Earnings call transcript: Cytame Q4 2024 sees strong revenue growth

Cytame (NASDAQ: CYTM) reported its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024, showcasing a significant revenue increase and surpassing earnings expectations. The company achieved a non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) of $0.93 on revenues of $68.1 million, reflecting a 61% year-over-year growth. The results exceeded the market’s EPS forecast of $0.33, contributing to a positive market response, with shares rising 3.9% during regular trading hours. However, the stock saw a slight decline of 1.34% in aftermarket trading. According to InvestingPro data, the stock has shown remarkable momentum with a 14.69% return in the past week and nearly 99% over the last six months, though current valuations suggest the stock may be trading above its Fair Value.

Key Takeaways

• Cytame reported a 61% year-over-year increase in Q4 2024 revenue.
• The company exceeded EPS expectations, reporting $0.93 against a forecast of $0.33.
• Stock rose by 3.9% during regular trading but fell 1.34% in aftermarket.
• Strong bookings momentum and focus on AI and data center markets highlighted.
• Revenue from clocking products could reach $100 million in coming years.

Company Performance

Cytame demonstrated robust performance in Q4 2024, with revenue reaching $68.1 million, marking a 61% growth compared to the same period last year. The company’s full-year revenue of $202.7 million represents a 41% increase year-over-year. This growth is attributed to Cytame’s strategic focus on precision timing products, which are gaining traction in AI, data centers, and networking markets. The company has also expanded its product offerings, introducing new platforms that enhance its competitive position in the semiconductor technology sector.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $68.1 million in Q4 2024, up 61% year-over-year
• Non-GAAP EPS: $0.93, significantly above the forecast of $0.33
• Full-year revenue: $202.7 million, a 41% increase from the previous year
• Cash flow from operations: $23.3 million
• Gross margins: 58.2% for the full year

Earnings vs. Forecast

Cytame’s actual EPS of $0.93 significantly surpassed the forecasted $0.33, marking a substantial earnings surprise. This performance highlights the company’s strong operational execution and effective cost management. The revenue of $68.1 million also exceeded the forecast of $58.52 million, indicating robust demand for its products.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Cytame’s stock experienced a 3.9% increase during regular trading hours, closing at $220. However, in aftermarket trading, the stock saw a slight decline of 1.34%. This mixed reaction suggests investor caution despite the strong earnings report, possibly influenced by broader market conditions or sector-specific trends.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Cytame forecasts Q1 2025 revenue between $53 million and $55 million, aiming for a long-term growth rate of 25-30%. The company remains optimistic about its prospects in the Communications Enterprise Data Center (CED) segment and anticipates significant contributions from its clocking products, potentially reaching $100 million in revenue in the coming years.

Executive Commentary

Rajesh Vasist, CEO, emphasized Cytame’s leadership in precision timing technology, stating, "Cytame’s precision timing delivers better performance and reliability." CFO Beth Howell added, "Our product portfolio continues to expand with differentiated products that address large and growing markets."

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain disruptions could impact production and delivery timelines.
• Competitive pressure in the semiconductor industry may affect market share.
• Economic uncertainties could influence customer spending and investment.
• Regulatory changes in key markets like China could pose challenges.
• Dependence on a few large customers could affect revenue stability.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Cytame’s growth strategy in the AI and data center markets and its expansion into the Chinese automotive market. The management highlighted strong bookings momentum for 2025 and the successful integration of the Aura Semiconductor acquisition, reinforcing its commitment to innovation and market expansion.

Full transcript - Sitime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) Q4 2024:

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Sea Time’s Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. At the conclusion of today’s conference call, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded 02/05/2025. I would now like to turn the call over to Brett Perry of Shelton Group Investor Relations.

Brett, please go ahead.

Brett Perry, Investor Relations, Shelton Group: Thank you, Lisa. Good afternoon and welcome to Cytame’s fourth quarter twenty twenty four financial results conference call. Joining us on today’s call from Cytame are Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer and Beth Howell, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to point out that during the course of this call, the company may make forward looking statements regarding expected future results, including financial position, strategy and plans, future operations, the timing market and other areas of discussion. It’s not possible for the company’s management to predict all risks nor can the company assess the impact of all factors on its business or the extent to which any factor or combination of factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward looking statements.

In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward looking events discussed during this call may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied. Neither the company nor any person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward looking statements for any reason after the date of this conference call to conform statements to actual results or to changes in the company’s expectations. For more detailed information on risks associated with the business, we refer you to the risk factors described in the 10 K filed on 02/26/2024, as well as the company’s subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During the call, we’ll refer to certain non GAAP financial measures, which are considered to be an important measure of company performance.

These non GAAP financial measures are provided in addition to and not as a substitute for nor superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with U. S. GAAP. The GAAP to non GAAP reconciliation include stock based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangibles and acquisition related expenses, which include transaction and certain other cash costs associated with business acquisition, as well as changes in the estimated fair value of contingent consideration and earn out liabilities. Please refer to the company’s press release issued earlier today for a detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non GAAP results.

With that, it’s now my pleasure to turn the call over to CyTime’s CEO. Rajesh, please go ahead.

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Thanks, Brett. Good afternoon. I’d like to welcome new as well as existing investors to Cytom’s fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings call. Cytom is the leader in a dynamic new semiconductor category that we call precision timing, which is the heartbeat of modern electronics. Whether it’s in AI data centers, networking infrastructure, automated vehicles, personal mobility or IoT, Cytam’s precision timing delivers better performance and reliability.

Scitam’s precision timing products use semiconductor technology to reimagine time and transform the $10,000,000,000 timing market. Revenue for Q4 twenty twenty four grew 61% year over year with strong profitability. For all of 2024, we delivered 41% growth, which is well above our target. Our strong fourth quarter results demonstrate the diversity of site times across customer segments and geographies. Each of our customer segments and regions delivered double digit percentage growth with comms enterprise data center, what we call CED, growing significantly.

We exited the quarter with strong bookings for 2025, giving us a bright outlook for the year. Looking back, FY 2024 was a year of recovery and growth. As forecasted in the previous year 2023, we started growing sequentially in Q2 twenty twenty four. Every customer segment delivered double digit percentage year over year growth in Q2, Q3 and Q4 of twenty twenty four, while CED delivered triple digit growth. We believe that this strength in all of our customer segments is a big positive.

Our business model is structured to deliver profitable growth while serving different customer segments with different growth rates at different times. Product innovation plays a key role in fulfilling our strategy of producing high differentiation, high value timing products. Since Q2 twenty twenty three, we have introduced 10 new platforms that deliver 40 products with ASPs or average selling price ranging from $1 to over $200 These will be critical for growth in revenue and gross margin for the next several years. As electronic devices incorporate intelligent features, they will need faster processing, connectivity, reliability and Sitem is the leader in delivering these benefits. Our comms enterprise data center business demonstrates the value of our portfolio.

We expect CED to continue to lead our growth in 2025 as newer generations of servers in AI and networking equipment are rolled out. Turning to recent news in AI, we forecast that the need for higher bandwidth and lower latency will continue to increase. This is true regardless of traditional or low cost AI models and regardless of general purpose or reasoning LLM models. Applications such as active cables, ABCs, GPU switches, smart NIC (NASDAQ:EGOV) cards are solving bandwidth and utilization problems through architectural innovations as well as moving to higher interconnect speeds. And these trends are driving the demand for more precision timing with higher dollar content per application.

For example, our oscillators have significant market share in 800 gs optical modules and we have a compelling roadmap for future generations of 1.6 terabit and 3.2 terabit modules. In switches and NIC or NIC cards, Cytame’s recently introduced 5,977 Super TCXO solves GPU utilization and reliability problems by delivering up to 3x better synchronization, 4x smaller size and 20x better reliability. But it’s not all about data centers in our CD market. It’s also about the breadth of other applications. We’ve seen increasing demand in communications where our EPYC product, our OCXO, solves timing problems in five gs base stations.

We continue to expect success in this sub segment starting in 2026. Now let’s talk about growth opportunities for Saeta and Beyond CD. In the broader industrial market, new use cases and the adoption of new technologies is driving the need for more precision timing with higher dollar content. For example, autonomous technology that uses our timing products is being adopted in mining and construction equipment as well as precision agriculture. This is a $50,000,000 market for Scitime and we expect to get the majority share because of a greater resilience.

Similarly, the need for more precise and robust positioning is driving adoption of our products in drones, handheld military radios and assured PNT or precision navigation and timing systems. This is a $25,000,000 market for Sidime and we expect again to get a majority share because of a higher performance, smaller size and lower power. To summarize, we expect our growth to continue in 2025. The breadth and diversity of our products, applications and customers is delivering the growth that we have worked for. I’m confident of our success now and in the future.

And now I’ll turn the call over to Beth, our CFO, to discuss our financial results in more detail. Beth?

Beth Howell, Chief Financial Officer, Cytame: Thanks, Rajesh, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I’ll discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results, and then I’ll provide our outlook for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. As a reminder, I’ll focus my discussion on non GAAP financial results, which are reconciled to our GAAP financials in our press release. We are pleased with our performance as we continue to execute our financial model. We delivered remarkable results with strong revenue growth and even greater profit expansion, reflecting the scalability of the business.

Importantly, this performance was driven by broad based strength across our customer segments. Our performance this quarter demonstrates our ability to successfully invest in our business while delivering strong financial results. For the full year, we delivered revenue of $202,700,000 up 41% from the prior year. Non GAAP gross margins were 58.2% and non GAAP operating expenses were $117,500,000 For the fiscal year, we generated non GAAP net income of $22,200,000 non GAAP earnings per share of $0.93 and cash flow from operations of $23,300,000 Looking at the details of the December, Q4 was a strong finish to the year with revenue increasing 61% year on year and 18% sequentially to $68,100,000 Revenue by customer segment was sales into communications, enterprise and data center market of $24,800,000 or 37% of sales, up 156 year on year. Sales into the automotive, industrial and aerospace market were $20,500,000 or 30% of sales, increasing 32% year on year.

And sales into the mobile, IoT and consumer market were $22,800,000 or 33% of sales, up 33% year on year, with sales to our largest end customer totaling $16,400,000 or 24% of sales. Non GAAP gross margins were 58.8%, up 70 basis points sequentially and a bit better than expected due to favorable product mix. Total (EPA:TTEF) non GAAP operating expenses for the quarter were $32,500,000 with R and D expense of $19,400,000 and SG and A expense of $13,100,000 As expected, the increase in R and D spend was due to investments in new products that we are bringing to market. Fourth quarter non GAAP operating income was $7,600,000 an improvement of $3,600,000 sequentially. Interest and other income was $4,500,000 Fourth quarter non GAAP net income was $11,800,000 or $0.48 per share compared with $0.4 per share in Q3.

Turning to the balance sheet. Accounts receivable were $38,100,000 with DSOs of fifty days, up three days from Q3 due to revenue linearity. Inventory at the end of the quarter was $76,700,000 compared with $71,900,000 in Q3. During the quarter, we generated $13,600,000 in cash flow from operations, invested $16,000,000 in capital purchases and paid $7,000,000 to Aura Semiconductor. At the end of the fourth quarter, we had $419,000,000 in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments.

Now, I’d like to provide our outlook for the March. We expect typical seasonality in Q1 with revenue of $53,000,000 to $55,000,000 an increase of 64% year over year at the midpoint and gross margins of approximately 57%. We expect operating expenses to be roughly flat sequentially, even as we absorb the higher beginning of the year payroll taxes, and we expect interest income of roughly $4,000,000 to $4,500,000 As a result, we expect Q1 non GAAP EPS to be in the range of $0.09 to $0.13 per share. In closing, we are pleased with our strong results and we believe we are well positioned for growth in 2025. Our product portfolio continues to expand with differentiated products that address large and growing markets and our customers are clearly recognizing our value proposition.

All in all, we are executing our strategy and our strategy is working. With that, I’d like to hand the call back to the operator for questions and answers.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank

: you.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Our first question today will be coming from the line of Tore Salsgaard of Stifel. Your line is open.

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: Yes. Thank you and congratulations on the strong results. So, Rajesh, you talked about strong bookings momentum going into 2025. If you look at your three segments, can you just give us a little bit of a sense for where those bookings are coming? And then as we think about growth in 2025, where would the relative strength come from the three segments?

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Right. Thanks. Thanks, sorry. Yes, so it’s no surprise that most of the growth in 2025 will also come from the CED portion of the market, the communications enterprise and data center portion of the market. I think we’ll see growth in consumer mobile IoT and we’ll see growth in industrial, automotive and military aerospace.

But perhaps not to the same extent for these two segments that we see for the first one that I mentioned. So we still expect to be on that one for a while.

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: Great. And if I can sort of zoom in to the CED segment, you’ve talked about selling into four different applications for an AI based server. And I’m just wondering if we look at calendar twenty five again, whether it’s switches or NIC cards or AECs, where do you see the sort of biggest strength within those applications in 2025?

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes. In general, we sell more units into AACs, NIC cards and smaller units into GPUs and some of these other ones. Also in the more quantity, more units is also in the optical modules as we have said before. The pricing for the products in the GPU is probably higher, but the volumes are not as high. So I think it just depends on which one does better, but we expect all of these segments to grow.

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: That’s helpful. I have a couple more, but I’ll go back in line. Thank you.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question will be coming from the line of Quinn Bolton of Needham and Company. Your line is open.

: Hey guys, let me off further my congratulations as well. I guess maybe just big picture Rajesh and Beth, you’ve talked about a target of 25% to 30% in twenty twenty five percent, ’20 ’20 ’6 percent, obviously very solid foundation in twenty twenty four percent. But are you still feeling pretty good about your ability to hit that kind of longer term growth rate both this year and next?

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes, I think that’s a good target for us, Quinn. I think that we see that kind of growth coming from the breadth of the market that we address and the broad level of activity in these markets with our latest products. So yes, I would agree that we’re probably we’re probably good for that as a target right now.

Beth Howell, Chief Financial Officer, Cytame: Perfect. And then I guess, Beth, on

: the gross margin, the step down to 57%, probably a little bit lower than at least I had modeled. Wondering if you could just sort of walk us through some of the puts and takes. I know revenue lower revenue probably means absorption is an issue, but you guys spent, I think you said $16,000,000 in CapEx in the quarter. I wonder if there’s also some additional depreciation or costs for new products that you guys may be absorbing in the near term before those have sort of fully ramped. And so how much of it is just revenue stepping down?

How much of it is perhaps the ramp of new products that aren’t yet at mature yields or sort of fully ramped up on the supply chain?

Beth Howell, Chief Financial Officer, Cytame: Sure, Quinn. Thanks for the question. I think you hit the nail on the head. So when we’ve got the revenue seasonality and the manufacturing absorption is the most significant part of that. And then we do have additional depreciation as we’re ramping new products.

And so we, as expected, have a step down in the gross margin here. As we’ve talked about, we’re on the path that we’ve been on in terms of bringing these new products to market, working through the yield improvements, the cost downs, improving test times and other things as we mature these products. So over time, we do expect gross margins to improve, but the combination of the typical seasonality and lower revenue in Q1 combined with these ramps is driving gross margins this quarter.

: If I could just take a quick follow-up. You’ve talked about hoping to get back to a 60% gross margin, obviously, maybe starting a little bit lower because of the absorption issue in March. Do you think you can get to 60% sometime in the back half of ’twenty five or should we be thinking 60% might now be pushed out to calendar ’twenty six?

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: We’re still targeting that as something we want and we can address.

: Great. Okay. I’ll go back in queue. Thank you.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. And the next question will be coming from the line of Suji D’Silva of Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Suji D’Silva, Analyst, Roth Capital: Hi, Rajesh. Hi, Beth. Congrats on the progress here. Just a quick follow-up on Tory’s question about bookings. Are you seeing the improvement?

Is that a customer preference or something in newer products? Or have the lead times moved at all or customers just acknowledging long lead times? Any color on why the bookings are improving would be helpful.

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes, I think bookings are just strong on the back of demand. We just see a pretty good demand coming from all sectors. Our lead times are pretty solid where they were. We just see a lot of when we look at the end markets, whether it is the industrial, military, aerospace, automotive or it’s the mobile, IoT, consumer and of course we’ve talked about CD. We just see demand coming through.

I’m not saying that it’s some kind of over the top demand. I’m just saying it looks solid.

Suji D’Silva, Analyst, Roth Capital: Okay. That’s helpful. And then separately on the timing product, the Aura acquisition, maybe you can give us an update on where the roadmap product, roadmap and synergies are there and where some of the traction is as you kind of put the products together in there?

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes. So we had taken that product mostly for the higher end of our market, mostly for the CED market and some portions of the military aerospace and some portions of the industrial market. And that is completely playing out. So Aura has done of course a fantastic job, I’ve said this several times, in delivering the products that they were supposed to deliver and we are really pleased with the level of support that they have given us and the integrity with which they have been dealing with us. So that’s an absolute positive.

But the second part is that those products combined those clocking products, the jitter attenuators, the buffers, the clock generators combined with our higher end oscillator products have worked according to plan have been one plus one equals three as we go to some of these customers that I mentioned earlier. So it’s coming exactly according to plan. As we mentioned, it will these kinds of products take a longer time to design in, but we’re still thinking that in the next few years, the revenue from clocking could be approaching $100,000,000

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: Very helpful color, Rishi. Thanks.

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. And the next question will be coming from the line of Chris Caso of Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Chris Caso, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Yes, thank you. Good evening. I guess the first question is on OpEx. And as you deliver on hopefully deliver on some of the growth that you’re expecting this year and next year, what should we expect with regard to OpEx and getting some leverage on that growth? Where is your expense level relative to where you need to be to get to the growth that you’re targeting?

Beth Howell, Chief Financial Officer, Cytame: So if we look at operating expenses, I think as we’ve been saying, I expect that we can grow revenue much faster than OpEx. Again, we were at $32,500,000 in Q4. I think we’ll be roughly in that same range for Q1 with some puts and takes. Forgive on Q1, we’ve got to absorb the higher payroll taxes that we have at the beginning of the year, so there’ll be some offsets in there sequentially. And as we look forward, we’re going to continue to make strategic investments in R and D, in go to market as we continue to grow the revenue.

But again, I think you can think about it growing certainly probably not more than half as fast as revenue.

Chris Caso, Analyst, Wolfe Research: That is helpful. If I can ask another question with regard to the auto business. And there’s a trend that’s becoming clearer where the center of gravity of auto is kind of moving a bit more to China. Certainly, there’s some share shift going on. Can you speak to Sidime’s position in China Auto as compared to Western Auto?

Do you is the share similar, the opportunity similar, your ability to penetrate those customers similar if we continue to see this trend?

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: So it’s always helpful to think of Citan customers using us in their most innovative products. So that’s kind of the heuristic Sitime’s products are more innovative than other timing products and therefore they get used in our customers’ more innovative products. In the case of automotive, it turns out that there while there are a few innovative American companies, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) comes to mind and some of the others, the more automotive innovative companies that have been changing the world of cars is of course coming from China. Whether they’re electric vehicles or around automation, I think that’s coming from China. So necessarily there’ll be a bigger use case coming out of China.

Having said that, as United States companies and European companies and for that matter Japanese companies start adopting some of the same technologies, we expect to get more and more of that penetration. So at this point, about in our automotive business, I’d say about 30% to 40% of our business is coming from China.

Chris Caso, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay, helpful. Thank you.

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. One moment please. And we do have a follow-up question coming from the line of Torrey Soderbergh of Stifel. Your line is open.

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: Yes. Thank you. The first one is on your largest customer. As we look at 2025, is there something going on there that is unusual, whether it’s new products from them that you might be in or whether you’re expecting any new content growth in any other existing devices? Just to sort of better read on what could potentially be going on with your largest customer, twenty five.

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Yes. As you know, we haven’t seen any press releases out there just like I guess you haven’t seen any press releases. So we get our information in the same way on new products from them that the world does. So let’s just wait and see what happens with all of that.

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: That’s fair, Rajesh. And then my other follow-up was on Ora. So you talked about that $100,000,000 business target, But I noticed you did pay them some money this well, you had a payout this quarter. So I’m just wondering, should we assume that those clocks are now already starting to generate revenue? And I assume that the margin profile for that $100,000,000 would be higher than the corporate average?

Beth Howell, Chief Financial Officer, Cytame: Thanks, Tori. So yes, we are starting to see some revenue from the ORA products. As we’ve talked about, we got the assets that have been having to get the design wins and some have come through maybe a little faster and so are starting to see some revenue in 2024, expect that to continue to build in 2025 and beyond. So that’s good news in terms of our products and the trajectory for those clocks. And yes, the gross margins are generally accretive to the corporate average.

And so as we continue to build that business, it’s both good revenue as well as good margin.

Tore Salsgaard, Analyst, Stifel: Excellent. Thank you so much.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. And there are no more questions in the queue. I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Rajesh Vasist, Chief Executive Officer, Cytame: Well, thank you very much. We said goodbye to 2024. It was a wonderful year in growth and settling down the company. We look forward to a very good 2025 and hope to see you across all the earnings quarters. So thank you again.

Lisa, Conference Call Operator: Thank you all for participating in today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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