can you talk a little bit about what’s happening in that vertical specifically, have you started to see a increase competition or is there a kind of, you know, inherence lumpiness that we should be thinking about, you know, that kind of snaps back over the next couple of quarters?

Charles Liang

Operator

It’s kind of product base, so sometime it’s higher, sometime it’s lower, but with our Asia operation ready now we have much better cost now, so we will be more aggressive in the segment in the near future. Aaron Rakers – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay. And then, final question for me is on the OEM cost, the direct business that looked – project really strong in the quarter, was that more driven by OEM versus direct, can you just talk about where exactly are you seeing it looks like there is about 22% sequentially, where are you seeing that relative strength on the sequential basis?

Charles Liang

Operator

Basically is both, and I would have to say the most influence is the product because we get type of FatTwin, our brand new architectural available at one time ago and that architectural perform the best in term of per watt and in terms of in density, in I/O performance. So because of that strong product line, that’s why we grow both in OEM and kind of direct, big corporate or datacenter. Aaron Rakers – Stifel Nicolaus: Thank you.

Charles Liang

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we will go next to Glenn Hanus with Needham. Glenn Hanus – Needham: Yeah, congrats from me as well. IT bridge timing, you mentioned next month, has that slipped a little bit nominally a couple of weeks or anything or is that pretty much timing the same as you thought it would be a few months back?

Charles Liang

Operator

It looks like we’re having same, keep it the same and this time, it looks like our services will be 100% ready. So, we are very optimistic of what we rent. Glenn Hanus – Needham: Yeah, so real healthy ramp by guessing the December quarter?

Charles Liang

Operator

December quarter, I didn't see, most of them we have in December quarter. Glenn Hanus – Needham: You want to spend a minute on operating expenses. Let’s see, came in at least according to model you came in million or so under what I was expecting, some in sales and marketing, some in G&A, you were a little bit more than I thought in R&D, can you talk about the puts and takes on OpEx this quarter. Did you make some conscious effort to reduce anything? And any color you can give us over the next couple of quarter on OpEx?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Glenn, with regards to some puts and takes, I think last quarter we were rolling out some of the hassle solutions as I mentioned there. So, we incurred some more margins, some more cash in material expenses as we are rolling out that product, but we are watching our overall operating expenses and trying to leverage it as best we can. I think we will have some annual increases that happen normally for us on timing basis with the salary increases , but that won't be huge and going forward, I think we are still going to put an eye on that and try to leverage our expenses. Glenn Hanus – Needham: Did you comment on OpEx below what you might have thought of three months ago? Or is it just my model was expecting too much?

Howard Hideshima

Chief Executive Officer

I am not commenting, I don’t know if I can comment on your model, but I think it’s coming in where we’re thinking about with regards to basically, how do I put it, leveraging our expenses. Glenn Hanus – Needham: So, that our current R&D level in the recent quarter included some one-time taxes of items as we go into December with the IV bridge launch, should we anticipate some incremental R&D there?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yes, basically like when we share in last few quarters, we grew indeed about 90 something percent in engineering industry. So pretty much yeah, that can become maybe strong and we do not play into higher, many more people in the near future. Glenn Hanus – Needham: Okay, all right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) We’ll go next to Ted Monroe with KCG. Ted Monroe – KCG: Yes, thank you for taking my question. I was just wondering if you think today’s announcement by IBM and their new OpenPower consortium impacts your businesses at all or are you agnostic to an X86 architecture versus the momentum in maybe ARM-based servers or even this new IBM announcement, and what would be your main concern?

Charles Liang

Operator

We opened our eye for all the possibility, but basically we are very concentrated on our expertise, our strengths as well. So X86 for sure will continue to be our main focus. But yes, we opened our eyes for whatever new technology or product line that customer have a demand. Ted Monroe – KCG: Okay. So would you then design some products around this new potential like IBM opportunity or even what’s going on with ARM line networks?

Charles Liang

Operator

Yeah, it is positive, but otherwise our event depends on what customer need. Ted Monroe – KCG: Sure, okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) At this time we have no further questions, so I’d like to turn the call back over to your speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

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. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen that does conclude the Super Micro Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2013 Conference Call. We do appreciate your participation, you may now disconnect at this time. Thank you.