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Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 4, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Super Micro Computer Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2015 Conference Call. The company's news release issued earlier today is available from its website at www.supermicro.com. In addition, today's call, the company will refer to a slide presentation that was 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 & 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 in a listen-only basis. As a reminder, this call is being recorded Tuesday, August 4, 2015. A replay of the call will be accessible until midnight August 18 by dialing 1-877-870-5176 and entering the conference ID number 5322120. 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 - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Good afternoon, and thank you for attending Super Micro's conference call on financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015, which ended June 30, 2015. 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 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 & 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 2014, and our other SEC filings. All of those documents are available from the Investor Relations page of Super Micro's website. 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 - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Management

Thank you, Perry, and good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to slide four. First, let me provide you with the highlights of our fiscal first quarter. We are pleased to announce that, we achieved a record quarter of growth as our revenue reached $573.6 million, it's 21.7% higher quarter-over-quarter; and 34% higher year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income was $30 million or 20.3% higher quarter-over-quarter, and 54.6% higher compared to last year. Super Micro's non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.57 per diluted share compared to $0.47 last quarter or $0.40 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, and then, I will share our outlook for fiscal year 2016. Last quarter, we achieved a record-high revenue, which was 34% higher than last year. This strong first quarter performance push our full year revenue to $1.99 billion, almost $2 billion, representing 35.7% growth over last year. Once again, our quarterly and yearly growth rates are multiple times the industry's rate, indicating that we continue to take much share, as we have planned. Even though, some industry watchers believe that server industry is mature with minimal differentiation between manufacturers, we know based on direct customer experience that is not the case with Super Micro. Our strong performance is the direct result of our unique business model that enable our partners to succeed with the most innovative application optimized server and storage solutions ahead of our competition. In addition to Super Micro's broadest product range and time to market advantages, our product continue to deliver clear performance and feature advantages, such as best performance in heterogeneous computing with the 1U 4 GPU server, highest drive capacity with a 3.5-inch drive in the 1U space. You've seen…

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you, Charles, and good afternoon, everyone. I will focus my remarks on earnings, gross margins, operating expenses and similar items on a non-GAAP basis, which reflects adjustments 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 detail on the slide presentation accompanying this conference call. Let me begin with a review of the fourth quarter income statement. Please turn to slide seven. Revenue was $573.6 million, up 34% from the same quarter a year ago, and up 21.7% sequentially. The increase in revenue from last year was primarily due to our increase in Server Solutions, which was up 49.8%. On a geographical basis, we had strong growth in the U.S. of 42.3%; followed by Europe at 37.1%, while Asia was about flat. The sequential increase in revenue was primarily due to seasonally strong quarter. Both our distributor and subsystem and accessory business were strong at 32.6% and 29.9% growth over the prior quarter respectively. In addition, our storage business was particularly strong with 31.8% growth over the prior quarter, with the majority of this growth coming from our traditional storage business as we expanded our high-density storage solutions. Slide eight. Turning to product mix. The proportion of revenues from server systems was 61.7% of total revenues, which is up from 55.2%, the same quarter a year ago, and down from 64.1% last quarter. ASPs for servers was $400 [sic] $4,000 per unit, which is up from $3,300 last year, and from $3,900 last quarter. We shipped approximately 87,000 servers in the quarter and 1.317 million subsystems and accessories. We continue to maintain a diverse revenue base with about 800 customers. No customers represented more than 10% of our quarterly revenues. Cloud,…

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Thank you, Howard. For 22 years, we have been a customer-centric technology company, always listening to them and developing innovative products that our customers appreciate. Now, with our software and service package fully ready, we are able to create more complete Total Solutions, greater product value, and achieve higher level of customer satisfaction. We have more than doubled our revenue in the last three years, and by continuing our focus on our advanced product lines and customers, we expect to make another aggressive dip of growth in the coming years. Operator, at this time, we are ready for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. And we'll go first to Alex Kurtz with Sterne Agee.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee

Analyst

Hey, thanks, guys. Can you hear me, okay?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Yes. Yes, we can.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee

Analyst

Hey, Charles. So, Howard, I just want to drill in a little bit on the margin. It sounds like this was largely due to the higher component mix. Would you expect that to reverse itself next quarter, and was there anything else in there that was a heavy weight on what drove the gross margin off a little bit this quarter?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

No, Alex. I think, as I said in this – subsystems and accessory business was higher this quarter. It grew quite frankly about 30% quarter-over-quarter sequentially. So again that, as you know, we talked about it, component and subsystem business is at a lower margin than our complete server solution business. We do expect that our complete service solution business will continue to grow.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee

Analyst

Okay. And just two quick follow-up questions here, Howard, on the tax rate, you said 34% for Q1. What was the guidance for the year again? Was it back down to 30% for the year?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. We said it would – would be around – we said that the – if the R&D tax credit was put back in, like it was in 2015, then we would see similar, yeah, a reduction in our rate by about 7% in that December quarter. And then, if it did happen, that the rate overall for fiscal 2016 would be similar to fiscal 2015 or 2014, which is about 31%.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee

Analyst

So we should effectively be modeling 31% for the year?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Again, it depends on the timing of the R&D tax credit.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee

Analyst

No, I understand. And I'll just put this to Charles, and all three of you. You guys have talked about this $3 billion annual goal by fiscal 2017. It certainly seems like you're on that pace. Any reason you wouldn't be able, any change from that view?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

At least at that pace, if not faster.

Alex Kurtz - Sterne Agee

Analyst

Okay. Good to hear, Charles. Thank you, guys.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

For next question, we'll go to Mark Kelleher with D. A. Davidson. Mark D. Kelleher - D. A. Davidson & Co.: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations on a torrid top line growth rate pace there. That growth though, is putting some pressure on your balance sheet as your working capital struggles to keep up. Is there a possibility or an element of increasing your pricing to slow the top line down? How do you think about gross margin versus that torrid top line versus your working capital that has to support that?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Well, I think, Mark, as we talked about before, I think there's a wonderful opportunity for us to take market share right now, and we're going to continue to focus on that part of it. There's lots of opportunities for us to go out there and go get, as Charles talked about, our top line growth, and what have you. But again, we'll be looking at that, and then we're looking at the working capital needs of the company to properly support that. Mark D. Kelleher - D. A. Davidson & Co.: All right. And just as my follow-up, the – can you just give us an update on where you think the Grantley Haswell cycle is? I know we ask you that every quarter, but we seem to be getting further along down that cycle, and maybe some thoughts further beyond to Broadwell coming up, how does that play out?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

In terms of new product status, we feel still in the ramp-up mode. And yes, the Broadwell is coming soon. So overall, I believe the product line advantage will continue to happen. And especially, once we announce the 1U 4 GPU, and kind of 90-Bay in 4U JBOD, that will be our strong product. Mark D. Kelleher - D. A. Davidson & Co.: Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Aaron Rakers with Stifel. Aaron C. Rakers - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yeah. Thanks. A couple of questions if I can, as well. So first of all I want to – I'd like to dive a little bit deeper in your enterprise traction. I know you talk about software and services being about 1% of total revenue. It looks like your direct business excluding the Internet, data center grew a pretty solid 52% year-over-year. I also believe you said that you had 800 cumulative customers. I think last quarter it was 700. So can you talk a little bit more about the success you're seeing in the enterprise segment, what enterprise represents as a percentage of total, inclusive of the software and services, and where you expect that to play out through the course of this year? What kind of contribution you're expecting for the full year from enterprise?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Yeah. I mean, our software and service program although start from fiscal year 2014, but it really grow much quicker in 2015. We grew almost triple last year, and looking forward, looks like the growth rate will be continuing very fast, because it's finally a very mature, very strong product. And that's why we are able to approach more and more enterprise customer, and after two year's usage, they have been really happy with whatever total solution we provide. So we feel pretty positive in that area. Aaron C. Rakers - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Any estimate of how – what kind of percentage that could look like as you exit fiscal 2016?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Hopefully another triple this year, so hopefully 3% for example for software and service. Aaron C. Rakers - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. And can you talk a little bit – the second follow-up question is on the gross margin trajectory. What drives the differential between 16% versus the high-end of the band of 18%? And what you're assuming as far as the ramp of your utilization rate in the Taiwan facility?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, Aaron, this is similar to what we talked about in the past. I think the levers for us, for our gross margin are still there, continue to ramp the Taiwan utilization for us, continue to build the scale of our business. And so that includes our purchasing power, improve the mix of our total server solutions. Then as Charles mentioned, the services and support portion of our revenue, as that grows, that provides us with margin uplift there, too. So those three levers are available to us, and still we're trying to execute through those levers. Aaron C. Rakers - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: And do you still think you hit the 80% utilization rate in the Taiwan facility over the next quarter or two?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

We do believe so. Aaron C. Rakers - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Nehal Chokshi with Maxim Group.

Nehal Sushil Chokshi - Maxim Group LLC

Analyst · Maxim Group

Thank you. Just want to revisit the balance sheet there, because that seems to be the crux of many bear arguments I've heard. And especially in this quarter, the accounts receivable did increase $100 million Q-over-Q, versus last year, it increased only $20 million Q-o-Q. Albeit Q-o-Q revenue growth was $100 million for this June quarter versus $50 million a year ago. But it still does not seem to compute, and I think there's some concern that you may have pulled forward some demand, or is looking to move inventory that may have been getting old. So can you just address that bear argument point blank?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

This is Howard, again. I don't believe that there is any pull-forward or revenue per se. It was a seasonally strong quarter. We have lot of new opportunities out there to take advantage of, and we're leveraging on those opportunities per se. How do I put it? The enterprise space is opening up to us. A lot of the market opportunities we talk about are opening up to us, and some of those customers do demand longer terms, I've talked about before with regards to that. So again our DSOs are affected by that.

Nehal Sushil Chokshi - Maxim Group LLC

Analyst · Maxim Group

Okay. Great. Thank you. And if I may ask a follow-up question with respect to enterprise model. For the service line, what's the pricing model of that? Do you target a percent of sales on that service there? And can you also comment on what you expect the operating margin profile for products being sold into these corporate data centers relative to your overall margin profile?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Yeah, for software and service issue, probably the margin is much higher. However, overall our revenue only about 1% for fiscal year 2015, and for 2016, I hope we are up to 3% or even more. So that one will be long-term growing, very positive factor. But yes, the percentage still small, although faster growing.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Go next to Mehdi Hosseini with Susquehanna.

Mehdi Hosseini - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Yes. Thanks for taking my question. I want to go back to the mix, it seems like your server business was pretty good, but the top line upside was mostly driven by system and accessory. And if I were to compare your performance to the rest of the competitors this earnings season, it seems like you're gaining share. And I want you to help me understand what has enabled you to gain market share if it's indeed a share gaining story? And how should we think about the mix going forward? How should we think about the data center mix in the first half of fiscal year 2016? And I have a follow-up.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Yeah, I mean – very good question. Basically, we have much better product, especially for (36:56) application, we have specifically optimized product for them. So customer appreciate that. And also our enterprise customer, they need on-site service. They need software for system management. Before we were pretty weak in that area, but now become much stronger, and we'll be – continue to be stronger. So we are gaining enterprise segment kind of consistently now, and better product, especially application optimized.

Mehdi Hosseini - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

And then, how should we think about the mix into the first half of the fiscal year 2016, especially with the data center?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Data center indeed, it really depends on our production capacity, kind of before our limitation, pretty much production capacity. So now, with our building (37:53) grand opening, yesterday, and another new building in Netherlands, we'll be ready to move in next month. So we have much more space, much more capacity for new data center business now. So if we like, we can grow that area much more aggressively than before.

Mehdi Hosseini - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Okay. And then moving onto the storage. What the mix of next-gen storage this quarter, this past quarter, and how should we think about looking forward?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

For next-generation storage, our volume had been growing very consistently. I guess, year-over-year we grew about 80%...

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

79%.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

79%.

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

In total.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

In total. So in terms of next generation storage also, about that percentage, because we grew both for traditional storage and next-generation. I guess that percent is pretty close.

Mehdi Hosseini - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

So the next-gen storage was up almost...

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, guys. Maybe just to elaborate on your question. Actually for the Q4 versus Q4 of 2014 and 2015, actually next-gen grew about 94% year-over-year same quarter.

Mehdi Hosseini - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

And is it still accounting for half of your overall storage?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Roughly a little less than half for the fourth quarter.

Mehdi Hosseini - Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP

Analyst

Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Brian Alger with ROTH Capital Partners.

Brian Alger - ROTH Capital Partners LLC

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners

Good afternoon, everyone, and again, congrats on what was a great quarter. I want to come back to Mehdi's question with regards to the strength in the accessories business. The systems business was great, in line or a little bit better than what we expected, but I was really surprised by the subsystems and accessories, can you maybe elaborate there in terms of what drove that growth, and where the demand came from?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. I think it goes in sync with what we talked about, the distributors are primarily the guys who buy the subsystem accessories business. You'll see a lockstep, kind of move with our distributor business, and our subsystems and accessories business. So distributor business was or channel business was very strong for us this quarter.

Brian Alger - ROTH Capital Partners LLC

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners

And given the geographic mix, I'd presume that there was distributors here in the U.S. as opposed to say Europe or Asia?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah.

Brian Alger - ROTH Capital Partners LLC

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners

Great. Great. And then as we look at the systems business, the one area that I haven't heard you really talk about – we've talked about servers and we've talked about storage. What about networking? How's the networking moving? I know it's relatively new there, but is that something that's continuing to grow for us?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Yeah. Our networking solution is part of our Total Solution, and that has been growing consistently, although not as fast as our storage. But long-term, yes, that will be one of our focus as well.

Brian Alger - ROTH Capital Partners LLC

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners

Great. Great. Again, guys, great quarter.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next we'll go to Rich Kugele with Needham & Company. Rich J. Kugele - Needham & Co. LLC: Thank you. Good afternoon. A few questions. The – in terms of the issues that impacted you negatively last quarter from the port crisis, getting the chassis and Taiwan program that had been delayed, we assume – should we assume from the revenue that all those issues were resolved, and you were able to ship all your backlog?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes. Rich J. Kugele - Needham & Co. LLC: Okay. And when you look at storage, how much was it as an overall percent of revenue?

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

About 21%. Rich J. Kugele - Needham & Co. LLC: I know you don't want to talk about fiscal 2016 right now, but just directionally, do you think that, it can continue to increase as a percent? Or would you anticipate that the systems side just broadly catches up, and maybe it will stay where it is?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

Yes. We continue introducing even better storage system. For example, 4U 90-Bay and lots of other (42:10) storage Total Solution. So I believe storage product line in terms of percentage will continue to grow. Rich J. Kugele - Needham & Co. LLC: Okay. Then just lastly just to understand the timing of the capacity coming online, and the potential impact to gross margin. Should we assume that the first half of fiscal 2016 sees a dip as that capacity comes online? Or can you bring it on linearly as the revenue needs it?

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Operator

We will control the margin kind of like we have a strong demand from our big data center, but only when we have extra capacity or in-house capacity, otherwise we are little bit selective for customer. Rich J. Kugele - Needham & Co. LLC: Okay. Excellent. That's helpful. Thanks a lot.

Howard Hideshima - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude the question-and-answer session of our conference call. I would now like to turn the conference back to Mr. Liang for any closing remarks.

Charles Liang - Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

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.