QUALCOMM Incorporated

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Qualcomm Third Quarter Fiscal 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star, then the number 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the numbers. Please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded July 31st, 2019. The playback number for today's call is 877-660-6853. International callers, please dial 201-612-7415. The playback reservation number is 136-923-66. I would now like to turn the call over to Mauricio Lopez-Hedoyan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Lopez-Odoin, please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Today's call will include prepared remarks by Steve Molenkopf and Dave Wise. In addition, Cristiano Mon, Alex Rogers, and Don Rosenberg will join the question and answer session. You can access our earnings release and a slide presentation that accompanied this call on our investor relations website. In addition, This call is being webcast on Qualcomm.com, and a replay will be available on our website later today. During the call, we will use non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G, and you can find the related reconciliations to GAAP on our website. We will also make forward-looking statements, including projections and estimates of future events, business, or industry trends, or business or financial results, actual events, or results could differ maturely from those projected in our forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K, which contain important factors that could cause actual results to differ maturely from the forward-looking statements. And now, to comments from Qualcomm's Chief Executive Officer, Steve Molenkopf.

Thank you, Mauricio, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We executed well this quarter against challenging industry conditions. Despite weakening demand for our 4G solutions, fiscal third quarter non-GAAP earnings of 80 cents per share was at the high end of our guidance range, driven by improved product margins, lower R&D and SG&A, and a lower tax rate. In QTL, following the district court's ruling, our licensees continue to perform under their agreements. In parallel, at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, we are pursuing a partial stay and appealing the ruling. was the statement of interest of the Department of Justice in support of our stay motion, stating that Qualcomm is likely to succeed on the merits in the appeal. The Huawei export ban, along with a pivot from 4G to 5G, which accelerated over the past couple of months, has contributed to industry conditions, particularly in China, that we expect will create headwinds in our next two fiscal quarters. As a result of the export ban, Huawei shifted their emphasis to building market share in the domestic China market where we do not see the corresponding benefit in product or licensing revenue. In addition, our customers in the China market are working through their existing 4G inventory and de-emphasizing their second half 2019 4G launches as they shift their priorities to their 5G launches in early 2020. As a result, we do not expect the typical seasonal benefits given these unique market dynamics. By the first calendar quarter of 2020, we anticipate reaching the inflection point as our financial results begin to reflect the benefits of our substantial efforts over the years to bring 5G to the market worldwide. Let me walk you through the dynamics of 5G rollouts. 5G network rollouts are progressing at a much faster rate when compared to 4G. We expect over 20 operators to launch 5G service and over 20 OEMs to have 5G devices in the first 12 months after the first commercial launch. This compares to four operators and three OEMs with the launch of 4G, with the major difference being that China is launching 5G in the first year. In China, 5G commercial service was officially approved in early June, and our current estimate is that by the end of this year, the three operators will deploy roughly 100,000 5G base stations, which to put in context is the equivalent of the scale of the entire network of a large U.S. wireless operator. And in the U.S., 5G is being deployed across sub-6 and millimeter wave for nationwide coverage. Verizon has noted that they expect three-quarters of the phones they are launching next year will be 5G. AT&T announced that they are on track for a nationwide 5G coverage in mid-year 2020. And we expect the proposed T-Mobile Sprint merger to result in an accelerated nationwide 5G rollout. I would add that we expect millimeter waves to be a mandatory requirement at all major carriers in the United States. Also helping to drive this accelerated transition to 5G is dynamic spectrum sharing, which enables carriers to dynamically repurpose 4G spectrum for 5G use. DSS is a game changer for the carriers and will result in a much more rapid proliferation of 5G than we have seen in prior G transitions. Before I talk about our products, I would like to remind you of our contribution to develop the fundamental elements of 5G, including innovations that enable massive MIMO, millimeter wave, security, and the deployment of 5G technologies in networks across broad spectrum allocations. This early work has resulted in a valuable IP portfolio and provided us with early insight into what products need to be developed and commercialized at scale. This will continue as 5G expands beyond Release 15 and the feature sets continue to evolve. Today, we are the only chipset vendor that has 5G system-level solutions spanning both sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands. This is key to global deployments. Our 5G system-level solutions span baseband, transceiver, RF front end, and antenna elements as the components are tightly coupled together for best-in-class performance, spanning multiple KPIs, including power, area, and modem benchmarks. Let me now give you an update on our OEM traction. All of the major Android OEMs have announced 5G devices for this year, and as volume ramps in early 2020, device offerings will expand beyond premium-tier devices. As an example, China Mobile plans to drive 5G devices to price points under a US dollar equivalent of $300 by the end of 2020, representing about 40% of the Chinese smartphone segment by price band. Our Chinese customers have recently made product portfolio decisions consistent with that carrier objective to drive 5G into lower price bands. On the product side, our 5G design wins have doubled since our last earnings call. We now have over 150 5G designs launched or in development using our 5G chipsets. In addition to core chipsets, virtually all our 5G design wins are powered by our complete RF front end solutions for 5G sub six and or millimeter wave. We are the only company today delivering an end to end comprehensive modem to antenna solution. The complexity of 5G and the value of innovative solutions enables us to expand our ASPs significantly from 4G. Turning to more detail on our legal matters, on July 8th, we filed our motion for a partial stay with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and as you may have seen, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the United States, filed a statement of interest that supports our request. We cannot predict the exact timing, but we expect the Court of Appeals to rule on our stay motion in the near future. In the meantime, as can be seen from our results this quarter, licensees continue to perform under their agreements consistent with our view that the district court decision does not nullify the existing license agreements. On our appeal on the merits of the FTC matter, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the request for an expedited briefing schedule. We expect briefing to be complete by the end of the calendar year, and the court has said it will schedule the case for oral argument on the next available hearing date after briefing is completed. With regards to Huawei, we continue to pursue a negotiated resolution of the dispute focused on a final agreement. Turning to QCT, on July 15th, we announced our Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus mobile platform, providing about one billion mobile gamers a leading flagship option for pro-like gaming devices. Expanding on our China relationships, we are pleased to announce a strategic cooperation with Tencent to deliver premium 5G and gaming experiences to consumers and developers in China and other regions. This cooperation includes joint efforts on Snapdragon-based mobile gaming devices, Snapdragon Elite Gaming, cloud gaming, AR, VR, and always connected PCs. We continue to execute on our growth opportunities across automotive, AR, VR, connectivity and networking, and IoT. In compute, we are on track to see the first Snapdragon 8CX-based designs to launch in the second half of calendar year 2019. In summary, While near-term demand trends are not surprisingly soft as the entire market and industry transitions to 5G, we are very excited with our design wins and growth in device content as 5G ramps, particularly into 2020. Put simply, our position at the center of developing this incredible technology represents a large opportunity for our stockholders. I would now like to turn the call over to Dave.