Silicon Motion Announces Results for the Period Ended December 31, 2019

Financial Highlights

Business Highlights

• Total controller sales grew Q/Q to a record high
• SSD controller sales increased about 25% Q/Q to a record high
• eMMC+UFS controller sales increased about 70% Q/Q
• SSD solutions¹ sales increased about 60% Q/Q

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¹ Non-GAAP

TAIPEI, Taiwan and MILPITAS, Calif., Feb. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silicon Motion Technology Corporation SIMO ("Silicon Motion" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2019.  For the fourth quarter, net sales (GAAP) increased sequentially to $153.2 million from $110.5 million in third quarter 2019.  Net income (GAAP) increased to $25.4 million or $0.73 per diluted ADS (GAAP) from net income (GAAP) of $4.2 million or $0.12 per diluted ADS (GAAP) in third quarter 2019.

For the fourth quarter, net income (non-GAAP) increased to $33.8 million or $0.96 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP) from a net income (non-GAAP) of $24.4 million or $0.69 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP) in third quarter 2019.

Fourth Quarter 2019 Review
"In the fourth quarter, sales momentum accelerated with strong sequential growth led by our three key products," said Wallace Kou, President and CEO of Silicon Motion.  "We delivered record high SSD controller sales, both for the quarter and the year.  Additionally, our eMMC+UFS mobile embedded memory controller sales continued to grow strongly, and our SSD solutions sales also posted strong growth with both Shannon and Ferri SSDs up sequentially." 

Key Financial Results

Other Financial Information

During the fourth quarter, we had $2.3 million of capital expenditures for the routine purchase of software, design tools and other items.

Returning Value to Shareholders
On October 25, 2019, our Board of Directors declared a $1.40 per ADS annual dividend to be paid in quarterly installments of $0.35 per ADS.  On November 21, 2019, we paid $12.1 million to shareholders as the first installment of our annual dividend.

On November 21, 2018, the Company announced that our Board of Directors had authorized a new program for the Company to repurchase up to $200 million of our ADS over a 24 month period.  In the fourth quarter, we did not repurchase any of our ADSs.  Since the start of this program, we have repurchased $59.8 million of our ADSs.

Business Outlook
"This year, we expect all three of our key products to contribute to our overall growth," said Wallace Kou, President and CEO of Silicon Motion.  "We expect our SSD controller sales, now representing over half of total revenue, to continue to deliver solid growth as we expand our OEM exposure.  We anticipate that our eMMC+UFS controller sales will return to growth this year as UFS adoption in smartphones increases.  We believe that our SSD solutions will also return to growth this year as Chinese hyperscalers adopt more of our open-channel SSDs in their data centers and as our differentiated industrial SSDs diversify further into automotive, data networking and other applications.  Finally, there is significant uncertainty relating to the recent coronavirus outbreak and its effect on demand and our supply chain; this business outlook incorporates related information that we have at this time." 

For the first quarter of 2020, management expects:

* Projected gross margin (non-GAAP) excludes $0.1 million of stock-based compensation.
** Projected operating margin (non-GAAP) excludes $2.5 million to $2.7 million of stock-based compensation.

For the full year 2020, management expects:

* Projected gross margin (non-GAAP) excludes $0.5 million of stock-based compensation.
** Projected operating margin (non-GAAP) excludes $14.0 million to $16.0 million of stock-based compensation.

Conference Call & Webcast:

The Company's management team will conduct a conference call at 8:00 am Eastern Time on February 7, 2020. 

Speakers:
Wallace Kou, President & CEO
Riyadh Lai, CFO
Chris Chaney, Director of Investor Relations & Strategy

Conference Call Access Numbers:
USA (Toll Free): 1 866 519 4004
USA (Toll): 1 845 675 0437   
Taiwan (Toll Free): 080 909 1568
Participant Passcode: 6499746

Replay Numbers (for 7 days):
USA (Toll Free): 1 855 452 5696
USA (Toll): 1 646 254 3697
Participant Passcode: 6499746

A webcast of the call will be available on the Company's website at www.siliconmotion.com. 

Discussion of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement the Company's unaudited selected financial results calculated in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP"), the Company discloses certain non-GAAP financial measures that exclude stock-based compensation and other items, including gross profit (non-GAAP), operating expenses (non-GAAP), operating profit (non-GAAP), net income (non-GAAP), and earnings per diluted ADS (non-GAAP). These non-GAAP measures are not in accordance with or an alternative to GAAP, and may be different from non-GAAP measures used by other companies.  We believe that these non-GAAP measures have limitations in that they do not reflect all the amounts associated with the Company's results of operations as determined in accordance with GAAP and that these measures should only be used to evaluate the Company's results of operations in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP measures.  The presentation of this additional information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measure.  We compensate for the limitations of our non-GAAP financial measures by relying upon GAAP results to gain a complete picture of our performance.

Our non-GAAP financial measures are provided to enhance the user's overall understanding of our current financial performance and our prospects for the future. Specifically, we believe the non-GAAP results provide useful information to both management and investors as these non-GAAP results exclude certain expenses, gains and losses that we believe are not indicative of our core operating results and because they are consistent with the financial models and estimates published by many analysts who follow the Company.  We use non-GAAP measures to evaluate the operating performance of our business, for comparison with our forecasts, and for benchmarking our performance externally against our competitors.  Also, when evaluating potential acquisitions, we exclude the items described below from our consideration of the target's performance and valuation.  Since we find these measures to be useful, we believe that our investors benefit from seeing the results from management's perspective in addition to seeing our GAAP results.  We believe that these non-GAAP measures, when read in conjunction with the Company's GAAP financials, provide useful information to investors by offering:

• the ability to make more meaningful period-to-period comparisons of the Company's on-going operating results;
• the ability to better identify trends in the Company's underlying business and perform related trend analysis;
• a better understanding of how management plans and measures the Company's underlying business; and
• an easier way to compare the Company's operating results against analyst financial models and operating results of our competitors that supplement their GAAP results with non-GAAP financial measures.

The following are explanations of each of the adjustments that we incorporate into our non-GAAP measures, as well as the reasons for excluding each of these individual items in our reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures:

Stock-based compensation expense consists of non-cash charges related to the fair value of restricted stock units awarded to employees. The Company believes that the exclusion of these non-cash charges provides for more accurate comparisons of our operating results to our peer companies due to the varying available valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types. In addition, the Company believes it is useful to investors to understand the specific impact of share-based compensation on its operating results.

SSD solutions restructuring are charges relate to the restructuring of our underperforming Shannon and Bigtera product lines and include goodwill and intangible assets impairment expenses, the write-down of NAND flash and SSD inventory valuation and customer sales returns and accounts receivable attributable to these product lines.

Amortization of intangibles assets consists of non-cash charges that can be impacted by the timing and magnitude of our acquisitions.  The Company considers its operating results without these charges when evaluating its ongoing performance and forecasting its earnings trends, and therefore excludes such charges when presenting non-GAAP financial measures.  The Company believes that the assessment of its operations excluding these costs is relevant to its assessment of internal operations and comparisons to the performance of its competitors.

Litigation expenses consist of legal expenses relating to intellectual property disputes, commercial claims and other types of litigation. While litigation may arise in the ordinary course of our business, we nevertheless consider litigation to be an unusual and unplanned activity and therefore exclude this charge when presenting non-GAAP financial measures.

FCI divestiture refers to the exclusion of revenue, expenses and other items relating to our FCI specialty RF IC product-line, the sale of which was closed on May 31, 2019.  Under GAAP, according to FASB ASU 2014-08, this disposal transaction does not meet the threshold for presenting as a discontinued operation.  We are excluding FCI from our financial results for non-GAAP as we believe this provides investors with enhanced transparency.  Additionally, we are also excluding transaction expenses and long-term investment gains from this asset disposal.

Foreign exchange gains and losses consist of translation gains and/or losses of non-US$ denominated current assets and current liabilities, as well as certain other balance sheet items which result from the appreciation or depreciation of non-US$ currencies against the US$. We do not use financial instruments to manage the impact on our operations from changes in foreign exchange rates, and because our operations are subject to fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, we therefore exclude foreign exchange gains and losses when presenting non-GAAP financial measures.

Gains on disposal of long-term investments relate to gains from the sale of our investment in ProGrade, a professional-grade memory card manufacturer, and Cashido, a manufacturer of flash memory storage devices.

Gain and loss on equity-method investment consists of gain and/or loss related to our investment in a privately-held company, which varies depending on the operational and financial performance of the company in which we invested. We believe that providing non-GAAP measures excluding these charges, as well as the GAAP measures, assists our investors because such charges are not reflective of our ongoing operations.

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² Assumes all outstanding ordinary shares are represented by ADSs.  Each ADS represents four ordinary shares.

About Silicon Motion:

We are the global leader in supplying NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices and the merchant leader in supplying SSD controllers.  We have the broadest portfolio of controller technologies and our controllers are widely used in embedded storage products such as SSDs and eMMC+UFS devices, which are found in smartphones, PCs and commercial and industrial applications. We have shipped over six billion NAND controllers in the last ten years, more than any other company in the world.  We also supply customized high-performance hyperscale data center and industrial SSD solutions.  Our customers include most of the NAND flash vendors, storage device module makers and leading OEMs.  For further information on Silicon Motion, visit us at www.siliconmotion.com.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including without limitation, statements about Silicon Motion's currently expected first  quarter of 2020 and full year 2020 expectations of revenue, gross margin and operating expenses, all of which reflect management's estimates based on information available at this time of this press release.  While Silicon Motion believes these estimates to be meaningful, these amounts could differ materially from actual reported amounts for the first quarter of 2020 and full year 2020. Forward-looking statements also include, without limitation, statements regarding trends in the semiconductor or consumer electronics markets and our future results of operations, financial condition and business prospects.  In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expect," "intend," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology.  Although such statements are based on our own information and information from other sources we believe to be reliable, you should not place undue reliance on them.  These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual market trends or our actual results of operations, financial condition or business prospects may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward looking statements for a variety of reasons.  Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to the unpredictable volume and timing of customer orders, which are not fixed by contract but vary on a purchase order basis; the loss of one or more key customers or the significant reduction, postponement, rescheduling or cancellation of orders from these customers; general economic conditions or conditions in the semiconductor or consumer electronics markets; the effects on our business and our customer's business taking into account the ongoing US-China tariffs and trade disputes and recent global outbreak of coronavirus; decreases in the overall average selling prices of our products; changes in the relative sales mix of our products; changes in our cost of finished goods; the payment, or non-payment, of cash dividends in the future at the discretion of our board of directors and any announced planned increases in such dividends; changes in our cost of finished goods; the availability, pricing, and timeliness of delivery of other components and raw materials used in our customers' products; our customers' sales outlook, purchasing patterns, and inventory adjustments based on consumer demands and general economic conditions; any potential impairment charges that may be incurred related to businesses previously acquired or divested in the future; our ability to successfully develop, introduce, and sell new or enhanced products in a timely manner; and the timing of new product announcements or introductions by us or by our competitors. For additional discussion of these risks and uncertainties and other factors, please see the documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed on May 15, 2019.  We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this press release.