InterDigital - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, thank you for standing by. Welcome to InterDigital's second quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Raiford Garrabrant, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Raiford Garrabrant (Head of Investor Relations)

Good morning to everyone, welcome to InterDigital's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I am Raiford Garrabrant, Head of Investor Relations for InterDigital. With me on today's call are Liren Chen, our President and CEO, and Richard Brezski, our CFO. Consistent with last quarter's call, we will offer some highlights about the quarter and the company, and then open the call up for questions. Before we begin our remarks, I need to remind you that in this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding our current beliefs, plans, and expectations, which are not guarantees of future performance and are made only as of the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from results and events contemplated by such forward-looking statements.

These risks and uncertainties include those described in the Risk Factors section of our 2022 Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our other SEC filings. In addition, today's presentation may contain references to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our financial metrics tracker, which is available on the investor relations section of our website. With that taken care of, I will turn the call over to Liren.

Liren Chen (President and CEO)

Thank you, Raiford. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. This was another strong quarter for the business. We added to our recent momentum, once again demonstrating our ability to deliver stable, recurring revenue and strong profitability, and continued our excellent track record of returning capital to shareholders. Let me start with a status update on licensing. We continue to make solid progress in the smartphone space, where we added a new licensee in Q2. In addition, we closed a new licensing agreement with Alps Alpine, a specialist system and technology provider in the IoT and auto sector. In the first half of the year, our recurring revenue from the consumer electronics and IoT, including auto, increased by almost 20% year-over-year, once again highlighting how we are capitalizing the opportunities in multiple verticals.

In addition, early in the third quarter, we added another new licensee from the consumer electronics sector. We also continue to advance our case in our arbitration with Samsung. The 3 arbitrators who will hear the case has now been confirmed, and a case management conference is being held today. As a reminder, Samsung has already agreed to take a license to our portfolio, effective January 1, 2023, where the arbitration process will decide the monetary terms. We remain confident that our new license with Samsung will reflect the value of portfolio and continue our long-term relations with Samsung that started more than 25 years ago. Next, I want to give you an update on our litigation with Lenovo.

Recently, we received another good decision from the UK High Court, which increased the amount Lenovo must pay us for a license to our 3G, 4G, and 5G patents to just under $185,000,000, which we already received from Lenovo. Rich will explain the revenue recognition topic in his remarks. This is a very positive development for us, and adds to the court's previous ruling that Lenovo must pay us in full for the past sales going back to 2007. As court noted, this is intended to be a powerful way of discouraging licensees from holding out on taking a FRAND license. I want to remind you that the $185,000,000 judgment is for a license to only our cellular patents until the end of 2023.

It does not include our valuable portfolio of radio, Wi-Fi, and implementation patents. We remain committed to receive a full and fair return on our technology that Lenovo uses in its devices each day. One aspect of our dispute, which I'm particularly pleased with, is that when we assert our patent in three separate technical trials against Lenovo, each patent were found to be valid, essential, and infringed. Because they are all standard-essential patents, this not only places us in a strong position on Lenovo case, but also in our future negotiations and litigation with other prospective licensees. We are, in our heart, a research innovation business. The technology we developed and the patent that we file each year are, in many ways, the product that we bring to the market.

The high quality of proof of our portfolio is directly connected to our ability to remain at the cutting edge of foundational research in wireless, radio, and increasingly in AI. This year has already included many examples of how we excel as an innovation business. Our engineers produced a record number of new invention filings in the first half across both 5G and radio spaces. As we continue our work in 5G, including what will be the first release of 5G-Advanced, we are also deepening our research for 6G. In Q2, we announced a new research partnership with the University of Surrey in the UK to focus on specific technologies that we think will become a part of the 6G standard.

Our ongoing wireless work, including the use of AI to improve the efficiency and reliability of mobile networks, is an excellent example of how central AI has become so much of our innovation. Our CTO, Rajesh Pankaj, is a well-known leading expert in AI and has been working in the space for years. Many of our other engineers are becoming noted experts, and like Rajesh, several have emerged as leaders in the field. For example, in Q2, one of our senior engineers was elected as a Vice Chair of an industry group within the standards body ETSI, which is focused on creating standards to preserve and improve the security of AI. Staying on our innovation success, we were recently named by LexisNexis as one world's top 100 companies in innovation that advances sustainability.

We strongly believe that our innovation is only become more valuable in an increasingly connected world, and I'm delighted that we are also playing our part in steering us towards a more sustainable future. Before I hand it over to Rich, I want to thank all our employees for the hard work in putting us in a strong position and deliver superb value to our shareholders. Our financial strength, combined with our innovation leadership and the growing importance of technology for different use cases, means that we remain ideally placed to build on our recent success. With that, I hand it over to Rich.

Richard Brezski (CFO)

Thanks, Liren. I'm pleased to share that in Q2, we delivered diluted earnings per share and adjusted EBITDA above the high end of our guidance range. This was driven primarily by revenue in line with expectations, coupled with continued expense management. It's worth highlighting that when we received the initial Lenovo judgment in Q1, we recognized a large amount of catch-up revenue and a smaller amount of recurring revenue. In Q2, the UK High Court increased the value of the award, but in Q2, we recognized the same conservative level of recurring revenue from Lenovo as in Q1. Furthermore, we expect to continue to recognize revenue on that same basis throughout the balance of the year or until the related appeal process progresses. As such, we are deferring recognition for about 40% of the updated award.

This is rooted in the conservatism inherent in the generally accepted accounting principles applicable to this situation, since some of the award is still contingent on appeal. Even with the deferral, our revenue continued to drive strong profitability as we posted adjusted EBITDA of $54,000,000 at a 53% adjusted EBITDA margin. Notably, we have delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin over 50% in seven out of the last eight quarters. Our adjusted EBITDA margin shows the power of our business model, as even in a quarter with only a small amount of catch-up sales, we converted over half our revenue to adjusted EBITDA. This is driven by the operating leverage inherent in our model, combined with the discipline to ensure we maximize the conversion of revenue to profit and cash flow.

As discussed on the last few calls, we believe adjusted EBITDA is a great metric to measure the ability of our business to generate cash over time, because it adjusts for timing differences in cash collections under our fixed fee agreements. For example, this year, we used cash in the first half of the year, but expect customer receipts, including Lenovo, will drive well more than $200,000,000 of free cash flow in Q3. We continue to return excess cash to shareholders. As previously discussed, in the first quarter of this year, we repurchased 2,700,000 shares through a $200,000,000 Dutch tender. Since then, we have repurchased over 700,000 additional shares for almost $60,000,000.

That brings the year-to-date totals to over $250,000,000 of share repurchases, a reduction of 12% of the outstanding shares since the beginning of the year. Looking forward to Q3, I'll remind you that our Q3 revenue guidance is based off of contracts signed to date, since the timing of new license agreements is inherently uncertain. We expect Q3 recurring revenues will once again be around $99,000,000. We expect operating expenses to be similar to Q2. We expect an adjusted EBITDA margin of about 50%. We expect to continue to repurchase stock. Finally, we expect GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.60 to $0.70. Since both of our converts are in the money now, the diluted share count in our guidance includes an estimated 1,200,000 shares of accounting dilution.

It's important to note that while the converts are dilutive from a GAAP standpoint, they are not economically dilutive below $106 due to hedges we have in place. Longer term, our goal remains to achieve and sustain a 60% adjusted EBITDA margin on $650,000,000 of annual recurring revenue from device licenses, with additional upside from licensing new products and services. I'll turn it back to Rayford.

Raiford Garrabrant (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Rich. At this point, Michelle, we are ready to take questions.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please limit to one question and one follow-up question, and you may get back into the queue if you have additional questions. Thank you. Please stand by for our first question. The first question comes from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti. Your line is open.

Anja Soderstrom (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the solid execution. I have a question on the Lenovo case. The resolution you've got now, the $185,000,000, is just in regards to license for the cellular. Are you running the other technologies parallel, or is that something you will... When do you think that's gonna be resolved as well, or how is that progressing?

Liren Chen (President and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, hey, Anja, good morning. This is Liren. As I mentioned in the prepared remark, our current $185,000,000 reward from the UK judge only captures 3G, 4G, 5G cellular technology, it also only captures the use of those technology until end of this year. Therefore, there's really 3 elements for additional value. One is we have other patents, plus Wi-Fi, HEVC, and implementation patents that their devices are using. We also have patents reading on their non-cellular devices, including their PC and their laptop, which are not part of the judge's decision. In addition, after end of the year, going forward, they are unlicensed, even for the cellular devices. Regarding us capture the value, we currently already have ongoing litigation against them.

For example, in Germany, where we are asserting our HEVC patents against, both their laptop, but their, their, mobile devices, their cell phones, and the trial is actually coming up, in next month. We're definitely working on those, and we expect, as I said in the prepared remark, to be paid fully for our technology that they are using.

Anja Soderstrom (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thank you. In terms of the capital allocation, with all this cash coming in, what's your sort of priorities?

Richard Brezski (CFO)

Yeah. Anja, you know, our priorities are to be responsible stewards of our cash. You know, we returned, as I noted in my comments, quite a bit of cash, so far this year, but we have $142,000,000 remaining on the authorization. As I indicated, you know, we certainly plan to continue to repurchase shares into Q3. That's, that's, as always, an ongoing discussion with us.

Anja Soderstrom (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thank you. That was all for me.

Liren Chen (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by for our next question. The next question comes from Brian Balchin with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Brian Balchin (Research Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking the question. Just on the targets that you've outlined, you know, $500,000,000 for wireless and $150,000,000 for IoT revenues, could you please give an update on, you know, reaching those targets? You know, how should we think about levers that you still need to pull, you know, perhaps upside from the ongoing cases to reach that $500,000,000 wireless target?

Liren Chen (President and CEO)

Yeah. Hi, Brian, this is Liren. On the target for $500,000,000 for mobile, we are proceeding very well. Obviously, the Lenovo case is part of the step towards that decision. The three largest unlicensed, including also OPPO and Vivo, which frankly, size-wise, are bigger than Lenovo regarding their annual device sales. We currently have cases against OPPO pending in multiple jurisdictions. One of the things I'm mentioning in my prepared remark, it's a decision in UK for the three patent trials. It's actually a very helpful decision, even for the OPPO case, because they are standard-essential patents. The three patents have been found to be valid, infringement, actual to the standard, which allows us to fast-track that case in UK against OPPO.

There's actually an important hearing coming up in October of this year. It's a willingness trial, followed by a FRAND rate determination next February. Those are, frankly, the Oppo timeline, it's quite good. Regarding Huawei, we are continuing active dialogue with them, so we feel confident about our $500,000,000 target for the mobile side. Regarding the CE and IoT space, the $150,000,000, that's something we are making progress. Frankly, if you look at our program here, our IoT CE growth rate is faster than our mobile. We have been achieving double-digit year-over-year growth for the IoT space for the last couple years already, and first half this year, we are growth about 20% year-over-year. We like to keep on building on that momentum.

Brian Balchin (Research Analyst)

Okay, perfect. I just had one follow-up. On, you know, you guys have started articulating, potential monetization of services. Could you perhaps provide an update, you know, on potential size of opportunity and timing of this? You know, if you could provide any color on the process and strategy in building out this platform, that'd be great.

Liren Chen (President and CEO)

Yes. Again, look, Brian, this is Liren. If you look at the-- what the kind of technology those online services are using, by online services are being, you know, the, the distribution of video, either, you know, one directionally, interactively, it's, it's beyond any reasonable doubt that they are using and benefiting a lot from our connectivity as well from our video technology. The real question is really how do we launch a licensing program in there, which we have been working on for quite a bit now. If you look at the market size, the online video space is projected to be growing to about $500,000,000,000 in 2027, which, interesting enough, is the same size as today's smartphone market size. We are working on that quite diligently.

Currently, we don't have enough specification to provide a precise estimate on how big a licensing opportunity this is with us, because we really would prefer to, you know, sign up, you know, at least one or more license before we put a specific number to it. We'll keep you informed, and we have been working quite diligently on that space.

Brian Balchin (Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Again, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. I am showing no other questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Raiford, for closing remarks.

Raiford Garrabrant (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Michelle. I'll now turn it back to Liren for his closing remarks.

Liren Chen (President and CEO)

Hey, thank you everyone who joined today's call, and we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter.