Cohu, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to CoHUE's first quarter 2022 financial results conference call. At this time, all participant lines are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star then one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised today's conference may be recorded. If you require operator assistance during the call, please press star then zero. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. Jeff Jones, Senior Vice President and CFO.

Good afternoon and welcome to our conference call to discuss CoHUE's first quarter 2022 results and second quarter 2022 outlook. I'm joined today by our President and CEO, Luis Mueller. If you need a copy of our earnings release, you may access it from our website at cohue.com or by contacting Cohue Investor Relations. There's also a slide presentation in conjunction with today's call that may be accessed on Cohue's website in the Investor Relations section. Replays of this call will be available via the same page after the call concludes. Now to the safe harbor. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements reflecting management's current expectations concerning CoHUE's future business. These statements are based on current information that we have assessed, but which by its nature is subject to rapid and even abrupt changes. We encourage you to review the forward-looking statement section of the slide presentation and the earnings release, as well as CoHUE's filings with the SEC, including the most recently filed Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Our comments speak only as of today, April 28, 2022, and COEU assumes no obligation to update these statements for developments occurring after this call. Finally, during the call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release and slide presentation for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Luis Mueller, COEU's President and CEO. Luis?

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. Fourth quarter revenue was approximately $198 million, and non-GAAP EPS was $0.66, both exceeding expectations, driven by customer acquisitions and effective supply chain management. Cohue is benefiting from several key design wins in late 2021, with those customers starting to place volume orders this past quarter. This has been particularly beneficial for the tester business that booked incremental $45 million in design win orders in Q1, broadening our addressable market beyond RF front-end IC tests. The success in new customer acquisition-driven orders increased backlog to a new record and is putting Cohue on pace to achieve our midterm targets of 25% non-gap operating income at $1 billion revenue. Our supply chain team also did an effective job managing the ongoing challenges and controlling costs. Combined with progress of our contractor manufacturing insourcing, we're delivering better than anticipated gross margin, and again, on pace to achieve our midterm target of 49% non-GAAP gross margin. In all, CoHue is progressing well against our strategic plans. Semi-task is expanding applications in display driver IC, capturing business in Korea and Taiwan, gaining new sockets for testing power management and analog ICs as we continue to expand the instrumentation portfolio in our low-cost DiamondX platform. Our test interface business is gaining momentum in millimeter wave and delivering on the promise of expanding into the probe card market. Our services business, including spare parts, Upgrades in data analytics software remain robust in continuing to develop a new frontier with DI core data analytics software that is now in use at several major automotive customers. We're also qualifying new customers on the Neon package and inspection system on our path to grow our number two position in this market. Our test automation business is advancing with new products in the push to automate back-end operations. We got a key order for a next-generation MEMS sensor test platform that brings tasks to a new level, enabling ultra-sensitive sensors used in mobility and automotive applications. We have demonstrated the superior thermal performance of our T-Core thermal technology in the Eclipse handling, testing high-performance computing processors in ultra-large form factor devices. The push to automate back-end factories and improve productivity, also known as Industry 4.0, is creating new sales opportunities for CodeView to provide automation and data analytics solutions to customers. We're excited to be at the forefront of this factory automation revolution, leveraging our engineering competencies to promote value upgrades to our large install base of equipment. Moving to discuss ESG, in Q1, we published CoHUE's 2021 Sustainability Report, which you can read in detail in our website at www.cohue.com. We're excited to communicate our progress on energy usage, addition of two operating sites with solar power generation, and to continue our stellar safety and ethics record. The report also promotes our progress on employee gender and racial diversity, details about Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, and corporate ESG targets for 2022. Switching topics, we are disheartened by the conflict in Ukraine. Although we have very limited exposure to customers and supply chain in that region, we have opted to join other global corporations in halting any business engagements with Russian companies starting on March 1st. We're also participating with employees in contributing to the relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees in Europe. Finally, I want to comment on COVID disruptions and supply chain constraints that continue to impact many semiconductor and equipment companies. We're not immune to shortages, cost increases, and regional lockdowns, but the COHU team has done an outstanding job putting in place countermeasures anticipating these challenges, requesting and receiving help from our suppliers, some of which are also our customers. These challenges are not new. They have been around since March 2020 and are probably going to continue. But I'm confident that our proactive approach in managing disruptions will continue to yield positive results. The fact is that one company's challenge is also another's growth opportunity. And we're working hard to capitalize on these disruptions to support and win new customers. Let me now turn it over to Jeff to share first quarter results and provide specifics about our second quarter guidance. Jeff?