QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Martin Yang: Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is a follow-up on the gross margin discussion. When you — let’s say, after we go through some engineering costs associated with the gross margin, do you expect the new component or new product gross margin overall to eventually converge with mature products, as you have more licensing — higher margin licensing elements in the new product revenues.?

Elias Nader: Yes, Martin. Go ahead, Brian.

Brian Faith: Let me ask a clarification question, Martin. Are you asking sort of at what point do the service revenues drop down as a total percent of revenue, so they are not a drag on gross margin? Is that — gross margins are more like the mature products?

Martin Yang: Because my impression is that the new products overall still have margin gap versus mature products. Do you think that will eventually — the two segment will converge in terms of gross margin?

Brian Faith: Well, in fact, I think the long-term is that the new products for IP and software will actually exceed mature product revenue and mature product gross margins, because once we get to the point of doing the royalty on IP shipments, that’s almost pure gross margin at that point. It just takes a while for that flywheel to get started to generate the significant royalty revenue. The other thing I’d say is that, some of these devices that we’re doing like the U.S. government baseline, I mean the gross margins associated with that specific market segment are quite high. And so, once that — hopefully we will be the storefront for that and when that does start taking place, then we will start to see some uplift on gross margins even beyond what our mature products were.

Martin Yang: Got it. Yes, that’s my intuition. So when you talk about some of the more royalty like revenue streams coming up, is that in two to three years’ time when you start shipping devices or longer or shorter time?

Brian Faith : Well, they have to be from device shipments where they’re royalty bearing. We have talked in the past about the time between IP license to royalty start is probably like 18 months or so. So I think that is still true. So at some point next year, we should start to see some royalties for the earlier licenses that we did late last year or early this year. If you talk about SensiML for a second, then those royalties can start faster, because they’re not being embedded into a chip like an IP license. It’s software running on an existing microcontroller. So as people start to go to production with those AI models, then the royalty stream from those should start sooner.

Operator: Our next question is from Rick Neaton with River Shore Investments.

Rick Neaton: In your last 10-Q, you broke down some color into your new product revenue between eFPGA IP hardware and SaaS. Can you give us that breakdown for Q3 and how you see it breaking down in Q4 in your guidance?

Brian Faith : I don’t think we’re breaking it down to that level in the guidance, Rick. And I don’t have it at the top of my head for the Q3 actuals, although, the service was particularly high in the quarter. Like Elias and I had mentioned related to some toolings cost for the customer tape out, but I don’t recall the exact number. I don’t know —

Rick Neaton: In terms of the sales funnel that you described at 110 million, can you give us a rough breakdown of that sales funnel between those three revenue categories that you itemized in your 10-Q in August?