Data I/O Corporation (DAIO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Data I/O First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jordan Darrow, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to the Data I/O Corporation first quarter 2025 financial results conference call. With me today are the company's President and CEO, Bill Wentworth; and Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Gerald Ng. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that statements made in this conference call concerning future events, results from operations, financial position, markets, economic conditions, supply chain expectations, estimated impact of tax and other regulatory reform, product releases, new industry participants, and any other statements that may be construed as a prediction of future performance or events are forward-looking statements, which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. These factors also include uncertainties as to the impact of global and geopolitical events, international trade regulations, order levels for the company and the activity level of the automotive and semiconductor industry overall, ability to record revenues based on the timing of product deliveries and installations, market acceptance of new products, changes in economic conditions and market demand, part shortages, pricing and other activities by competitors and other risks, including those described from time to time in the company's filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission, press releases and other communications. The accuracy and completeness of forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied upon. Data I/O is under no duty to update any forward-looking statements. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill Wentworth, President and CEO of Data I/O.

Jordan, thanks a lot. Thank you for the people joining on the call. It's always great to get a great audience. So looking forward to some questions after the call as well. We're pleased to announce the Data I/O team has reversed the 2024 trends, with revenue coming in at $6.2 million, up 19% over the previous quarter 3, 4. Bookings up $4.6 million, up 11%. As we're all aware, the tariff discussion has been front and center since the beginning of March. It has had -- obviously, everybody reads the headlines and reads the news. It's had some, I'd say, stalling some investments, maybe sitting on some of those decisions. We are constantly communicating with our customers weekly, almost in some cases, daily because there are some orders that we've been tracking since the beginning of the year. I would say Asia was off to a slow start. That was really due to kind of a late Chinese New Year this year. But also they had a pretty good year last year. Looking at their forecast for this year, we still see them holding. Again, tariffs are going to play a big role in that. And depending on how those go, we'll dictate some of that. We'll get into -- and any questions around tariffs, definitely in the open questions, we're very prepared to talk about how we're getting around those issues in the supply chain. The team has done a phenomenal job really putting together various different pathways to still be able to deliver product and not have a major, major tariff impact. The -- next would be really some several announcements we'll be making over the next 2 to 3 quarters, and this really comes from the last 6 months of discovery work, really looking through our technology platform and programming platform. We do have a new product road map that we'll be rolling out, that will be very detailed in the next quarter or 2, strategic investments for growth and productivity improvements. The other notable thing over the last literally 6 to 8 weeks has been our discussions with semiconductor companies. We'll be talking about this and probably by the end of Q2, some of the strategic relationships that we're forging with these companies. And this is something Data I/O did years ago. And I will tell you, the conversations have been quite substantial and quite fruitful and is really going to set us up for real good growth and being able to be that recommended partner, technology partner for the semiconductor houses that produce programmable technologies. Diversity in customer segments. We've talked a lot about in the past automotive and IoT. Interesting in some geos, those 2 verticals, especially automotive, are stronger than you would expect, given what's going on around the world, especially domestically. Whereas such in China, we have domestic manufacturing in Mainland China, which that's one of the areas like such as their EV market has remained fairly strong. Customer diversity in segments such as industrial, service provider networks, which would be franchise distribution, we haven't really gone to those markets too strong yet because we're developing new products that will fulfill their product needs for the technologies that they sell, and we see that coming in the coming quarters. Coming off the IPC APEX show in March, where we refreshed our manual product line, introduced the new LumenX-M8 and the FlashCORE III-M4. These are really reskins of existing technology, but adding some software to make it more functional within engineering departments. I will say it was the best trade show we've had in APEX since 2013. It was a really -- what really was great to see was just the activity around our booth. And we had our competitors within line of sight of our booth, and qualified leads were up 39%, which this is based on flat attendance from last year. New contacts were up 18% from 2024. These are just great metrics. And it really brought to light the consultative discussion we're having around the whole supply chain for how you program parts, how you manage the technology, how you move from engineering to production to final inspection to rework of products that may come back for rework. So we believe this -- although a small sample, we believe that this consultative approach will be a big part of our growth engine in the future. It was -- it certainly made its mark there. I'd like to turn the discussion over to Gerry Ng and talk about our financial results.

Thank you, Bill, and good day to everyone. I look forward to outlining and elaborating on our recent financial performance in more detail. My comments today will focus on key points of interest for the first quarter of 2025 and our perspective looking forward. Our recent performance has been impacted by positive business strategy and go-to-market changes, which Bill alluded to earlier. However, that was offset by recent economic headwinds created by, of course, tariffs and trade uncertainties. Despite these recent challenges, we saw quarterly revenue and profitability improvement on a sequential and year-over-year basis. Net sales in the first quarter were $6.2 million, up $1 million or 19% from $5.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and an increase of $100,000 from $6.1 million in the first quarter of 2024. The improvements were driven by business recovery and backlog deliveries in the Americas and Europe, with growth from the prior period of 32% and 44%, respectively, for again our Americas and European markets. Asia revenue did decline 40% due to a strong prior year performance and current quarter business pushout from evolving trade tariffs as well as economic uncertainties. Automotive electronics, a primary business segment, represented 66% of our first quarter '25 bookings compared to 59% for all of 2024. Consumables -- consumable adapters and services remained steady, representing 46% of total first quarter revenue and providing a stable base of recurring revenue. Moving on to new bookings. Activities were strong at the start, but did slow at the end of the first quarter as customers delayed purchase decisions due to the economic trade and tariff concerns, particularly in Asia. First quarter '25 bookings were $4.6 million, up from $4.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, but it was down from $8 million in the first quarter of 2024 a year ago due to last year's large $2.8 million contract from a single customer for multiple systems delivery that we have been providing and delivering on over the course of the last 6 months. Backlog at the end of the first quarter was $2.9 million, down $600 million -- $600,000, I'm sorry, from December 31. Moving on to gross margin as a percentage of sales was 52% in the first quarter of 2025 and comparable to the 53% achieved in the full year 2024. The slight decrease in gross margin percentage for the current quarter primarily reflects a higher mix of system revenue and lower inventory levels and the associated spending absorption. More importantly, direct material costs remained steady and consistent with prior periods. Looking forward, the planning and actions are underway, as Bill indicated, to mitigate the impact of new tariffs, trade and inflationary pressures, leveraging our domestic and international production and service capabilities. Potential actions under consideration include shifting material sourcing, product manufacturing and shipment logistics, just to name a few. Operating expenses for the first quarter were $3.6 million, down $427,000 or 11% from the fourth quarter and down $515,000 or 12% from the prior year period. Fourth quarter announced changes -- last fourth quarter announced changes with staff reductions and related charges did contribute to approximately $300,000 of expense savings in the first quarter of 2025. And those savings are expected to continue into the remaining year, of course, allowing the business to redeploy those resources as necessary. First quarter operating expenses, which are typically higher than other quarters of the year, also did include public company costs pertaining to audit, regulatory fees and NASDAQ fees at approximately $300,000. The company incurred a net loss of $382,000 for the first quarter compared to a net loss of $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and a loss of $807,000 for the prior year period. The improvement in the first quarter net loss reflects, of course, higher revenue and lower operating expenses, which were partially offset by, again, onetime annual public company expense in Q1. Adjusted EBITDA, which may be a good proxy for cash, for the first quarter was nearly breakeven at a loss of $98,000 compared to a loss of $364,000 for the prior year period. Using that to transition to the balance sheet, we continue to maintain a healthy cash position. We ended the first quarter with access to $10.5 million in cash, up $159,000 from the $10.3 million on December 31, 2024. The increase in cash reflects higher sales, an improved and continued improvement in our cost structure and lower inventory levels, again, partially offset by higher cash expense related to our annual first quarter expenses for public company activities. Data I/O's net working capital of over $16 million on March 31 remained relatively flat compared to the beginning of the year. The company continues to have no debt. While we remain cautious for the second quarter, our entire team and channel partners remain focused on driving sales improvement by leveraging our new go-to-market and product strategies, which Bill has alluded to, and will continue to expand on. Despite the current tariff trade and inflationary pressures, we believe we have the talent, experience and financial capacity to navigate these challenges. This concludes my remarks for the first quarter of 2025. Operator, please start the Q&A process.

[Operator Instructions] Today's first question will come from David Marsh with Singular Research.

And congrats on the improvement this quarter. So my first question is just around revenue mix. I mean, are you -- typically, it's kind of a wait for the SEC filing. But could you just provide a little bit of color on revenue mix between capital equipment adapters and software in the quarter and how it may compare to prior year?

Yes. In the prior year 2024, our mix of what we call recurring -- reoccurring revenue was about 50%, and that is made up of both adapters revenue as well as service contracts, software and things of that nature. For the -- for recent Q1, our recurring revenue mix was 46%. So it actually decreased by 4 percentage points. However, that's a good thing because our overall revenue increase was driven, to a large extent, by the fact that we were able to secure and deliver more systems. And so as a result, the overall mix did shift a little bit. But again, we are still very happy with our recurring revenue base because that is, of course, a stable base kind of going forward.

Right. And I would say, to add to Gerry's comments, is that Q1, we shipped about $2 million worth of, I think, sockets in Q1. That was up over Q1 of last year. So the trend for -- and all of last year, I think we were about $7.4 million, somewhere in that. So the trend, if we continue to do this trend, and I do believe that will continue, we see some activity coming in systems that we've newly shipped Usually, those new systems and the ship, you'll see follow-on orders -- large orders of adapters. So we're in communication about that. And probably, we'll be able to communicate that at the end of Q2. So yes, the consumables are a big indicator of where we go. Things like socket adapters, we track now daily. It is on an active dashboard that the whole sales team can see and finance can see. These are some of the changes we made internally just to be able to view through our lens what are the important indicators to drive the business. And that really comes down to adapters and device requests because those 2 are basically an indicator of how much of your platform is being used as it's consumed.

Got it, got it. That's really helpful. And then just transitioning to the expense side. Your SG&A was down handsomely year-over-year. And obviously, we know Gerry has been working hard to eliminate things where he can. So as we look at that and we look at it in the context of the prior year, I mean, do you think that for the current year, you have the potential to be down, kind of a similar percentage throughout the year? Or kind of can you give us a sense of where that's trending for the year?

Yes. Obviously, we can -- we are always consistently looking at opportunities. We made good progress last year. And we have, I think, some opportunities from an expense reduction and an efficiency perspective going forward, particularly around, not surprisingly, IT, automation, efficiency, things of that nature. So those will always be efforts that will allow us to continue to drive cost reduction where we can. However, I think there is going to be an emphasis on the business to also make sure we make the right investments going forward, particularly in driving the growth of the business. So I think that will be a constant balance that the business will look at. I would probably say -- I would probably not anticipate similar year-over-year expense reductions that we've been able to achieve over the course of the last 2 years. But I think that's going to result in investments that will hopefully drive better overall company performance.

Yes. Sure, it is. To add to Gerry's comments, this is a transformational year, so there are things that we've seen that we need to make some investments in for the future. And given the current business conditions, there are some headways that we can do a little faster than others, but we will do this in a cautious but predictable way that will still drive to our goals. And we're finding ways to fit that in the existing expense profile the best we can.

Makes sense. And if I could just get one more real quick before I jump back in the queue. You talked a lot about diversifying end markets, and there was some specific mention in the press release about the semiconductor sector very specifically. I mean, could you just -- Bill, just talk about how things are progressing there? I mean, I know it's not a light switch like overnight -- it doesn't happen overnight that you're growing significantly in end markets that you haven't been in or have been nascent in for a while. But it sounds like based on the -- what we are trying to read, the tea leaves in the press release that you're making some progress there. Maybe you could just give us some color.

Yes, I would love to. It's actually -- I will -- it's never easy, right? We attended the Embedded show in Nuremberg, Germany in March. So it went from Germany to Anaheim back-to-back trade shows. The Embedded show is not something that we've attended. We have long years ago, but definitely going to make a better effort at these shows in the future, and we'll probably show at the show next year. We made some really great contacts. We brought over our Chief Algo Engineer and really struck up a lot of great conversations. Probably a good 20 to 22 contacts that we made there came back. We had one with a particular supplier. We're under NDAs with these. The conversation was fantastic. It could not have gone better. Now does this result in business right away? No. But to be able to get the relationship going for us at the level that we're at and at the position in which they're introducing their new products was far better than I even imagined. And so it's been surprisingly quicker than I would have expected. I would say these conversations are well ahead of even what I thought they would be. Again, I can't say what that's going to translate in business. But when you can create a relationship with a semi house and you're in with their new products and their product groups within their industrial group, their automotive group, their consumer electronics group, you can't be better positioned. And so this is something Data I/O used to do years ago, and it's one of the initiatives that I architected to the Board back in October. And Dave, I would say they're going far better than I thought they would this early. And so we'll be reporting out more specifics as we can in Q2 and Q3, but they're going very well.

The next question comes from [ Chris Vechavski ], private investor.

I wanted to ask about that subject you were just discussing. Is there any technological reason, any new technological development that makes it important for a semiconductor house to actually have a preferred programmer vendor?

Well, yes, and this is really becoming -- it's one of the reasons why we want to focus on these partnerships because the technologies nowadays such as UFS, NVMe, these memory technologies, which used to be the easiest technologies to program, quite honestly, because you just be programming a simple data file into a memory block, now these UFS parts, they have very specific protocols you have to follow. You have to be able to emulate those handshakes within the programming algorithm. These are fairly very complex. So it takes different types of equipment, which we invested in Q1 to get through a specific technology road map that we had pending already, which really got through and over a hurdle far faster than we would have in the past. So yes, those relationships are absolutely critical because we're testing these, say, critical timing paths. We need feedback from the suppliers. Are we on the right path? And so it is something that Data I/O got a little behind in, and we're playing a little catch-up, but we plan on getting ahead by, one, using these relationships; and two, being more engaged with the governing bodies around these protocols. It's a much more complex world, which, by the way, favors Data I/O's future market. I mean, the market will grow organically just based on the size of these memories that are coming up that will have to be taken offline to program. We saw road maps as early as 2027 for 1 terabyte flash. I mean, that is a ton of memory. You can't do that in line. It's -- file sizes aren't going to be 1 terabyte, but they're going to be a big portion of that memory. So yes, I think we are definitely positioning, and this is where you'll hear in the coming quarters, our product road map, which is pretty exciting. I hope that answers your question.

Right. So what you're saying is that -- and let me just try to simplify things. You're saying that at this point, you don't -- you can no longer program these memories the usual way, the way a telephone access them or the way an entire device accesses them. You have to program them, and the program might have been in a different way because you just need to put way more data in it and you don't -- you can't wait half an hour.

Right, right. Exactly. And there's protocols in which you have to follow to access the memory. So...

Are those public? Or are those something privately shared with the semiconductor company?

No, we wouldn't share those publicly because it's our intellectual property.

Right. But wouldn't the semiconductor companies specify the protocols?

Yes. I mean, they're out there, sure. How we apply them is our IP. But yes, those are all public. I mean, you can go on the different governing bodies. We'd be share -- happy to share those in the future where you go get that information. But that's public information for sure. If you went to Micron's website and looked up UFS 4.0 and Protocols 2.0, it will tell you what's in there. It's just, can you do it? I mean, people nowadays, some of our competitors just take a golden chip and duplicate it, but then you have yield issues. So...

Okay, okay. I see. All right. So it's good to hear that there's -- so what you're saying is that there's new technological hurdles emerging in your business. Okay. That's good to hear.

And like I said, we'll -- in the coming quarters, we will have -- we'll be announcing our product road map, which will have a lot more detail behind it.

Okay, okay. I'll be listening for that. And I just wanted to ask also. Have you seen an improvement in orders in April? Or is it the people are just still waiting?

Yes. So Gerry, I don't know if you want to take a stab at this one, but the tariffs and the noise in the headlines has definitely created this swirl, and things have -- if you even look through our Q1 as good as it was, I mean, January, and I'd like to say it was definitely a big part of the team. January is a great month. It normally isn't a great month. And Q2 is typically a slower month anyways historically if you look back at our financials. But January, hot. February, really good. March should get quiet. And naturally, I mean, that's just what's going to happen when you have the uncertainty that you have.

So Chris, maybe to jump on that. Again, maybe I'll use the -- our systems versus our reoccurring revenue. Number one, again, our reoccurring revenue is pretty steady. It's pretty steady week-to-week. And I would -- and at this point, just a couple of weeks into the month of April, we're happy with our reoccurring revenue. That's why we like it and we have it. Relative to our systems and CapEx sales, as indicated in our earnings release and indicated earlier, we did have a little bit of delay and pushout as we finished the quarter. Our sales team is actually working with our customers because they have to go through the process of understanding its impact on their business. And so we're staying close to them. And at some point, whatever our customers do, we're going to follow because that's the nature of how -- who we support. And so I anticipate that we'll continue to probably be a little slow working with our customers, but the expectation would be that we're still -- we're cautious about Q2, but we're working hard to make sure we mitigate the issue.

And could I also ask you, do you track -- I'm sure you track utilizations of your systems. Are they running hot? Or is utilization also slowing because of this tariff uncertainty?

Could you repeat that one more time? I'm not sure I caught all of it.

So I'm sure you track utilizations of your systems out in the field. Are they running hot?

We don't track utilization of our customers. It's -- quite honestly, they're not going to let us tether into the network and track inserts. I'd love to. It would be great if I could do that, Chris, because getting data off the machines, we could do a lot more predictive maintenance and things like that. But given the global security concerns, that's just not going to happen, unfortunately. I would love it, but we live in a different world nowadays.

But Chris, kind of building on what Dave indicate -- asked and our response earlier, we have some early indicators. Obviously, a good example is bookings, right? Bookings lead to revenue. Another indicator is our socket or adapter sales because to the extent that we see continued and increased adapter request, it means our customers are using more products. And at some point, it either means that they're going to hit capacity and wants to buy more of our products. So that, again, is a key indicator that we follow.

And it's also why we do track DSRs and specifically sockets, to Gerry's point, is that, that's an indicator of usage and utilization of the -- I can see this quarter, maybe, customers maybe again stalling CapEx, but buying more programming heads per se, options, things that can expand volume without having to do a heavy CapEx now and get by based on their uncertainty. So we're monitoring that super closely and to see what that behavior is, and again, talking to our customers weekly. We have a very -- we've increased our cadence with our clients, and we're just monitoring the situation as close as we can.

[Operator Instructions] Seeing no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

This is Gerry. Thank you. Again, thank you very much, operator. To all listeners and participants in today's event, we appreciate your continued interest in and support of Data I/O. And as you can tell, we are very excited and enthusiastic about the opportunities ahead of us, given the uncertainties regarding tariff regimes unfold. At this point, I'd like to conclude the call. Enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you again for joining us, and goodbye.

Thanks, everyone.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.