CEVA - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, welcome to the CEVA second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Kingston, Vice President, Market Intelligence and Investor in Public Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Richard Kingston (VP of Market Intelligence and Investor in Public Relations)

Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CEVA's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today on the call are Amir Panush, Chief Executive Officer, and Yaniv Arieli, Chief Financial Officer of CEVA. Before handing over to Amir, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussions contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of CEVA to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding market trends and dynamics, including anticipated recovery in semiconductor startup funding and opportunities for Wi-Fi and generative AI.

Our market position, strategy, and growth drivers, demand for and benefits of our technologies, and expectations and financial guidance regarding future performance, including expected recovery in revenues and guidance for the third quarter and full year 2023. For information on the factors that could cause a difference in our results, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

These include the effect of intense industry competition, the ability of CEVA's technologies and products incorporating CEVA's technologies to achieve market acceptance, CEVA's ability to meet changing needs of end users and evolving market demands, the cyclical nature of and general economic conditions in the semiconductor industry, CEVA's ability to diversify its royalty streams and license revenues, CEVA's ability to continue to generate significant revenues from the handset baseband market and to penetrate new markets, and CEVA assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information which speak of their respective dates. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide a more meaningful analysis of our core operating results and comparison of quarterly results. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release we issued this morning, and in the SEC filing section of our investor relations website at investors.ceva-dsp.com.

With that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Amir, who will review our business performance for the quarter and provide some insight into our ongoing business. Amir?

Amir Panush (CEO)

Thank you, Richard. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our second quarter results reflect the dynamic environment brought about by challenging macroeconomics conditions that has led to slower than expected recovery in some regions. On the other hand, we also saw resumptions in chip demand following a few quarters of inventory correction. Our licensing business experienced a slowdown in the quarter, which I will explain momentarily. On royalties, we saw our royalty revenue recover to grow 17% sequentially, and we anticipate this recovery can continue in the coming quarters. In licensing, our revenue came in below our expectation. The primary reason for this relates to the Semiconductor startups, a customer base that is an important contributor to any IP licensing business. Semiconductor startups rely on venture capital funding to underpin their businesses.

Funding for VC for semi startups slowed down towards the end of 2022. Global VC funding for the 1st quarter of 2023 fell 50% year-over-year. Consequentially, some of the deals with startups we anticipate closing in the quarter did not come through as planned. The resulting shortfall in licensing revenue was unexpected. However, we are already seeing funding of startups in the semiconductor ecosystem picking up again and anticipate licensing to these companies will recover in the coming quarters. We also saw mixed results in our design services activities in the quarter, where the overall defense industry is moving slower than expected to conclude new investments, and funding there takes more time. As a result, some projects in our sales pipeline are taking longer to get funded.

Looking at licensing business concluding in the quarter in more detail, we signed 17 new licensing and NRE agreements with noteworthy interest in our wireless communications offerings, encompassing 5G, Cellular IoT, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and UWB. All of these technologies continue to be in demand with deal signs in each of these areas. We signed 3 Wi-Fi 6 deals for combo chips, where we also license our Bluetooth technology. One of these deals was with a strategic customer, a leading supplier of connectivity chips into IoT devices, spanning consumer, industrial, and smart home. This latest deal with the customer is a multi-use agreement as they look to expand their Wi-Fi 6 business on the back of their highly successful Wi-Fi 4 business. This latest deals with the customer is a multi-use, where they have shipped more than 300 million CEVA power Wi-Fi chips to date.

As we have discussed previously, the average royalty per unit we get for Wi-Fi 6 is higher than previous generation of Wi-Fi. Having an established customers and leader in this space migrate to Wi-Fi 6, presents another potentially strong contributor to our Wi-Fi royalty stream in the coming years. Other deals of note in the quarter include 4 new agreements for automotive. 2 for our UWB technology for digital keys and in-cabin radar applications, and 2 for our AI compiler technology that creates fully optimized runtime software for our SensPro processors and NeuPro-M NPUs. Our product offering are very well aligned with the automotive industry's push towards electrification and even more powerful safety system.

We have many touch points already in the car, including our vision AI processors for ADAS, sensor fusion, DSPs for drivetrain and battery management systems, UWB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 5G and V2X for safety, infotainment, communications, and connectivity. Our inherently low power solution are an excellent fit for automotive, and while it can take quite a number of years before our automotive design wins show up in production vehicles, we are very excited about design wins we have secured to date and the potential royalty stream that we can generate from this highly lucrative market. Finally, we signed two new agreements in cellular IoT space, one for our new, Narrowband IoT technology and another for targeting 5G RedCap. Now to royalties.

After a weak first quarter, we saw a good recovery in the second quarter, driven by smartphone targeting emerging markets and restocking for consumer and industrial IoT products following the inventory correction. Royalties for the quarter reached $9.5 million, up 17% sequentially. We saw CEVA Power chip volumes increase sequentially across the broad spectrum of markets we address, and a notable recovery in smartphones, PCs, and 5G base stations in particular. On the last earnings calls, we explained there was a significant inventory correction taking place, particularly in the smartphone and consumer IoT spaces, where we have meaningful exposure. Following conversation with our customers and other companies in the supply chain, we believe that this inventory has been worked through for the most part, and our royalties reflect a resumption in demand to refill the channels.

We reiterate our belief that the first quarter was the bottom for our royalty business. We anticipate continued recovery for our royalty business through the remainder of the year. Now, I would like to switch to discuss a new strategic market time expansion opportunity that we are addressing with our products targeting AI, from the cloud to the edge. Earlier this week, we announced our latest neural processors targeting generative AI applications. Generative AI is creating a lot of headlines recently, dominating the AI narrative, thanks to ChatGPT and other generative pre-trained transformers or GPT models. In general, AI is divided into training, including deep learning and machine learning, and inference, including computer vision, co-piloting, photonics, such as fast optical networking, and more.

CEVA has addressed inference application with our SensPro and NeuPro product line for a number of years, and has been successful in helping our customers deploy AI across multiple end markets and devices, including industrial, automotive, and consumer. Generative AI takes the AI experience to the next level. Transformer-based models have led to significant breakthroughs in several forms of generative AI. They are key in both increasingly powerful text-to-image models such as DALL-E or Stable Diffusion, and language and instruction following models such as ChatGPT or Stanford Alpaca. Today, such networks are typically executed on GPU-based compute infrastructure in the cloud because of their massive model sizes and high memory and bandwidth requirements. However, as transformers-based networks mature and become increasingly popular, there is an opportunity spanning all the way from the cloud to the edge to increase the performance and efficiency of executing generative AI.

For example, there are new generative AI models, which are domain and enterprise-specific, that use smaller proprietary datasets with fewer parameters and expert systems. These generative AI models don't require GPU-based compute to execute. Thanks to our extensive experience in developing processors that support AI in low-power devices, we have enhanced our NeuPro-M NPU family to support this transformer-based large language models, LLM, and generative AI models to allow natural language processing and generative capability locally, AKA co-piloting, with incredible efficiency. This directly improve the latency and overall personal experience of using generative AI, protect the privacy of the user data, addressing a key concern of cloud-based AI today, and significantly reduces the cost per query.

I believe that our ability to support transformer architecture with exceptionally low power consumption and highly efficient, positions us very well to exploit this new wave of AI across the full spectrum of end markets from consumer IoT to industrial, automotive, and networking. Our new NeuPro-M is already available for licensing to customers, and we are very excited about the potential here to grow our AI footprint with this enhanced product family. In summary, despite the revenue shortfall in licensing this quarter, we believe our portfolio of wireless communications and sensing AI technologies is unrivaled and leads the industry in terms of performance, power, efficiency, and quality. Our new NeuPro-M family further expands our strengths in AI to address the growing trend of deploying the incredible potential of generative AI to any device and application.

With our technology leadership position and top-tier customer base and desire to grow and expand, we remain very optimistic about the long-term trends in our business and our ability to drive long-term shareholder value. Now, I will turn the call over to Yaniv for the financials.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

Thank you, Amir. Good day to all. I'll now start by reviewing the results of our operation for the second quarter of 2023. Revenue for the second quarter was $26.2 million as compared to $33.2 million for the same quarter last year. The revenue breakdown is as follows: licensing NRE and related revenue, reflecting 64% of total revenues, was $16.8 million, as compared to $22.1 million for the second quarter of 2022. The licensing business can be volatile in the IP industry, in recent periods, it has been influenced both by cyclical macroeconomic trends as well as short-term conditions, such as shifts in fundings of start-up customers. Royalty revenue, reflecting 36% of total revenue, was $9.4 million, as compared to $11.1 million for the same quarter last year.

Illustrative of the overall soft demand in our end markets for this time last year. Encouragingly, on a sequential basis, royalty revenue grew 17% and as we expected, experienced significant improvement in the smartphone, 5G, base station, and PC markets from the first quarter level. Quarterly gross margin came in lower on GAAP and non-GAAP basis as compared to our guidance, due to lower revenue base and higher subcontracting-related expenses in our cost of revenues. Gross margin was 79% on GAAP basis and 82% on non-GAAP basis, compared to an 82% and 85% guidance on GAAP and non-GAAP, respectively. Our non-GAAP quarterly gross margin excluded approximately $400,000 of equity-based compensation expenses and amortization of acquired intangibles of $400,000.

Total GAAP operating expenses for the second quarter was lower than the low end of our guidance, at $26.9 million, due to immediate actions taken by management associated with lower overall employee-related benefit accruals, as well as better FX environment with a stronger US dollar compared to other currencies and lower overall marketing-related activities. Total GAAP operating expenses for the second quarter, excluding equity-based compensation expenses, amortizations of intangibles, and holdback expenses, were $22.4 million. Below the low end of our guidance due to the same reasons I just explained. GAAP operating loss for the second quarter was $6.3 million, up from GAAP operating loss of $0.3 million for the same quarter last year.

Non-GAAP operating loss was $1 million, compared to operating income of $4.6 million for the same quarter a year ago. GAAP and non-GAAP tax expenses of $0.5 million was recorded, mainly associated with withholding tax deducted by our customers that could not be utilized and were expensed. Our GAAP net loss was $5.8 million, and the diluted loss per share was $0.25 for the second quarter of 2023, as compared to a loss of $1.1 million and the diluted loss per share of $0.05 for the second quarter a year ago.

With respect to other related data, shipped units by CEVA's licensees during the second quarter of 2023 were 370 million units, up 25% sequentially compared to the first quarter of 2023, reported shipments of 297 million units, and down from 433 million units a year ago, primarily to the reason Amir discussed earlier. Of the 370 million units reported, 79 million units, or 21%, were for handset-based chips, up from 27 million in the first quarter of the year. Our base station and IoT product shipments were 291 million, up 8% sequentially from 270 million units for the first quarter of 2023, and down 17% year-over-year from 349 million units.

Bluetooth shipments were 210 million for the quarter, as compared to 190 million for the first quarter of 2023. As we saw in the beginning of the restocking of, following the inventory correction we experienced. Wi-Fi shipments were 29 million units as compared to 21 million units in the first quarter of 2023. Cellular IoT shipments were 21 million units as compared to 29 million units in the first quarter. Other shipments under our base station IoT umbrella totaled 31 million units in the quarter. This includes our computer vision, AI, audio, sensor fusion, 5G RAN, and DSPs for non-cellular communications. As Amir stated, we saw a significant recovery in handset baseband chips for smartphones in the quarter, driven by channel restocking in emerging markets following the inventory correction in the prior quarter.

As for the balance sheet items, at the end of the quarter, our cash, cash equivalent balances, marketable securities, and bank deposits were approximately $136 million. Our DSOs for the second quarter were 47 days, better than the first quarter's 55 days. During the second quarter, we used $4.8 million cash from operating activities. Our ongoing depreciation and amortization was $1.4 million, and purchase of fixed assets was $1.1 million. At the end of the second quarter, our headcount was 497 people, of whom 410 were engineers. This is the same count as we had at the end of the first quarter. Now, turning to our outlook.

Our licensing and NRE-related revenue business is fueled by a strong portfolio of wireless connectivity and sensing AI technologies and provides critical building blocks for many in the semiconductor industry. With that said, with the current market condition, we're taking a cautious approach and forecasting a lower base revenue level than achieved last year. In royalties, the correction and improved environment in handset baseband royalties can continue into the second half of the year. Our base station IoT customers also look more positively in the upcoming two quarters, so we anticipate sequentially higher royalties for the third and fourth quarters. In parallel, we'll continue to monitor market trends. Earlier in the year, on our Q4 2022 earnings conference call, Amir outlined this scenario and the potential of the licensing business to be impacted by project expense adjustment and realignments within the semiconductor industry.

At the time, we also stated that this may further our cost control measures if required. In light of the recent financial results, we focus on the products and technology investments, and to some extent, also tied to the current macroeconomic environment, we have acted, and we are taking few immediate measures to reduce overall headcount and expenses, and forecast overall lower expenses in both the 3rd and the 4th quarter. We'll continue to monitor our expenses closely and strategically invest our resources. Specifically for the 3rd quarter of 2023, gross margin is expected to be higher than the 2nd quarter, approximately 82% on GAAP basis, and higher sequentially on non-GAAP basis at 85%, excluding aggregate base compensation expenses of $0.4 million and amortizations of acquired intangibles of $0.4 million as well.

OpEx for the third quarter is anticipated to be slightly higher compared to the second quarter of 2023, due to R&D effort allocation from cost of goods and in the range of $26.7 million-$27.7 million, including an anticipated $4.7 million of equity-based compensation, $0.8 million for amortization of acquired intangibles. Non-GAAP OpEx is also expected to be slightly higher in the second quarter due to the reasons I just explained and in the range of $22.2 million-$23.2 million. I want to emphasize that overall expenses for CEVA in the third quarter is forecasted to be lower, lower second quarter expenses level that we recorded due to the cost measures I just mentioned. Net interest income is approximately $1 million.

Taxes for the third quarter are expected to be shy of $1 million, derived mainly from withholding taxes associated with new deals to be signed and reported in royalties during the quarter. Share count for the third quarter is expected to be approximately 24.7 million shares. Rocco, we could open the Q&A session now.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Ladies and gentlemen, our first question today comes from Matt Ramsay with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Matthew Ramsay (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, guys. I, I guess for my first question, Amir, I totally get the changing sort of landscape right now from a licensing perspective and some of the things that you mentioned about smaller and startup companies and their funding situation to take licenses. I, I, I get that on the headwind side. I guess what I'd like to hear a little bit more about is the licensing trends in China. We've heard from a few folks that as the HiSilicon, Huawei Semiconductor business essentially couldn't manufacture stuff on the leading edge anymore, there's a lot of new companies that have sprung up over there from the same engineering base and have quite a bit of funding behind them.

I guess, could you talk a little bit about any restrictions you guys might have in terms of export controls or whatnot, and licensing into China, what the licensing trends are there? I guess I'm a little bit surprised that some of those new companies that are popping up over there maybe didn't make up for some of the shortfall that you mentioned in, in the Western markets. Thanks.

Amir Panush (CEO)

Yes, very, very good point. I, I think, Matt, there are several things here. First, that's definitely a, a potential as we look forward. Some of those companies that you mentioned, there is a very strong engineering base there that are actually extremely familiar with our technologies, and we see that interest coming later on in the year. Those things, you know, those changes have happened more recently, and that will take some time for basically get established, getting the funding, building, and then deciding on their technology and product line. The, the activity overall is, is still very strong. It's just that some of those decisions are taking longer. Our, our business in China is solid, and actually, we see a lot of potential as we keep driving towards the, the next few quarters.

Overall, as I mentioned in the prem, in my prepared remarks, is that the overall fund macroeconomics and with the easy funding and just decision to make on to take on new projects and to use their cash, is just taking longer. That's, that's what's really happening in this quarter and as we look towards the rest of the year.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

I'll, I'll add, Matt, maybe you asked about export control, we obviously comply with export controls and don't have any special limitations that we are aware of or that as anything has changed recently. That's, that's really not the case. Those exact type of companies that you mentioned, that maybe started off and they're a great potential, but didn't get to the final stage of signing and executing those deals that we were working with.

Matthew Ramsay (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)

Thank you, guys. As my follow-up question, Yaniv, I wanted to focus on the model a little bit. You mentioned in your script and obviously in the results and guidance, the lower licensing revenue. I'm just trying to get my head around what you guys are trying to message there. I mean, for the full year, 2023, are we looking at licensing revenue similar to what it was in 2021? Like, that $73 million, give or take, is that? I'm just trying to use that as a benchmark to see if that's in the right ballpark.

Then the second piece is, you, you mentioned lower OpEx for Q3 and then Q4 as well. Maybe you could go through the, the non-GAAP guidance again on OpEx, because maybe I misheard, but it looked like it might be actually up a little bit sequentially in, in September versus June. If you could help on those two items, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

Sure. Let's start with the licensing. I think for Q3 and Q4, we're keeping the licensing more or less. Obviously, it could be a range, plus, minus, $1 million-$2 million, depends how the quarter will look like. We're looking at about $17-ish million, very similar to what we came out right now for Q3 and Q4. Again, pending deals that we could get signed maybe earlier than planned or larger in size, but that's the model. Probably a little bit shy of the $20 million-$21 million, but that's in the ballpark that you asked about. That's on the licensing. Royalties, we mentioned, we started with $8 million, got up to $9.4 million. We are looking at both Q3 and Q4 sequential growth.

We don't know exactly the pace and the, the magnitude of that, so we are taking it slow, but all the indications from the royal report we received from Q2 show that there is a significant recovery in handsets, in PCs, in 5G RAN base stations. All that is baked in, in continuous growth in the next two quarters. Not necessarily 17% sequential growth, but still more limited than growth. Until we get the actual report and have a better, obviously, visibility. On the expense level, I want to again emphasize there are two expense lines.

There is the cost of goods for us, and the R&D on the operating expenses, and the expense that moves around a bit from quarter to quarter between R&D and cost of goods is the actual service costs and EDA costs that are associated with those services that we provide. Margins, gross margins are slightly higher. In the 90-85%, both for Q3 and Q4, compared to 82% that we just reported. On the other hand, some of those higher expense, high and better margins, or lower cost of good expenses go to back to the R&D line. You're right that for Q3, it's slightly higher in the operating expenses.

We guided $22.2 million-$23.2 million, so somewhere in the middle, is probably where we end up, including those variable expenses that move up and down from R&D to cost of goods. If you look at the overall expenses with that, then higher gross margin, you'll see that the overall expenses from Q2 to Q3 will go down, and that's the plan for Q4 as well.

Matthew Ramsay (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)

Okay. No, thank you, Yaniv, particularly the last point about the total expenses, including COGS. That's helpful. Really appreciate it. I'll get back to you guys. Thank you.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

Thanks, Matt.

Operator (participant)

Our next question today comes from Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Kevin Cassidy (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. My question's around the licensing during the quarter, when you're working on these deals, did they get flipped out, or were they canceled?

Amir Panush (CEO)

Yeah, Kevin, that's a good question. It's actually, to some degree, a mix, but to the most part, they are getting delayed. Definitely, there, there are companies that takes longer to make those decisions, or they take longer for them to get the final approval of the funding that they need in order to, so-called, to, to make the final call and, and license from us the technology. That's the majority of the cases, but there are also, some cases where the company decided eventually not to go ahead.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

I'll, I'll add one more thing, Kevin, that we also signed, one or two deals that were signed, but because of payment concerns, until this funding gets executed, we didn't deliver and didn't recognize. You'll see, and that's not just for this quarter, it happened in the past as well, and if we're not sure about the collectibility, we don't deliver and don't don't recognize any revenue. They're on both sides of the, of the line.

Kevin Cassidy (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Thanks for that clarification. On your new NPU, that's the exciting, the generative AI, and I'm sure you've been developing this with customers already or potential customers. Can you say where their applications are? Is it in the handset, PCs, or is it new types of product?

Amir Panush (CEO)

It's actually, Kevin, great question. It's actually across a, a wide variety of applications. We you see that right now, so-called, for, for edge devices, co-piloting use cases. The like that you mentioned, like PC, tablets and, and handsets devices, that's definitely where you will see those things deployed in the future. In addition, things related in the future for high-speed photonics, also in areas of automotive, for similar or different type of use cases, really, quite a wide range of applications in the consumer space and automotive.

Kevin Cassidy (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Amir Panush (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1. Our next question comes from Chris Reimer at Barclays. Please go ahead.

Chris Reimer (Analyst)

Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my questions. I was wondering if you could give any more color. You've mentioned several times in the past quarters about getting into the industrial and the larger consumer products markets. I was wondering, what has to happen before you break more into that, that area?

Amir Panush (CEO)

Yeah, we are actually already playing quite a bit in the industrial space for things, everything related to AI application and DSP processing, as well as with our leadership in wireless communication. So there is already quite high adoptions with our different type of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G technologies, and RedCap that is coming to the industrial space. I, I don't think there is one things in particular that we need to do differently, but it's keep driving the innovation with our product line and addressing this market. Overall, like with the other markets, we are focusing a lot on power efficiencies and high performance and high quality of our products, and this is very applicable also for the industrial space.

Chris Reimer (Analyst)

Okay. Touching on the efficiency measures, how sustainable are they? If you could just touch on what exactly you did in order to reduce expenses.

Amir Panush (CEO)

Yeah, I, I think the best way to look at it is really starting with the strategic decision first, where I, I want our team to focus in terms of driving the long-term growth. First, we really have a very strong leadership in wireless communication, spanning all the way from 5G to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ultra-wideband, and urban IoT, and definitely that area of focus that we'll keep and invest and enlarge our capabilities there. And the other focus area is around DSP processing, moving into the AI space, and as I mentioned, the NeuPro-M with the additional very great capabilities to support transformers and generative AI. Those are the focus areas that we are heavily investing.

With that, I keep basically working with the team where we see other activities that are not necessarily with the focus of the long-term strategy of the company, and that's where basically we drive more efficiencies. Overall, cost reduction. We have done it through the, towards the end of this quarter, and as we get into Q3 and Q4, as Yaniv mentioned, and we will continue monitoring basically our success in the market and the strategic activities we want to drive in order to ensure the focus. Overall, we're very strong focus on our IP portfolio to drive that to the market.

Chris Reimer (Analyst)

Got it. Thanks. That's it for me.

Amir Panush (CEO)

Thank you, Chris.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Gus Richard with Northland. Please go ahead.

Gus Richard (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yes, thanks for taking the question. I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit of color on, the geographic distribution of your licensing business.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

Same, same as in the past. Nothing too dramatic. All of our service business is in the U.S, relating to aerospace and defense. Strong presence in China, more than half of the business usually comes from there. As we were asked earlier, also a lot of the new start-ups are emerging and a lot of investments overall in the last decade has been relevant there. We're seeing now more in Europe and the US, obviously, opening and creating fabs. We saw TSMC announcement yesterday about opening a new fab in Europe, with the joint, with the very, very large semiconductor players.

All that fuels both the U.S. and Europe to more intensive services, IPs, ship design activities, all to be able to fill up those fabs. We're trying to shoot in all the different areas. New markets obviously will also change a bit, the mix, geographical mix for us. Japan has been strong. This last quarter, Taiwan has been strong for us, with a very nice deal there. All over the place, but I, I would say that we're trying to move and add more offerings and more revenues over time in both Europe and the U.S.

Amir Panush (CEO)

I will add a little bit. Thanks, Yaniv. I will add a little bit more colors on that. We have talked about 4 deals that we had this, this quarter in, in the automotive space. This, with the generative AI and overall focus on high performance NPUs for the AI, those are the type of technology that will help us actually to expand very, very nicely in the other regions. On top of that, in the previous earning calls, I mentioned about so-called the tailwind, that we expected more to come towards as we go into 2024 and 2025, which is the funding, the local funding for those local semiconductor industries from the fab to overall development. This is definitely something that we see happening in the different regions, and that will also propel more opportunities for us.

This, with the combination of focusing on the, the AI space and the automotive, in addition to our leadership in wireless communication, will drive more adoption of our technology, so-called outside APAC.

Gus Richard (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Very helpful. Then just, and again, back to the licensing business. You know, as you look forward, you know, where do you see your, your best opportunities for licensing over the next 2 years? Is it AI auto, or does it remain wireless? You know, any color in that, in that area would be helpful. Thank you.

Amir Panush (CEO)

It's quite similar to what I mentioned previously. There is first, of course, everything related to wireless communication. We are in a really very strong position, and we, we expect that to continue and even to strengthen. That's definitely will continue to drive significant portion of our licensing and business overall. Also in addition, really, the processing, the DSP processing and moving into AI, that's so-called the new growth area on top of that, that will drive lot, lots of our success. Lastly, is that in the, in the previous calls, I mentioned our software embedded application goes on top of that. That drives much more demands directly with the OEM that will drive also additional growth for us, especially on the royalty side, longer term.

Gus Richard (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Amir Panush (CEO)

Thank you.

Yaniv Arieli (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question today is a follow-up from Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Kevin Cassidy (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

thanks. And just for a little more detail on the, with the 4 deals in automotive, are those traditional semiconductor companies or are they tier ones, or are you even dealing with automotive companies that are designing their own semiconductors?

Amir Panush (CEO)

In most cases, we are dealing with the tier ones, or the semiconductors... Sorry, we are dealing with the semiconductor suppliers, and in some cases, also directly with the tier ones. It depends on the application and how they would like to deploy it in their systems. It's a combination with majority of the semiconductor companies. Sorry.

Kevin Cassidy (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Richard Kingston for closing remarks.

Richard Kingston (VP of Market Intelligence and Investor in Public Relations)

Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in CEVA. As a reminder, the prepared remarks for this conference call are filed as an exhibit to the current report on Form 8-K and accessible through the investor section on our website. With regards to upcoming events, we will be participating in the following conferences: The Oppenheimer 26th Annual Internet Communications and Technology Conference, taking place today, virtually. Rosenblatt 3rd Annual Technology Summit, The Age of AI, taking place August 22nd to 24th, virtually. Jefferies Semiconductor, IT, Hardware and Communications Technology Summit, August 29th and 30th in Chicago, and the Jefferies Israel Tech Trek, September 11th to 13th in Israel. Further information on these events and all events we will be participating in can be found on the investor section of our website. Thank you and goodbye.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.