Peraso Inc. (PRSO)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Nov 14, 2022

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to Peraso Inc.'s third quarter 2022 conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Monday, November 14, 2022. I would now like to turn the call over to Peraso's CFO, Jim Sullivan. Please go ahead.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's conference call to discuss Peraso's third quarter 2022 financial results. I'm Jim Sullivan, CFO of Peraso, and joining me today is Ron Glibbery, our CEO. This afternoon, we issued a press release and related Form 8-K, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The press release and Form 8-K are available on Peraso's website at www.perasoinc.com under the Investor Relations section. There is also a slide presentation that we will be using in conjunction with today's call that may be accessed through the webcast link on the IR website. As a reminder, comments made during today's conference call may include forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed as forward-looking. Peraso advises caution and reliance on forward-looking statements.

These statements include, without limitation, any projections of revenue, margins, expenses, non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP operating expenses, adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net loss, cash flows, or other financial items. Also, any statements concerning the expected development, performance, and market share or competitive performance of our products or technologies. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to Peraso on the date hereof. These statements have all known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause Peraso's actual results to differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statement, including unexpected changes in the company's business. More detailed information about these risk factors and additional risk factors are set forth in Peraso's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Peraso expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Additionally, the company's press release and management statements during this conference call will include discussions of certain measures and financial information in terms of GAAP and non-GAAP. Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP items, which provide additional details. For those of you unable to listen to the entire call at this time, a recording will be available on the investor relations section of Peraso's website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Ron Glibbery, for his prepared remarks. Ron?

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, and welcome to everyone joining us over the phone and via webcast. As outlined in today's press release, Peraso had a solid quarter, with total revenue growing at 60%-63% year-over-year. Although product revenue came in lower than what we had previously expected as a result of not being able to recognize revenue on certain orders shipped in the quarter, overall, we continue to experience strong customer demand for our millimeter wave solutions. We also achieved noted sequential improvement in our gross margin, which combined with lower OPEX due to the realized gain from the technology license to Intel contributed to significant improvement in our bottom line results for the third quarter.

One of the key contributions to our continued growth in the third quarter was the expected commencement of shipments to fulfill an initial portion of the previously announced purchase orders we received earlier this year. As a reminder, these orders included a combination of Peraso's millimeter wave IC and module products for fixed wireless applications, and we anticipate continued shipments in support of these orders through the first half of 2023. More broadly, fixed wireless access continues to demonstrate solid momentum, with fixed wireless access services dominating subscription net adds among the top six broadband providers in the United States. In spite of increased macroeconomic uncertainty, the global adoption of millimeter wave has remained strong and increasingly strategic for carriers to maximize bandwidth limitations. I previously highlighted multiple leading carriers that have announced millimeter wave deployments, including NTT DOCOMO, KDDI, SoftBank, and Rakuten.

Additional carriers such as NBN Co, T-Mobile in North America, as well as carriers in India and France have acknowledged initiatives to add millimeter wave-based solutions to their existing networks. During the quarter, we showcased demos of Peraso's new 5G millimeter wave product at both the European Microwave Week in Milan and Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas. Having personally attended MWC, I can tell you that we received significant interest in our millimeter wave technology from a series of existing and prospective customers and partners. Further underpinning the very strong reception and interest in our highly integrated 5G beamformer is the device's extraordinary performance, which continues to exceed our internal targets. Although these engineering graphics are fairly technical, I wanted to share them because they represent a few of the crucial KPIs achieved by our fully integrated dual-band antenna.

This unique dual-band capability with a single antenna provides carriers and operators with numerous benefits, including more flexible and lower cost deployment. However, using our antenna customization resources, we can also provide an operator a version of our 5G module with an antenna that's fully optimized for a single band. In either of these configurations, the power consumption of our solution is highly competitive. We're poised to expand sampling of our 5G beamformer over the coming months, and currently expect to achieve production silicon in the first quarter of next year. Although Peraso has been in the business of developing and shipping millimeter wave solutions for more than 12 years, we historically have been focused on a relatively small number of core customers.

In October, we took an important step to begin expanding our commercial reach with the appointment of Mark Lunsford as Chief Revenue Officer. Mark brings a deep understanding of leading edge technologies and has demonstrated success across companies at various stages of growth, including SiTime Corporation, NXP Semiconductors, Micrel Semiconductor, and Pivotal Technologies. Highly applicable to Peraso is his prior experience at emerging growth companies, where he has helped convert groundbreaking technology into large multi-million dollar sales pipelines. He has also led sales efforts with responsibility for global customer bases and secured an impressive lineup of tier one customers at prior companies. The addition of Mark to the management team will support our customer expansion efforts in both 5G licensed and 60 GHz unlicensed segments of the marketplace. Finally, acknowledgment of cross-currents and weaker macro environment.

To date, we have not seen measurable impact on our business. We exited the quarter with record product backlog and very good visibility for the first half of 2023. As previously mentioned, we're focused on driving expanded commercial engagements and targeting a broader group of prospective customers across a larger portion of our served markets. Today, we're actively pursuing engagements with large series of new customers and partners. Among those are more than one tier one carrier, a leading network system designer, as well as a global telecom software solutions company. In addition to achieving increased market penetration with our existing products, we're consistently thinking about working to advance our future product and technology roadmap.

This activity includes current ongoing discussions with multiple companies on prospective NRE development projects targeting areas such as support design for a high frequency radio band and the development of next generation 10 Gb baseband technology. With that, I'll pass the call back to our CFO, Jim Sullivan, to review the financial and provide guidance for the fourth quarter.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Thank you, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be speaking with you again today. During my comments, I will make several references to non-GAAP numbers. Unless otherwise indicated, referenced amounts exclude stock-based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangible assets, business combination transaction costs, and the change in fair value of warrant liability. These non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of the differences between them and comparable GAAP measures are presented in our press release and related current report on Form 8-K, which was filed with the SEC today. Turning now to our third quarter 2022 results. Total revenue was $3.3 million, compared with $4.3 million in the second quarter of 2022, and $2 million during the same quarter a year ago.

Product revenue from the sale of our integrated circuits and modules was $3.1 million, compared with $4.1 million in the prior quarter and $1.4 million in the third quarter of 2021. The sequential decrease in product sales was attributable to approximately $1.1 million of product shipments late in the third quarter, for which the company was unable to satisfy the revenue recognition criteria. The growth in revenue year over year was primarily driven by increased demand and shipments of our memory IC products, as the prior year included no sales of such memory products due to the timing of our December 2021 business combination. Royalty and other revenue for the third quarter of 2022 was $0.2 million and comprised non-recurring engineering services and royalty revenues from licensees of our memory technology.

GAAP gross margin was 39.3% in the third quarter, compared with 34.7% in the prior quarter and 54.4% in the year ago quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding amortization of reported intangible assets, gross margin for the third quarter was 50.2%, compared with 43% in the second quarter of 2022 and 54.4% in the year ago quarter. The increase in gross margin over the previous quarter primarily reflected an increased mix of memory IC products, which generally carry higher gross margins than our millimeter wave products. Product gross margin was 34.6% in the third quarter, compared with 32.1% in the prior quarter and 33.8% in the third quarter of 2021.

The sequential and year-over-year increases in product gross margin were also largely a function of revenue mix in the third quarter. As we progress through 2020-2022 and into next year, our corporate gross margin target continues to approximate 50%. We expect revenue growth will contribute to higher levels of scale and enable us to capture additional production cost reductions on our millimeter wave modules, while also realizing benefits from anticipated ongoing sales of our higher margin, memory IC products. GAAP operating expenses for the third quarter were $5.3 million and included a $2.6 million gain related to an exclusive license and asset sale accounted for as a reduction of operating expenses in accordance with GAAP. For comparison, operating expenses were $8.5 million in the prior quarter and $4.4 million in the year-ago period.

Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2022 on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation and amortization of reported intangible assets, were $3.3 million, compared with $6.6 million in the prior quarter and $3.1 million in the same quarter a year ago. GAAP net loss for the third quarter of 2022 was $4 million, or a loss of $0.20 per share, compared with a net loss of $7 million or $0.36 per share in the prior quarter, and a net loss of $3.8 million or a loss per share of $ 0.73 in the same quarter a year ago.

On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for the third quarter of 2022 was $2 million or a loss of $0.10 per share, which excluded stock-based compensation and amortization of acquired intangibles. This compared with non-GAAP net loss of $4.8 million or a loss per share of $0.23 in the prior quarter, and a net loss of $2.5 million or loss per share of $0.47 in the same quarter a year ago. The weighted average number of basic and diluted shares outstanding for purposes of calculating both GAAP and non-GAAP EPS for the third quarter of 2022 was 20 million shares, which excludes 1.8 million shares of our common stock and exchangeable shares that are escrowed pursuant to the terms of an escrow agreement and subject to an earn-out based on achievements of certain stock price targets.

In terms of adjusted EBITDA, which we define as GAAP net income or losses reported, excluding stock-based compensation, amortization of reported intangibles, interest expense, depreciation and amortization, and the provision for income taxes. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2022 was -$1.8 million, compared with -$4.5 million in the prior quarter and -$1.4 million in the prior year period. We entered the fourth quarter with significant backlog that extends well into the first half of 2023 and positions us for continued growth. Specific to the fourth quarter of 2022, the company expects total net revenue to be in the range of $3.8 million-$4.1 million, which excludes approximately $1.1 million in anticipated revenue recognition associated with previous product shipments to an existing customer.

This concludes our prepared remarks, and we will now open the call to questions. Operator, please initiate the Q&A session.

Operator

Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you have a question or comment, please press star one on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that'll be star one on your telephone keypad at this time, if you would like to enter the queue to ask a question. Please hold a moment while we poll for questions. The first question today is coming from Kevin Liu. Kevin, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Kevin Liu
Founder and CEO, K. Liu & Company

Hi. Good afternoon, guys. Wanted to start first with the $1.1 million in product revenue that wasn't recognized in Q3 here. Could you talk a little bit about why that actually wasn't recognized even though it was shipped? Just wanted to clarify for Q4, it sounds like you didn't include that in your range, but are you assuming that it does ultimately that you are able to recognize that revenue in addition to your guidance for the quarter?

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Hi, Kevin. Let me start on a LIFO basis on your question. The guidance for the quarter, for the fourth quarter does exclude that revenue recognition amount. We did keep that out of the number. So that would be potential upside when that is recognized. So that answers the first question. You know, the second question, there was basically a collectibility issue, and given there was some extended payment terms on that sale, when we looked at you know, the requirements of ASC 606, and then you know, particularly with the focus you know, right now of you know, the macroeconomic environment, et cetera, we just felt it was prudent to defer the revenue and you know, let that you know, settle ideally in the fourth quarter.

You know, as I believe we said in the press release, you know, we do expect to recognize that in the fourth quarter. We did have additional revenue recognition from that customer during the third quarter, but there were some facts and circumstances around it and happening late in the quarter, that we just felt it was prudent, to defer that shipment.

Kevin Liu
Founder and CEO, K. Liu & Company

Yep. Understood. Appreciate the color there. Just in terms of your backlog, can you just talk a little bit about whether that customer represents any significant portion of kind of the product backlog you're carrying today? More so beyond that, you talked about, you know, fairly strong backlog heading into Q4 and then the first half of next year. You know, just wondering how you see those revenues or how that weighting looks currently. Does most of that come out within the fourth quarter, or is it fairly evenly spread over the next few quarters?

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

You know, I'll start off first and then let Ron, you know, add some color. You know, for the fourth quarter, I will say that, you know, the customer is a meaningful piece of backlog, but the revenue guidance I gave for the quarter does not include that customer. We were being specifically conservative in the guidance. We wanted to be, you know, ultra-conservative looking at the fourth quarter. While that customer is not in the guidance, they're in our backlog. Right now, we've obviously made a large shipment to them at the end of September. We expect to start shipping to them again later this month or early next, but if we don't, we're very comfortable with our guidance number, and we would just kind of move it into Q1.

I would say the backlog is, like I said, we have, you know, Q4 covered, and we have a substantial amount of Q1. You know, kind of looking back to, I guess, you know, time flies, it was weeks ago now, we had announced a, you know, a meaningful increase in orders, and that's really kind of what's driving our visibility, you know, particularly on the, you know, those orders that came in were on millimeter wave. Since then, we've really firmed up our backlog on the memory IC products as well. We feel, you know, kind of very good looking ahead the next couple of quarters. Ron, did you wanna chime in and clarify anything I said?

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Yeah, I think that covers it. I mean, I think it, you know, we should make it clear that, you know, I would say this particular customer is getting a little diluted in terms of the percentage that, you know, of the backlog that they represent as we move into the first half of 2023.

Kevin Liu
Founder and CEO, K. Liu & Company

Okay. Just wanted to touch on the hiring of Mark Lunsford as your Chief Revenue Officer. Can you talk a little bit about any sort of changes you plan to make in terms of your go-to-market or even your sales organization, and you know, what we should be looking for in terms of kind of milestones over the next couple quarters here to see you know, progress on the sales front?

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Well, Kevin, yeah. Mark has been on board two weeks, so he's still really figuring things out. I mean, I can summarize in terms of, you know, kind of the KPIs I've set out for Mark. I mean, obviously, you know, today, on our unlicensed products, we're seeing very nice design win activity, good growth. Obviously from Mark's perspective, the very short-term revenue opportunity for him is to really target that market. You know, I would say that, specifically in that market, you know, without having someone like Mark, we, you know, were pretty focused.

You know, really fundamentally from Mark's perspective on the initial KPIs, it's really go after the several customers in that space we haven't really addressed yet. That's gonna be the first objective for Mark. I think that'll you know we'll start to make that public over the coming quarters for sure in terms of who some of those customers might be. You know, obviously the second and actually I feel fortunate about this. I mean, on the second leg of his strategy is 5G. Our 5G product is being very well received.

I'm pretty thrilled with the feedback we're getting in terms of, again, just the level of integration that we've achieved, but also the frequency range. I mean, we cover the entire, you know, 24 GHz-43 GHz 5G band. So people are, you know, amazed that we can do that, so I'm thrilled with that. So Mark is coming in just at the right time to go after those opportunities. You know, as you can see, the wireless carriers in the licensed band are seeing tremendous growth in fixed wireless. So I feel our timing is terrific in terms of addressing that market. So those are gonna be the two, you know, primary objectives for Mark.

The other thing we're seeing actually, and I touched on this at the end of the presentation, Kevin Liu, is you know, we're seeing some very nice opportunities in terms of you know, kind of non-dilutive engineering revenue. Just you know, revenue in which frankly speaking, our customers are willing to help us out in terms of our expenses. You know, we haven't really kind of discussed those in detail, but we'd be making those more public over the coming quarters in terms of our ability to actually get our customers to help us to pay for some of this development. You know, it's an area that we're quite focused on.

We can do it now because we've got that, you know, baseline intellectual property that we can leverage into the customer base. Mark, almost the third leg of Mark's strategy is to bring in some of those non-dilutive NRE deals that, you know, that really help us out in terms of our cash flow. I would say those are the three primary objectives for Mark at a very high level is, you know, existing unlicensed, you know, aggressively going after 5G designs and also non-dilutive financing from some of our customers.

Kevin Liu
Founder and CEO, K. Liu & Company

from customers and others at the Mobile World Congress, just wanna touch on, you know, the interest in the 5G beamformer product and where you think, you know, the early opportunities for you guys will be in terms of getting into production.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Just to be clear to everyone on the call, I mean, our beamformer is very, very targeted on the end user equipment side. That is, you know, what goes in the consumer's home. We think most of our competition is really focused on, you know, infrastructure side, be it base stations or small cells. You know, where we're seeing, I mean, I can tell you, I guess, geographically, you know, obviously just respecting the confidential information. You know, I think you might have seen that India actually has provided licenses for millimeter wave bands, particularly in the 26 GHz band.

Brazil has made millimeter wave available, obviously in America, we're working with carriers in America. I think geographically, that's, you know, where our first interest is coming from. One, you know, point I'd really like to point out, Kevin, is that, you know, if you take, like, the India opportunity, for example, you know, it's really focused on 26 GHz. We, of course, cover, you know, our antenna design is, you know, a bit astounding in terms of the breadth of its frequency range. We'll spin, you know, our modules specifically to address the India market for this opportunity. That's really a special capability that we have at Peraso, is our ability to customize our antennas for specific markets.

Really, that's, you know, the beauty of having, you know, the ability to cover these wide swaths of frequencies. When we get a very specific customer, we can focus our efforts on that specific opportunity. That really would summarize where we're at from a 5G perspective.

Kevin Liu
Founder and CEO, K. Liu & Company

Great. Well, good luck as you execute against these opportunities, and appreciate you taking my question.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Oh, my pleasure, Kevin.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Thanks, Kevin.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question is coming from David Williams from Benchmark. David, your line is live. Please go ahead.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Thanks so much for taking the question, Ron. Jim, it's good to hear from you and congrats on the continued execution here.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Thanks, Dave.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

I guess one thing I've noticed more recently is just kind of the demand strength we've seen on fixed wireless access coming from.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Yeah.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

you know, the U.S. carriers.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Yeah.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

It's been a very big area of growth specifically for AT&T and T-Mobile. Just kinda curious what you're seeing there. It seems like this could be reaching an inflection point here in the near future. Am I thinking about that right? What do you think the hurdles are? When will you guys see that revenue inflect, you think?

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Well, I guess to summarize where we see in the U.S. market in particular is like our whole business thesis is the concept of capacity problems for the carriers. I think that, you know, we saw the rise of the mid-band offering from the carriers. What we're frankly seeing and really in the top 20 markets in the U.S. is it's quickly running out. You know, coupled with that is we're seeing the, you know, this, as you say, growth of, I mean, 920,000 new fixed wireless adds just in Q3 for between T-Mobile and Verizon. We're seeing, you know, two things happening. One is, you know, the networks, the network capacity is getting bogged down.

Two, fixed wireless is a very strong, you know, growth opportunity. So we're right in the thick of things. I mean, we think what's going to happen is that the carriers will start to migrate their mid-band capability to mobile and really logically, and this is in denser environments, not in rural environments where millimeter has historically been, but right, you know, in cities, is to concentrate their millimeter wave capacity on fixed wireless access. That's what that's the trend that we're seeing now with, you know, with the capacity crunch that we see the carriers experiencing in the U.S..

Frankly speaking, I mean, you know, I mean, we would say outside of the U.S., you know, we're really shooting to try to have some production in 2023, which is for us, frankly, you know, maybe even potentially ahead of schedule. You know, realistically, the first half of 2024 is when we could see you know, revenue in the U.S., just because, frankly, the lead times, you know, are 12-18 months. We would be stretching it to say, like in a year from now, but I think for the U.S., first half of 2024 is realistic.

We think the good news, Dave, is that, you know, we're really seeing this, you know, again, this high demand, you know, on the carrier networks driven by, you know, frankly, streaming services or video apps or what we did here at Mobile World Congress that 70% of the network traffic now is video, and it's increasing. That's really what's driving the capacity crunch. We think it's very, very logical that we're starting to see the carriers really start to bring on more and more millimeter wave for fixed wireless, well, frankly, for mobile, but what we really see, the carriers embracing fixed wireless, or millimeter wave for fixed wireless access over the coming 18 months.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Yeah. Thanks for the color there. It seems like just from an infrastructure deployment or investment, CapEx investment, it seems like fixed wireless access would be substantially cheaper than deploying other cellular bands. Is that a good way to think about it, or am I maybe thinking of something different?

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Well, yeah. I think there's two issues to address there. I mean, the first issue is, first of all, you know, the cost, the spectrum cost for millimeter wave is substantially cheaper than other bands. Right off the bat, I mean, you're right, the cost to deploy millimeter wave is substantially cheaper. Now, there's an argument that says, oh, we need to put a lot more small cells or base stations to support millimeter wave. But again, if you're going out to fixed wireless, I would argue that you just don't need. Because you're not really trying to support, you know, the dynamics of a mobile environment. If you're really just focused on fixed wireless, those costs are quite reasonable.

Again, now you've got the carriers who've got, you know, pretty inexpensive spectrum, you know, a capacity crunch on their mid-band, and, you know, fixed wireless where really the support challenge is quite limited compared to mobility. I really think, you know, the cost of deployment for the carriers for millimeter wave is substantially lower. Yes, I agree with you in terms of what those metrics look like.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Okay, fantastic. Maybe secondly or another question from me here is, so you've got some pretty good orders, made some good traction, demand is good. From a capacity standpoint, what do you think the restrictions are? If you saw a real inflection in revenue, what are your hurdles or challenges? I mean, can you support a 50% increase in order flow? Just kinda given the working capital requirements and your resources you have available today, just anything just to help me understand how big the business could be at kind of with the existing footprint.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Yeah. I mean, we have. You know, our budget completely has built in capacity increase. I mean, I would say the bottleneck right now is test. We've already built. What that implies is revised test boards, where we go to dual site or even quad site test capability. We really have realized that test is one of our main bottlenecks, and we've already addressed that problem actually, and we're implementing that. We should be going to dual site test over the next, you know, quarter or so. Then into 2023, if all goes well, we can get to quad site. The reality there is that that is the real bottleneck in terms of our.

As you say, just pick a number, 50% increase in our revenue. There's some capital, but it's not actually, as a matter of fact, believe it or not, Dave, you know, in terms of the cost of that test equipment, it's come down substantially. There's really millimeter wave test sockets that's historically been very, very expensive that have come down substantially in price. The reason is because of 5G millimeter wave people, you know, the test companies are saying, "Oh, we need to lower our costs." And sure enough, the cost for the revised test equipment has come down substantially.

As a matter of fact, the capital at least for capital equipment in our test strategy has come down, and we really expect to solve those bottlenecks over the next couple of quarters. Then broadly speaking, I mean, obviously, as our revenues go up, the cost, you know, there will be capital requirements for that. We expect to raise the capital necessary to meet those cash requirements. Maybe Jim can speak to that, as well.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Yeah, no, I think that's, you know, correct, Ron. Certainly as we, you know, execute our business plan, you know, generate higher revenues, higher margins, and narrow our operating loss, which is our, you know, plan and what we've been talking about, you know, there'll also be, you know, solutions for working capital, i.e. lines against receivables, things like that, you know, a company at our size and our current scale is tough. The folks who do those wanna see a, you know, a smaller burn. We certainly are putting the, you know, the plan in place, and the burn was down this quarter and, you know, stay tuned on that front.

I think that'll be another avenue that will open up to us as well, you know, in addition to the, you know, the financing front.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Okay. Okay, fantastic. I haven't had a chance to run through the full model yet, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but it looks like the margins on a non-GAAP basis were up sequentially. Just kind of curious if there's anything there that's helping and how you expect that to run. Are there modules that are beginning to help lift that margin or is it mix? What are the levers and where can that go?

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

You know, I think I'll go first and then Ron can chime in.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Sure.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

You know, we want to be 50% or higher non-GAAP gross margins.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Okay.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

You know, under GAAP. You know, on the GAAP piece we take out, you know, we record some amortization from the intangibles from our business combination there. Our non-GAAP, we pull those out.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Okay.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Our target is to be 50% and higher. You know, again, at this size, the numbers can move in the quarter. This quarter benefited from a higher percentage of our memory IC product sales which, you know, can carry margins anywhere from 67%-70%. So that certainly helps. You know, on the module side, we've seen improvement in gross margins. You know, we're targeting, you know, we push, we wanna push those towards 50%. Again, at this early stage, we just started selling those, you know, about a year ago, and it's obviously a more complex build than just, you know, shipping chips.

We're pleased with the progress and as Ron kind of, you know, I think mentioned on the CapEx side, making some, you know, modest improvements to improve throughput and, you know, quad site handlers, things like that that can, you know, move them. You know, we want to keep the margins, you know. We were above 50% for the quarter. I think on the year we're in the, you know, just over 48% or so. You know, we are, you know, implementing some, just as we're seeing from suppliers and everywhere, we're all seeing I think in our world today for all of us, price increases. You know, we've got to pass on and cover those.

You know, we feel very good about the plan to certainly in 2023 see those move north of, you know, 50%.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Fantastic.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Yeah. I mean, I would just echo that. I mean, the company really recognizes margin as room for improvement. There's really a comprehensive plan in place to get it above 50%, including price increases and reduction in test time and you know, so improvement in yield. All of those are levers, David, that we're actively working to get those margins above 50%.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst, The Benchmark Company

Okay. All right. Very good. Gentlemen, thanks so much for the time. Certainly appreciate it, and best of luck on the quarter.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Thanks so much, Dave.

Jim Sullivan
CFO, Peraso

Thank you, David. Appreciate your time.

Ron Glibbery
CEO and Co-Founder, Peraso

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions in queue at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

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