Everspin Technologies, Inc. (MRAM)
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Earnings Call: Q4 2021

Mar 2, 2022

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Conference Call to discuss Everspin Technologies Fourth Quarter 2021 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in 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 today, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Before we begin the call, I want to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements regarding future events, including, but not limited to our expectations for Everspin's future business, financial performance and goals, customer and industry adoption of MRAM technology, successfully bringing to market and manufacturing products in Everspin's design pipeline, and executing on its business plan.

These forward-looking statements are based on estimates, judgments, current trends, and market conditions, and involve risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. We would encourage you to review our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K, which will be filed with the SEC on March 3, 2022, and other SEC filings made from time to time in which we may discuss risk factors associated with investing in Everspin. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on this call or to alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

The financial results discussed today reflect our preliminary estimates, are based on the information available as of the date hereof, and are subject to further review by Everspin and its external auditors. Our actual results may differ materially from these estimates as a result of the completion of our financial closing procedures, final adjustments and other developments arising between now and the time that our financial results for this period are finalized. Additionally, the company's press release and statements made during this conference call will include discussion of certain measures and financial information in the GAAP and non-GAAP terms. Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP net income to adjusted EBITDA, which provide additional details. A copy of the press release is posted in the Investor Relations section of Everspin's website at www.everspin.com.

This conference call will be available for audio replay for at least five days in the Investor Relations section of Everspin's website at www.everspin.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Everspin's Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Darin Billerbeck. Darin, please go ahead.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us on the call today. Q4 results came in above the high end of guidance, as mentioned in our press release. We were GAAP net income positive for the third quarter in a row. We've also had positive GAAP net income for the year that ended December 31, 2021, which is the first in Everspin's history. Our revenue for Q4 was 23% higher than Q3 and 82% higher than Q4 a year ago. Being GAAP net income positive on a consistent basis is obviously a focus for the company. We believe this demonstrates that being laser-focused on improving product yields, controlling OpEx spending, growing our top line while keeping gross margins in a healthy range will drive profitability. A few records we achieved in Q4 2021.

Record annual total revenue, record annual product revenue, record Q4 product revenue, record annual design wins again in 2021 after setting a record in 2020. A record of more than 1,600 volume production customers. Record low distributor inventory, showing strength of our sell-through and impact of supply chain. Although I'm not really sure I'm proud of that record. Record 2022 product backlog is at an all-time high. Despite being impacted by supply constraints that left over $2 million of customer demand unfulfilled, we had the largest Toggle quarter since 2018. Distributor inventory is still very lean and well below our target as we continue to fight for every wafer and every tester we can get. It's doubtful we can get into a healthy inventory range until 2023, assuming all goes well with respect to allocations.

STT revenue was flattest as our largest customer was also saddled with supply constraints. The good news is that Everspin was not the constraint culprit. However, based on other suppliers, we do expect STT revenue to continue to be flat for the next couple of quarters. On the R&D front, we are in the process of checking out our next generation STT product, which we expect samples to be out later in March. This is right on track for what we expected. Knock on wood, our checkout so far shows no major issues. We believe this new product will be revolutionary in its ability to serve both the SRAM replacement market, along with mid-density rugged NOR applications where no other memory can play.

Finally, with respect to our deliberate strategy of monetizing our IP, we recognized $3.95 million in revenue in Q4 related to IP transactions. We are pleased to note that our cash and cash equivalents are over $21 million as of the end of the year. I will now turn it over to our CFO, Anuj Aggarwal, who will take you through our fourth quarter financials and first quarter 2022 guidance. Anuj?

Anuj Aggarwal
CFO, Everspin Technologies

Thank you, Darin, and good afternoon, everyone. We're excited to report Everspin's best ever quarterly results.

Delivering a strong finish to a record year. Despite supply constraints, I'm happy to announce that Everspin reached profitability for the first time at year-end. We delivered solid quarterly results with 23% revenue growth over last quarter, beating top end of guidance, positive net income of $3.7 million, and positive cash flow from operations of $6.4 million for the fourth quarter. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 came in at $18.2 million, compared to $14.8 million last quarter and $10 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. MRAM product sales in the fourth quarter, which include both Toggle and STT-MRAM revenue, was $12.6 million versus $12 million in the prior quarter and $9.7 million in Q4 of 2020.

In Q3 of 2021, the company entered into an IP monetization deal worth $5.25 million. $3.95 million in revenue was recognized in Q4. Licensing, royalties, patents, and other revenue in the quarter was $5.6 million, compared to $2.8 million in the previous quarter and $2.3 million in the prior year period. The increase in revenue is due to strong Toggle sales, RadHard revenue recognition, and the IP monetization deal. Shipments to suppliers for our largest end customer, who we serve with our high-density STT product for data center applications, represented 23.4% of revenue in the quarter versus 28.5% of revenue in Q3 and 39.9% in the year ago quarter.

Turning to gross margin, GAAP gross margin for the fourth quarter of 2021 was 62.8% versus 57.1% in the prior quarter and 52% in Q4 of 2020. The higher gross margin compared to the prior quarter is driven by RadHard revenue recognition and the IP monetization deal. GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2021 were $7.7 million versus $7.4 million in the prior quarter and $6.4 million in the same quarter one year ago. The increase was primarily for 20-nanometer product development, sales and marketing, variable compensation, and administrative costs.

GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2021 included $753,000 in stock-based compensation, compared to $1.03 million last quarter and $1.3 million in the year ago quarter. We expect R&D expense to grow in 2022 as we prepare for the launch of our 20 nm STT-MRAM product targeted at industrial and other broad-based applications. We are pleased to report fourth quarter positive net income of $3.7 million or $0.19 per share based on 19.4 million basic weighted average shares outstanding.

This compares to a GAAP net income of $880 thousand or $0.04 per basic share in the third quarter of 2021, and a GAAP net loss of $1.6 million or $0.10 per basic share in the fourth quarter of 2020. Basic EPS of $0.19 was better than our guidance, reflecting our strategic operational discipline and strong gross margins in the face of tightening supplies and high margins from IP deals. Turning to the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents increased to $21.4 million at the end of the fourth quarter, compared to $14.6 million at the end of the prior quarter and $14.6 million in Q4 of 2020.

Cash flow from operations was positive at $6.4 million for the current quarter, compared to $1.9 million in the prior quarter and $0.6 million positive for Q4 of last year. Turning to our first quarter 2022 guidance, demand for our Toggle products remains strong. We expect industry supply constraints to limit supply and push some unfulfilled customer demand to Q2. We expect Q1 revenue to be between $13.4 million-$14.2 million. We expect a GAAP income per basic share of between negative $0.03 and breakeven, primarily driven by expenses related to next generation 20-nanometer STT-MRAM product and price increases from our suppliers. I'll now turn it back over to Darin for some brief additional commentary before we open it up for questions.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Thanks, Anuj. In summary, we continue to build towards a future of profitable, sustainable growth. Positive net income and 2021 GAAP profitability are testaments to the hard work and extra effort every Everspin team member put in to control our costs, improve our yields, and ship everything we could in a very constrained semiconductor supply network. I'm excited not only by what we accomplished in Q4, but to be handing the reins of Everspin's CEO leadership off to Sanjeev Aggarwal to both continue the momentum from 2021, but also pave the way for greater things for Everspin in the future. I'm very comfortable with this move, along with partnering with Sanjeev on our strategic long-range plan. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Our first question comes from Raji Gill with Needham & Company. You may proceed with your question.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

Yeah, thank you for taking my questions, and congrats to Sanjeev, and also congrats on a strong year. Just a question on the supply situation. You know, you mentioned in your prepared remarks that the supply constraints are kind of pushing some unmet demand into the second quarter. I think you had mentioned there was at least $2 million of unmet demand because of the supply constraint environment. I'm wondering how kind of confident you are in terms of that demand being realized in the second quarter. You know, given the current supply constraint environment that you talked about and kind of given your commentary that it appears that you'll have to wait till 2023 to get a better supply situation.

Just wanted to talk a little bit about a little long-term in terms of how you're getting supply this year going into next year and that kind of unmet demand.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Our backlog for 2022 is as strong as we've ever seen.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

Oh.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

A lot of that. I mean, some of that is driven by the fact that we've pushed our lead times out so far because we just can't get the capacity that we need. Again, if you remember, when it started to get constrained, we already had a lot of wafers in the pipeline. As it continued to be constrained, that impacts us because the lead times are so long. We were able to kind of fight our way through last year. Here we come in Q1 and Q2 and stuff's starting to tighten down. We've gotten some upside in the second half of last year, so we've been able to just, you know, keep our head above water on all these things.

It's starting to get to the point where we're leaning inventory, we're doing all these other things, just to be able to ship. We're comfortable in the position that we have. Even if somebody, let's say, turned on in Q3 of this year, said, "Okay, we got all this additional supply," it still takes us, the lead time for us to get that through our pipeline is, you know, on the order of almost six months, sometimes even longer. You wouldn't really see those impacts until 2023. That's what I was alluding to, is it's, you know, it's just a long slog for us to get out of this thing. We're doing it a little bit at a time.

Like, we can pull some material forward if we get new material, expedite stuff through testers and also through the back end for packaging. It's tough. We thought it would ease up a little bit by now, but it really hasn't. You know, we haven't seen a lot of, you know, impacts from any of the current crises in the last six days, but I'm sure that, you know, that could impact things also.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

I see. In terms of your, you know, the record backlog that you're seeing, and particularly around Toggle, I'm wondering if you can kind of distinguish between kind of unit growth versus kind of price increases when you're looking at your dollar size of your backlog. Are you kind of raising pricing, which is contributing to kind of a higher dollar volume backlog, or is it really in part driven by just unit growth with respect to adoption of Toggle?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. I mean, our price increases were just to cover some of the price increases that we got. You know, we by no means tried to raise them. We are. We focus on our customers' longevity, not just the tactical area of it. Our backlog is actually a combination of, I think, people freaking out that there might not be capacity for them. A lot of people are ordering earlier than they normally would, and we're seeing that. We went back and looked at every single customer that we have and said, "Is anybody double booking or unusually booking?" We can't find any incidences of that. We did have one, we alluded to that last quarter, where there was one company that came in, you know, was trying to order double what they had, and we're like, "No, no.

That's not gonna happen unless you can show us design, you know, their design wins on the other end, 'cause we didn't wanna take that capacity away from other customers. We've been managing that for about 12 months now. It feels comfortable that that demand is real. I'm sure at some point in time, for all semiconductors, some of that demand may be perishable. For right now, in the foreseeable future, we don't see that.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

In terms of your kind of IP monetization strategy, last year was $11 million-plus, up from about $2 million in 2020, so pretty big increase. You know, how are you thinking about the IP monetization this year? And how do we think about kind of the RadHard, you know, recognition of the revenue? Just trying to get a sense of what the mix of licensing and royalty will be this year.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

'Cause it seemed strong in 2021.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. The harder one to call is when you're doing, you know, specific licensing that's not related to a product-specific request. You know, that's always difficult to be able to say, "Yeah, we're gonna have two or three of those through the year." Those are a little bit more random for us, but we're always in the process. You'll see over time, all of a sudden we'll come up, we'll say, "Okay, we've got some licensing agreement with XYZ," and we don't always mention their name. The other one that I think is more important to us in this IP deal is really ongoing discussions with some things like government agencies and things that's happening as the United States is bringing more manufacturing onshore. What we're finding is a lot of opportunity there.

That's specifically very similar to those RadHard deals that we talked about, where there's a license agreement up front and then you have these royalty attachments to that over time. We don't, by any means, give up any of our IP during those. What we end up doing is being able to help other people design their specific products, and there's a toll on that. You know, obviously, the toll at the beginning is really the licensing agreement, then there's a lot of NRE where we help them through that process. That's been a very successful model to us. It's probably you know, for us, that's something that we think is quite a bit more recurring. The other one is more, you know, it's more random, but it can be bigger in nature.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

Just for my last question, Anuj, the gross margins have improved materially over last year in 2021. A lot of it obviously was earned because of the IP monetization, but you are getting, excuse me, better product yields. Particularly Q4 was very high gross margin. As you kind of look into 2022, have you guys kind of centered around a certain type of gross margin range that you wanna operate at?

Anuj Aggarwal
CFO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. Yeah, Raji. I know, you know, we don't really guide on the full year 2022, but for gross margin, we're still very comfortable believing that it'll be within the low- to mid-50s% long term. You know, we saw some price increases from suppliers like Darin mentioned. We took some, you know, actions to increase pricing to offset some of that. We feel comfortable that it'll be in the low- to mid-50s%. We were fortunate to see some Toggle yield improvements and mix and things like that supporting the gross margin. That gave us a little bit of uplift. You're right, a lot of the gross margin uplift again was the RadHard deal and the IP monetization.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

Great. Let me just squeeze one more. In terms of the OpEx, you know, based on the guidance, and obviously you're not providing guidance for gross margins, but it implies that the OpEx is gonna move up, you know, almost $1 million or so. So, are we gonna see kind of an uptick in OpEx in Q1 for 20-nanometer, then it kind of normalizes or is that gonna be the run rate off that high base going forward throughout 2022? Thank you, Anuj.

Anuj Aggarwal
CFO, Everspin Technologies

We're trying to be obviously pretty frugal and careful, right? On how we're spending money on OpEx. We're trying to limit that and make decisions based on if it makes sense, and we're supporting, for example, the 20-nanometer investment, and we need to do it, we're doing those things. I would just look at it in terms of we're trying to keep OpEx flat to have it increase less than 10%. We're trying to be mindful on the investment, be very careful. You know, this quarter might be a little bit high in terms of OpEx, but I wouldn't say it would sustain throughout the rest.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. Let me add on to that a little bit. Whenever you have a new product, you've got a lot of wafers running through. You're trying to debug that product. There's a lot of R&D spending and different spending that gets attached to that. Because we are actually so healthy with that product right now, again, knock on wood, right? We're healthy on that. That accelerates some of that spending. Once you get to HVM, all that gets converted. Once we pass our high volume manufacturing requirements as far as saying, "Hey, this is production ready," then a lot of NRE and other things that we write off as R&D and OpEx just go right into the product cost. You're gonna see that go up.

Our hope is that we can shorten that process quite a bit. As Anuj alluded to, you know, it's gonna go up a little bit as we, you know, kind of walk through it, and then we expect that to kind of come down to a standard rate. You know, very similar to how we ran at the beginning of last year before we taped out the product.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director, Semi Conductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Company

Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from, oh, I mean, Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. We proceed with your question.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Okay, great. Guys, thanks for taking my questions. Let me follow up on the topic of supply chain here. I think what I heard from you, Darin, on that one is that you talk about an impact of about $2 million that's gonna be pushed into the second quarter. Based on the supply chain not normalizing until next year, I'm assuming that we're probably gonna hear a message next quarter about some push out of demand here just based on supply chain. Is that your expectation, or do you think it's only gonna be one quarter phenomenon and back to normal?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Without giving out guidance, I would say that could be likely. Right? I mean, we're gonna do everything we can to pull everything into every quarter that we can do, you know, because again, we're just trying to grow. I know this is gonna get freed up eventually where you're not as tight. We do have multiple suppliers. You're well aware of this, Richard, that we have multiple front-end suppliers that we can push and pull from. The biggest challenge is, you know, as we go through that, is getting all these wafers through the back end. I think that's kind of the hardship we're seeing today, is really just can we get all this stuff crammed through, especially when you're, you know, in a market where, you know, everybody's trying to gouge on prices and this and that.

Sometimes, you know, I'm more worried about the margins during the recovery because I think to get more waivers, you're gonna probably have to pay more in a constrained environment. You know, we haven't changed our model, by the way. Our gross margin model is identically the same as what we've mentioned on the product side. The IP does move it up as we talked about, and Anuj alluded to. Bottom line is, you know, we think we're comfortable with the model that we have out in front of us. You know, it's hard to predict these constraints because on one side you get push outs, the other side you get upsides, and it can happen in a 24-hour period.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

That's gotta be fun to manage through. Thanks for that detail, Darin. Another quick follow-up. You mentioned lead times have gone up a lot. Can you quantify that and what was kind of normal, you know, whatever year and a half ago, whatever that was, just to get some sense of quantity and scale here?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Are you talking about ours or our suppliers?

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Yours. What you're quoting to your customers.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Oh, right now we're quoting out to Q3. Q3 and Q4 of 2022.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Like 20-25 weeks or more?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

This is outrageous. In some cases we already have demand for 2023. It's an artifact.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Will it?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. The people just, they're basically putting in their demand in. They're saying, "Hey, this is what I see for my long-term demand. Don't forget about me. Here's my backlog." They're just putting it into the system. It's amazing, but it's an artifact of what's going on in the worldwide constraint.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Yeah. Okay.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

'Cause I don't know if you remember, before we got into this constraint, we would say, "Oh, yeah, you know, we'd enter the quarter with, you know, a percentage of backlog that was fairly consistent would book throughout the quarter. You know, you get turns and different things booked throughout the quarter. As we got into constraints, the whole quarter was booked before we started, and then the next quarter was partially booked. Now you're starting to see a couple of quarters being booked, and stuff booked all the way to 2023.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Okay. Perfect. Thanks for that detail, Darin. Let's see. Let's talk about the new STT product you're gonna start sampling, I think, later this month. What kind of timeframe should we expect for milestones for sampling being done, engagements with customers, and then kind of, you know, revenues eventually? I assume that this is sometime in 2023, but I want to get a little bit more detail on what you're seeing right now.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. We expect to actually sample this month. That's our goal, right? There's nothing that we can see at least for right now, not be able to cut, you know, at least get our alpha samples out for our customers. Then after that, it's a fact of just having the reference design, the design kits themselves, right, the development kits, and then we should be off to the races. As you know, it's gonna take, you know, some of these design wins take time. Others are conversions, you know, from some of our older Toggle products into this specific product. Like you said, we have never really counted on much revenue in 2022. However, 2023, our expectation is that we'll grow that product modestly through time.

It is a killer product, and it's in the correct place as far as SRAM densities. If you're not aware, this is in our 64-megabit and 128-megabit, drops down to 32-megabit, which really extends our product, our Toggle product line. Think of it as our low-density STT product. You know, it's not the big one or two gig product. This is our, you know, 64 megabits, so it's targeted right at the meat of the replacement market for data logging SRAM.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Okay. Does this product need any, you know, like, special interfaces for customers or any other, you know, go-to-market, dynamics like reference designs, boards, whatever that MRAM typically hasn't done in the past? Or is this, you see this mostly as a seamless transition, customer attention should be obvious, just a matter of how fast you can convert them?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah. We expect it to be drop-in compatible for SRAM with some firmware. Obviously, you'd have some firmware updates and the same thing in the NOR. Both for SRAM and NOR, we expect to have to do firmware updates, which is, you know, pretty standard. It's drop-in capable with all the standard interfaces.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Okay. Perfect. Last question for you, just on Toggle here. Obviously, you don't give us exact numbers here, but as I try to figure it out what I think was going on here in the past year plus, you grew it, you know, probably somewhere in the mid-teens area, best guess, with an acceleration in the back half of the year. I guess my question is more in an unconstrained environment, but if you wanna talk about the constrained one, that's helpful too, Darin. But how would you want people to think about the growth opportunities here? You've had some really nice design wins.

We don't know when they hit, we don't know how big the designs are, but, you know, what's your expectation for growth going forward on Toggle for the next year or two?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

For 2021, quarter-on-quarter, we were high single digits between Q3 and Q4, right? We were high single digits. Year-on-year, we were double-digit growth, I think, as you alluded to. If we look at next year without giving out guidance, I don't know, you know, it's gonna be dependent on our supply more than anything. I don't know that I wouldn't say that should be about the same thing. You know, we should be able to continue to grow that product based on the design win. We talked about all the design wins that we had, plus all the new customers that we have. The good news is we're growing, you know, it's kinda like the sea is rising versus, you know, one or two things, you know, going up.

It's kind of a nice place to be. It's, you know, the tide's rising comfortably. However, the biggest issue we're gonna have is gonna be supply.

Richard Shannon
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum

Okay. Fair enough. That is all from me, guys. Thank you.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

All right. Thanks, Richard.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Orin Hirschman with GIV Partners. You may proceed with your question.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

Hi. I will always defer to Richard ahead of me, so I'm okay with that. In terms of the new products, just to follow up on what Richard said, you know, I want you to just go through again drop-in replacement. Does that shorten the design cycle from what it normally would be? And does that. Are there customers that actually already be able to do some pre-preparation in advance of sampling, or not in real life?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Well, no. Real life is a simple deal where you take an SRAM, and if you're drop-in capable, you can drop it into somebody else's reference design. Then in some cases, you might have some identifications and some microcontroller firmware that you'd actually have to update. That's standard practice. If you have high-volume customers, they might have three or four different suppliers in there with different modules that they run. For us, it's about, you know, to get those design wins, you know, it still takes time because they have to verify that the design actually works with our product. So we don't think it's gonna be a 30-day deal where they swap over for sure, but that's all baked into our plan of growth on 2023.

We expect to get a lot of those, you know, I'll just call it the heavy lifting out of the way with our key customers this year, and then they can begin to transition that over in the 2023 period.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

Yeah. That includes both replacements for Toggle, but doesn't that also include a lot of new designs as well where it's SRAM replacement?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Correct. If we're just replacing, for instance, the 64-megabit SRAM, it's a drop-in product that you just change the firmware on. That was the intention. You know, we struggled with our first STT product because it didn't have standard interfaces on it, and people had to use either.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

Yeah.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

An FPGA or an ASIC, right? So this is a departure from that. We can also drop it into specific NOR areas where they need highly reliable NOR products, that they need extended cycling and extended data retention.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

My follow-up question on this was, is it a drop-in replacement for NOR as well?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yes. It has that interface. They all have, like, an SPI interface, which is the standard interface on the memory bus. When you look at that, it still is a change for firmware and different things, but it's not like, as long as you're in the same package with the same pin out, with the same interfaces, you can drop these things in. The intention is, like, obviously, NOR in that memory, if you look at NOR in that density, it's gonna be a commodity if you just go after standard NOR. If you're going after the niche memory market, which is, like, high reliability, high speed.

Let's say you needed faster reads, faster writes, and you needed, you know, a much higher retention, and you still wanted to be able to run those products. A lot of people are seeing a need for that, especially in these high-density automotive markets that you're starting to see. You know, people wanna not have to have redundant memories. They just like to have one that's robust.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

A follow-up on that as well, and then one last question after that. Follow-up on that is, in terms of what you need in the family to get the densities where this becomes, you know, outstanding and a standout in terms of having that greater density as a NOR replacement, you know, are you gonna have those densities? When do those densities all sample? Is that something for this year?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

The product family that we have today can run somewhere between about a 32 meg and a 128 comfortably. We could scale it to a 256 if we wanted. If we are talking about super high density NOR, that would be an STT product that would be similar in configuration to what we're selling today, except even higher densities. Those products, if you look at, nobody in the world can do it today. Nobody in the world can produce a one gig NOR memory that is cost effective, right? They may stack a bunch of things. They may take 512. They may you know, do a bunch of Multi-Level Cell stuff. They're not gonna be doing that in affordable fashion.

One can articulate that or, you know, look at this in the sense of on 22-nanometer for our devices, it's a pretty fair fight. If you go below 22-nanometer, MRAM would win. You know, on the high density portion, assuming there's a big enough market on high density NOR that isn't absorbed by store and download using NAND and SRAM. We know all the architectures. If you don't remember who I am, I ran Intel's Flash division for a decade. I have a pretty good understanding of what Intel did, what AMD did, you know, and what these markets look like. It's not, you know, inconceivable that you couldn't get there, but that's not where we're banking the strategy short-term on.

We know we can get there, but that's gonna take us time to be able to get to that point in time.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

Okay. Last question is just in terms of the large license deal and licensing in general that's slated for Q1. You know, any approximation as to how much is being amortized into Q1 of this year?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Could you repeat the question? I don't think I caught that.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

Yes. I'm sorry. In terms of the large licensing deal from this quarter, as well as just normal, what's teed up on the IP side, any guesstimate as to IP revenue in Q1 or IP revenue that's clearly in Q1 just based on amortization or whatever you could share with us?

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

Yeah, we try not to forecast or give out guidance on our mix of IP, but we've been very consistent, as we'd like our IP to be somewhere around 10% of our total revenue. That's always our goal. There's gonna be quarters where we could be less and quarters where we can be more, but we try not to forecast that. We just tell you that's our overall goal because that gives us healthy margin, also gives us healthy cash from operations and everything.

Orin Hirschman
Managing Member, GIV Partners

Okay. Another way of phrasing it is the robust product demand for Q1 and just capacity constraints beyond that. Thank you very much.

Darin Billerbeck
Executive Chairman and Interim CEO, Everspin Technologies

You got it.

Operator

Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Anuj Aggarwal for any further remarks.

Anuj Aggarwal
CFO, Everspin Technologies

Thank you, operator. Since there's no more further questions, we can now disconnect the call. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.

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