Earnings Sentiment

Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.

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Sentiment Distribution

   

Earnings Call Transcript Word Cloud

     

Bullish Statements during Earnings call

Statement
For the full-year 2023, we generated record revenue of $165.8 million versus $148.5 million in 2022, a 12% year-over-year increase
Analytics has solidified as the dominant component of our overall business and is now 92% of total revenue revenues for the full year
First, attendance was fantastic, with over 300 people registered from over 100 companies, which represents two times the turnout of our last conference
We are pleased with another year of positive operating cash flow generation consistent with our history
Gross margin for the full-year '23 increased to 73%, up from 71% for 2022, chalking another year of expanding gross margins
We're proud of the performance of '23 against the macro environment and remain committed to the long-term targets we set at our Analyst Day in October last year, of 20% year-over-year total company revenue growth rate, 75% gross margin, and 20% operating margin
Like John, I'm also pleased that we ended the fourth quarter of 2023 by growing our backlog versus the third quarter of '23
We are pleased that a second leading edge customer now has our eProbe DFI machine at their facility for manufacturing evaluation
While bookings in the first three quarters were muted, Q4 bookings were strong and we again built backlog
So we have good confidence that we will be able to demonstrate success and then convert that into revenue upon achievement of the milestones that we've set out for this evaluation
Customer interest in our ML OPs has been fantastic
We are making solid progress on our mission to become the leading analytics software provider for the global semiconductor supply chain
Looking back on 2023, the company made great strides in our goal of being the end-to-end analytics platform for the semiconductor and electronics industries
All of our marketing, product development, and field applications effort resulted in positive growth in the business
The strong bookings helped our revenue performance despite weakness in gain share and run time licenses, due to equipment customers in wafer fabs shipping less product than we originally expected for the second half of the year
Of course, we've had a number of products that we've done in conjunction with Advantest that are generating revenue and continue to generate momentum
Overall, we received positive feedback from our community of customers, partners, investors, and analysts
Despite the fact that gain share, which is 100% gross margin, decreased, we were able to grow gross margins in part due to better optimized spending on cloud infrastructure as we improve the business scale
This is yet another year in a row for this noteworthy achievement
It's starting to show early results in the strength of the pipeline and hopefully, the two deals in Q4 that we did chalk up some of that benefit already and hopefully more to come
First, our analytics revenue grew 17% for the full-year '23 on a year-over-year basis
As John said and stated in our earnings release, our outlook for the year reflects both the short-term weakness in the semiconductor industry and the strength of our pipeline, bolstered by the macro trends of distributed manufacturing, energy electrification, and AI, which can drive significant growth
In terms of continued - in terms of adoption with additional customers, it's nice to see that customers are using our products on a larger scale, as were referenced by the comment that we made in the call about the two large customers with the large deals that we talked about, the double-digit-million-dollar deal
When we look to the progress we made in 2023 and consider the opportunities we see in front of us in 2024, we truly appreciate the effort of our employees, contractors, customers and partners that have positioned the company for the future
So we've - we continue to see opportunities in advanced logic, and we do expect advanced logic incrementally to contribute this year above what it contributed last year
There are activities that we see that we're in deep discussions with customers that we feel pretty confident about, the gain share and the run time licenses you put are more like the overall weather outside of us
For the year 2023, we reported EPS of $0.73 a share, a meaningful growth of more than 20% compared to the $0.60 per share we reported for the prior year 2022
Overall, we expect bookings for the year to be up significantly versus last year, and we expect to build backlog meaningfully
We expect to build on that bookings momentum in Q4 and the first half of this year to be substantially over the second half of last year from a booking standpoint
As a result, we expect revenue for the first half of 2024 to be flat over the comparable period of the prior year, and for revenue for the second half of the year to grow by 20% over the comparable period of the prior year
       

Bearish Statements during earnings call

Statement
With respect to Cimetrix products, we continued to see weakness in equipment shipments affecting the contribution to revenue which declined on a year-over-year basis for the full year
Turning to our view of 2024, many of our fabless foundry and equipment customers are reporting relatively weak first half of 2024, and in many cases, customers are reporting Q1 will be down
For the full-year 2023, IYR revenue comprised 8% of total revenues at $13.8 million and was down 24% on a year-over-year basis, driven by completion of some fixed-fee engagement projects and reduction in revenues from gain share, primarily from reduced production volumes at key gain share customers
Our outlook for the year reflects both the short-term weakness in the IC industry and the longer-term macro trends that can drive significant growth
While some customers are experiencing near-term weakness, the long-term trends driven by increasingly intelligent semiconductor products that make AI possible, the electrification of the energy economy, and the geographic diversification of manufacturing are only accelerating
So we book in Q1, it will drive very little revenue growth, very little revenue in Q1
They can't really tell you do you have a failure in a billion or 0.1 failures in a billion or 10 failures in a billion on the contact and via layer? And the eProbe is the only thing that can really do that, can measure tens of billions and tell you, okay, what's your real failure rate across all the layout styles on a real product? And that was the point the guy said, like, God, John, when we went from your test vehicle to product, we got caught by some issues
For the full year, analytics revenue increased 17% to $152.1 million versus the prior year, despite the fact that Cimetrix Connectivity run time licenses, which generate revenue when customers ship their equipment, were down double-digit percentage due to decline in end market equipment shipments
And we've always known in our models it's half your yield loss, just hard to see in line
We're not forecasting a ton of growth in gain share
We're not forecasting - we are forecasting equipment getting better as we get towards the second half of the year modestly
The reasons for optimism are more internal or like our specific business situation with customers than it is the macro environment
And so even for twelve nanometer or 28 nanometer, that actually matters quite a bit
And as John pointed out, an industry that contracted 10%
   

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