Earnings Labs

Synaptics Incorporated (SYNA)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 28, 2016

$89.29

+2.01%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-3.40%

1 Week

+2.08%

1 Month

+8.35%

vs S&P

+7.62%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Synaptics Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2016 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Jennifer Jarman. Please go ahead, Ma'am.

Jennifer Jarman - Director, The Blueshirt Group LLC

Management

Thank you, Robbie. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today on Synaptics fourth quarter and fiscal 2016 conference call. This call is also being broadcast live over the Web and can be accessed from the Investor Relations section of the company's website at synaptics.com. With me on today's call are Rick Bergman, President and CEO; and Wajid Ali, CFO. In addition to the company's GAAP results, management will also provide supplementary results on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes share-based compensation, change in contingent consideration and certain non-cash or non-recurring items. Please refer to the press release issued after market close today for a detailed reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP results. Additionally, we would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, Synaptics will make forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial conditions, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. Although Synaptics believes our estimates and assumptions to be reasonable, they are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties beyond our control and may prove to be inaccurate. Synaptics cautions that actual results may differ materially from any future performance suggested in the company's forward-looking statements. We refer you to the company's current and periodic reports filed with the SEC, including the Synaptics Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 27, 2015, for important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Synaptics expressly disclaims any obligation to update this forward-looking information. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Rick Bergman. Rick? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Jennifer, and I'd like to welcome everyone to today's call. Revenue for fiscal 2016 was approximately $1.7 billion, a slight…

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our first question from Rajvindra Gill with Needham & Co. Please go ahead. Rajvindra S. Gill - Needham & Company, LLC: Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate it. Wajid, on the fiscal year 2017 flat annual revenue number, can you talk a little bit about, what are some of the puts and takes in that guidance in a bit more detail? And how – in terms of stress-testing that, the annual guidance number, what did you include in those – what were some of those factors to get to a fiscal year flat number? Because as you know, in the past, there's always a risk to annual guidance when you give those numbers. Wajid Ali - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Rajvi. So, a couple of things. One of the things we mentioned on our prepared remarks is that we're providing directional guidance, simply because of some of the risk factors that you mentioned. An acceptable level of precision can sometimes be difficult in this type of market. Having said that, at a market level, we're expecting the smartphone market to have a low- to mid-single-digit growth over our fiscal year. At a product level, we're expecting to see double-digit growth in each one of our key product line areas, whether that be our TDDI business or our fingerprint business, as well as seeing some strong stabilization in our PC business. Some of that is from design wins that we've already, achieved and some of that is from design wins that we are working on, and that we're feeling confident about. The one offset that we spoke about in our prepared remarks that's hampering some of that underlying growth is what we're seeing in our display driver product line, where…

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Rob Stone with Cowen & Co. Robert Stone - Cowen & Co. LLC: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I had a couple of questions, Rick, on the subject of gross margin. I know you don't guide gross margin or revenues by segment. But, historically, we've understood DDICs to be your lowest margin segment. And you mentioned the mix shift was in that towards even lower end. I'm curious as you think about fiscal 2017, if DDICs are going to be not growing in the context of flattish or maybe even shrinking in the context of flattish total revenue in these other sectors, fingerprints and TDDI are up. Does that imply that you can get to better margins through the course of the year on that mix? And in particular, how should we think about the margin profile for a TDDI chip, which combines historically the higher touch controller margin and the lower DDIC margin? That's my first question. Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. You got a lot of mileage out of that first question. So let me again step back a little bit. So, as Wajid referred to some mix changes within our DDIC family of products. Now there's one customer in particular that we've heard a lot about, how they've had strength in their product line towards the low end. And that has shifted some of our mix fairly significantly, especially, last quarter and as we look into this quarter, which had impacted our margin a tad bit. And that's kind of the primary reason that it's a little bit lower than maybe a few of you expected. As we move through the course of the year, I think it's a little early to project…

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Paul Coster with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. I'm a little confused on the decline in discrete display driver business. On the one hand, I think I heard you say that the low-end of the market is going away first. But, at the same time, you also talked of the upper end of the market going to OLED. Is it kind of like a one, two hit to that discrete driver business or have I misunderstood the comments there? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Paul, let me try it again. There's single-customer, short-term issues and then longer-term trends in the marketplace. So as much as I can say, for certain customers, we've seen a move more towards lower-end devices. I think it's been well-publicized this week, which puts a little margin pressure and ASP pressure on us, because they tend to use a lower end display driver. As we look towards the broader market, certainly, the overall smartphone market is just not – or the high-end smartphone segment is fairly stagnant at this juncture. It's clearly not growing. In that case, we continue to provide certainly display drivers. But that market, of course, is moving to OLED. And we'll provide OLED drivers at the appropriate time into that marketplace. Today, we do not provide OLED drivers.

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Okay. I understand now. Follow-up question; unrelated, actually. Auto, you've mentioned it a few times in your prepared remarks. It doesn't quite sound like it's going to be the same – well, it's obviously not going to be the same scale. Are we missing something? Are the ASPs higher or are the number of applications brought in the bill going to be higher? Can it ever be a material contributor to your business? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We certainly see it as an opportunity going forward. It's just a question of time. So I think, as I mentioned, we just have to be patient and we'll continue to update you on our progress. Do we think it can be material? Absolutely. Again, the math for us, Synaptics, it will be 100 million or 100-some-odd-million cars shipped per year and growing over the course of time. And we see half a dozen opportunities per vehicle, whether it's in the instrument cluster or the entertainment cluster, or the back of the seat displays. Fingerprint solutions, which we talked about quite a bit today, where there's also touch solutions as well. So you quickly can get to a pretty sizeable market that tends to have higher ASPs in the consumer market, which tends to have higher gross margins. So from that perspective, yes, it's just going to continue to be a few years. But even today, Paul, we do have – it depends what you mean by material, it's 1% to 2% of our revenue, and it has all those characteristics that I just talked about in terms of ASP and margin. But we clearly want to see it be a bigger part of our revenue going forward.

Paul Coster - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Charlie Anderson with Dougherty & Company. Please go ahead. Charlie Lowell Anderson - Dougherty & Co. LLC: Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions. Rick, you mentioned that fingerprint was going to be a contributor to growth in fiscal 2017, and you mentioned some of the variables there earlier. As I think about that market, obviously, there's larger number of phones fingerprint could go on, then there is the inevitable ASP declines, and then there's your market share. I wonder, of those three, where the units are going in the market, where ASPs are going, and then your market share, if you could address what you're thinking, to get to the flat outcome for the business, and how fingerprint will contribute? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I just want to make – you said flat outcome? Charlie Lowell Anderson - Dougherty & Co. LLC: Flat outcome for the business, but fingerprint growing. What fingerprint has to do to help you to get to flat. Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Just making sure we didn't miscommunicate there. So no, we see very healthy growth for our fingerprint business. And, to a certain degree, it's a combination of what you mentioned. There's certainly – the attach rate is going up. So that increases the overall unit TAM or opportunity for us. There is ASP pressure as that market opportunity opens up, as it can tend to be mid or lower-end phones. So our OEMs will put a higher factor on price or cost when they're making their decision on a vender or the solution. However, there's some very interesting developments that I was talking about earlier around under-glass or in display that actually provide ASP growth opportunities. So I would say, as a general rule, without going into too much specifics, we're not seeing the ASP decline that potentially we had anticipated because of the richness of our solutions, but couple that with more unit opportunity as well, to get that total healthy growth. Charlie Lowell Anderson - Dougherty & Co. LLC: Great. Then follow-up from me, Wajid, can you talk about any 10% customers in the quarter? Wajid Ali - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yes. We had three customers that were over 10%. Charlie Lowell Anderson - Dougherty & Co. LLC: Do you have the percentages offhand? Wajid Ali - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yes. 10%, 15% and 20%. Charlie Lowell Anderson - Dougherty & Co. LLC: Perfect. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Brett Simpson with Arete. Please go ahead.

Brett Simpson - Arete Research Services LLP

Management

Yeah. Thanks very much. Rick, I had a question for you on OLED. So when you talk about shipping OLED in 12 months, 18 months, will you be shipping 2K resolution for mobile? And just as a follow-up, how confident are you that you can retain your largest customer and your existing LCD DDI business as they transition to OLED? And do you think you need to make any acquisitions to realize your plans in OLED? Thank you. Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: All right, Brett. Let me answer these questions as much as I can. So fundamental, we're not going to answer – or we're not going to announce our product or the specific devices that we're working on, other than to say we're going to target more, call it, the premium part of the market that has (47:42) a lot of volume on OLED. And so whether it's 2K resolution, or WQHD, or that type of thing, I'm not going to say at this point. So, are we going to comment about our opportunities at a specific customer? Way too early to talk about that, nor do we generally disclose that until there's a tear-down in the marketplace. Do we need to do an acquisition for the capabilities? No. As I said, we feel very confident. The leverage between what we do on LCDs and OLED is very high. We believe we have the best development team from the RSP acquisition, now supplemented with a bunch of designers in Taiwan and here in San Jose. And our display partners also believe that. And that's why they're engaging with us to work with us on – to bring up their very first OLED displays. Because what we really bring, and if you look at the LCD market, a lot of the IP technology around image quality and so forth that I talked about earlier is well understood, because these panels now – or this technology is 10 years. As they bring up OLED, they want to work with the expert in image quality. And that is Synaptics in the marketplace. So it certainly gives us the opportunity to work with our display and OEM partners around the world.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Ambrish Srivastava. Please go ahead.

Ting Pong Gabriel Ho - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Hi. This is Gabriel Ho calling in for Ambrish. Thanks for taking my question. I would like to dive deeper into your fiscal 2017 expectation of maybe a flattish revenue. So what is your assumption in terms of the growth drivers in absolute dollars between your fingerprint sensor and your TDDI? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, as we articulated, TDDI is going to have one of those huge growth percentages. Relatively small base, although we had – as we talked about in our prepared remarks, we had a pretty good Q4 on TDDI. So as I said, the ramp finally has occurred. And we're thrilled about that. But with a full year and a lot more design wins and a lot more parts rolling to production, very, very strong growth. In fact, I couldn't really typify it as double-digit growth, because it's actually triple-digit growth. So as we look at fingerprints, again, we're planning – or believe we have a line of sight to very strong growth year-over-year. Some of it is with our existing customers. For example, the PC business is one example. Attach rates are going up there as well. We don't typically talk about that a lot. But we have very high share in the PC business. And consumers now use fingerprints on their phones. Of course, they want it on their laptops as well. And so nice attach rate and ASP increases there as existing business also moves from swipe to area. And then, new customers in China is only going to add to our revenue. And new solutions, as I mentioned on a earlier question, that give us new ASP opportunities as well. So unfortunately, we're not going to break down each of our sub-businesses in terms of growth rates, but try to give you the best color on where we see the major drivers of our growth. And not surprisingly, it's a few growth drivers that we've been talking about for a couple years now.

Ting Pong Gabriel Ho - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Thanks. And as a follow-up, on your display driver business, the discrete display, I'm referring to. And for the decline – I mean, you expect it to decline, but how much of it is due to the units? Or it could be the pricing? Or maybe some share loss potentially? Wajid Ali - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: So, Gabriel, it's not due to share loss. The year-over-year decline in the discrete display driver business has really to do with two things. One is, is that there is lower end customer demand. And I think that the lower end customer demand has been pretty well publicized. So I don't think I need to get into that anymore. And then the second thing is a shift in product mix. So whereas in fiscal year 2016 at least for the first three quarters, we were primarily supplying higher end display driver products in Q4. Fiscal 2016, we started seeing strong demand for lower end solutions and lower end display drivers for that customer. And we see that continuing throughout our fiscal year. And so with lower end solutions, you have lower ASPs and lower gross margins. And so when you multiply that out by millions of units that can have a material effect on your year-on-year revenue. So really those are the two things. We haven't had any market share loss with that customer.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jagadish Iyer with Redstone. Please go ahead.

Jagadish K. Iyer - Summit Redstone Partners LLC

Management

Yeah. Thanks so much for taking my question. Two questions. Firstly on, Rick, one of your European competitors recently articulated that their market share would be at their high end of their initial targeted range. So I just wanted to understand where do you see the opportunity for biometrics over the next 12 months and where can we hear more socket wins possible for you? And then I have a follow-up. Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. So, I guess, I can't really comment on what our competitors say. We have some colorful ones out there. So I worry about our business and our opportunities, I kind of talk through that. We're definitely bringing on new customers. You've heard TCL and ASUS over the last 30-or-so days and we expect through the course of the calendar year to continue to announce new ones. Some high volume solutions. And then, our existing customers, there are some opportunities to increase ASP as well as grab – as they move into mainstream and lower end solutions, grab those opportunities as well. So there's, call it, not one driving factor. There's multiple factors there moving forward. And that will allow our business to grow at a nice healthy clip versus fiscal 2016.

Jagadish K. Iyer - Summit Redstone Partners LLC

Management

Just to dive on the OLED side, I wanted to understand are there really customers right now who are doing TDDI on an OLED situation at this point of time? We don't have anybody at this point of time and when do you think that the market is ready for that, in your opinion? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. I so much touched on it in an earlier question. Many vendors are ramping up – I think actually every vendor is ramping up production from prior volume levels, which in many cases in zero to higher volume levels in the future. And so their focus at this juncture is to not change too many variables at once. And so use discrete display drivers for the short term, work on the yields, work on the quality issues that potentially they could have, imaging, those type of areas. And then let's think about how we could do display integration solutions like TDDI, or In-Cell, and so on. We're having very early discussions on those. But we're aligned with them. But let's get that initial production up and running or increasing the production that they already have. So it's hard to put exact timing on when the transition to other solutions may occur. But, as you heard, I said more in 2019/2020 timeframe.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our last call from Osten Bernardez with Cross Research. Please go ahead.

Osten H. Bernardez - Cross Research LLC

Management

Yes. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. To begin, I guess, I was just wondering if you could perhaps add a little bit more color on the OLED question and I was just wondering whether you anticipate your early shipments of OLED DDICs potentially coming from customers in China, Japan, or Korea. Can you give any color to that? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's kind of as broadly as I can. The advantage that we have and one of the key reasons for the RSP acquisition a couple years ago was to give us a major international presence and worldwide scale. And from that perspective, I think we are unmatched. We have a very substantial team in Japan. We have a substantial team in Taiwan. I mentioned the U.S. team. And also, we work very closely with the Korean vendors as well. So the one we can talk about, of course, is we have the preferred touch solution for OLED panels out there in the marketplace today. And that gives us a lot of intelligence and feeling in terms of that technology there. So okay. There's Korea. You can imagine with a large display team in Japan. We're probably working with the Japanese. And there's a reason we put a large display team in Taiwan and so we'll be working with display manufacturers in China and Taiwan. Given our scale in this business, we pretty much have to work with those – depending on how you count it – three or four major geographic areas. It's tough to exclude one. And that's the advantage that Synaptics brings. We're really the only vendor that brings that type of capability to work with display manufacturers across these geographies. And that's why OEMs, when I talk about OEMs, branded OEMs at the smartphone level like to work with Synaptics because of that scale and reach.

Osten H. Bernardez - Cross Research LLC

Management

Thank you. And then, lastly for me. Can you remind me sort of how – with respect to TDDI, how do you envision – I know it's early, but I'm just trying to get a sense – your share playing out with TDDI when you think of that market, TDDI penetration reaching 50%, let's say, by 2019, can Synaptics still hold at least 50% share in that space by then or how are you thinking about that? Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Your leading assumption was correct. It's early to make projections out that far. So obviously, being a first mover gives us a nice advantage. And over the next few quarters, certainly, we'll be able to hold majority share. Realistically, though, as we look forward, I don't think anyone has ever been able to hold majority share in any technology class in the display driver business. And so our share will invariably move lower. Is it 30%, 20%? I can't really tell you at this juncture. And a lot of it's to be determined. We have to continue to innovate, bring new value, bring new lower-cost solutions, all those different things, to hold the share in the leadership position. But that's certainly what we want to do as a company to be the leading TDDI vendor.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks. Richard A. Bergman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. This is Rick Bergman again. Thank you for joining us on the call today. It was a pleasure getting all those great questions. We look forward to updating you through the quarter or certainly at the next call in October. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.