Synaptics Incorporated

Welcome to Synaptic's first quarter fiscal year 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Manjal Shah, Vice President in Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kathy. Good afternoon and thank you everyone for joining us today on Synaptic's first quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. My name is Manjal Shah and I'm the head of Investor Relations. With me on today's call are Michael Hulston, our president and CEO, and Kent Rizvi, our chief financial officer. This call is also being broadcast live over the web and can be accessed from the Investor Relations section of the company's website at synaptics.com. In addition to the supplemental slide presentation, we have also posted a copy of these prepared remarks on our Investor Relations website. In addition to the company's GAAP results, management will also provide supplementary results on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes share-based compensation, acquisition-related costs, and certain other non-cash or recurring or non-recurring items. Please refer to our earnings press release issued after market closed today for a reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to the non-GAAP financial measures presented, which can be accessed from the Investor Relations section of the company's website at synaptics.com. Additionally, we would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, Synaptics will make forward-looking statements in our prepared remarks and may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial conditions, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance, and business. Although Synaptics believes our estimates and assumptions to be reasonable, they are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties beyond our control. Synaptics cautions that actual results may differ materially from any future performance suggested in the company's forward-looking statements. Therefore, we refer you to the company's current and periodic reports filed with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Synaptics expressly disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking information. I will now turn the call over to Michael. Thanks,

Manjal. I'd like to welcome everyone to today's call. We delivered very solid performance this quarter. Revenue increased 8 percent -over-year and exceeded the midpoint of our guidance range, driven by continued strength in Core IoT product sales, which were up 55 percent compared to the prior year. Our profitability continues to improve, with non-GAAP growth and operating margins higher compared to the prior quarter and the year ago. We delivered strong EPS growth, with non-GAAP EPS increasing 56 percent -over-year. We had another great quarter in Core IoT, led by our wireless and processor products. We are introducing new products, winning new designs, and increasing our pipeline. Our Core IoT funnel has grown nearly 30 percent since our last update a year ago, increasing from about 2.2 billion in September of 2023 to over 3 billion today. This design pipeline supports a compounded revenue growth of 25 to 30 percent over the next five years. In wireless, we are making progress in broad markets, which we defined as a part of the wireless connectivity market that requires a lower power and lower cost solution. At our analyst day just over a year ago, we outlined our SAM from this market segment as approximately 3 billion dollars. Our first broad market chip is back from Fab and is on track to sample this quarter, allowing us to address this opportunity for the first time. Given our level of differentiation, we expect to build share in broad markets and establish a meaningful position over the next two years. Meanwhile, in high-performance Wi-Fi, we continue to build our position with new customer wins and market share gains. The pace of new wins accelerated, nearly doubling in number as compared to just three months ago, and spanned across a broad range of customers and applications. In addition, we remain on track to sample the first Wi-Fi 7 device designed specifically for the IoT market later this month. While our overall share is still modest, we continue to believe that we can be a leading player in the next few years. Moving to processors, our Astor products recently earned recognition from industry experts by winning the 2024 Edge Awards in the machine learning and deep learning category. Our solutions are gaining market traction with our funnel growing 300 million in the quarter. Our primary progress to date has been in designs for home automation, security, and appliances. Additionally, we are seeing interest from ODMs and customers for an AI hub that connects to multiple devices, reducing or eliminating the need for cloud connectivity. Customers are drawn to our products because they bring AI capability to edge devices at very competitive price points. In this way, a decision doesn't need to be made immediately as to the AI use cases because our products are plug and play replacement for existing MPUs. In enterprise and automotive, we're seeing gradual improvement across the enterprise portfolio. Our PC product revenue increased by a high single digit percentage in the quarter, benefiting from market seasonality and incremental share gains. While 2024 was a year of stabilization in the PC market and notebook units didn't grow quite as expected, there is an increasing belief that demand will grow more appreciably in 2025, driven by multiple factors including the age of the fleet, Windows 10 end of life, and new AI PCs. Given our market position in fingerprint sensors, touchpads, and user presence detection, any growth will be beneficial to our top line numbers. Even with limited growth in units next year, we expect our UPD products to double in FY25, albeit off of a relatively small base. We are ramping design wins that our lead customer and sit on Intel's reference design for their Panther Lake platform. The progress with both Intel and our major customer shows the significant advantage we have. We expect to be able to bring those new differentiators to new PC customers and to other applications growing revenue for this product line over the next five years. Next, our video interface products are showing signs of life again as we have mostly worked down inventory. While revenue from these products improved a double digit percentage compared to the year ago quarter, they are still 40% or more below the normal run rate. Irrespective of the PC market, we believe our video interface products will see improvement in 2025 due to technology standard upgrades and increased manageability requirements. For example, next year's notebook models will include Thunderbolt 5 and our latest devices uniquely support its high bandwidth requirement. Our latest video interface product, Carrera, should see a high rate of adoption as it enables more displays, higher refresh rates, and faster charging capability. Further benefiting this product line is the advent of new ARM based PCs. Our newly introduced DisplayLink Pro is CPU and GPU agnostic and the only solution available that can support both ARM and x86 processors. In automotive, end market demand has deteriorated and these products were actually down year over year. We remain cautious regarding this product line given the broader market slowdown, the continued decline in legacy DDC products, and delays in the adoption of new technologies. In mobile, our touch controllers are aligned with the high end of the Android market and are seeing good strength. We continue to win replacement designs with major customers and see opportunities down market with some OEMs. We are also introducing a new frequency based touch controller which should not only help build share in handsets, but also potentially unlocks new non-mobile applications. We also plan to begin deploying capital this quarter. Ken will provide more details in his prepared remarks but our focus will be on share repurchases. To conclude, we are making progress in Core IoT, gaining share in high performance Wi-Fi while building a foundation in broad market connectivity and edge IoT processors. In addition, our enterprise product sales are growing again and any further increase in end demand should result in improved margins. Finally, we are driving higher earnings and starting to return capital to shareholders. Let me turn the call over to Ken for a review of our first quarter financial results and the second quarter outlook.

Thanks, Michael, and good afternoon to everyone. I will focus my remarks on our non-GAAP results which are reconciled to GAAP financial measures in the earnings release tables found in the investor relations section of our website. Now let me turn to our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2025. Revenue for fiscal Q1 was $257.7 million above the midpoint of our guidance with sequential improvement across Core IoT, enterprise and automotive, and mobile products. Q1 revenues were up 8% on a -over-year basis and up 4% sequentially. Revenue mix in the first quarter was as follows. 23% Core IoT, 57% enterprise and automotive, and 20% mobile products. Core IoT product revenues increased 55% -over-year and 10% sequentially, reflecting new design ramps as well as further recovery in the overall wireless end market. Enterprise and automotive product revenue improved 3% sequentially and was down 5% on a -over-year basis. Our PC products continued to improve and 3% sequentially, helped by both share gains and seasonality. The -over-year decline was primarily due to our automotive products, which were impacted by the overall market slowdown and the decline in legacy products. Mobile product revenue was up 14% -over-year and 3% sequentially. And as a reminder, our mobile products are largely driven by the high-end Android market. During the quarter, we had two customers greater than 10% of revenue, each at approximately 12%. First quarter, non-GAAP gross margin was .9% above the midpoint of our guidance. First quarter non-GAAP operating expense was 95.9 million, and at the midpoint of our guidance range. Our non-GAAP operating income strengthened again in the first quarter, coming in at 16.7%, up by over 400 basis points on a -over-year basis, and up by over 200 basis points sequentially, driven by improved revenue and continued operating expense controls. Non-GAAP net income in Q1 was 32.5 million. Non-GAAP EPS per diluted share came in above the midpoint of our guidance at 81 cents per share, an increase of 56% on a -over-year basis, and 27% sequentially. Now, turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with approximately 854 million of cash and cash equivalents, down approximately 23 million from the prior quarter. Cash used in operations was 11.4 million, primarily due to the 30 million of cash taxes, including a one-time cash payment related to the on-shoring of our intellectual property last quarter. Capital expenditures were 9.1 million, and depreciation for the quarter was 7.2 million. Receivables at the end of September were at 135.8 million, and day sales outstanding were 47 days, down from 52 days last quarter. Our ending inventory balance was $119.6 million, up slightly compared to the last quarter, to support customer demand for our second quarter. The calculated days of inventory on our balance sheet were 93 days. Now, let me turn to our capital allocation priorities. First, we will continue to invest in our organic business as we see significant opportunities for growth, especially in our core IOT and enterprise and automotive products. Second, we will continue to augment our internal capabilities with M&A in a disciplined manner, which we have done successfully over the last several years. Third, we will return capital via share repurchases. And finally, we will continue to maintain a strong balance sheet and liquidity profile, enabling us to remain nimble and allocate capital in an efficient manner. Today, our cash balance is higher than our operational requirements, and in addition, we have ample dry powder for tuck-in acquisitions. As a result, we intend to return a portion of our cash to shareholders, while also continuing to maintain a strong balance sheet. We are earmarking approximately $150 million, or 150% of the free cash flow generated in fiscal 2024 for share repurchases over the next 12 months. Now, let me turn to our second quarter of 2025 guidance. We expect revenues to be approximately $265 million at the midpoint, plus or minus $15 million. Our guidance for the second quarter reflects an expected revenue mix from Core IoT, Enterprise and Automotive, and Mobile Products in the second quarter to be approximately 24%, 59%, and 17%, respectively. We expect non-GAAP gross margin to be .5% at the midpoint, plus or minus 1%. Non-GAAP operating expense in the December quarter is expected to be approximately $96 million at the midpoint of guidance, plus or minus $2 million. And we expect non-GAAP net interest and other expense to be approximately $5 million in the December quarter, and our non-GAAP tax rate to be in the range of 13 to 15%. Non-GAAP net income per diluted share is anticipated to be 85 cents per share at the midpoint, plus or minus 20 cents on an estimated 40.5 million fully diluted shares. We are expecting another quarter of sequential growth in Q2. We have also worked through our internal inventory challenges, and our channel inventory is lean, and even below normal in certain pockets. However, as revenue growth is still relatively muted, we will continue to appropriately manage the business and overall expenses while also ensuring adequate investments for our long-term growth. This wraps up our prepared remarks, and I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to start the Q&A session.

Thank you. As mentioned, at this time we'll conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press start 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Christopher Rowland with Susquehanna. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question, and congrats on the quarter. I guess first of all, roadmaps and timelines for new products. Have you guys pulled any in or moved any out? And I think you have a broad markets chip coming. Perhaps you could talk about your expectations for that chip in the nearer term. Thanks so much, guys.

Hey, Chris. Thanks for the question, and thanks for paying attention to the call. Appreciate it very much. You know, number one, I think our timelines have remained consistent. We talked about in the Wi-Fi area being in a position to sample a Wi-Fi 7 chip this quarter for IoT applications. That's very much on target. And for our broad markets chip that we spent some time talking about and your question speaks to, again, on target to sample this quarter. So we've held our schedules fairly well. I think in the processor area, we're obviously in production with several of our Edge AIO processors. We have a pretty big one coming out mid-year next year. So that schedule is also holding. So in the core IoT area, I'd say generally we're giving schedules hitting those schedules. I think the engineering team has done a good job. With respect to broad markets, I think that we are expecting that particular unit. If you remember when you came to the analyst day in New York, we talked about three segments, high performance, broad markets, and BLE. I think the revenue contribution in the 2028 timeframe was roughly 150 million just from broad markets. And that appears on track. Given the funnel, given the sales opportunities we're generating in broad markets, I don't want to give a new number. I'd say generally we're tracking above that number given early traction. But I think we sort of outlined that that would be somewhere in the 150 to 200 million dollar contributor in that 2028 timeframe. And that seems very good right now.

Excellent. Thank you, Michael. Also perhaps a follow-up on the core IoT funnel seems like great growth there. Great revenue, CAGR 25 to 30 over the next five years, really strong there. Perhaps you can put a finer point on growth. Where is it coming from? How much is Wi-Fi? How much is Bluetooth? How much is processors? Just kind of work up where you're maybe most excited and where you think needle-moving growth is really going to be coming from here to track to that 25 to 30.

Yeah, very good question, Chris. I think obviously near-term it's all Wi-Fi. So our high performance Wi-Fi, as we outline the call, doing super well. We're actually, again, I'd say exceeding expectations at this point relative to design wins and projections we have coming out of our funnel. That is all kind of carries us through this fiscal year. In 2026 we start seeing contributions from this broad market chip. I don't think it's going to contribute in fiscal 2025 just given its sampling schedule. And then in 2026 we start to see the very early knee-up of the processor initiative. We've got our existing processors, as you know well, that are focused in these narrow verticals that are contributing revenue today. But the broad market processor with the AI capability we'd expect to see kind of first revenue late fiscal 26, but really contributing meaningful in 27. So that's kind of the rank order. BLE, you talked about, I think BLE, we've got to look at very carefully our BLE strategy. That's one area where we are tracking behind a bit. We've got to look at how we can find a way to accelerate our BLE opportunity, which I think in our 2028 projection in the stackup that we gave to you at Analyst Day was somewhere between 50 and 100 million dollars of contribution. So the smallest of the three Wi-Fi segments. But I would say right now, Chris, we're tracking a little bit behind on BLE.

Excellent. That AI product sounds really cool too. Thanks so much,

guys. Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is now open.

Yes, thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the great results. Maybe my question is along the same line as Chris's. The Wi-Fi 7 as you're coming into that market, how would you compare that upgrade cycle to past Wi-Fi upgrade cycles? Are you getting more pull on that? Maybe just give me a description of what's happening in that market.

Yeah, Kevin, as always, thanks for paying attention to the company and giving us all the coverage that you do. I would say very consistent, actually. I mean, what happens is you're going to get kind of a step function up and we'd expect to see that in our fiscal 2026, probably a little earlier than the broad markets where you go from sort of zero penetration in the IoT segment to something like 20 to 25% penetration relatively rapidly. A pretty big step function because there are certain devices that are going to gravitate very naturally to Wi-Fi 7. A lot of other video transfer products that we've talked to you about before, drones, set up boxes, things of that nature. Then it takes some time from 20 to 25 to let's say 50% penetrated probably takes two to three years, right? That's kind of the normal curve. Then to get the last 50%, you start kind of mixing in, just thinking about legacy Wi-Fi standards and by then we'll probably have Wi-Fi 8. You're really never going to see any one standard occupy more than 50 to 60% of the shipments. You're going to have older technologies occupy a good chunk and then you're going to see probably a similar step up in Wi-Fi 8 as you do in Wi-Fi 7 getting to that 20 to 25%. For us to expect much more than 50 to 60% of all shipments on Wi-Fi 7, that would kind of defy historic norms. We would expect a fairly fast step up and then kind of a slow dribble from there up to kind of a normal share of the market.

Okay, great. I see. So as long as you're showing your customer product roadmap for upgrades, they stay with you through the cycles.

The way it works, Kevin, is when Wi-Fi 7 comes on, it'll obviously ease into the Wi-Fi 6 share. Wi-Fi 6 is probably now at that 50%, maybe slightly below 50% penetrated and Wi-Fi 4 and 5 still occupy a significant share of the overall market. So now as Wi-Fi 7 comes online, you'll see Wi-Fi 6 still hang in there for a good period of time, probably squeezing out Wi-Fi 4 and 5 and then when we get to Wi-Fi 8, similarly, you'll probably see very little Wi-Fi 4 and 5 and Wi-Fi 6 will start to get squeezed out. So that's kind of how it works. You pretty much have somewhere between three and four standards shipping at any one time and it just depends on the application, the price point and so on. The good news for us, at least right now, is we have all of those standards covered, four, five, six and seven, so we're in pretty good shape.

Okay, great. Thanks for that detail. Maybe for just a little more detail, what are your end market exposures as far as, say, consumer, the IoT Wi-Fi in consumer, maybe in the home versus industrial? It seems in this earnings period that industrial has still been weak and maybe home is getting better, but I'd like to hear what you see is happening in the end market.

Yeah, we have very little industrial, so that's one. We have very little automotive. I think we've talked about one win. We are making progress in the automotive market with our Wi-Fi, but nothing to speak of yet outside of one win. I think we talked about two earnings calls or so ago. Our exposure is predominantly consumer and then a reasonable mix of enterprise. That's kind of how we think about the Wi-Fi business, probably, I don't know, but Joel, 65% consumer, 35% enterprise.

Yeah, that's the right way to think about it. And we may have some other end markets, but to your main end markets, Michael is right, primarily consumer, some enterprise, and little to no industrial and automotive.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thanks, Kevin.

Thank you. Our next question comes in from Krish Sankar with TD Cowan. Your line is now open.

Thanks for taking my question. I told Michael, one is you had nice sequential revenue growth this year every quarter. So as we look into March quarter, do we expect seasonality to impact this revenue growth cadence, or do you think there are any green shoes that can help avoid the seasonality in March?

Yeah, thanks, Krish. It's Ken here. Appreciate the question and ongoing support. If we look into, you know, we don't provide guidance more than one quarter ahead, right, guided for our fiscal Q2. But as we look at March, typically we would see some seasonality, especially if we look at areas like the PC space into the March quarter. So we expect a little bit of seasonality, and right now the automotive market is a little sluggish, so we'd expect those two factors to impact the March quarter.

Got it. And then just a quick follow-up, you know, you spoke a lot about the Wi-Fi 7. I'm kind of curious, how to think about the ASP and gross margin differential between Wi-Fi 7 compared to Wi-Fi 6?

Yeah, we have a first mover advantage, Krish, so we definitely like our ASP and margin position. It's probably somewhere in the $1 to $2 range out of like for like. Of course you have one by ones and two by twos, but if you think about on a like for like basis, you're going to get between a $1 and $2 ASP uplift and probably somewhere in the, you know, 8 to 10% margin uplift. That'll decay over time. Wi-Fi is a pretty competitive market, as you know, but we'd be able to just given our first mover advantage, we would think that we could maintain that for, you know, a year or so until we start seeing a lot more price competition.

Thanks a lot, Michael, very helpful.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to start to kind of follow up to that green sheet question. You saw 3% growth, I think it was, quarter to quarter in enterprise and it sounded like you might be starting to see signs of demand stabilization or at least, you know, maybe perhaps a better outlook and wondering if you could just expand on what you're seeing in enterprise IT or you see in corporate IT budgets starting to firm. And then the second question is, you know, can you just describe what you're seeing on or in the general pricing environment across the processor and the wireless segments? Is it stable? Are you starting to see some pricing pressure especially from Asia competitors? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks Quinn. You know, first of all I think you got the tone and tenor right. We certainly are liking enterprise for the first time in a while. We're seeing much better results in the enterprise area. I'm not totally sure that it's driven necessarily by some magic uptick in IT spending. I think it's driven a lot by refresh cycles, our video interface products. We talked about being up sequentially. There we've introduced two new devices that have pretty compelling use cases that are driving adoption. So I'd say that's happening there. In PC, you know, we're kind of bubbling with the market but I think we've actually had some share gains that have led to some incremental revenue growth in the PC area. So if you look across the portfolio, we would expect a now-ish as we've talked about, that we get a much better sense for IT budgets. We feel that the IT budgets will be better. It looks like all the things that we've talked about relative to assets being sweat for longer, necessary updates coming to roost. Looks like that could be better. And so I think outside of some of the seasonality that Ken talked about in Q1, which who knows where it ends up, but I think it's good to provide some caution, generally we feel pretty good. Oh yeah, Quinn asked about pricing. Yeah, also good question. You know, still the pricing environment has not been that challenging. We certainly see it in the areas that we've highlighted. Wi-Fi, to a certain extent in mobile we see it. We don't have a lot of China exposure and so the Chinese pricing environment as we understand is a little bit of a challenge. But I would say right now the pricing pressure is plus. I mean in other words, if we look at it historically in the semiconductor business, I don't think it's nearly as bad as it was 2015, 2016, maybe even 2017. It seems to be holding up relatively well. Yes, there are pockets of price pressure, the Wi-Fi touch controller, some of the others, but mostly we're able to hold pricing. You know, on the other side we don't see a lot of help from the suppliers on cost reductions on the input side.

Yeah, and Quinn, maybe I'll just jump in here as well, Ken. Good to talk to you. I'll say if you look at some of the markets we serve and some of the products that we have, we have very strong print positions. So on those products there's very little pricing pressure just given our print position.

Got it. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Our next question comes in line of Peter Peng with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon and congratulations on the strong guidance. Sounds like, you know, enterprise is starting to finally move in the right direction. How would you kind of think about the recovery profile of this? Does this kind of follow how we would observe in the core OT? Do you think this is more muted? And then what kind of margin implications does this have given that this is a higher margin segment?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, consistent with what we've said previously, it's going to really depend on IT budgets and IT spending. We definitely see signs of life. So that's the good news. I think you got the headline right. I do think that that's, as I said to the previous question from Quinn, I think it's driven mostly by kind of things in our control. Some new features, some market share gains, and things like that. On aggregate, we haven't seen a lot of IT spending increases, but I would say we feel better about that happening now in 2025. And should that happen, look, you're right. I mean, it's mixed within the mix. Always our margins are impacted by what we ship. You know, if PC comes up, like we said in the prepared remarks, that won't help a whole lot on margin. If we're able to see a better increase on our video interface products, some of our audio products, some of our enterprise telephony, that really does help the margin profile. So it depends a bit on where it comes from. PC is, you know, kind of in line with the corporate average in terms of margin, where these other segments will definitely, or product lines will definitely drag it up.

Great, thank you. My follow up is on, and thanks for disclosing your funnel for your Astra platform. Maybe you can provide some color in terms of your customer engagement. How broad is it? Is there any geographic concentration? Maybe you could put some more color on that.

Yeah, I mean, it's the right question. I was just debating our division leader on the phone just prior to our call on this topic. The answer is it's pretty broad. And what's going on right now is we're generally hunting and we're finding opportunities across segments and we're trying to figure out where we best fit. I mean, our products are very unique. They're super low power, very low cost, kind of in this five, six, seven dollar price point, and enabling quite a bit of compute. We're talking about 10, 12 tera ops of inferencing that these devices are capable of. So you put that together, they can fit in a lot of different end applications. Home security, appliances, home automation, industrial. I think somebody was, maybe Kevin was asking about that segment a minute ago. There's a lot of different areas in which we can go. So right now we're kind of going broad with these devices. Our goal is probably first quarter, second quarter next year, to really finish the exploration process and narrow down on two or three segments and really go after it. We feel good about where we are. I mean, the funnel size speaks to that. A lot of opportunity in this area. As I said, our value proposition to customers right now is look, we can replace processors from our competitors in a plug and play type of fashion, no cost increase at all, and then you get all this AI capability. So when you figure out your AI use case, you're good to go. And you don't need to have that in mind right out of the shoe.

Thank you guys.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. And we'd now like to turn it back to Michael Hurlston for closing remarks.

I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today. We look forward to speaking to you at our upcoming Investor Conferences during the quarter. Thanks so much.

This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect. Thank you.