Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the NBE Conference Call on Third Quarter Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today, Dan Baker.
You may begin.
Good afternoon, and welcome to our conference call for the quarter ended December 31, 2020. As always, I'm joined by Curt Reinders, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast live and being recorded. A replay will be available through our website, nve.com. After my opening comments, Curt will present a financial review of the quarter and I'll cover the business and then we'll open the call to questions.
We issued our press release and filed our quarterly report on Form 10 Q in the past hour following the close of market. Links to documents are available through the SEC's website, our website and our Twitter timeline. Comments we may make that relate to future plans, events, financial results or performance are forward looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including among others such factors as risks and uncertainties related to future sales and revenue, uncertainties related to future stock repurchases and dividend payments And risks related to the COVID-nineteen pandemic as well as the risk factors listed from time to time in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10 ks for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, as updated in our just filed quarterly report on Form 10 Q. Actual results could differ materially from the information provided, and we undertake no obligation to update forward looking statements we may make. We're pleased to report our best quarter in 2 years as the effects of the COVID-nineteen pandemic on our business are subsiding.
We reported a 5% increase in net income to $0.81 per share, driven by a 3% increase in product sales. Now Kurt will cover the details of our financials. Kurt?
Thanks, Dan. Total revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2020 increased 1% Compared to last year due to a 3% increase in product sales, partially offset by a 34% decrease in Contract R and D revenue. The increase in product sales was despite the continued impact of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, although those effects appear to be subsiding. The decrease in contract R and D in the Q3 of fiscal 2021 Was due to the completion of certain contracts. Total revenue increased 49% sequentially Compared to the immediately prior Q2 and net income increased 77%.
Expenses decreased 8% for the Q3 from the prior year due to a 9% decrease in R and D And a 5% decrease in SG and A. The decrease in R and D expense was Due to the completion of some new product developments, the decrease in SG and A was due to staffing changes. Interest income for the Q3 decreased 18% due to a decrease in our marketable securities And money market funds and a decrease in the average interest rates on those securities and funds. Net income for the quarter was $3,930,000 or $0.81 per diluted share compared to $3,730,000 or $0.77 last year. Our gross margin was a record 84%, driven by a more profitable revenue mix and net margin Was a record 60%.
We paid a $1 per share dividend in the past quarter and today we announced that our Board Declared another quarterly dividend of $1 per share payable February 26 to shareholders of record as of February 1. For the 1st 9 months of the fiscal year, total revenue decreased 20% due to a 19% decrease in product Sales and a 21% decrease in contract R and D as revenues were impacted by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Net income for the 1st 9 months decreased 23 percent to $8,560,000 or $1.77 per share compared to $11,200,000 or $2.30 per share last Fiscal year. For the 9 months, we paid $14,500,000 in dividends and repurchased $91,000 of stock. Even with those returns to our shareholders, our balance sheet remains strong With cash plus marketable securities of $65,800,000 as of December 31.
Now I'll turn the call back to Dan to cover the business. Dan?
Thanks, Curt. I'll cover the business and review 2020. In the past quarter, we continued to work on new sensors and coupler products. We also worked on continuously improving our existing products. For example, our flagship IL-seven hundred series line of Spintronic couplers was introduced more than 20 years ago, But it's still the best in the industry.
In the past quarter, we improved a key specification for those parts called the common mode Transient Immunity or CMTI. CMTI is an important specification for improving power control efficiency And applications such as motor control, hybrid electric vehicles and battery charging. We are working with our German distributor to target the upgraded We're proud to supply products to some of the world's most demanding customers, including Abbott's Pacesetter subsidiary. In December, we extended our supplier partnering agreement with Abbott, which would have expired at the end of 2020 into May. The 4 month extension gives us time to negotiate a long term amendment.
The extension was filed with the SEC as a material definitive 2020 was a challenging year, but we had some important accomplishments that lay the groundwork In addition to the Abbott extension, in 2020, we extended our supply agreement with Sonofa, a leading hearing care supplier into 2025, and we extended our building lease into 2026. We enhanced shareholder value by returning more than $20,000,000 to shareholders in dividends and stock repurchases in the calendar year. It was also a productive year for R and D, including new high field magnetic sensors and switches for MRI tolerant medical devices. The introduction of data couplers with best in class common mode transient immunity for energy efficient motor control, A new family of ultra precise tunneling magnetoresistance motion sensors for robotics and factory automation The launch of the world's smallest DC to DC converters to transmit power as well as data in industrial networks and cars And new smart sensors for more versatile connectivity. Smart sensors have been one of our R and D thrusts In the past quarter, the Semiconductor Industry Association previewed its so called decadal or 10 year plan, Which identifies 5 areas it says will shape the future of chip technology.
The first of those five areas is smart sensing. With a number of new products in the past year, we're looking forward to the possibility of trade shows in 2021. Two big trade shows for us have been scheduled for June, Sensor Plus Test in Germany, which is billed as Build is North America's largest event dedicated to sensors, connectivity and the Internet of Things. Now I'd like to open the call for questions. Towanda?
Thank Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Bernstein with Cowen. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Congratulations. It's a great quarter. I think you had originally guided for revenue to be a little less robust and not up year to year. So I'm curious if you could maybe walk us through sort of cancellations, push outs, whether pull ins, Sort of what happened through the last couple of quarters here?
Yes, I can take that, Jeff. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, The effects of the pandemic on us appears to be subsiding, although there's still a lot of uncertainty. The worldwide semiconductor market is strong. The outlook for elective medical devices Appears to be improving. Revenue in the current quarter based on our forecast orders and What we've been hearing, we currently expect the revenue to be slightly less than last fiscal year.
We're starting to see a lot of orders being pulled in. In the Q3, our most recent quarter, we did have some orders that were pulled into that quarter. So we Ended up a little bit better off than we originally expected earlier in the quarter.
Got you. And then obviously, there's been this kind of sudden stop start and we're hearing about auto Factories having to suspend operations for a week or 2 waiting for parts and various pieces of the supply chain Kind of getting backed up. In terms of inventory that could be out there in the channel or that kind of it seems like probably the channel has been drained and now People are trying to bulk back up, but how do you guys sort of keep tabs on what's going on out there and understand if You're getting into kind of a heated situation with double ordering or that kind of thing.
Yes. This is Dan. I can answer that. Maybe Kirk can add some color as well. But we haven't experienced any significant material shortages, but lead times Have lengthened for some raw materials and services.
So, we see that as both a threat and an opportunity. We've always Carried ample inventories, as we've talked about before, to guard against contingencies, and we're addressing the threat of shortages by building inventories Critical raw materials such as foundry wafers, which are semiconductor products that we buy and incorporate into our end products as raw material. So, we're well positioned to weather those sorts of shortages. We're not We don't keep our inventories as lean as perhaps the automotive industry does by any means. And then we're also addressing the opportunity, which is that we can help customers who are facing shortages from traditional suppliers Or our competitors.
So we see it as an opportunity to pick up share, and our folks are constantly monitoring Our critical suppliers are in close contact and making sure that we have adequate inventories For any kind of contingency or shortages.
So Dan, is There's some pin compatibility on some of these parts where you can actually fill in for somebody else who where there's part shortages Or does it take a new board design for somebody to be able to accommodate your parts?
In many cases, we have drop in replacements, Jeff. We design our isolators, our couplers, for example, to use the old optical coupler pin outs. So we also use some of the older packages, so what are called PDPs or dual inline packages. So, if our customers are short of traditional semiconductor products, such as optical couplers, they can use our products With a minimum of redesign, and in some cases, they might need to Or they might want to change their circuit boards to take advantage of some of our parts. We have the smallest parts in the industry, But we also have parts that are designed to replace legacy semiconductor parts, so that it's easy for our customers to migrate To our parts from traditional semiconductors, and that's always been our philosophy.
We try to make our parts, as you know, have Exotic technology and best in class performance, but we want to make sure that our that they're easy for our customers To change to.
So this may actually be an opportunity to get in front of Some automotive guys who are living hand to mouth right now in parts?
Exactly.
Okay. That's great. Can you give us any kind of view on what the book to bill was in the quarter?
We don't track that Precisely because it's a metric that's more useful for commodity semiconductor suppliers. But as Curt mentioned, we had some orders that were pulled in. So we had orders that were unexpected. We were able to fulfill them, otherwise, of course, they wouldn't have counted for revenue. So Having inventories and having hedges against contingencies, I think, has paid off.
Got you. Okay, great. And then obviously, you've had to change the way that you're selling because of the pandemic. And you've done some things with you worked with Snap EDA on downloadable EDA files, you redid your website, etcetera. Anything else that's changed and how are you progressing in this new era?
Right. Well, we're doing a lot more Skype and Zoom calls, of course, like most folks. Our distributors and private label partners are Also doing the same thing, so we're talking to them and talking to our customers. We're using the opportunity to train our distributors on some of our New products, they're mostly at home or in their offices, so we have an opportunity to get them together that we don't have when they're traveling. An example of a distributor partnership, I mentioned it briefly in the remarks is that our German distributor is working on an OBC, that's an onboard charger platform, Reference design for the electronics in a hybrid electric vehicle, an electric vehicle in this case, to interface The AC line voltage to the charging to charging the batteries in a car.
And so that's a great opportunity that our distributor has helped And there are other smaller opportunities that we're finding with our distributors to Address new markets and to get into markets that we've targeted In the past, such as automotive and the industrial Internet of Things.
That's great. Thanks. I'll let somebody ask some questions. Thanks.
Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you. We do have a follow-up question from Jeff Bernstein.
All right, Dan. So can you talk a little bit about the Puff business? That's been a little unpredictable in terms of macroeconomic impacts, but what's your visibility on that the next few quarters?
Right. So, puffs are physical unclonable functions, which is a function that's Embodied in a physical structure that's easy to evaluate but hard to predict and replicate. So they're an important component of our Spintronics anti tamper systems and anti tamper systems are designed to protect sensitive data or electronics, primarily for military systems. So those businesses can be fairly lumpy in that they tend to be Intermittent orders, but we continue to see that as an important business. It's not a huge contributor to our revenue.
It was fairly strong in the most recent quarter, but And I think part of what's contributing to Kurt's tempered outlook for The current quarter is that it may not be quite as strong year over year. Some of that got pulled in. But it remains A significant business, and it's also a business that Builds intellectual property, as you know, Jeff, that we can use in commercial products. So we see it as important strategically, And it's a business where we have a good reputation. We've been in it for a long time and our technology is extremely well suited for it.
So We continue to devote a significant effort there. A related area is MRAM or spintronic memory, where we use the memory for crypto keys and for security. And we continue to Develop and sell MRAM into that space, and that's valuable intellectual property, we believe. And so this business or this general category of business, the anti tamper business, allows us to develop that Technology and because it's mostly customer funded, it's technology where we can Accrue some benefits without having a large expense, an R and D expense.
Does the MRAM for CryptoKeys and Security, are there commercial applications now for that? And is the obviously, there was the big SolarWinds issue recently, is that Changing the outlook for that business at all?
Yes. We do see potential commercial applications, Including high speed encryption and security for consumer electronics and for data streams. And as you mentioned, it continues to be And issue to secure all of the communications that there's so much communication that goes electronically. So, it's longer term, but we do see commercial applications and that's one of the reasons why we consider this Business area important, even though it's not a huge revenue driver right now.
Okay. And then can you just talk a little bit about the hearing aid market? I guess you have one win in a next It's been delayed, but I guess by the end of the year, hopefully, they're going to have rules on the OTC market, etcetera. But any new wins or anything else to In terms of how that's developing?
Well, we continue to see it as an important market. As you point out, The FDA has not yet formally approved so called over the counter Hearing aids, but it appears that, that could be in the still in the first half of twenty twenty one. So that's an excellent market. And then also in ear audio devices, so called hearables, Which would be for people with normal hearing, but as a peripheral, that's estimated to We'll become nearly a $100,000,000,000 market by 2026 with a compounded annual growth rate of 17%. So It's an excellent market.
As you point out, we have some early stage design wins in that space. We've begun offering sensors that are compatible with the rechargeable batteries that are often used in consumer wearables Rather than the disposable batteries that are generally used in traditional hearing aids. So, we have products. It's an excellent market, Both the hearables market and the over the counter hearing aid market. And We're going to continue our development and hopefully that will the market will accelerate once the FDA acts.
That's great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. Well,
if there are no other questions, we were pleased to report our best quarter in 2 years despite the challenges of the pandemic. We look forward to speaking with you again in early May to discuss 4th quarter and full fiscal year results. Stay safe, everyone, and thank you for participating in the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.