QuickLogic Corporation (QUIK) Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to QuickLogic Corporation's Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Alison Ziegler of Darrow Associates. Ms. Ziegler, you may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to all of you for joining us. Our speakers today are Brian Faith, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Elias Nader, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, some of the comments QuickLogic makes today are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, statements regarding our future profitability, revenue growth and cash flows, expectations regarding our future business and statements regarding the timing, milestones and payments related to our government contracts, statements regarding expected contracts and the expected magnitude of such contracts and statements regarding expected adoption rates and/or orders by our customers. Actual results may differ due to a variety of factors, including: delays in the market acceptance of the company's new products; the ability to convert design opportunities into customer revenue; our ability to replace revenue from end-of-life products; the level and timing of customer design activity; the market acceptance of our customers' products; the risk that new orders may not result in future revenue; our ability to introduce and produce new products based on advanced wafer technology on a timely basis; our ability to adequately market the low power, competitive pricing and short time-to-market of our new products; intense competition by competitors, our ability to hire and retain qualified personnel; changes in product demand or supply; general economic conditions; political events, international trade disputes, natural disasters and other business interruptions that could disrupt supply or delivery of, or demand for, the company's products; and changes in tax rates and exposure to additional tax liabilities. For more detailed discussions on the risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could result in these differences, please refer to the risk factors discussed in QuickLogic's most recently filed periodic reports with the SEC. QuickLogic assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information which speak as of the respective dates of any new information or future events. In today's call, we will be reporting non-GAAP financial measures. You may refer to the earnings release we issued today for a detailed reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP results and other financial statements. We have also posted an updated financial table on our IR webpage that provides current and historical non-GAAP data. Please note, QuickLogic uses its website, the company blog, corporate Twitter account, Facebook page and LinkedIn page as channels of distribution of information about its business. Such information may be deemed material information and QuickLogic may use these channels to comply with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. A copy of the prepared remarks made on today's call will be posted on QuickLogic's IR webpage shortly after the conclusion of today's earnings call. I'd like to turn the call over to Brian. Go ahead.

Thank you, Alison. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining our second quarter 2026 conference call. Since our last conference call, we have made significant progress towards achieving our 2026 goals and have narrowed our full year growth outlook to a range of 70% to 80%. With this anticipated growth, we are continuing to model non-GAAP profitability and cash flow positive operations for the second half of 2026. In addition to contributions from Storefront and RadPro, we anticipate our second half growth will be driven in part by new customers and new market sectors, including automotive, robotics and commercial satellite applications. We also believe there is good potential to sign an eFPGA IP architectural license late this year. The short story is, 2026 is on target to be a very successful year for QuickLogic and our accomplishments are positioning us well to continue our growth and market penetration trends in 2027 and beyond. Before I go into what has elevated our confidence in full year 2026 revenue growth, let's take a moment to touch on what weighed on Q2 and why we will guide for flat revenue in Q3. We anticipated finalizing a 7-figure extension of an existing customer contract in late Q2. The revenue for this extension was forecasted to be recognized in Q2 and Q3. This contract extension has been delayed as the customer is reevaluating what functions it wants to put in embedded FPGA versus the functions that will be locked down in the fixed portion of its ASIC prior to finalizing the design. This delay is the sole reason why Q2 revenue was at the low end of our guidance range and the primary reason why we will forecast flat Q3 revenue. We remain confident in securing this contract extension, but this delay removes it from our 2026 forecast. In addition to this delayed contract extension, we are removing a commercial ASIC design targeting Intel 18A from our second half 2026 forecast. Several uncertainties involving this design arose recently and in the best-case scenario, the eFPGA hard IP contract for this ASIC will be a 2027 opportunity. While these 2 changes lead us to forecast flat revenue for Q3, the value of contracts and orders that we have on the books and the progress we are realizing in other areas gives us the confidence to raise the low end of our full year outlook. At the foundation of our anticipated Q4 growth is our ongoing contract with the U.S. government, which was increased last year to a total ceiling value of $89 million. We are forecasting revenue recognition from this contract will contribute a significant percentage of total Q4 revenue. In addition to this, we have a sound base of mature product business, continued demand for RadPro Dev Kits and ongoing IP contracts that are already on the books scheduled for Q4. Since our last conference call, we have continued to receive and deliver orders for our RadPro Dev Kit. We expect this trend to continue and with a number of evaluations already underway, we are very optimistic that we'll see initial Storefront device demand in 2027. We are continuing our work on the contracts targeting GlobalFoundries 12LP process that we discussed in our last conference call. This includes the receipt of discrete FPGA test chips that we taped out for the contract with a $2.7 million ceiling value that we announced May 13th. Within the scope of this contract, QuickLogic will be provided test chips that we will characterize and include in a new 12LP eval kit that is scheduled to release in Q4. The eval kit will be compatible with common third-party development environments used by both DIB and commercial customers. This enables customers to accelerate evaluations of discrete and chiplet designs that we can provide as Storefront solutions. Beyond these scheduled contributions is an anticipated extension of our $1 million LUT contract to target Intel 18A-P and pending contracts with new customers I mentioned earlier. The majority of our development and customer design activity in Intel 18A has shifted to Intel 18A-P. Intel 18A-P is capable of delivering over 9% higher performance at isotropic power or more than 18% lower power at isotropic performance. Given the fact we have been able to leverage the development work we completed for Intel 18A, the time and cost to develop eFPGA hard IP for Intel 18A-P will be de minimis. As a matter of fact, we anticipate receiving a follow-on contract from the customer that funded our 1 million LUT developments in Intel 18A for an Intel 18A-P implementation that we are targeting for Q4 delivery. We will continue working with some customers on Intel 18A designs, but we expect most will transition to Intel 18A-P and that it will also be the focus for new design activity. We believe the release of Intel 18A-P will likely accelerate design activity and with that opportunities for our eFPGA hard IP. In addition to the follow-on 1 million LUT contract, we are working closely with several new customers on ASIC designs that target the incorporation of our eFPGA hard IP. Two of these potential contracts are in late-stage negotiations. The first is a design targeting automotive, industrial automation and robotic applications. The second is an international customer that is developing an ASIC for a LEO satellite application. We are also working closely with a new customer that has interest in an eFPGA architectural license. Earlier this year, we were awarded a 5-figure feasibility study contract to evaluate our eFPGA IP for a particular use case. We have recently completed the contract and the customer is now investigating if a custom implementation of our IP targeting its proprietary process will meet its PPA requirements. The initial results look promising and if successful, this will lead to an eFPGA IP architectural license late this year. As most of you are aware, QuickLogic's initial FPGA devices leveraged one-time-programmable anti-fuse technology. This is the highly reliable technology used and mature products we have been supplying to defense and aerospace contractors for decades. Beyond the ongoing demand for our mature products, which have recently been designed into new programs, certain DIBs have shown an interest in our existing devices in smaller packages than we currently offer. One in particular has contracted with us to fund and qualify this smaller package for new designs. Our evaluation of this opportunity suggests it could become a new multi-million-dollar market for QuickLogic that only requires a minimal ongoing operational investment. We are working closely with this DIB and are in discussions with other DIBs and aerospace companies to fully leverage this opportunity. In 2025, we launched our digital proof of concept strategy as a very cost-effective way for both QuickLogic and prospective chiplet customers to execute evaluations. This strategy has led to more than 5 active proposals that include chiplets targeting GlobalFoundries 12LP, Intel 18A, and Intel 18A-P fabrication processes. The 12LP eval kit I mentioned earlier will enhance these efforts by enabling customers to rapidly move beyond software simulations to real hardware evaluations. I believe these and other proposals on the horizon will lead to meaningful chiplet revenue beginning in 2027. With that, I will turn the call over to Elias for his presentation of financial data.

Good afternoon, everyone. Total second quarter revenue was $5.5 million. This was 48.7% from Q2 2025 and up 8.5% from Q1 2026. Due solely to delay in the extension of an existing contract that Brian previously discussed, this was below the midpoint of our guidance. New product revenue in Q2 was $4.7 million and mature product revenue was $0.8 million. New product revenue was up 59.7% from Q2 2025 and up 8.6% compared to Q1 2026. Mature product revenue was up 6.9% compared to Q2 2025 and up 8.8% from Q1 2026. Non-GAAP gross margin in Q2 was 46.8%. This was above the midpoint of a 42% outlook and a significant increase over a reported 31% in Q2 2025 and 39.6% in Q1 2026. Non-GAAP operating expenses in Q2 were approximately $3.5 million. Due to the allocations of R&D costs between OPEX and COGS and new hires, this was slightly above a $3.3 million outlook. This compares to $2.5 million in Q2 2025 and $3.2 million in Q1 2026. Q2 2026 non-GAAP net loss was $1.1 million, a loss of $0.06 per share. This compares to a non-GAAP net loss of $1.5 million or loss of $0.09 per share in Q2 2025 and a non-GAAP net loss of $1.3 million or loss of $0.08 per share in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. The difference between our GAAP and non-GAAP results is primarily related to non-cash stock-based compensation expenses, restructuring charges and the removal of a significant non-recurring gain. Stock-based compensation for Q2 was $753,000 compared to outlook of $900,000. Stock-based compensation was $843,000 in Q2 2025 and $858,000 in Q1 2026. Impairment charges were $0 in Q2 2026 compared to $300,000 in Q2 2025 and $0 in Q1 2026. Restructuring costs were $16,000 in Q2 2026 compared to $21,000 in Q2 2025 and $11,000 in Q1 2026. We also removed a non-recurring gain of $950,000 that was included in our GAAP results in Q2 2026. There were no non-recurring gains in Q2 2025 or Q1 2026. For the second quarter, 2 customers accounted for 10% or more of total revenue. At the close of Q2, excluding a $5 million drawdown from our line of credit, net cash was $13.5 million. This compares favorably with a projection of slightly less than $12 million and with the $3.8 million in net cash reported at the close of Q4 2025. This increase of $9.7 million in net cash through the first half of fiscal 2026 is inclusive of $9.8 million raised with our ATM prior to our last conference call. Now moving to our guidance and outlook for our third fiscal quarter, which will end on September 27, 2026. Based on backlog and customer forecast, our total revenue guidance for Q3 is $5.5 million plus or minus 10%. We expect total revenue to be comprised of $4.7 million in new product revenue and $0.8 million in mature product revenue. Earlier this year, we anticipated an increase in second half mature revenue. However, based on current forecasts, we are now estimating full year 2026 mature revenue will be flat with 2025 at approximately $3.3 million. Based on the anticipated Q3 revenue mix, non-GAAP gross margin for the third quarter is expected to be approximately 47% plus or minus 5%. For the full year, we are modeling a non-GAAP gross profit margin of approximately 51%. Please note that given the nature of the industry, we may occasionally need to classify certain expenses to COGS versus OPEX or capitalize certain costs. These classifications are related to labor and tooling for IP contracts. This may cause variability in our quarterly gross margins and operating expenses that will usually balance out on the operating line. With that in mind, our Q3 non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $3.6 million plus or minus 5%. Due to the variabilities in the allocations of R&D costs between OPEX and COGS and new hires, we are raising our full year outlook for non-GAAP OPEX to a range of $13.7 million to $13.9 million. The forecasted growth of approximately 17% in non-GAAP OPEX over 2025 as compared to our outlook for 70% to 80% revenue growth in 2026 illustrates the strong inherent leverage of our business model. After interest and other income, we're forecasting a Q3 net loss of about $900,000 or loss of approximately $0.05 per share. Based on our current outlook, we still anticipate non-GAAP profitability for the second half of 2026. The main difference between our GAAP and non-GAAP results is related to non-cash stock-based compensation expenses. In Q3, we expect this compensation will be approximately $900,000. This compares to $828,000 in Q3 2025 and $753,000 in Q2 2026. As a reminder, there will be movement in the stock-based compensation during the year, and it may vary quarter to quarter based on the timing of grants. We anticipate Q3 cash use of approximately $400,000. With this, we expect to close Q3 with a net cash balance that is slightly over $13 million. Please note that the cash use could vary based on the timing of certain payments and receipts from contracts during the quarter. Based on our current outlook, we anticipate positive cash flow during the second half of 2026. With that, thank you for your time. I will now turn the call over to Brian for his closing comments.

Thank you, Elias. 2026 is shaping up to be a very good year for QuickLogic. Based on contracts and orders we have on the books and the status of our negotiations on a couple of new contracts, we have narrowed our full year growth outlook to 70% to 80%. With this, we are modeling non-GAAP profitability and cash flow positive operations for the second half of 2026. As important as this is, I want to emphasize in parallel we have laid the groundwork for continued growth and profitability in 2027 and beyond. Earlier this year, we forecasted 3 completed tape-outs in 2026. The first was completed and we are scheduled to receive an allotment of test chips that we will incorporate in a 12LP eval kit. This will help our customers accelerate evaluations and we believe will lead to new designs that we can Storefront as either discrete devices or chiplets. In addition to this, we have a number of other chiplet opportunities in the works that we believe will lead to new contracts and Storefront orders beginning in late 2027. We have 2 more tape-outs scheduled for late 2026. In one case, we will have access to enough devices to support initial production orders that we can supply through our Storefront initiative beginning in 2027. We are continuing to support demand for our RadPro eval kit and anticipate new orders through the second half of 2026. We are optimistic this will lead to initial Storefront orders beginning in 2027. We are also optimistic that we will receive and secure a contract for our second-ever eFPGA IP architectural license in 2026, and will work closely with the end customer as it develops a device targeting its proprietary fabrication process in 2027. We have recently won 2 new designs for our existing mature products and have been awarded a contract to qualify a new small package option. We believe this will open a multi-million-dollar opportunity to expand into new designs beginning in 2027. With these many accomplishments, I am hopeful you can share my pride in the extraordinary execution by the QuickLogic team and my high level of optimism in our future growth. Thank you and we'll now open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Neil Young with Needham & Company.

So just looking at the rest of the year, it looks like 4Q is now carrying much of sort of the full year growth story. I guess just doubling down on that, sort of what's your confidence level on timing risk? Is any of that revenue recognition contingent on milestones or deliverables that could possibly flip past 4Q into '27? Then I have one more.

That's a great question. We meet regularly between our business and engineering teams to make sure that the technical resources are available and prioritizing the work that is related to revenue recognition. So we look at these contracts that I was alluding to in the call and when we would need to make delivery of these items, and we are scheduling work now so that we can hit those milestones for rev rec. And so now it's a matter of closing on a couple of these contracts in order to make that happen. That's more on the business side to close the contract versus the engineering side and the deliverables. To be clear, we've lined up the engineering team and in some cases they're already starting work on these items so that we can deliver and meet the revenue recognition expectations for the numbers that we just talked about.

Okay. And then my other question, if I heard you right, you were talking about most customers are planning to transition from Intel 18A to 18A-P and the porting costs will be de minimis given existing dev work. So I guess practically, does that mean any revenue from active Intel 18A engagements could get delayed while customers are waiting to redesign for 18A-P? Or does the existing 18A work carry forward unaffected? Anything you can offer there?

Yes, so we have multiple 18A opportunities that we've been discussing on these calls. And we actually have a revenue stream from one of the customers that's related to the 1 million LUT IP contract. And we are expecting, as I said on the call, that to transition to A-P. There's a couple other proposals that we have out that would still allow us to leverage the work that we've done on our 18A-P core, but they could also kick over to 18A-P. And once we've done the port the first time, doing subsequent licenses or derivative licenses off that very first port to other customers is very cost and time effective for us, meaning that we could hit the revenue targets if we get new contracts on 18A-P or customers that are moving all to 18A-P. I think we've got good coverage. It shows I think the operating leverage we have with our model and the fact that we have the automation with Australis in order to deliver for these customers in a timely fashion. I do think there's a lot of investment that's happened in the ecosystem in general around Intel 18A, not P. And some customers will, I think, make use of that, perhaps, if they're far down the path on a chip design before they kick over. Because you can imagine that ecosystem in general, everybody has to have certain things done on 18A-P or chip designs to move that direction. I'm talking about all the different IPs that you might be integrating into that. So I think, like I said, it'll be a gradual transition for some as the ecosystem matures. In some cases, if it's high digital content, we can move a lot faster like we are with our hard porting.

Our next question is from Tyler Burmeister with Lake Street Capital Markets.

Good quarter, and congrats on the narrowed full year guidance there. I guess maybe first, I'll go to the dev kit customers. Is there any way to quantify, I guess, how many of those you think -- I guess I think your comment was moved to Storefront revenue next year. I guess any way to quantify that, I think about the number there would be great.

These are related to programs I'm not really allowed to talk about. But what I can say is the -- I think that people that would have a need for a strategic rad-hard FPGA are ones that we're engaged with. In some cases they already have dev kits. And I do believe that we will have Storefront revenue next year related to the valuations that are going on, on those dev kits. As far as like how many or what percent, I won't go into that. But I have high confidence that they will lead to Storefront sales next year.

Understood. Understood. All right. Sorry to keep asking questions about programs like this. Maybe another way. You previously bracketed the strategic rad-hard opportunity in total, I think, at 10 to 20 sockets across multiple programs. I'm wondering if as you've got these dev kits now in the customers' hands, you've had continued conversations with those customers, if you've maybe seen any change to that opportunity set? If that opportunity set's got larger, if these conversations maybe affirm that opportunity set up. I guess any color that you can give on maybe that would be interesting.

I guess the way I'd say it is that we are engaged with more groups now than we were the last time we spoke on our Q1 call. So the opportunity set has expanded, which is a good thing. I think that's natural. As you start having real silicon and real dev kits, you start getting new opportunities that maybe were from people that were in a wait-and-see mode. And once they see real silicon, they start to move faster. It's encouraging that it has expanded. That's why we inserted that comment in the script today that we expect to see more dev kits going out even from now until the end of the year to support additional evaluations. I wish I could give more color on these things, but hopefully you understand the sensitive spot I'm in with respect to nondisclosure agreements for these types of programs in particular.

No, completely understand. Sorry to put you on the spot like that, but appreciate the color.

Thanks, Tyler.

Our next question is from Gus Richard, Northland Capital Markets.

Just on the rad-hard contract, just could you update us on how much you have left and when do you expect the next tranche?

So as far as how much we have left, we haven't disclosed the details of that. But I'll recap for everybody. We are currently operating and executing on the $13 million tranche. We announced that in mid-December of last year. And we have said on the call that, that would be -- we're forecasting it would be fully recognized during this fiscal year 2026. We also said on the call that we expect Q4 to be a big contributor to the revenue growth and within Q4, the government contract would be a big contributor to that. So we are forecasting that we will have another tranche in place before the end of the year which would be supporting that. I guess like -- Gus, let me just add one more thing to that question. I think that everybody knows that the U.S. government is a large customer for QuickLogic. So you could always look in the Q and see what percentage -- what 10% customers we have and the percentages of those and you could probably derive it from that...

Got it. And then on the eFPGA, I think it sounds like one contract was delayed. They're not sure what they want hard and what they want to be gate array. Do you have any sense on how much revenue you expect over the next couple of quarters from eFPGA licenses?