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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q1 2025 Fossil Group Inc Earnings Call
Christine Greany; Investor Relations; The Blueshirt Group Franco Fogliato; Chief Executive Officer, Director; Fossil Group Inc Randy Greben; Chief Financial Officer; Fossil Group Inc Operator Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fossil Group first-quarter 2025 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) This conference call is being recorded and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the I'll turn the call over to Christine Greany of The Blueshirt Group to begin. Christine Greany Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today is Franco Fogliato, Chief Executive Officer; and Randy Greben, Chief Financial we begin, I would like to remind you that information made available during this conference call contains forward-looking information and actual results could differ materially from those that will be discussed during this call. Fossil Group's policy on forward-looking statements and additional information concerning a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements is readily available in the company's Form 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K reports filed with the SEC. In addition, Fossil assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by today's call, we will refer to constant currency results as well as certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please note that you can find a reconciliation of actual results to constant currency results and other information regarding non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call in Fossil's earnings release, which was filed today on Form 8-K and is available in the Investors section of that, I'll now turn the call over to Franco. Franco Fogliato Thank you, Christine. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start by welcoming Randy, who joined us in March and has been a tremendous asset in his first two months with Fossil Group. As we have heard me saying on recent earnings calls, we're moving fast and furious over here. Randy has jumped the has ranked quickly, developing sharp proficiency across the operating and financial models in just a matter of weeks. And his high energy and strong desire to win are an ideal fit with our customer. After my remarks, I will turn the call to Randy to provide a detailed review of the financial results and discuss our recognize the global trade environment is top of mind for everyone. Our world-class teams have been doing excellent work in scenario planning, balancing near-term cost management with long-term supply chain optimization. Both Randy and I will address this during our remarks I will discuss our Q1 performance and provide an update on our turnaround initiatives, which are generating strong business momentum. We're pleased to report another quarter of exceptional progress under our turnaround plan. Our teams delivered results ahead of our expectations, both operationally and recorded a significant improvement in sales performance on a sequential basis, drove another quarter of meaningful gross margin expansion and generated a second consecutive quarter of profitability. Specifically, we narrow our core sales declined to just 8%, that represents a sequential improvement of 400 basis points compared to the fourth quarter. Gross margin exceeded 61%, up nearly 9 points from the prior year and we delivered positive adjusted operating margins of 4.3%.Despite the dynamic macro backdrop, we're not currently seeing any softening in our demand trend and continue to have confidence in our ability to drive growth to our turnaround plan. Our confidence is underpinned by several factors. First and foremost is the immediate traction and positive results we're seeing from our turnaround efforts over the past two we have a number of tailwinds to propel the business forward: a leading market position; favorable industry dynamics; and a core underlying strength, including iconic brands, innovative design, talented teams in a broad global reach. We're incredibly proud of our teams for delivering strong execution under our turnaround a reminder, the plan is centered on three primary pillars: refocusing on our core, rightsizing our cost structure and strengthening our balance sheet. I'll take you through a progress update for each of these items. Starting with our first pillar, focusing on our core. Our teams are fully aligned on our new brand-led and consumer-focused operating model, which is translating to positive results across the business. Our primary focus under this pillar is twofold, traditional watches on our major brand platforms and go-to-market advancing quickly on several fronts. First, we are delivering a robust pipeline of product innovation with core Fossil icons, such as our award-winning Raquel line for women in our classic machine series for men. Raquel continues to be among our top seller, capturing attention from influencer talent and style editors the men's side, our Machine Chronograph has been a standard among celebrity stylists, generating social media buzz and press coverage worldwide. In 2025, we're elevating storytelling around major product and brand moments to strengthen engagement and prioritize winning in men while continuing to maximize momentum we've seen in our women's remains core to the Fossil brand as we continue to build a foundation of store tale that connects our rich heritage with today's culture. Among our most highly profiled collaboration this year is the Fossil for Mine Craft collection. Just two weeks ago after the launch, the watches were sold out on Organic social performance was also exceptional with a total reach of $5.5 recently, we had the preview event for our upcoming Fossil Shelby collection. This is our most elevated performance-driven chronograph today, which was built to capture the trailing legacy of Shelby American racing. Additionally, this week, we introduced a limited addition on Superman collection, featuring a full range of products from watches and wallet to bracelet and cufflinks, time to coincide with the Father's supporting our robust pipeline of innovation and branded utilization efforts with full-funnel marketing initiatives. In 2025, we would be investing more strategically, deploying our spend towards a higher mix of brand marketing versus performance Q2, we will be doubling down on media, influencer, and PR to drive brand heat, build awareness, and full demand. This included the upcoming introduction of our global Fossil brand campaign featuring Nick Jonas. As our global brand ambassador, Nick has been a fantastic partner to us as we collaborate in preparation for the March, Fossil was a lead sponsor of JONASCON, a Jonas Brothers' fun convention created in celebration of the group's 20th anniversary. Nick wore our Machine Chronograph throughout the event, providing Fossil with exposure to this most engaged audience while also generating significant press coverage and social engagement. He has a tremendous reach as a musician, actor, and philanthropist who is known worldwide. And we believe Nick will help us build increase awareness of the Fossil brand and drive resonance among both new and existing the same time, we will be investing in point-of-sales marketing, rolling out a new picture and improved store reselling collateral that beacons to the Fossil brand at now to our core license brand: Armani, Kors, and Diesel. We're investing in point-of-sale and in-store presentation in the wholesale channel to reinvigorate our positioning among this brand. These initiatives are already generating improved performance. The Kors brand returned to growth, posting double-digit gains in the first quarter. Armani Exchange was also up in the double digits, while the Armani brand remains pressured by the difficult market environment in are particularly pleased with our ability to achieve minimum royalty reduction with our key partners, which speaks to the strength of our long-term relationship and demonstrate their confidence in our turnaround plan and current trajectory. Importantly, these agreements position us to drive profitable growth among our portfolio of licensed brands going key initiative is the work we are doing to optimize our global wholesale footprint by prioritizing key geography. Most notably, in the US, our Q1 wholesale business for our core brand grew in the double digits on a year-over-year basis. We also saw continued momentum in other highly scalable markets such as India, where traditional watch performance across brands remain transitioning five of our smaller international markets to a distributor model earlier this year, we're continuing to evaluate additional opportunities where we can drive efficient growth and scale through the distributor model. This go-to-market strategy can be very powerful in smaller markets. It simplifies our operating model, allows us to leverage the regional expertise of local partners to a full top-line growth and lowers our in-region cost to drive increased to our initiatives around channel profitability. Our actions are generating meaningful results across both wholesale and DTC. This is clearly reflected in the strength of our gross margin and improved the bottom-line result. The wholesale channel continued to perform ahead of our expectations, led by fewer promotion as well as Fossil brand the e-commerce channel, operating results continue to strengthen. After delivering better-than-expected results in Q4, we saw ongoing momentum in Q1, which has not slowed down thus far in Q2. The strategic decision to reduce our promotional activity is paying clear dividend, higher gross margin, higher quality traffic to our website, and increased average unit at our retail stores, we're seeing a strengthening trend in our full-price location led by improved performance in our traditional watches. During the quarter, we continued to optimize the store portfolio throughout the closure of 28 additional stores. As we continue to make great progress across the strategic areas of the business, we're also taking action to transform our operating model by rightsizing Fossil Group's cost structure. In fact, we have already taken the steps necessary to align our cost structure to our newly defined strategies, scope and scale. This includes a reduction in force in February, moving some of our international markets to a more profitable distributor model, and closing unproductive retail actions are expected to drive $100 million of SG&A savings in 2025 versus 2024. We're also continuing to evaluate other opportunities, including the potential sale of non-core at the third key pillar under our turnaround plan strengthening the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $100 million of liquidity, and we are actively pursuing initiatives to improve working capital and manage a few days ago, we signed an agreement for the sale leaseback of our European distribution center in a transaction that's expected to close later in Q2. At the same time, we're working with our adviser to address our upcoming debt maturities. Importantly, our better-than-expected financial performance in Q1 provides us with the added flexibility to execute our plans and navigate the dynamic macroenvironment.I'm tremendously grateful to our teams across the organization for their dedication to Fossil Group. They're putting their work and we're seeing that in the early stage of our team. This is inspiring and highly motivating. Including Randy, we have three new executives who joined the company during the first quarter. All of them have hit the ground Martin, our Chief Commercial Officer, has overseen all of our global revenue generating activities. Joe is already implementing a robust commercial strategy designed to drive growth within our global wholesale business. During Q1, Joe and I spent time meeting with our partners around the globe, and we're working in close collaboration on future planning reinforcing the opportunity in front of key leader new to the team is Antonio Carriero, our Chief Vision Information Officer and General Manager of EMEA. Antonio is leading our global technology strategy and driving our commercial business in the EMEA region. He is focused on optimizing our existing tech stack while accelerating our use of AI across the organization to drive efficiencies and unlock potential growth of while I've already talked about the value Randy has brought to the table, I will add that he has been instrumental in our tariff war room as we assess, plan, and model the business amidst a fluid we announced today, we also added two new Board members to complement the strength of our executive team and bring additional supprot leadership to Fossil Group. While the year started differently than we expected, we are seeing continued business momentum, and we are addressing the global tariff environment from a position of and foremost, we're fortunate to have a team with extensive experience, navigating complexity across global markets. Equally important, our diverse global footprint limits our tariff exposure and we have multiple levers we can pull to protect our strong gross margin profile. We have long-term relationship with our vendor partners. We have the ability to lean into a highly scalable market outside the US, where our brand already has a strong presence and we have pricing the evolving policy changes and market moves make it challenging to predict consumer sentiment for the remainder of the year, we have not seen any slowdown in our business trends year to date. We are reiterating our full-year guidance, which contemplates a range of outcomes for China tariff. We also remain confident in the three-year financial framework we have outlined during our March earnings outlook assumes there is no material change in macroeconomic conditions and broader consumer demand trend. (inaudible) we have been operating in tumultuous environment, our turnaround plan is working, and our results are moving in the right direction. We look forward to continuing on our path to restoring growth, delivering long-term profitability and creating durable shareholder I will turn the call over to Randy to review the first-quarter financial and discuss our outlook. Randy Greben Thank you, Franco, and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be here and be a part of this incredible team. I'm excited about the opportunity we have in front of us and look forward to getting to know how our started the year with strong first-quarter performance that exceeded our expectations across the P&L. First-quarter net sales totaled $239 million, down to 6% in constant currency. Core sales declined 8% on a year-over-year basis, excluding the benefit of 700 basis points from the additional week in this year's retail calendar, partially offset by 500 basis points of impact from our smartwatch exit and retail store closures. This represents notable sequential improvement from a core sales decline of 12% in in our Fossil traditional watch business also improved sequentially, posting growth of 7% globally versus the prior year, excluding the 53rd week and store closures. That's up from low single-digit growth in Q4 of gross margin expanded 880 basis points compared to last year coming in at 61.1%. The year-over-year increase primarily reflects higher product margins in our core categories, driven by improved product costing, reduced promotional activity in our e-commerce business, and our exit from connected watches. Looking at the balance of the year, we expect gross margins to remain strong as we continue to reduce our promotional levels and focus on a full-price selling at expenses, we brought down SG&A by $17 million to $136 million. This represents a decrease of 11% versus prior year, which can be traced to lower store operating costs on fewer stores, lower compensation and administrative expenses, and a planned decrease in digital marketing spend versus the prior year. Our teams have done a great job of prioritizing cost control, and we will continue to identify additional expense levers in Q1, we closed 28 stores, ending the quarter with 220 stores. All of these closures occurred at natural lease expiration with very minimal closing at the bottom line, our focus on gross margin expansion and cost reduction enabled us to deliver a second consecutive quarter of profitability. First-quarter adjusted operating income swung from a loss of $20 million last year to a $10 million profit this year. This strength drove Q1 adjusted operating margin of 4.3%.Moving to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $100 million, including $78 million in cash and cash equivalents and $21 million of availability under our revolving credit facility. Inventory levels totaled $182 million. That's down 19% compared to a year ago and in line with our expectations. Our teams are continuing to operate with financial rigor, exercising working capital discipline and careful inventory management as we work towards strengthening the balance sheet, a critical pillar under our turnaround company has been acting with urgency to address its liquidity position and I can share that we're making meaningful progress towards refinancing our debt, selling non-core assets and further reducing costs. I'm particularly pleased to report that in the last week, we signed an agreement for the sale leaseback of our distribution center in EXSTAT Germany. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 and will bring in excess of $20 million to the balance sheet upon completion. The refinancing process has been a particular focus of mind during my first 60 days and we look forward to sharing more with our investors in the coming now to guidance. Based on the results we're seeing from our turnaround initiatives and ongoing momentum across the business, we are reiterating our full-year outlook for 2025. With respect to the global tariff situation, our business has a number of factors that work in our favor, and I've been impressed at the speed at which my colleagues around the globe have mobilized to address this head company is leading from the front with respect to addressing tariff mitigation and absorption. Even if tariff rates ultimately fell between 30% to 145% on goods from China and 10% on products from other countries, we're confident that we can mitigate the full impact of tariffs to our 2025 me unpack just why. First and foremost, we are a global company with more than 60% of our revenue generated outside of the United States. This provides us with a level of insulation that we will leverage as we continue to lean into countries where we have a strong presence and growing business momentum, placing less reliance on our tariff-impacted domestic addition to having a large and diverse revenue stream, we have long established vendor partner relationships, in many cases, formed over decades, both in China and around the globe. We are leaning into those relationships and have already seen partners willing to participate in sharing some of the cost impact of the incremental tariffs. We also have a supply chain that has built-in redundancy, providing us with the agility to reallocate manufacturing quickly and seamlessly as reducing costs and leveraging our global revenue stream are key advantages, they are not our only levers. We have also made the strategic decision to increase prices later in Q2 and into Q3. Our approach is highly surgical and will vary by brand and by category, providing us with another means to protect the gross margin progress we've demonstrated over the last two final mitigant is to further geodiversify our production. We are evaluating opportunities to lessen, and in some categories, completely removed the portion of our production that occur in China. In fact, we've already begun to mobilize on this front in certain key areas of the the fluid trade situation, there are two key points I will make regarding our guidance. First, our full-year outlook assumes no material softening of the macroeconomic environment or broader consumer demand. And second, the favorable dynamics Franco and I discussed make us confident that we can offset potential tariff impact even if China rates settle as high as 145%. If the current rate of 30% holds through the year-end, we believe the guidance we're providing today could prove full-year 2025, we expect worldwide net sales to decline in the mid- to high-teens, which includes approximately $45 million of impact related to retail store closures and excludes impacts from foreign exchange and potential asset the strong business momentum we're seeing, we expect to continue to narrow our year-over-year sales declines for the remaining quarters in 2025. As Franco mentioned, we are taking actions this year that are expected to generate approximately $100 million of SG&A savings in 2025 versus factors are driving the savings. First, we implemented a corporate reduction in force in February. Next, we expect to continue to rationalize the store portfolio with plans to close approximately 50 stores in 2025. And third, we transitioned five international markets to a distributor model, which brings our operating costs in those markets to near zero. We are continuing to evaluate opportunities in additional expect the combination of expanding gross margins and aggressive cost actions to drive full-year adjusted operating margin in the negative low single digits. As we position the business to achieve long-term profitable growth, we're acting with discipline, maintaining financial rigor, and moving as quickly as possible on all appreciate your time this afternoon and we'll be available for follow-up calls. Now I'll turn the call back to Franco for closing comments. Franco Fogliato Thank you, Randy. I want to thank you, our teams, for their tireless efforts and dedication to our turnaround plan. And I want to thank you, our shareholders, for their ongoing support. We remain committed to restoring profitable growth and building long-term shareholder value. Look forward to updating everyone on our continuous progress next quarter. Operator This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q2 2025 Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Ltd Earnings Call
Steven Pelayo; Investor Relations; The Blueshirt Group, LLC. Stephen Chang; Chief Executive Officer, Director; Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Ltd Yifan Liang; Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Secretary; Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Ltd Craig Ellis; Analyst; B. Riley David Williams; Analyst; Benchmark Jeremy Kwan; Analyst; Stifel Financial Corp. Operator Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's Alpha and Omega Semiconductor fiscal Q2, 2025 earnings call. My name is Jaylen and I'll be your moderator for today. (Operator Instructions). The conference over to our host, Steven Pelayo. Steven. You may proceed. Steven Pelayo Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Alpha and Omega Semiconductor's Conference Call to discuss fiscal 2025 second quarter, financial results. I'm Steven Pelayo, Investor Relations representative for AOS. With me today are Stephen Chang, our CEO and Yifan Liang our call is being recorded and broadcast live over the web. A replay will be available for seven days following the call via the link in the investor relations section of our website. Our call will proceed as follows today. Steven will begin business updates including strategic highlights and a detailed segment report. After that Yifan will review the financial results and provide guidance for the March quarter. Finally, we will have a Q&A earnings release was distributed over the wire today, February 5, 2025 after the market close, the release is also posted on the company's website. Our earnings release and this presentation include non-GAAP financial use non-GAAP measures because we believe they provide useful information about our operating performance that should be considered by investors. In conjunction with the GAAP measures, a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in the earnings remind you that during this conference call, we will make certain forward-looking statements including discussions of the business outlook and financial projections. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ more detailed descriptions of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our recent and subsequent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligations to update the information provided in today's call. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CEO Stephen Chang. Stephen Chang Thank you, Steven. Welcome to Alpha and Omega fiscal Q2 earnings call. I will begin with a high level overview of our results and then jump into segment details. We delivered fiscal Q2 revenue and EPS results in line with our guidance revenue was $173.2 million non-GAAP. Gross margin was 24.2% non-GAAP EPS was $ we saw seasonal sequential declines in fiscal Q2 from each of our major segments. The communications and industrial segments outperformed our initial forecasts and we saw sequential growth in graphics cards, quick chargers, PC desktops and power tools. These increases were offset by seasonal declines in gaming, notebooks, tablets and wearables. With the December quarter now complete, we can reflect on our performance in calendar 2024 where AOS revenue increased 4.1% year over this modest overall growth might not seem overwhelming the recovery in our segment suggests the inventory correction is clearly behind us. Further, a closer examination by segment validates AOS, a strategic shift from a component supplier to a total solutions provider. This transition is enabling us to tap into new opportunities, gain market share and increased bomb notably, our computing and communication segments each grew more than 25% in calendar 2024 driven by market share gains and bomb content growth in motherboards, AI graphics cards and tablets. In smartphones, our battery PCM product line contributed the largest incremental dollar growth to the company in calendar year 2024. We now believe AOS is the industry leader in smartphone battery also saw strong growth in wearables and e mobility in calendar 2024. Further proving our ability to build on existing customer relationships, while broadening into new and adjacent markets. The primary headwinds to calendar 2024 growth were mostly concentrated in gaming and quick chargers. Yet both markets have now digested excess inventories and returned to growth in the past few we look ahead, we are delivering on our commitments and advancing our transformation from a component supplier to a total solutions provider. Our strategic focus is to go deeper by leveraging strengths in high performance silicon packaging and intelligent ICs. Our goal is to leverage premier customer relationships to expand market share and increase bond content with a broader that, let me now cover our segment results and provide some guidance by segment for the next quarter. Starting with computing, December quarter revenue was up 6% year over year but down slightly negative 0.5% sequentially and represented 43.9% of total revenue. These results were better than typical seasonality but slightly worse than our original expectation for slight sequential saw relative strength from PC desktops and graphic cards offset by the seasonal decline in notebooks and tablets. Servers and AI and celebrator cards were also softer as the industry prepares for the next platform transition. We continue to see a good opportunity in advanced computing, and we are encouraged by the progress we have made thus AI for large data centres, we are a contender in the middle stages of the design phase, and we see potential for these products to contribute to revenue in the middle of the calendar year. On graphic cards, the next generation platform is ramping up to mass this new platform, we expect bomb content to increase as more power stage ICs paired with our controller are being used to power the GPU, looking forward into the Marsh Corridor, the computing segment will likely decline due to seasonality. However, the PC market is expected to be flat as [tariff] uncertainty is leading to demand pull ins with PC to the consumer segment, December revenue was down 3.9% year over year and down 28.8% sequentially and represented 13% of total revenue. The results were in line with our forecast driven by seasonality in gaming and home appliances as well as a pullback in wearables following a record level achieved in the third calendar a reminder, we don't expect gaming to return to meaningful growth until, the customer transitions to the next platform. For the March quarter, we forecast a low single digit sequential decline in the consumer segment driven by continued seasonality in gaming TVs and softness in home let's discuss the communications segment, revenue in the December quarter was up 14.5% year over year, but down 6.4% sequentially and represented 19.2% of total revenue. These results were above our initial expectations for a double-digit sequential decline as broad-based demand from our tier one US smartphone customer and China OEMs moderated only slightly, while Korea saw an increase in preparation for product launches in the first calendar believe the better-than-expected results are due to a combination of market share gains. A mix shift to higher end phones in China and generally higher chargings driving increased bomb content. Looking ahead, we anticipate a low teen sequential decline in the March quarter for the communications segment, mostly due to let's talk about our last segment Power supply and industrial, which accounted for 20.2% of total revenue and was flat year over year and up 9.6% sequentially. The results were ahead of our forecast for low single digit sequential growth driven by seasonal strength in quick chargers. As well as an increase in power tools demand also held relatively steady quarter over quarter in ACDC power supplies and e we stated before, we see additional opportunities in 2025 for quick chargers due to increased BOM content by a higher charge in we are leveraging relationships in Taiwan to partner on DC stands for server racks. For the March quarter, we expect a low key sequential decline for the power supply and industrial assignment. Primarily driven by seasonal decline in quick chargers. This decline will be partially offset by some sequential growth in e mobility and ACDC power closing December quarter revenue was slightly ahead of our expectations. While gross margin was a bit softer, the continued year over year revenue growth confirms that inventory corrections we experienced over the past year are analogy has returned and new markets like AI and advanced computing are emerging. As we look ahead to 2025 visibility remains limited and the first quarter is typically affected by seasonal softness. The subdued market environment will likely pressure pricing and wind down of licensing and engineering revenue with further impact gross margin. We expect both revenue and margin to recover beyond the March quarter, with incremental growth likely from smartphones, graphics cards and is well positioned for growth supported by our advanced technology, a broad product range and our premier customer base across the various industries. Strategic initiatives over the past few years are yielding results with successful design integration of controllers and power stages into PCs, graphics cards and AI applications. We are poised to accelerate this expansion, capturing new opportunities and increasing our bond management remains at the core of major industry trends including AI digitalization connectivity and electrification critical to achieving a low carbon sustainable future. We anticipate continued growth driven by advanced computing and data centres, AI integration in PCs and smartphones and higher charging currents in smartphones. Beyond computing and communications, we see many opportunities in solar motors and E-mobility gaming, home appliances and power that, I will now turn the call over to Yifan for a discussion of our fiscal second quarter financial results and our outlook for the next quarter. Yifan Liang Thank you, Stephen. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. Revenue for the quarter was $173.2 million down 4.8% sequentially and up 4.8% year over year. In terms of product mix, DMOS revenue was $113 million down 7.8% sequentially and up 3.8% over last I see revenue was $53.7 million up 1.5% from the prior quarter and 6.8% from a year ago. Assembly service and other revenue was $1.1 million as compared to $0.9 million last quarter and $0.7 million for the same quarter last year. License and engineering service revenue was $5.4 million for the quarter versus $5.6 million in the prior quarter and $5.5 million for the same quarter a year license and engineering service revenue will end in the mid February after the 24 month contract expires non-GAAP growth margin was 24.2% compared to 25.5% last quarter and 28% a year ago. The quarter over quarter decrease was mainly impacted by ASB erosion and mix changes. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $39 million compared to $38.5 million from the prior quarter. And $37.9 million last slight quarter-over-quarter increase was primarily due to higher R&D expenses. Non-GAAP quarterly EPS was $0.09 compared to $0.21 per share last quarter and $0.24 per share a year on to cash flow. Operating cash flow was $14.1 million including $5 million of repayment of customer deposits. By comparison, operating cash flow was $11 million in the prior quarter and negative $23.5 million last year. We expect to refund the $11.1 million customer deposit in the March quarter, if it does for the quarter was $16.8 million compared to $20.6 million last quarter and $20.7 million for the same quarter a year let me turn to balance sheet. We completed the December quarter with a cash balance of $182.6 million compared to $176 million. At the end of last quarter, net trade receivables decreased by $4.7 million. Sequentially day sales outstanding work 12 days for the quarter compared to 15 days for the prior quarter. Net inventory decreased by $1.2 million days in inventory remained at 125 days for the quarter. CapEx for the quarter was $7.4 million compared to $6.7 million for the quarter. And we expect CapEx for the March quarter to range from $7 million to $9 million. Now, I would like to discuss March quarter expect revenue to be approximately $158 million plus or minus $10 million. GAAP gross margin to be 21.5% plus or minus 1%. We anticipate the non-GAAP growth margin to be 22.5% plus or minus 1%. The expected quarter over quarter decline is largely due to the decrease in license and engineering service revenue and to a lesser extent the anticipated increased manufacturing costs during the Lunar new year Operating expenses to be $46.5 million plus or minus $1 million. Nongaap operating expenses are expected to be $39.5 million plus or minus $1 million. Interest expense to be approximately equal to interest income and income tax expense to be in the range of $1.1 million to $1.3 million. With that, we will now open the call for questions. Operator, please start the Q&A session. Operator (Operator Instructions) Craig Ellis, B. Riley. Craig Ellis Yeah, thanks for taking the question guys and congratulations on the areas of your, on your growth in calendar 24. I wanted to go back to the prepared comments on performance versus expectations in fiscal two Q in the AI Accelerator market. You commented that revenues were a little bit below what you had expected. Can you provide more detail? Was the issue, either an AOS product issue or share into a platform or was it just the pace at which the platform is ramping up? Yifan Liang No, it's simply that the transition from our customers old program moving into the new program. We are continuing to be to working with them and in their ramp up, but this is their transition phase. So just remember that we have been shipping into especially the accelerator cards throughout the past calendar now that they've launched the projects are transitioning to the new platform. So we expect a bit of a transition and the new models we are starting to ship already and that's going to continue to grow throughout this this current calendar year. Craig Ellis And then a follow up to that Stephen and thanks for that colour. There had been reports in the mid December time frame around some thermal issues associated with AOS sales products. You need to speak to whether that was the case and to the extent that it was whether those issues as reported accurately or potentially inaccurately have been resolved. Stephen Chang Yeah, so we're actually not going to comment. we did, we never offered any comments regarding the article that was put out about us. Our general practice isn't to go into details about our designs at our customers out of respect for our we did say in our remarks and, and what's actually going on is that we continue to be one of the main contenders in this upcoming design for data centres. So we're pretty excited about that. We are giving guidance that we expect this program to, well, they're program to launch in the middle of the year and this is something that we are excited and looking forward to. Craig Ellis And then if I could and it's along the same thing because that's where all the investor questions are. I think they are generally speaking, multiple opportunities for the company. One would be more card centric and, and somewhat similar to a long shipment history you've had with the customer, one would be more on server system you talk about the extent to which each of those and, the magnitude would contribute to growth and, and how should we think about the growth potential from this platform? How material can it be as we think about revenues ramping mid year? Thank you, Steven. Stephen Chang Sure. Thanks Craig. Certainly, our opportunity in AI falls into two categories. The first is continuing what we've been doing already, which is getting our products, shipping our products into both graphics cards as well as accelerated cards. And you know, this with our target and customer, it's pretty much a similar solution that's being used there for both graphics as well as AI acceleration in these data portion as I mentioned is undergoing that transition. They are, our customer is ramping up, we are ramping with them, and we do expect to see content increase also because I believe these cards are more powerful, they can do a lot more but they also require more power, which is a good fit for our are shipping one big change from last generation to this generation is that we're also now shipping the Multiphase controller in addition to our power stage. And so that's helping us to provide the total solution to the customer for this application. So that's the first category of we're, as I mentioned, we are continuing to ramp with them as they bring up production fully then going throughout this quarter. And then throughout the next few quarters. The second category of projects that we are targeting is the AI data centre portion. And this is where our solutions are being used on board to power GPUs and these go into their server this is something that, we are very excited to take part in to be able to design into and we in are right now still in the middle of that designing phase and we're closely working with that customer in bringing up boards and working with them. And I'm not going to go into details about the design, but, we did already indicate that this is something targeting mid year for launch. Craig Ellis That's very helpful. Thank you, Steven. Operator David Williams, Benchmark. David Williams Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. It's good to talk with you. And thanks for let me ask you a question here, I guess Stephen first. Hey, not to beat the proverbial dead horse here. But if we kind of think about the AI opportunity for you and you talked about being in the middle of the design phase here, how do you think obviously mid kind of year for what do you think you'll have a better indication your content that you have? And if you've won that slot and what you've won, when do you think you would kind of get that indication? And then when should we begin to really think about those revenues coming in and given that's kind of a new area for you, it seems like that should be a fairly sizable step up in the revenue. Is that fair to think that way? Stephen Chang Yes, we certainly think the potential for our business in data centre to be much bigger than that of the graphics portion simply because the usage goes up much more as you can imagine in these data centres. And it's the power levels are significantly bigger. So, it simply requires more power stages to power each of these GPUs.I don't want to quantify that the moment, but basically, it is something that is multiples bigger. You can say that in terms of the total attempt that we can go after. We know that we're not the only one players going after this. So, the share is still to be determined, the final design, everything still to be finalized as well too. So, we're working closely with the customer again, at this point, we can say that we're targeting for a midyear launch. David Williams Fantastic. Well, congratulations on the progress there, that area have been really working to get into. So fantastic. And then maybe if I if you kind of think about the gross margin profile, we knew it would come down here a bit, I think actually performed a little bit better than we how do you think about the margin profile as we get into next year? And as you kind of get this ramp coming back in, seems like some higher margin products potentially. And the volumes should we be begin to see that utilization snap back? And where do you think margins can genuinely go over the next 12 to 18 months? Yifan Liang Yeah, for the next 18 months again, I would expect it, the product mix is probably will improve and then from this March quarter, low point of the margin. And then I would expect that probably in the June quarter, we can expect the gross margin on a non-GAAP basis, get back to the December quarter the March quarter was mainly that, some product and also the decrease in revenue, license and engineering service revenue. So, and along with them, the Lunar New Year period, which is not going to help on the margin side. So then, I mean, I wouldn't expect that. Yeah, we can bounce back and recover from there. David Williams Okay, great. And then maybe just last one for me, I guess, Stephen, as you look across the landscape and you see the inventory digestion complete. But we've got the tariff issues that are kind of settling in and you pointed to some of that being pulled in this quarter, is there a way for you to, for us maybe to think about the magnitude of pull in you saw and then what maybe are you hearing thus far from your customers just given your, your base in China? How are you hearing from them or what are you hearing? And how are you positioned for the tariffs that is moving forward? Thank you. Stephen Chang I think it's not a huge amount, but I think it makes it that, right now we're, giving, we're guiding computing just to be slightly down, whereas in like a normal year will be, it will have a more of a pronounced effect there. And I think there's still a lot of uncertainty about how that's going to play out at the in terms of the, what the new administration is doing. And what the impacts will be on trade, you can say, but right now, I think that's because of the anticipation of tariffs. We saw a little bit of Pull ins coming because of that. David Williams Thanks so much. Operator Jeremy Kwan, Stifel Financial Corp. Jeremy Kwan Yes, thank you. Just wanted to circle back on the gross margin question. You mentioned, I think it's being impacted by ASP erosion and mix changes. Can you quantify that? I do recall, I think you talked about pricing declines in the high single digits kind of being above maybe typical. Can you kind of level set us where, things are now and how you see it shaping up over the next 12 months? Yifan Liang Okay, Sure. Yeah, I mean for the whole year, ASP erosion was in the range of mid to high single digit range and then I mean on the same product basis. So, you know, going forward then for this calendar year 2025 we continue to expect the mid to single digit, mid-single digit type of ASP erosion that you know what we do here is we will accelerate our new product rollout to counter the ASP with some good opportunities designed in opportunities here and yeah, we expect beyond March quarter that our smart and bounce back and recover. Jeremy Kwan Great. And can you remind us again, what your current utilization levels are both internally and also maybe potentially at your foundry partners, including the JV. And how you kind of expect that to look as we look ahead throughout the rest of the year. Yifan Liang Okay, Sure. For our internal utilization right now is around 80%. So Foundry and JV, they are on their own. So, yeah, they can provide and meet our expectations on the purchase. Jeremy Kwan Got it. And give you one last question the margin side. With margins back to the bottom at the 22.5% level. You talked about bouncing back to just on the quarter levels in June. How do you see your long-term targets? And what kind of revenue level do you need to get to kind of you know, maybe get back to that 30% gross margin that you experienced in the past? Yifan Liang Yeah, our midterm target model is you know, revenue are reaches the $1 billion and then, at that time, we expect the non-GAAP growth margin to be around 30% range. So that's our midterm target. Jeremy Kwan And, and that contemplates price erosion in the mid-single digits. Yifan Liang Yes. Jeremy Kwan Got it. I guess turning to the markets, Stephen, you mentioned on the consumer side that there's a transition going on in terms of the gaming, can you kind of walk us through, the dynamics of that? You know, when do you see that the transition inflecting, so that, the next gen is contributing more meaningfully and how long is that expected to be a headwind before it turns into more of a talent. Stephen Chang Sure. So, on the gaming platform cycles tend to last somewhere around 6 to 7 to 8 years. It really depends on how our customers cadence right now; we're around year five of the launch. So, it is expected that their production volumes are going is starting to tail off. So, for now, we aren't expecting this to be a huge part of the consumer know, our sites are set on and getting ready for the next platform, which is still kind of early stages for. So, in the meantime, we're putting our attention in the other areas that are growing, especially AI, smartphones is also something that we continue to grow in as well too. So we'll shift to, to addressing the other markets and of course, and we're going to be preparing ourselves for the next major gaming platform launch. Jeremy Kwan Got it. And then I guess maybe kind of going off that those comments as you look ahead to, the rest of this year, which end markets are you most excited about in terms of growth contributors? And, and if we could get a little bit more insight within computing, can you give us a split roughly between graphics cards, PCs and AI accelerator cards? Thank you. Stephen Chang Sure. Yeah, we're certainly excited about AI. And that's certainly going to help to strengthen our overall computing segment. In the past, we thought that this segment will start to reduce in terms of proportion of revenue. But because of our efforts into AI data centre and graphics, this is something I think this is actually going to continue to is actually a natural evolution of us focusing on PCs first and then moving to graphics and now moving to AI and that's not that pairs well with our solutions that we've been offering from discrete to ICs for the power stages and now selling the total solutions for that. Right now, AI and is really just starting. So, it's a small portion of our computing core PC business is still the mainstream and we still expect that to be steady and we're still waiting for that recovery, ultimate recovery to happen for the PC market. But, over time actually, we do see, we expect to see acceleration and growth for our AI and graphics business. I don't want to size it at this point, but this is definitely going to be the probably the biggest growth area for us in this calendar year. Jeremy Kwan Oh, great. Thank you. I'll hand it back over. Stephen Chang Sure. And I know the other area that just to finish your question, it was only on AI. We also see that smartphone will be an area that will continue to be strong for us. We are continue to be a market share leader in all the three core markets that we're in when it comes to battery protection. That's and for these customers, especially the leading brand, we are continuing to expand our footprint into the other products that will also be continue to be a growth area and a focus for us and, and we still see other sub segments also emerging that can help us to grow as well. You know, we're still excited about e mobility, that's a newer area when it comes to e bugs, e scooters. And you know, we'll, we'll continue to invest in other motor applications as well. Jeremy Kwan Great. Thank you very much. Operator Craig Ellis, B. Riley. Craig Ellis Yeah. Thanks for taking the follow up questions. And in fact, my first question is right where I think Jeremy and Stephen, you ended the conversation there and it was really framing up, the things you're most confident in driving calendar 25. You're on setting aside anything that's unit growth related, whether smartphones PCs, whatever, but either accruing from content gain, share gain or just s expansion into a new I think what I heard you say is that AI would be the biggest after that you still got a lot of headroom with smartphone content. And then there are other areas like e mobility. It is that the right prioritization. And is there anything else that would go on that list? Stephen Chang Yeah, I would put those and that's about right for sure. AI is the top one. We talked a little quite a bit about the potential there. Smartphones is exciting again because we are seeing currents increase. There is generally a demand for fast charging, and we see phone makers advertising that and this is something that that's directly tied to the usage of our products in those battery with the new charging currents going up, the performance requirements for our solutions also go up and, and and thereby the bomb content is expected to increase in, each forthcoming generation. And this is something that I think will continue to be rolled in going forward across various model at our customers. Craig Ellis Thank you. That's very helpful. And then the follow up is a little bit further on intermediate to longer term gross margin. So clearly, there's been a lot of competitor pricing pressure in the market at volume levels that are this low and it's, it's had a negative impact on gross margins. And here we are back down in the low 20s as the company looks at things that can do to move back to that mid 20s then to the 30% range. Are there things other than the new product release cadence and higher value, higher ASP products like we've seen U pr multiple times in the last couple of months that you get you back there. How do we think about things that you're doing differently amidst recent pricing pressure to re accelerate margins? Thank you. Yifan Liang Sure. I mean, yes and then, new products and higher margin products and the roll up and yes, definitely is a major factor to improve growth margin on top of that and then, I mean, as we continue to grow our business and we would expect in our nation and to pull up. So, I mean, internally we also focus on the cost reduction. So, all those aspects and then, we expect to grow our growth margin. Craig Ellis Got it. And Yifan, would you expect a fairly steady climb back? I know that's in part trying to put a prediction in demand, but maybe the different way to ask it is, are there any discontinuities coming either in new products and, pricing and gross margin or cost reduction that would give us a particular step up as we look out over 25 and 26? Yifan Liang I mean that for long and it's hard to say that, I mean, there are a lot of factors that would intertwine there calm. But what I expect is, in June quarter, we can expect our non-GAAP margin get back to the December, non-GAAP margin level. Craig Ellis Got it. Okay. Well, that'll be a nice step forward. Okay, thanks very much team. Yifan Liang Okay, thank you. Operator Jeremy Kwan, Stifel Financial Corp. Jeremy Kwan Thank you. Just a quick clarification. Follow up on the customer deposits, I think in the past you've broken out short term versus long term. And your total deposits, I believe it's $42.3 million last quarter with the $5 million down 37. But can you break that out between short term and long-term deposits and how you see that shaping up. And, and one follow up to that would be the are there any license, payments that you might need to make in terms of the filing carbide agreement or is that that pretty much locked in at this point?Or not like I'm sorry, the deposit. Yifan Liang Okay. In terms of customer deposits, yeah, there are $37 million balance right now on our balance sheet. In calendar year 2025 we expect to return about $25 million each. So, most of that $30 million already classified to short term within the next 12 months. So, after that and then, I mean, in the calendar year 2026 and there will be a few million dollars left over there. So that will be done by 2026. So what else on the. Jeremy Kwan So, there was I think in the past we had a built in Carbide supply agreement. Is there any kind of payment that's anticipated for that? Yifan Liang No, that's it. Yes. Jeremy Kwan Okay, great. Thank you very much. Yifan Liang All right, thank you. Operator (Operator Instructions). I have no more questions registered in queue. I'd like to pass the conference back over to our hosting team for closing remarks. Steven Pelayo Okay, great. This is Steven Pelayo, and this concludes our earnings call today. Thank you for your interest in AOS. We look forward to talking to you again next quarter. Take care. Operator That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and enjoy the rest of your day. Sign in to access your portfolio
