GSI Technology, Inc. (GSIT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to GSI Technology's First Quarter and Fiscal Year 2027 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin today's call, GSI Technology has requested that I read the following safe harbor statement. The matters discussed in this conference call may include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future performance of GSI Technology that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties are described in the company's Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, I have also been asked to advise you that this conference call is being recorded today, July 30, 2026 at the request of GSI Technology. Lee-Lean Shu, the company's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, will be hosting the call today. With him are Douglas Schirle, Chief Financial Officer; and Didier Lasserre, Vice President of Sales. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Shu. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, and thank you for joining us. I would like to begin by talking about where GSI is today and where we are heading. Didier will get into the details, but let me start with my view of the business. . Over the past several years, we have worked hard to move GSI from SRAM chip company into an AI platform company to address a large and growing market for our technology. With the APU, we feel an important gap in the [indiscernible] market. The additional GPU delivers strong performance but consuming too much power for many edge applications. Small process offer lower power but cannot deliver the AI performance the cloud for many real time workloads. The GSI use less power than traditional GPU while delivering higher performance than to say more bold processes. We believe that our APU delivers the performance and low power usage we sell out to achieve. Today, we have Gemini-II production chip ready for customers. We are now in the last phase of GSI trimming the APU technology into a business. The first quarter showed disciplined execution as we continue advancing our ongoing projects, while pushing ahead with the [indiscernible] development for the next 18 months, our priority are [indiscernible] , successfully completing our current proof of concept projects, extending it into adjacent applications and releasing our SDKs [indiscernible]. At the same time, we currently expect to keep [indiscernible] on schedule in March 2027. We start, I'll turn the call over to Didier, who will provide further detail on this on [indiscernible]. Please ahead, Didier.

Thank you, Lee-Lean. As Lee-Lean said, we've reached a pivotal point in the evolution of our APU business. We have a Gemini-II solution for proof-of-concept projects across a variety of edge AI applications. Our focus has shifted from improving our technology to turning customers into proof-of-concept projects. Ultimately, our goal is to secure design wins that could lead to commercial deployments and meaningful APU revenue. Our near-term strategy is to work closely with a small number of customers and system integrators on proof-of-concept projects and applications that are well suited to the APUs advantages. Rather than developing a unique solution for every customer, we found that we can adapt the software and development tools created from one application to an adjacent one. This will allow us to expand into new Edge AI applications more quickly and efficiently. We've already demonstrated this by applying many of the capabilities developed for the Sentinel POC to our Smart City project and we expect to build on that foundation as we pursue new opportunities and other Edge AI applications. During the first quarter, we made successful, meaningful progress on our projects, POCs and SBIRs, each of these position Gemini-II for broader commercial adoption. I'll begin with Sentinel, which is a good example of our customer adoption strategy. GSI has successfully completed all the deliverables for the first phase, including providing both the chip and the software. A laboratory test of the Sentinel POC was recently conducted in collaboration with G2 Tech and the participating defense agencies. Sentinel is an application where Gemini-I's performance per watt provide a clear advantage and the platform's results in the lab test confirmed this with time-to-first-token, also known as TTFT of 2.4 seconds. Preparation for the fuel demonstration continues under G2 Tech's leadership. We have completed all of GSI's deliverables for this next part of the POC as well. The timing of the field demonstration is now dependent on G2 Tech. Turning to our Smart City project in Shinshu County, Taiwan, we continue to meet our Phase I deliverables, which means we will soon be shipping the Gemini-II chips, servers and software supporting the rollout for 20 cameras. We remain on track to complete the Phase I deployment in November. If selected for Phase II, the project would expand to approximately 80 cameras and would add audio to the video from Phase I. This next phase would provide both additional hardware and software licensing revenue. The Smart City platform now includes a smart query capability that allows users to search surveillance footage using natural language. For example, an operator can simply ask, did you see a person matching this description yesterday? The system can quickly analyze recorded video identify relevant element events and locate potential matches without requiring manual review of hours of footage. Switching to our government-funded SBIRs. We're pleased to have launched our U.S. Army Phase II program with a formal kickoff meeting. We have begun preliminary work on developing a ruggedized Gemini-II system for Army applications. And another SBIR for the space development agency, we successfully completed radiation testing on a standard commercial Gemini-II device with no device optimization for withstanding radiation. In the test, the off-the-shelf chip continued to be operational under radiation levels found in harsh space environments. The testing achieved the radiation tolerant threshold typically required for radiation hardened application and showed no single event latches, also known as SEL. The absent of SEL is important because that reduces technical risk for companies evaluating the device and shows that our standard chip may be suitable for some space and high altitude applications. Before I conclude, I'd like to briefly update you on an important software milestone this fiscal year. In the past, you've heard us mention plans to release an AI compiler. We have expanded on that vision and are developing an AI-assisted SDK, as Lee-Lean mentioned. This is expected to significantly accelerate AI model development and the deployment on Gemini-II, the alpha release is currently targeted for this fall. One big advantage found in testing shows the AI-assisted SDK significantly reduces application development time. In one representative case adapting an AI model to run on Gemini-II previously took one engineer about a year, with the AI-assisted SDK, that work was completed in less than a month. This will help us support a broader range of customer applications while enabling us to work with more partners and system integrators. The AI-assisted SDK will also accelerate software development for [ PLAY-DOH ] by allowing algorithms and models to be ported more quickly, allowing us to bring final applications to the market sooner. To summarize, we're pleased with the progress made in the first quarter on our POCs and SBIRs. Our focus for the remainder of this fiscal year remains on executing our Gemini-II strategy, specifically completing our current proof-of-concept projects, expanding into adjacent applications and completing the software tools needed to support broader commercialization. Together, these initiatives will make Gemini to easier to deploy, enabling us to support more customers and over time, scale our business through system integrators. In parallel, we are headed down on the PLAY-DOH design and remain on track to tape out in early calendar 2027. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Doug. Go ahead, Doug.

In the earnings release we issued today after the market closed, you'll find a detailed summary of our first quarter fiscal 2027 financial results. In my comments to follow, I'll focus on the key drivers behind our performance and provide some additional context around the quarter. . Revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 was $6.3 million was at the midpoint of our guidance range, align with the prior quarter and up modestly from the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Overall, our SRAM revenues remained stable. As is typical in our business, customer demand can vary from quarter-to-quarter, which can impact both our revenue and gross margin. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, combined sales to KYEC, and Cadence represented approximately 23% of net revenues compared with the prior quarter in which KYEC represented 22.3% of net revenues, and there are no shipments to Cadence. We expect continued shipments to customers supporting AI chip design and semiconductor manufacturing. However, given the nature of our customer base, order patterns may continue to vary from quarter-to-quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was 53.4%, although slightly below our guided range of 56%. Gross margin improved 100 basis points sequentially. Compared to the year ago quarter, gross margin was lower, primarily due to product mix, which could fluctuate based on the timing and composition of customer shipments. Operating expenses for the quarter rose to $8.8 million, compared to $5.8 million in the prior year period. Our operating expenses increased year-over-year primarily due to costs related to Gemini-II software and Plato chip development. Research and development expenses were $5.9 million, increasing modestly from the prior quarter and by $2.8 million compared with the year ago period. The year-over-year increase primarily reflects our ongoing investment in the development of our next-generation Plato processor. Some of the increase in R&D also reflects lower SBIR funding recognized this quarter compared with the prior year period as well as a higher software development cost from our Israel-based team, primarily due to the strengthening of the Israeli shekel relative to the U.S. dollar. Both of these items are variable in nature. SBIR funding is an offset to our development costs related to ongoing SBIR projects and fluctuates from quarter-to-quarter based on the timing of project milestones and related reimbursements. Our software development costs can be affected by movements in this really shekel relative to U.S. dollar. Higher operating expenses increased the operating loss for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 to $5.4 million, compared to an operating loss of $2.2 million in the prior year quarter, while remaining relatively flat on a sequential basis. The first quarter net loss included interest and other income of $517,000 primarily from interest payments on the cash balance. Turning to cash flows for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 in thousands of dollars. Cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2026, were $67.2 million. Net cash used in operating activities was $3.9 million. Net cash used in investing activities was $300,000. And net cash provided by financing activities was $14 million. Cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2026, were $77 million. Net cash from financing includes $9.3 million in ATM proceeds in the quarter and $4.8 million from employee stock option exercises. Many of these exercises were associated with stock options granted up to approximately 10 years ago that were nearing exploration, making this an unusually high level of option exercise activity. We continue to expect cash usage to remain at current levels as we complete Gemini-II software development and advanced Plato toward a tape-out. Based on our current operating plan, we anticipate using approximately $4 million of cash per quarter or about $16 million annually. Although the timing may vary depending on development milestones and program activity. We ended the quarter with $77 million in cash and no debt. This compares to $67.2 million for the fiscal 2026 year-end ended March 31, 2026. This is a notable improvement from the year ago first quarter cash balance of $22.7 million and reflects the $46.9 million net of fees from the registered direct offering proceeds that closed in October 2025. With no debt and a strengthened cash position, we have confidence that we have the resources to continue investing in our strategic priorities while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation. Based on our current operating plan, our existing cash resources provide sufficient runway to complete the Gemini-II software development, support customer evaluations and our next-generation data processor. Before I conclude, I'd like to briefly address the housekeeping item. In the next few months, we expect to file a replacement for our universal shelf registration, the strongest capacity to $100 million. We have no current plans to raise additional capital. Maintaining an effective shelf registration is prudent corporate practice that preserves our financial and strategic flexibility should opportunities arise. As demonstrated last year, having an effective shelf in place allowed us to opportunistically strengthen our balance sheet during a strong -- during period of strong share price performance. We view maintaining that flexibility as good corporate governance and not as an indication of any change in our current capital plans. Before I hand the call over to the operator for Q&A, I'd like to provide a second quarter fiscal 2027 outlook. For the upcoming second quarter, we expect net revenues in the range of $5.7 million to $6.5 million, with gross margin of approximately 53% to 55%. Operator, at this point, we'll open the call to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from David Williams from Needham.

Congrats on the success here. it seems like you're making lots of great progress, and you touched on this a little bit during the call, but just kind of curious if you could talk maybe a little bit about how transferable some of the technical work that you've completed for these POC programs? How transferable is that maybe across some of the new applications? And what is that employment for the pace you can expand the POC pipeline without really having to drive increased engineering head count.

David, thank you for the question. Yes, so it's very transferable. One of the key elements that we always allude to with the Sentinel POC is this time-to-first-token parameter. And that is also important with the Smart City. It's also important to some of these other POCs that we're looking at as well. And so there are other features besides that, that fall under the vision language model that are also transferable. So yes, what's nice is when we went from the Sentinel drone POC to the Smart City, it wasn't a complete new hall. We were able to leverage a lot of what we've had in the past. And that will be true for some of these other POCs that we're looking to engage in. Now that along with the AI-based SDK that will also dramatically increase the algorithms that we can deploy for these new applications. So between the leveraging from last use case to the additional tools that are coming in fall. Yes, we're looking to be able to leverage these other markets more quickly. Does that answer your question?