Earnings Call: Q3 2019

Nov 7, 2019

I would now like to turn the conference over to Eric Bylin. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Atesha. Good afternoon, and welcome to Arlo Technologies' third quarter of twenty nineteen financial results conference call. Joining us from the company are Mr. Matthew MacRae, CEO and Ms. Christine Gorjan, CFO. The format of the call will start with an introduction and commentary on the business provided by Matt, followed by a review of the financials for the third quarter, along with guidance provided by Christine. We'll then have time for any questions. If you have not received a copy of today's press release, please visit Arlo's Investor Relations website at www.arlo.com. Before we begin the formal remarks, we advise you that today's conference call contains forward looking statements. Forward looking statements include statements regarding expected revenue, gross margins, operating margins, tax rates, expenses, future cash outlook, continued new product and service differentiation and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those contemplated by these forward looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Arlo's periodic filings with the SEC, including the most recent annual report on Form 10 K and quarterly report on Form 10 Q. Any forward looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and Arlo undertakes no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. In addition, several non GAAP financial measures will be mentioned on the call. A reconciliation of the non GAAP to GAAP measures can be found in today's press release on our Investor Relations website. And at this time, I would now like to turn the call over to Matt. Thank you, Eric, and thank you everyone for joining us today on Arlo's third quarter twenty nineteen earnings call. We have a lot to cover today and what was an outstanding quarter for the company from an execution perspective. Christine and I will walk you through the major elements, including financial results for the quarter, our definitive agreements with Verisure, launch of Arlo Pro three, announcement of our first video doorbell, implementation of a comprehensive restructuring plan and the closing of a $40,000,000 line of credit. Let's start by talking through some highlights for the quarter. In Q3, we achieved 106,100,000 in revenue above the high end of our guidance for the quarter. Services revenue was $11,800,000 which represents a year over year growth of 20% and a new record for the company. We added about 294,000 registered users to the Arlo platform in Q3 to reach a total of nearly 3,700,000 total registered users, up 48% year over year. More importantly, our paid subscriber base continues to grow at a faster pace and reached approximately 211,000 users, up more than 69% from a year ago. As a reminder, this growth does not include Arlo Ultra and now Arlo Pro three customers buying products with our new services business model that includes a limited free trial of Arlo Smart. We believe when the trial period for Arlo Smart lapses, many of these customers will subscribe to Arlo Smart and we will see further acceleration in growth of paid subscribers in the first half of twenty twenty. Today, I'm excited to announce that we have entered into a truly impactful strategic partnership with Verisure that has multiple benefits to Arlo. Verisure is a leading provider of professionally monitored security solutions with 3,000,000 customers in 16 countries across Europe and Latin America and growing quickly through innovation and excellent service. The partnership has two main elements. First, Verisure will pay Arlo fifty million dollars for Arlo's European commercial operations covering marketing and distribution of Arlo products and services, the Arlo brand and Arlo's existing installed base in Europe. From the acquisition, we'll create the first multi channel go to market for consumer security experience. We understand VeriSure plans to invest in sales and marketing to grow these channels significantly over time. Second, VeriSure has committed to purchase a minimum of $500,000,000 of Arlo products over the next five years to be distributed by Verisure. Verisure will also purchase associated cloud services from Arlo, including artificial intelligence, computer vision and other features. This agreement includes prepayment terms and other services that further provide cash for Arlo. In addition to locking in significant growth in Europe, we expect profitability to also improve from where it stands today over the life of the deal. Arlo will continue to own and operate all channels outside of Europe and will continue to own and drive our innovative product roadmap, our intelligent cloud services platform and the Arlo app experience on a global basis. The proceeds from this partnership will be used to fund operations and drive additional future growth opportunities across our businesses. The strategic partnership with Verisure is a transformative event for the company. Beyond the cash and future revenue impact, it provides substantial diversification for Arlo on both a regional and channel basis with a partner who is completely aligned to help us aggressively scale the European territory, while affording us lower complexity and operational focus on our other brands. Perhaps most importantly, Arlo and Verisher have a synergy of vision that will bring millions of customers peace of mind through connected security products to protect what matters most. Moving on to products. In Q3, we launched the Arlo Pro three, a major update to our best selling pro line of indooroutdoor smart cameras. It leverages many of the breakthrough technologies from Ultra, including an integrated spotlight, color night vision, high dynamic range and our new modular design in a package featuring two ks resolution video and 160 degree field of view. The Pro3 includes a three month subscription to Arlo Smart, our powerful cloud based AI and computer vision based service that enables smart notifications, person detection, vehicle detection, package detection, smoke, carbon monoxide alarm detection, E911 and numerous other features in addition to cloud video storage. This brings a tremendous amount of technology and capabilities to a more aggressive price point for users looking to protect what they care about most. And they have responded by rating the Pro3 a 4.5 out of five stars at Best Buy, making it one of our highest rated products at launch. Professional reviews are just rolling in and the first two both achieved Editor's Choice Awards with CNET commenting, The two ks streaming is stellar and the Arlo Pro three is the outdoor home security camera to beat, while naming it the top pick for all home security cameras. And today we announced that the Arlo Pro three won the coveted twenty twenty CES Innovation Award in the broad smart home category, one of two awards given to Arlo this year. Pro three sets a new benchmark for price and broad market appeal. Arlo also formally announced the Arlo Video Doorbell in the quarter, which is our first video integrated product in the space and brings significant innovation in the areas of video and audio performance. The product features an industry leading vertical field of view with a unique one by one sensor aspect ratio to see packages on the ground or visitors from head to toe solving the biggest complaint users have with existing products on the market. Arlo is also using voice over IP technologies to provide a best in class audio experience where a doorbell button press results in a phone call on your mobile device providing a high quality, low latency experience. The audio the Arlo Video Doorbell fully integrates with the wider Arlo ecosystem and features a free three month trial for Arlo Smart, which benefits greatly from the unique image sensor by allowing for superior computer vision detection of people and packages at close range. We believe this powerful combination creates the most sophisticated doorbell on the market and will drive future paid subscribers for Arlo. The video doorbell started shipping into the channel last week, will be available in November for Black Friday and is now available for pre order at Best Buy and other authorized Arlo resellers for $149.99 These two major product launches provide us with a phenomenal lineup for the holiday season, but also leading into the full year of 2020. As discussed previously, we have additional products in our pipeline to announce in the first half of next year, but are now substantially through our post spin innovation and new product introduction cycle that is refreshing our core products and transitioning to our new business model. As such, we are executing a comprehensive and detailed restructuring plan with an emphasis on optimizing the business across all functions and materially lowering our operating expenses. The execution of this plan began in the quarter and is focused on accelerating our path to profitability. I'll turn the call over to Christine for her commentary on this restructuring plan, our activities to add cash to the balance sheet, our third quarter results and our guidance for the fourth quarter and full year. Thank you, Matt, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our third quarter of twenty nineteen earnings call. Before I discuss our financials, I would like to provide some detail on our restructuring and line of credit. As Matt mentioned, today we announced a restructuring plan that has already allowed us to materially lower our operating expenses in Q3 twenty nineteen and under which we will continue to see benefits into 2020. Importantly, this will not hinder our ability to deliver market leading innovation to consumers. The guidance we gave for the third quarter and full year implied on an operating expense level of approximately $40,000,000 per quarter. Our restructuring plan will lower our ongoing non GAAP operating expenses to an annualized run rate of approximately $33,000,000 to $34,000,000 per quarter, saving approximately $25,000,000 per year compared to our expectation of $160,000,000 Due to these actions, we will incur a charge totaling approximately $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 over the next few quarters. These cost savings will be fully actualized by the second quarter of twenty twenty. But as I mentioned, we already began to see their effect in Q3. We expect some variability in our quarterly operating expenses, mainly due to our allocation of channel marketing expenses between contra revenue and operating expenses, as well as other seasonal expenses. These savings include, but are not limited to, reducing outside services, headcount, infrastructure and marketing activities. They also include savings that we will realize based on the VeriSure deal. Additionally, we have secured a $40,000,000 revolving credit line based on our receivables. We may use these funds to supplement working capital as needed. As previously disclosed, in April 2019, the company's Board of Directors commenced a comprehensive strategic review of the company. On 11/07/2019, the company announced that the strategic review had been formally concluded, but that the company will continue to evaluate a wide range of strategic alternatives available to the company to optimize the value of the company and to improve returns to its stockholders. And now on to the financials. As Matt highlighted, we achieved $101,100,000 of revenue, exceeding the high end of our guidance and up 26.9% sequentially, but down 19.1% year over year. During the third quarter, we shipped a total of approximately 1,138,000 devices, of which approximately 1,075,000 are cameras. We added approximately 294,000 registered users to the ARTL platform in Q3. As of the end of the third quarter, we had about 3,700,000 registered users, an increase of 47.8% from a year ago. Growing our registered user base is critical to growing our recurring subscription business, which we believe will help improve both our margins and revenue predictability. We are very pleased with the growth in our subscriber base and believe our new business model for subscriptions, which we introduced with Ultra, have included with Pro3 and the Video Doorbell and will continue with future product introductions will be a substantial driver of the subscriber base and recurring revenue growth in the near future. Our services revenue for Q3 twenty nineteen was $11,800,000 which is up 20.2% over last year. From this point on, my discussion points will focus on non GAAP numbers. The reconciliation from GAAP to non GAAP is detailed in our earnings release distributed earlier today. Our non GAAP gross profit for the third quarter of twenty nineteen was $11,400,000 which resulted in a non GAAP gross margin of 10.7%, just above the midpoint of our guidance. This compares to $30,400,000 in the year ago comparable period and $10,500,000 in the prior quarter. Our service gross margin was 41.9 for the third quarter of twenty nineteen. Total non GAAP operating expenses came in at $36,000,000 which is up 5.7% year over year, but down 4.8% sequentially. Our total non GAAP R and D expense for the third quarter was $15,100,000 and down compared to prior quarter. Our headcount at the end of Q3 twenty nineteen was four zero six employees compared to four zero two in the prior quarter. As we mentioned earlier, we began reducing our operating expenses during Q3 and expect to realize $25,000,000 in annualized savings by the end of Q2 '20 '20 compared to our prior expectations of hundred and $60,000,000 per year. That said, we expect Q4 will be up approximately 5% sequentially due to seasonal factors. Our non GAAP tax expense for the third quarter of twenty nineteen is $332,000 For the third quarter of twenty nineteen, we posted a non GAAP net loss per diluted share of $0.32 We ended the quarter with $153,800,000 in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments, up $15,900,000 sequentially. The increase in cash principally reflects our tight focus on working capital management. We continue to be very focused on managing our cash position and we're very pleased with our inventory management during Q3 and improved DSO of eighty five days for Q3. Over the last several months, we have worked to increase our liquidity by adopting a restructuring plan to reduce expenses, securing a credit facility, as well as entering into a strategic partnership with Verisure. These actions combined will increase our cash availability by up to an additional $110,000,000 Now turning to our outlook. We expect revenue in the fourth quarter to be in the range of $115,000,000 to $125,000,000 We expect our GAAP gross margin to come in between 9.912.9% and our non GAAP gross margin to come in between 10.513.5% in the fourth quarter of twenty nineteen. In Q4, we do not expect to meet all the demand for Pro2 from our retailers. An older product, Pro2 requires chips that are manufactured by a single vendor largely for Arlo. In October, this vendor informed us they would be short approximately 100,000 chips of what we expected for the first half of Q4. We expect this shortfall to cause a revenue headwind of about $15,000,000 in Q4 and adversely impact gross margin. We expect our GAAP net loss per diluted share to come in between $0.39 and $0.45 per share and our non GAAP loss per diluted share to come in between $0.28 and $0.34 per share. We expect our GAAP and non GAAP tax expense to be approximately $400,000 for Q4 twenty nineteen. And with that, we can open the call to questions. Your first question comes from the line of Adam Hindle from Raymond James. Okay. Thanks and good evening. Christine, I think I just wanted to start maybe on that last comment and kind of a more near term question on the product side. Q4 revenue, I know it was a pretty high bar to start, but it's going to come down by over 20%. So maybe just what is different from your expectation heading into this channel inventory was supposed to be lean. You thought you had two new products in the quarter, which typically don't get two new products in a single quarter. So that would lead to a big sequential uptick. I know that $15,000,000 chip shortage is going to lead to some of the delta, but not all of it. So just trying to get to the bottom of what on top of the chip shortage is driving the incremental delta from your expectations? Sure. I think when we look at the full delta, it's really some of those orders are slipping into Q1. Some of it is really we have seen some increased demand and it's really mix at that point coming in at the mix and bringing products in. So between the two, that probably gets close to the delta. Okay. I mean, and maybe a question for Matt. Is there any aspect of seeing pushback on the new business model that does not include services leading to lower product sales or is that just not happening? No, we don't see any issue there at all. The product we described at short is actually an older product and we're making moves to try and fill as much of that as we can, which is part of the impact on gross margin, but we're not seeing any issue in the shift to the new business model. Okay, good to hear. I want to touch on Verisure, professionally monitored security company. I just want to understand the economic aspects of the deal. I understand it's not fully closed and maybe still negotiable, but any help you can give us. What are the terms? Is the $500,000,000 contingent on anything or is it fully committed? What's the gross margin on that $500,000,000 It's how we can think about the economic aspects of it? Yes. I think what we can share with you from the high level is what we talked about around them purchasing the commercial operations for $50,000,000 and then having a minimum guarantee of the $500,000,000 across various products. Now if you what's interesting, if you look at the European market, that market for us is $50,000,000 roughly in revenue today and that market is growing at about 5%. Now with the $500,000,000 guarantee over the next five years, that's suggesting a CAGR locked in at 24%. So you're seeing a good deal of growth. Now what I'll say from just a kind of informational perspective is a lot of that growth you'll start to see in the second year of the deal. So 2021 going forward because the first year, we've got some development, some integration to do before you start really having the full impact of that. But the $500,000,000 is the minimum guarantee over the five years, suggesting that strong growth of 24% CAGR in that region. Now that compares to kind of the rest of world or if you look at the category in total on a global basis, where we're seeing growth roughly in the 5% to 10% range. And of course, as we look forward into 2020, we're targeting to outgrow the market there. And based on our new products like the full year on the doorbell and a couple of products that will be announced next year, we're targeting growth more like 10% to 15% above that category growth market when you compare it to our 2019 full year guidance. Okay. That's helpful on the timing. And then maybe just on the margin front of it, do you participate in any of the RMR from professional monitoring with it or is this just all basically product resale to them? And is it accretive to your current product margins? Is it dilutive? Just any ballpark on how we can think about the gross margins on that $500,000,000 over time? Yes. So what I can comment on is, it's the $500,000,000 guarantee over the next five years is really hardware purchases. But the deal also encompasses all of our Arlo smart services including computer vision and the like. And in fact, they're going to deploy the product through multiple channels and through their direct channel, every customer buying an Arlo product will actually have service attached. So we think this will actually serve as an acceleration of our subscriber and RMR market by this great partnership we have with Verisure, who really understands how to sell services in a professional and innovative way into the market that they're strongest in, which includes obviously the European territory. So we're not commenting on gross margins in detail, but I did say in the script, if you remember that as we look at this deal going forward, not only is the $50,000,000 business in Europe going to grow based on their investment and based on the $500,000,000 guarantee just on the hardware side, but we see profitability actually growing from that standpoint over the five years as well. Okay. That's helpful. Maybe just one last one. On the Arlo Smart trial, it's going to lapse in early twenty twenty for the first tranche. Any way that you can help us with how you're thinking about potential for incremental subscribers versus churn? Any help with the potential incremental services TAM from that opportunity would be helpful. Yes. So when we look at the current business model, which you're right, is still being rolled on the products we're selling today. I think we've commented in the past that people who try the service are attaching in a healthy, I think we use the term, manner and that our turn is actually also healthy. So we're using that to model what we think is going to happen next year. We don't there's nothing that we're actually sharing at this point. But based on what we're seeing in the current models, we expect to see an acceleration, especially as we kind of exit Q1 and start to look on the first full quarter of having people on new business models for several of our products. And to that point, we've had Arlo Ultra for the last six months or so really on this new business model and Arlo Pro three, which we announced today is on a shorter version of that same business model only ninety days and the video doorbell that we announced today is also on that ninety day trial. So we're really looking in kind of that Q1 to kind of Q2 timeframe to see what that lift will be. All indications is it will be a decent lift and we're looking forward to reporting that. Okay. One final clarification. On the Verisure, you had mentioned in the response to the question that they're going to Arlo Smart is going to be lumped into that. Is that also a one year free trial for those customers? Is it an ongoing? How does the Arlo Smart piece work with the Verisure relationship? Yes. So those products sold through the existing retail channels will at this point mimic what you see here in The United States. So there will be the new business model on the new products and it will flow through in a similar way. For those products sold through the VeriSure direct channels, that'll be actually encompassed into the VeriSure service package. And so they will be signing up for kind of a contracted service that includes Arlo Smart for those products that are Arlo developed and manufactured and sold to Verisure. Interesting. Okay. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. And our next question comes from the line of Ahmed Khorsand from BWS Financial. Hi. So first question I had was, what kind of changes are you making this quarter, specifically Q4, to off offset those shortages in Pro II? I guess is it any marketing, any kind of strategy to push the customer by Pro III and Ultra? Yes. Yes. So Pro2, obviously the shortage came in pretty late from a notification perspective. And what we've been doing is working with our partners from a channel perspective in leveraging other products like Ultra and Pro3 into some of those promotional opportunities. Okay. Are you going to pull back on some of the doorbusters? I know Best Buy has been advertising your Pro2 as a doorbuster for Thanksgiving weekend. Is that going to change up now because of the shortfall? No, I think you'll see that continue. It's just the number of units potentially sold because of the shortfall of supply is different than what we obviously expect to coming into the quarter. Okay. What I'm having difficulty is, obviously, you have better margins here if you sell the Pro three and Ultra, right? So isn't there more of an emphasis to move the customer higher instead of just Yes. I mean, we'll probably give them a little bit deeper discount on that, but then we also will get the service revenue for that when it turns around into Q2. Yes. The other issue that will hit is because we're having to bring in product at the last minute to fulfill some of the retailer demand, trade and some other things are a little bit more expensive. Okay. And then once we go into Q1, Q2, do you think you'll have enough supply to get gross margins back at a higher level? Yes, absolutely. We'll be back in stock in the Pro II by mid December in full stock. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. And our next question comes from the line of Thomas Boyan from Cowen and Company. Thank you very much. I just had a couple of quick ones. I was wondering what the feedback you've had from the direct to customer sales through arlo.com and really how that's matured over the past quarter? Yes, it's been a great start. I mean, obviously, we launched a rather simplistic version of the site, but it did beat all of our kind of internal goals and it's something that we'll obviously continue to invest in as we go forward and into 2020. What's interesting is not only do we view that as an incremental revenue opportunity and obviously a potential path to higher gross margins, it's also an area where we can explore new business models, potential bundles and other things in kind of a low risk manner before rolling that out in scale to some of our channel partners. So it's been a we would call it a great success starting from zero and it's something we're going to continue to build over time. Great, great. And how has the competitive environment changed over the last several months? Have you seen any of your other competitors start to offer E911 services or anything like that and then geographies that you compete in? We haven't seen a lot of news in that area. I think there's been a couple of announcements of some maybe one or two of the features being launched or maybe rolled out next year. But in the as we sit here today, Arlo still is the only company that has that suite of services that we have in Arlo Smart. And of course, we have a roadmap to add additional services over time over the next couple of quarters and as we get into 2020. So we're not standing still. I would expect now that we've had Arlo Smart in the market for a year, almost one point five years as we get to the end of this year, some of those original features could start appearing on other products. But like I said, we're going to continue to march forward and have a whole roadmap on adding additional compelling features to that to drive not only additional subscribers from a number and revenue perspective, but also also in the future look at potential opportunities to increase ARPU through adding more advanced features in the future. Great. Then I think I understand the revenue component of the guidance well enough with the $15,000,000 delta and then mix obviously explaining the rest of it. Could you just tell me better understand maybe the margin impact relative to maybe where I think expectations were heading into the quarter? Is that just a greater degree of promotions that's causing that expectation delta? Yes. I mean starting with it's our most we promote more in Q4 than any quarter, but definitely as we're substituting some other products for as in for example Pro3 for Pro2, we're promoting that more heavily. So that does affect the margins which I mentioned in the script. And then also during Q4, we do have the freight additional freight because we are bringing over Pro3 and doorbells and all the MPI products, the new products are coming over via freight. Excellent. And then just one last one really quick. What would your cash expectations need to be kind of looking into 2020 post the Board's review, the strategic review and understanding what kind of the cost of initiatives that you're already working with are? I mean, if you think about it, we're ending this quarter with $154,000,000 We have access to another $110,000,000 And so I think when we look at that, we would always like to have $100,000,000 So I think we're pretty pleased with the work that's happened this quarter. Excellent. Thank you very much. And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Matt McCray for closing remarks. Thank you everyone for joining us today on what you can tell is a significant quarter for Arlo. The announcements today represent the culmination of actions and execution taken since our spin from NETGEAR. The strong financial performance, the successful and on time launch of Pro3, our announcement of the video doorbell, the multifaceted strategic deal with Verisure providing a cash infusion and future revenue, our restructuring plan and the revolving credit facility have put Arlo on a solid ground to execute our business plan. The team here continues to be maniacally focused on operating the company in a focused, efficient and disciplined manner as we diversify the business and capture growth opportunities across markets. Thank you. And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.