CC Buried Comments deserving highlight: Hockey stick, Go-to-market, China, Feature phone, more.
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Sequans Communications' (SQNS) CEO Georges Karam on Q1 2018 Results - Earnings Call Transcript May. 2.18 ...
We are shipping Calliope Cat 1 chips to Gemalto, ...
... one of our end customers we serve through a module partner has launched his product at the end of Q1 on one of the US carriers and is now in full production...
On the competitive front, we feel very comfortable with our position. We have remained the only vendor shipping a fully-optimized solution for longer than we originally expected. ..
We see some specific signs of improvement in the U.S. broadband business, but we prefer to stay cautious for now. Most important, we are discussing multiple new and very interesting opportunities that could make a significant change to the broadband business next year. They cover different types of devices for the U.S. market and some of them could be launched on multiple operators' networks. Also, we are looking at some potentially large opportunities for enterprise networks and some applications for private networks such as government or campus settings. We are very well positioned to serve the CBRS ecosystem, and we have already been chosen by a few players, and we are in active discussions or trials with others. ..
In another important initiative, we have been working on expanding our go-to-market capabilities via new strategic relationships that extend our reach into markets beyond the traditional telco or regions where a strong local presence is required like China, for example. .. We've signed an agreement for the initial business phase with one go-to-market partner, and we will consider a broader, more strategic relationship in a second phase if things go well. We also are engaged in discussions with two other potential partners and it appears that we could reach agreements with both by the end of the third quarter. These opportunities would lend themselves to strategic components, and are not mutually exclusive. The funding aspect of these strategic relationships will also be our avenue for handling any potential short-term capital needs if they should arise. So bringing one or more of these opportunities to conclusion is an area of focus for us...
Some of the new projects involve different applications on a scale not represented by the design wins that are set to launch later this year, ... Examples would include things like pallet tracking, connected speakers, set-top boxes, health-monitoring equipment, gaming devices, smart watches and even feature phones, ...
We continue expect non-IFRS operating expenses in 2018 to average about $11.5 million per quarter, reflecting the impact of the stronger euro versus the dollar as well as some headcount increases, primarily in engineering compared to last year... reflecting improvement in accounts receivable collections as accounts receivable declined by more than $3 million, partially offset by a $2 million reduction in accounts payable...
Question-and-Answer Session...
Quinn Bolton Hi, guys. Congratulations on the nice results and good to see the beginning of the hockey stick here in the IoT business.
And then we have partner as well for China that we close this quarter and we are now putting some energy even on China in the IoT through this partner...
On the question about the broadband, the split between U.S. and emerging, technically it should - we should have in principle broadband - the emerging bigger than the broadband than the U.S. in general, I will say, maybe 60% emerging, 40% U.S....
Now China, I'm excluding explicitly this ... But we didn't give up on this. As I said previously, where we're working with a close partner to build a go-to-market strategy there that can work in China despite all the challenges that you can face there. And as long as this is big, it's not negligible. And I hope between now and maybe mid-2019 to see some component of our business as well in China through this kind of partnership. But maybe revenue-wise, because this will be maybe some model that we could adopt, not giving us I will say the full percentage of the revenue, but just only a portion of it, because we're leaving a portion to our go-to-market partner. But still on the profit basis, I believe it should be significant for the company as well. |
