Data I/O Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Data.io Corporation First Quarter 2021 Financial Results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jordan Darrow, Investment Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to the Data.io Corporation First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. With me today are Anthony Ambrose, President and CEO of Data.io Corporation, and Joel Hatland, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Data.io. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that statements made in this conference call concerning COVID-19, future revenues, results from operations, financial position, markets, economic conditions, estimated impacts of tax reform, product releases, new industry partnerships, and any other statements that may be construed as a prediction of future performance or events are forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. These factors include uncertainties as to the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, along with continued reopening and recovery efforts within the supply chain and among our customer base customers. levels of orders for the company and the activity level of the automotive and semiconductor industry overall, ability to record revenues based upon the timing of product deliveries and installations, market acceptance of new products, changes in economic conditions and market demand, pricing and other activities by competitors, and other risks, including those described from time to time in the company's filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission, our press releases, and other communications. The accuracy and completeness of forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied upon. Data.io is under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements. And now I would like to turn over the call to Anthony Ambrose, President and CEO of Data.io.

Well, thank you very much, Jordan. I'll begin my formal remarks by addressing our 2021 first quarter financial and operational performance, and then I'll turn it over to Joel for a more detailed discussion of the numbers. 2021 first quarter was our strongest revenue quarter in two years and continues the upward trend in automotive and industrial electronics demand that we were seeing since the bottom in Q2 a year ago. We're coming out of the COVID-19 recession very well and seeing a surge in business in March and April of this year. We believe the positive growth themes that we discussed recently in our year-end conference call are accelerating. Well, they're very well documented short-term supply disruptions caused by sharp increases in automotive electronics demand, supply chain interruptions in the semiconductor supply chain, and other factors. The long-term secular growth for automotive electronics remains intact, with industry analysts and customers projecting a compounded annual growth rate of 10% to 15% for the next decade. Clearly, additional capacity is going to be needed throughout the supply chain to support this demand. And we're seeing that as key semiconductor companies continue to announce record spending in the tens of billions of dollars for wafer fab and back-end capacity. DataIO is also answering this call with our most advanced technologies supporting all growth areas in automotive, including electrification, infotainment, advanced driver assist systems, security, and connectivity. And this is across flash memory products, microcontrollers, and security devices as well. We're very excited about the business performance in the quarter. During Q1, we won six new customers in Asia across all markets. This illustrates our global strength and the desire of customers to partner with the market leader during these challenging times. We also substantially added to our sales pipeline in Q1 with new prospects and repeat customers alike. This is in both our traditional business and the Centrix business as well. Overall, we see Asia Pacific and America's regions leading the recovery, with the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region following about one to two quarters behind. During the overall downturn in the past couple of years, Dataio has remained committed to our strategy of investing in our key technologies and our platforms. R&D continues to be a critical and sustainable competitive advantage for the company. In addition to that, COVID-19 disruption also shows the value of a resilient supply chain. And DataIO is the only programming supplier in our industry with two manufacturing locations. Recent fires in a semiconductor fab and environmental-induced issues in Texas illustrate the need for a resilient supply chain, and our automotive customers clearly value that capability. Regarding Centrix, we had a very nice quarter in Q1 as well. We won our very first Centrix automotive electronics customer through a partner in Q1. We also deployed our first field upgrade of a PSV 7000 system upgraded to a Centrix system for multinational customers, Asia Factory. We're also seeing increased customer activity from both partners and direct engagements on Centrix. As we look ahead, we become even more encouraged by the global economic recovery and the demand from our key vertical markets. With strong operating leverage, DataOil remains very well positioned to deliver disproportionate improvement in profitability, cash flow, as we continue our cyclical recovery within the framework of a long-term, strong, growing market. With that, I'll turn it over to Joel Hatlin.