Earnings Labs

TTM Technologies, Inc. (TTMI)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 29, 2015

$137.50

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the TTM Technologies First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Tony Righetti with The Blueshirt Group. Please go ahead, sir.

Tony Righetti

Management

Thank you, operator. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking statements. I wish to remind you that any forward-looking information we provide is given in reliance upon the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The comments that will be made today are management's best judgments based on information currently available. Actual results could differ materially from any implied projections due to one or more of the factors explained in the Annual Report on Form 10-K and other documents that the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. TTM does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as the result of new information, future events or other circumstances, except as required by law. Please refer to the full disclosures regarding the risks that may affect TTM and the risk associated with TTM's proposed acquisition of Viasystems Group, Inc., which may be found in the current reports on Form 8-K and the registration statements on Form S-4 that have been filed by TTM with respect to the proposed acquisition and the company's other SEC filings. In addition to the financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, we will discuss on this call certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA. Such measures should not be considered as the substitute for GAAP and we direct you to the reconciliation included in the company's press release, which was filed with the SEC and is available on TTM's website at ttm.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Edman, TTM's Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Tom.

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Thank you, Tony. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2015 conference call. I will begin with a review of our business, Todd Schull, our CFO will follow with a discussion of our financial performance. We will then open the call to your questions. Let me start with a review of highlights from the first quarter. Net sales in the first quarter were $329.2 million. GAAP net income was $3.4 million or $0.04 per diluted share. Non-GAAP net income was $10.8 million, or $0.13 per diluted share. We had a strong start to the year compared to our initial guidance Q1 revenue was at the upper end of our range and non-GAAP earnings exceed our expectations. In our cellular phone end market broad based demand continued into the first quarter following the Q4 seasonal peak and drove strong year-over-year top and bottom line increases. We are encouraged by the solid sell through rates that have continued, this combined with our product prototyping activities bodes well for this end market and TTM as we enter Q2 and prepare for the second half of 2015. Operationally, we executed well with solid yield performance during the quarter. Operating and gross margins improved year-over-year due to increased volumes and a product mix shift towards advanced technology products. As expected operating and gross margins decline sequentially following the Q4 seasonal peak. During the quarter our advanced technology work which includes HDI rigid-flex and substrate accounted for approximately 45% of our company’s revenue. This compares to approximately 37% in Q1 a year ago. Increasing the percentage of our business coming from advanced technologies continues to be a key strategy for TTM. As these product offer better revenue and profit growth opportunities. Our overall capacity utilization in Asia-Pacific was 72% compared to…

Todd B. Schull

Management

Thanks, Tom and good afternoon, everyone. For the first quarter, net sales were $329.2 million, compared to net sales of $291.9 million in the first quarter of 2014 and fourth quarter net sales of $390.9 million. As Tom said earlier, the year-over-year increase in revenue was driven by broad base strength in our cellular phone end market. The sequential decline in sales was largely due to normal seasonality. GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $8.3 million compared to GAAP operating income of $4.5 million in the first quarter of 2014 and $26.6 million in the fourth quarter. On a GAAP basis, our net income for the first quarter of 2015 was $3.4 million or $0.04 per diluted share. This compares to GAAP net loss of $3.8 million or $0.05 per diluted share in the first quarter of last year and GAAP net income of $13.9 million or $0.17 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2014. The remainder of my comments will focus on our non-GAAP financial performance. Our non-GAAP performance excludes certain non-cash expenses restructuring and impairment costs, costs associated with the early extinguishment of debt, acquisition related costs and other unusual or infrequent items as well as the associated tax impact of these items. Additionally we exclude non-operational changes in our tax expense such as the impact of retroactive changes in the tax law. We present non-GAAP financial information to enable investors to see the company to eyes of management and to provide better insight to the company’s ongoing financial performance. Gross margin in the first quarter was 15.7% compared to 13.3% in the first quarter of 2014 and 17.6% in the fourth quarter. The year-over-year improvement was due primarily to increased revenue at our advanced technology plants, which resulted in a higher utilization levels…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we’ll take our first question from Prabh Gowrisankaran.

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Hi, Prabh

Prabhakar Gowrisankaran

Analyst

Thanks for taking my call. How are you?

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Good.

Prabhakar Gowrisankaran

Analyst

Congrats on the really strong quarter. So I just a couple of questions one on the smartphone the strength that you’re seeing both you saw in Q1 and now you’re seeing in Q2? Do you see the seasonality changing with this or because traditionally between stronger Q3, Q4. How do you think it will play out this year?

Thomas T. Edman

Management

This is Tom Edman. I think the seasonal aspect is still there from the standpoint that and you saw that utilization rates are certainly lower this quarter then they were in Q4. So there is still a seasonal component to the smartphone business. I am encouraged that with both the fact the sell through has been strong but also with the off cycle introductions from some of the Asian customers that have certainly helped utilization levels in the first half. But I would still anticipate that we are going to see. What you would call a typical Q3, Q4 ramp as the larger the bigger product introductions will still occur in Q3. So that should not change. So again there will be a seasonal aspect to it. I think we are encouraged by certainly the developments in the first quarter and what we see in the second quarter this year.

Prabhakar Gowrisankaran

Analyst

Okay. And the second question I had was just on the North American business, looks like it slowed down a bit was that more a prototyping and networking and communications or what was driver for that?

Thomas T. Edman

Management

So overall high mix low volume area if you want to think about it that way has been down slightly in North America as we look forward in the second quarter, where we are looking at sequentially improvement in the North America business. And as I mentioned we are really encouraged by the Aerospace and Defense booking strength and that bodes well for the second half of the year for North America..

Prabhakar Gowrisankaran

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Rold with Needham.

Matthew David Rold

Analyst · Needham

Hi, thanks for taking the question. So on the networking segment side, sorry could you give an update on the end market demand there both in the traditional side and the other?

Todd B. Schull

Management

Sure, let’s start with the telecom side I think in the near-term certainly in the first quarter and what we see in the second quarter, we seem to be seeing an impact of it a combination of things, some inventory corrections that seems to be that there was some over ordering late last year in telecom and that is led to inventory correction. We are also seeing the demand does seem to be down particularly in Europe and what we also are hearing from our customers in telecom is that they are looking to a stronger Q3, Q4 as they move through the inventory correction is start to see real demand coming back again particularly in China. That’s the telecom side. On the networking side, better strength there so here we are talking about really routers and switches. So building on top of that infrastructure and as you would expect we are seeing decent strength in networking, but I would say that visibility still remains relatively limited there. So we are cautiously optimistic on the networking piece, but let’s see how it shapes up as we go through the year. So overall for the second quarter certainly we are continuing to expect and we’ll see a relatively muted demand situation and then looking to a better Q3 and Q4 particularly in telecom.

Matthew David Rold

Analyst · Needham

Okay, and then on the Chinese cellphone customer side. Could you talk about kind of distribution there has been concentration and just a little more color on how they are and how many of them there are and what kind of growth rates you are looking at there et cetera?

Todd B. Schull

Management

So without getting too specific I think if you look at major Chinese players, we certainly supply Korea a major Korean customer as well. So we have a large Korean customer and then on the China side you are looking at four to five customers, why the reason for the four to five is that occasionally with when we see off cycle situations we may see demand move away from a customer they come back in as they ramp up a new product. So I think four to five customers in terms of radar China upsized.

Matthew David Rold

Analyst · Needham

Okay, and they are relatively similar size within that four to five or is there any stand about?

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Yes, I mean again it moves around with product introduction cycles, but relatively similar in size.

Matthew David Rold

Analyst · Needham

Okay, got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We’ll take our next question from Matt Sheerin with Stifel.

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Hello, Matt.

Todd B. Schull

Management

Hey, Matt.

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

Thanks, good afternoon guys. Just a couple of questions from me, the utilization rate in North America was down again obviously under the seasonality, but less than 50% and you think that’s something that you’re going to have to address at some point and is that something that you’re looking at in terms of consolidating the cost structure there was that something you are going to wait until the Viasystems deal closes and you kind of figure out the assets for [indiscernible] companies.

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Yes, so first in terms of movement in the utilization. We actually saw an increase in utilization sequentially in North America. So we did see an increase there and from 47% to 48% it’s relatively flat, but slight increase. In terms of that doesn’t lessen the point that you are making on utilization. We understand that we can do better in our North America footprint, it is a high mix low volume environment, so always utilization rates will be far lower than the high volume areas and so we would be in a situation where really you would max out at 70% and you’d be running optimally at around 60% between 60% and 70%. As you pointed out we do continue to look at the footprint and certainly in combination with Viasystems we’ll have a larger and a broader footprint to look at North America and so we certainly will then be able to look at our footprint and look at how we can optimize.

Todd B. Schull

Management

And I would just add one at this time.

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

Yes, Todd.

Todd B. Schull

Management

When you look at gross margins in North America they don’t always directly correlate to utilization. So for example if we look at and I think in my comments when I was talking about the segments I highlighted the fact the gross margins this year in Q1 for North America were 15.5%, last year they were 13.7%, but if you look at year-over-year on the utilization it actually came down a lot again we talked about that a quarter or two ago. We added some plating capacity for technology reasons, it kind of messes with the utilization calculation formula, but in terms of profitability to the business it’s not a strong correlation as you would see in our Asia operations.

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

Got it. Okay, that’s helpful. On the computing peripherals tablet business are you guiding that up sequentially I understand why it was down it sounds like the tablets and the allocation of tablets from you big customer, but when you see the strength area is that on the mobile device side or you also seeing strength in computing servers, others parts of that business?

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Yes, so as we go forward and look at the second quarter, we are seeing new product introductions and tablets in some of the computing areas as well and then file servers. So it’s a combination of all three of those factors, but mainly if you look to the high end computing side we are seeing some new product introductions that will help drive that demand.

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

Okay, and then on the – with the debt down Todd do you expect interest expense to creep down a little bit next quarter and so will you be modeling around $3 million or so a quarter?

Todd B. Schull

Management

I gave guidance for that we would expect…

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

Oh, I missed that.

Todd B. Schull

Management

That’s fine. Let me just go back to that number, we are looking at about $2.8 million.

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

$2.8 million, okay.

Todd B. Schull

Management

It might be down a little bit within 100,000 of that number, but that’s the cash interest expense that we expect.

Matthew Sheerin

Analyst · Stifel

Got you. Okay, and then let’s see, well I think that’s it from me. Thank you very much and best of luck.

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Thank you. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

And it appears there are no further questions at this time, so at this time I’ll turn conference back over to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Thomas T. Edman

Management

Okay, this is Tom Edman just wanted to thank you all for joining the call and a few messages to leave you with I think we are really pleased with our first quarter performance and the market conditions that are leading to anticipated second quarter performance for TTM. We of course are in the mean time working on positioning for the second half ramp particularly in our mobile market as we build for the long-term with Viasystems acquisitions and a focus on operational execution on behalf of our customer base. So look forward to talking with you all and certainly speaking with you next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today’s call.