Earnings Labs

UTStarcom Holdings Corp. (UTSI)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 15, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by for UTStarcom’s Third Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Jing Ou Yang, Investor Relations Director for UTStarcom. You may begin.

Jing Ou Yang

Management

Hello everyone and welcome to UTStarcom’s third quarter 2012 earnings conference call. Earlier today, we distributed two press releases; one was our quarterly earnings results; and one that aligns on new strategic plan for UTStarcom. you can find copies of this on our website at www.utstar.com. In addition, we have posted a slideshow presentation on our website, which you can download and use to follow along with today’s call. On today’s call, we have Mr. William Wong, our CEO; and Mr. Robert Pu, our CFO. Before we get started, I will read the Company’s advisory on forward-looking statements. This call will include forward-looking statements relating to development and growth of the Company’s operational support services business, it’s new strategic plan for the Company’s business, the Company’s performance in 2012 and expectations regarding share repurchases. These statements are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Those include risks and uncertainties related to operating changes in the financial condition, and cash position of the Company, changes in the composition of the Company’s management and their effect on the Company. The Company’s ability to develop and operate its TV over IP services business and execute the business plans through acquisitions and organic innovations and to manage and to integrate such business, as well as risk factors identified in the Company’s latest Annual Report on Form 20-F, and current reports on Form 6-K as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company is in a period of transition and the conduct of its business is exposed to additional risks as a result. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to the Company as of the date of this release, which may change, and UTStarcom assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. William Wong.

William Wong

Management

Thank you, Jing, and hello to everyone. As Jing mentioned, we have distributed two important press releases today: one, covering our third quarter earnings results and the one, giving an overview of our new strategic plan. You can follow along with today’s call by downloading the presentation from our website at www.utstar.com. Also, unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the call are in U.S. dollars. To begin, I’ll point you to slide number five. Let me begin by saying that this is a very exciting time for UTStarcom. We have made several significant changes recently that we believe will position the Company for long-term success and allow us to deliver greater values to shareholders over time. There is an underlying theme introduced changes that would drive our efforts for years to come. And that is our goal to become a Next Generation Media company. Specifically, we intend to fully transform UTStarcom into a high growth, lower profitable business focused on building a platform of media operational support services and broadband equipment products and services. We will provide more detail on this call as to what that means. These new strategy which we are already executing, having announced a number of key events recently in support of these strategic shifts. in short, we have started to transform and change the makeup of UTStarcom by redesigning the management team, adding new independent directors to the Board and most importantly, have begun making key and necessary strategic changes to our business model. These include one, the divestiture of the underperforming IPTV business; two, the recently announced investment in the next generation video platform company, aioTV. These are just short of what we have planned and I’ll walk through the detail of our strategy in a few moments. Once again, this is a very exciting time for UTStarcom and we are delighted to be here. There are a lot of opportunities before us that it will require hard work and dedication to seize it. We believe we now have a concrete plan and the right leadership in place, with that together will enable us to convert those opportunities into profitable growth and the generation of shareholder value. So with that introduction, let’s get started with the review of our third quarter earnings results. I will now turn the call over to Robert Pu, our recently appointed Chief Financial Officer, who will provide you with details of the third quarter. We are delighted to welcome Robert, who has extensive CFO level of experience and have served on our Board of Directors since November 2011 and he is Head of the Audit Committee until recently. Following Robert’s presentation, I will talk further about our new strategy. Robert?

Robert Pu

Management

Thank you, William, and hello to everyone. This is my first earnings conference call at UTStarcom in my new capacity as CFO. I’m very excited about this opportunity and I look forward to working with you in the future. Please turn to page seven for the financial review section. In the following section of the conference call, I will highlight our third quarter and first nine month 2012 financial results in more detail and with year-over-year comparison. At the same time, our Q3 results also demonstrated the strength of our broadband business. Following the IPTV divestiture, we have a linear operation. We have a favorable gross margin in a lower long lead impacts. Also we have a strong balance sheet, we have no debt and we have removed significant amount of liabilities from our books through the IPTV divestiture. We continue our share repurchase program and beginning to invest in the higher margin products and services that we will elaborate later in the call. As you know in the third quarter, we officially divested IPTV business. As indicated previously, we will report IPTV financial results separately as discontinued operations for 2012 and for all comparable periods. However, it is important to note that we can put this into effect once we meet the requirement to do so. At this point for better comparison of the Q3 and year-to-date financial performance, we have prepared non-GAAP financial results that being today in my remarks, I will focus on our broadband business and exclude the IPTV business and the amortization of PHS deferred revenue from our discussion. Please note this will apply to for what I discuss for Q3 and year-to-date for 2012 as well as the comparison in 2011. Before we target the numbers, I want to highlight few broad themes for…

William Wong

Management

Thanks, Robert. To begin I ask you to go to slide number 16. The new management team has developed and already begun implementing a strategic plan in order to accelerate revenue growth also profit margins, improve operational cash flows and increase shareholder value. More specifically, we know we need to do the following, focus exclusively on faster-growing, higher margin market opportunities, create a business model with an enhanced overall profitability profile, generate a more predictable subscriber base recurring revenue stream, typically new business opportunities where UTStarcom has the potential to become the top one or two service providers. We believe that taken together, this will help accelerate UTStarcom’s transition into what we are calling a Next Generation Media company with a business model center on media operational support services as well as higher value added broadband equipment products and services. The plan we will execute is based on many important steps we have taken today and we believe our action will put UTStarcom in a better position to serve the evolving needs of the cable and broadband service providers that has historically made up UTStarcom’s customer base. Please now go to slide 17, our go-forward roadmap has been based largely on eccentric market analysis undertaken to understand where the most promising growth opportunities lie. And it’s in keeping with some of the key mega trends that are changing the way that people consume entertainment. One of the greatness of this trend is the proliferation of screens, on which people view content. Especially as they increasingly adopt a variety of mobile devices for their computing and entertainment needs. No longer, our consumer is confined to their television for video programming. In today’s global environment, consumers’ new video content on their mobile phone, tablet devices, laptops and PCs. Perhaps as a byproduct…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question will come from Jun Zhang of Wedge Partners. Please go ahead. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Thanks for taking my call. So my first question is what’s the new TV over IP platform different from the previous production offering like the RollingStream solution, so it's going to be the totally new solution for something based on the existing (inaudible) solution platform? Thanks.

William Wong

Management

That is the most different on our new platform versus in the past; the key thing is right now we essentially providing the solution and a turnkey operation to broadband and cable operators. So we start with content aggregation of the premium license content, local content, Internet content, and to the setting of the entire content management, service delivery and to the set-top box et cetera. So this is a very comprehensive platform solution that we offering to operators, so as opposed to before where is this more of like an equipment and infrastructure solution only. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay. So the new TV over IP platform be offer to those cable operators and the Telecos only to the cable operator?

William Wong

Management

We are targeting broadband operators as well as cable operators. So to a large extent and lot of this our previous customers of UTStarcom who has brought equipment from us before, so there is plenty of that customers already in Asia and the globe. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay, thanks. So my next question, what’s your view in the next two or three years, what percentage of revenue were coming from the equipment businesses and what percentage of revenue will come from the TV over IP platform, and rough idea on revenue break down by the regions? Thanks.

William Wong

Management

As we said we're focusing our initial markets in the Asia region including China, and we've also said that currently the Company anticipates by 2015 our TV over IP services revenue will become a major contributor to our total revenue. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay. So how much revenue, what percentage of revenue coming from China, or overseas China?

Robert Pu

Management

We are not ready to give you the breakdown of the revenue allocation among regions but I would say majority of our revenue should come from our APAC region, including China. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay, clear, thanks. And Rob, what kind of cash loan in your view will be used for the acquisition or the new TV over IP platform in the next year or two?

Robert Pu

Management

I didn’t hear you very clearly, could you please repeat. Thank you. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: I’m sorry, I probably the signal. What kind of cash volumes will be used to acquisitions or the new TV over IP platform, roll outs in the year or two years?

Robert Pu

Management

Sure. Currently on the balance sheet we have more than $200 million in cash and we have no debt and they found the current financial model we believe we have sufficient fund for the strategies that what just I’m laid out to be. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay, thanks. And my last question is do acquisition, the aioTV what’s the role including aioTV the new strategy, especially in China?

William Wong

Management

aioTV has very innovative platform that particularly caters for contacts coming from the Internet. So in our overall TV over IP platform, that would be a good part of the platform offering, so that we would be able to combine what we call the typical pay TV content meaning the premium license content, plus some of the local content and to wired aioTV’s platform, combined that to include Internet content. So in that platform, we would be able to offer a new user experience that incorporate all this different in which coming from various different sources. So in China, there’s a plenty of those what we called the OTT type of content. So that would be combined with the typical Pay TV or cable programs and deliver to the family room of the viewers. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay. So could you also comment what kind of the revenue generation model from this aioTV if you got declared that in China?

William Wong

Management

In China, it would be mostly through a subscription based revenue model and with the combination of advertising based on the partially free into that context. So it will be a combination of both type of the business models, which also reflects actually the revenue model that aio is seeing in the rest of the world, particularly in North and South America where they have been deployed, it’s also via similar models. Jun Zhang – Wedge Partners: Okay, thanks. That’s all my questions. Thanks a lot.

William Wong

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from [Don Kennedy] of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Good morning. I had a couple of questions. The first one is any comments or thoughts with regard to monetizing the tax loss, if you guys have on the balance sheet? And then the second one maybe if you could just comment in general obviously the strategy you guys are embarking on, there is a lot of competition. If you can maybe just kind of talk a little bit about your view of the competitive landscape and how you guys will fit in? And then lastly thoughts on why you guys repurchasing stock instead of paying out the special dividends? Thank you.

William Wong

Management

Let me answer that I’d referred to this question first and compared to issuing dividends or special dividends, I think buying back our stock provide liquidity to our shareholders and potentially avoid the double taxation situation. So that’s why we initiated and we continue our task buyback program.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay.

William Wong

Management

And Don, I think earlier you had a question on I believe it’s our carryover of net property and loss, is that…?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yeah, right.

William Wong

Management

We have the section of creation (inaudible) NOLs carryforward and in our opinion the best way to utilize the value of NOL is actually to make money and I had a profit to get NOL and non taxable at the same time.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And then any thoughts or comments you can give me on the competitive landscape and how you see yourselves fitting would be helpful? Thank you.

William Wong

Management

So I think you were referring to the competitive landscape of our broadband business, is it correct?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Correct.

William Wong

Management

Okay. In the broadband space actually and where we are focusing particularly in the transmission area with the PTN products, there are number of different players in there, but each with very specific architecture setup. So in where we are playing, we have been enjoying the relative CEO of strong margin because of the wide scale deployment that we have done on our PTN products. So moving forward, we continue to focus on being a very niche product play and targeting to customer architectures that would maximize the benefits based on using above products. So in essence, the competitive landscape that we have scarfed out give us a unique advantage to compete with other people and also enjoy a relatively high gross margin.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

William Wong

Management

Thank you.

Robert Pu

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the conference back to management for closing comments.

William Wong

Management

Thank you for joining us on our third quarter 2012 earnings conference call. We look forward to updating you on our first quarter and full year 2012 in a few month times. Feel free to get in touch with us anytime if you have further questions, concerns or comments. Thank you everyone.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.