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Transcript Summary

NVE Corporation reported strong results for Q4 fiscal 2026, with net income rising 27% to $4.9 million, driven by a 34% increase in non-defense product sales. This growth successfully mitigated a 79% decline in volatile defense-related revenue. For the full fiscal year, revenue reached $26.3 million. A major milestone was the completion of a two-year manufacturing expansion, which doubled capacity and introduced advanced equipment for atomic-layer precision in spintronic material deposition. This expansion supports NVE’s focus on miniaturized sensors for medical devices, surgical robotics, and AIoT applications. Financially, the company maintained a high 62% operating margin and utilized advanced manufacturing tax credits to reduce its effective tax rate to 5% for the quarter. The $1.00 per share dividend remains well-covered by $16.7 million in annual operating cash flow. Management also introduced a new distributor, Semitech, to target high-volume electronics manufacturing. During the Q&A, executives highlighted the power efficiency of their isolators for AI data centers and their commitment to long-term product support compared to competitors. For fiscal 2027, NVE anticipates a recovery in defense sales and significantly lower capital expenditures following the expansion's completion.

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NVE Corporation: A Spintronics Cash Cow with a Fortress Balance Sheet

Full Earnings Call Transcript — Q4 • 2026-05-06

Daniel Baker: Good afternoon, and welcome to the NVE Corporation conference call for the quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2026. I'm Dan Baker, NVE's President and CEO. I'm joined by Daniel Nelson, our Principal Financial Officer; and Pete Eames, Vice President of Advanced Technology. This call is being webcast live by YouTube and Google Meet and being recorded. A replay will be available through our website, nve.com, and our YouTube channel, youtube.com/nvecorporation. [Operator Instructions] After my opening comments, Daniel Nelson will present our financial results. Pete will cover new products and R&D. I'll cover sales and marketing, and then we'll open the call to questions. Note that we're using a new call-in service this quarter with a different phone number. The call-in number and PIN are in our press release and in the Investor Events section of our website. We issued our press release with summary financial results and filed our annual report on Form 10-K in the past hour, following the close of market. The press release has financial results for the quarter in addition to the fiscal year. Links to the press release and 10-K are available through our website, the SEC's website and X, formerly known as Twitter. Also, this afternoon, we posted a new Sustainability Report on our website. The new report replaces and supersedes our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, or TCFD report. The new report covers climate, employees and governance. And we also highlight the positive impact of our products on people and the environment. Please refer to the safe harbor statement on your screen. Comments we may make that relate to future plans, events, financial results or performance are forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including, among others, such factors as our reliance on several large customers for a significant percentage of revenue, uncertainties related to the economic environments in the industries we serve, uncertainties related to future sales and revenue as well as the risk factors listed from time to time in our filings with the SEC, including our just filed annual report on Form 10-K. Actual results could differ materially from the information provided, and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements we may make. We're pleased to report a 27% increase in net income for the quarter driven by a 34% increase in our core nondefense sales, which more than offset a decrease in defense sales. Daniel Nelson will cover details of the financials. Daniel?
Daniel Nelson: Thanks, Dan. Fourth quarter total revenue increased 5% year-over-year to $7.65 million. The increase was due to a 6% increase in product sales, partially offset by a 19% decrease in contract R&D revenue. The increase in product sales was due to a 34% increase in nondefense product sales, as Dan Baker noted, partially offset by a 79% year-over-year decrease in defense sales, which can be volatile because of defense procurement cycles. Sales increased across most of our nondefense product lines and channels. Total revenue increased 23% from the prior quarter. We see a continued bright outlook for product sales with favorable semiconductor industry conditions in our new products. We have ample inventories to support increased demand. The defense business has been steadily recovering over the past year, and we currently expect defense sales to increase significantly this fiscal year, the year ending March 31, 2027. Contract R&D is primarily defense and government related, and those revenues can also be uneven, but we currently expect contract R&D to increase this fiscal year. Gross margin for the quarter was 78% of revenue compared to 79% in the prior year quarter. Total operating expenses decreased 19% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, due to a 26% decrease in R&D expense and a 5% decrease in SG&A. The decrease in R&D was due to completion of some of our wafer-level chip-scale packaging activities and reassignment of some R&D resources to manufacturing. The decrease in SG&A was primarily due to the timing of selling and marketing activities and reassignment of some SG&A resources to manufacturing and new product development. Interest income in the quarter decreased 6% due to a decrease in our marketable securities portfolio as proceeds from bond maturities help us pay generous dividends. Our effective tax rate, which is the provision for income taxes as a percentage of income before taxes, decreased to 5% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to 18% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. The decrease was primarily due to advanced manufacturing investment tax credit on equipment we put into service in the past quarter. Net income for the quarter increased 27% to $4.9 million or $1.02 per diluted share from $3.89 million or $0.80 per diluted share. The increase was primarily due to increased revenue, decreased operating expenses and a decrease in our effective tax rate. This was our highest earnings since the chip semiconductor shortages 3 years ago. Earnings more than cover our $1 per share dividend for the past quarter. Our profitability metrics for the quarter were strong. Operating margin was 62%, pretax margin was 68% and net margin was 64%. For the fiscal year, total revenue increased 2% to $26.3 million from $25.9 million as revenue increases in the past 2 quarters more than offset decreases in the first 2 quarters. The increase in product sales was due to a 21% increase in nondefense product sales, partially offset by a 67% decrease in defense sales, which can be volatile because of defense procurement cycles. Our full year tax rate decreased to 15% for fiscal 2026 compared to 16% for fiscal 2025. The decrease was primarily due to an increase in advanced manufacturing investment tax credits, partially offset by a decrease in foreign derived intangible income deductions. The fiscal 2026 provision for income taxes included $1.07 million in advanced manufacturing investment tax credits. We expect such credits to decrease significantly in fiscal 2027 since we expect manufacturing equipment purchases to decrease significantly with the completion of our expansion. Prior year unamortized R&D expenses write-off allowed under the new tax law reduced our fiscal 2026 quarterly estimated tax payments by $1.4 million. We also expect a $1.3 million Dallas federal tax refund as a result of research and development and advanced manufacturing investment tax credits claimed in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Net income for the year increased to $3.14 per diluted share from $3.11 per diluted share. The increase was primarily due to increased revenue, decreased operating expenses and a decrease in our effective tax rate, partially offset by decreased gross margin and decreased other income. For the year, operating margin was 60%, pretax margin was 68% and net margin was 58%. Cash flow from operations was $16.7 million in the fiscal year, an increase of 16% from the prior year. Cash flow was $1.5 million more than net income, showing the high quality of our earnings. Highlighting 2 cash flow items. Inventories decreased by 5% due to increased product sales. Raw materials and WIP inventory decreased, but finished goods inventory increased. New equipment helped us convert raw materials and WIP efficiently. We've increased finished goods inventory to support increased product demand. Fixed asset purchases were $2.19 million for the fiscal year, which is unusually large for us. We substantially completed spending on our 2-year multimillion dollar expansion. We put the last major equipment cluster for that expansion into service in the past quarter as planned. Pete Eames will discuss the new equipment. We expect fixed asset purchases to decrease significantly in fiscal 2027 with the completion of our expansion. Now I'll turn the call over to Pete Eames, our Vice President of Advanced Technology, to discuss the new equipment and to cover new products and R&D. Pete?
Peter Eames: Thanks, Daniel. I'll cover new equipment and R&D. We completed a significant expansion in the past quarter. New equipment in the past year has increased our capacity, increased our capabilities and allowed us to do smaller and more precise wafer-level chip-scale package parts in-house. The new equipment allows extremely precise control of spintronic materials deposition to well within one atomic layer. This capability translates into more precise spintronic devices and expands our capacity with existing products. As Daniel said, we placed the new equipment into service in the past quarter as planned. It's building products, and we're confident the new equipment will pay back with more revenue. In the past quarter, the new equipment helped us fill orders for new high-performance TMR sensors. Our R&D strategy is to transition the world's best technology into the world's best products for high-value markets such as medical devices, electric and autonomous vehicles, advanced humanoid robotics and highly automated fourth wave factories using the Artificial Intelligence of Things. We have a continuous flow of new products as part of that strategy. In the past quarter, we announced a new wafer-level chip-scale sensor for medical and industrial applications. The new part is 0.65 millimeters on the side. And as you can see in the slide, the sensor is about 1/3 the area of the conventionally packaged version, which allows smaller medical devices and especially precise robotics. In addition to the new sensor launches in the past fiscal year, we've also invested in advanced R&D initiatives with the potential to drive future growth, including next-generation MRAM for anti-tamper applications, next-generation sensors for hearing aids and medical devices and extremely sensitive TMR sensors. Now I'll turn it back over to Dan Baker.
Daniel Baker: Thanks, Pete. I'll cover sales and marketing. In sales, last week, we announced a new distributor for our isolator products, Semitech Incorporated. They specialize in supporting electronics contract manufacturers, which is a good market for us. In the past quarter, we exhibited at Medical Design and Manufacturing West in Anaheim, California, for the first time. It's one of the largest and most influential business-to-business medical device and advanced manufacturing trade shows in North America with attendees from all over the world. Medical devices are an important market for us. Our product advantages for medical devices include small size, low power and superb reliability. At the show, we highlighted wafer-level chip-scale parts for miniaturization of implantable medical devices and surgical robots, MRI-safe and MRI-tolerant sensors for medical devices, high-sensitivity sensors for medical device navigation and our best-in-class electrical isolators to ensure the safety of medical instruments. A video of several new demos is on our website and our YouTube channel. The show generated some good leads, and we believe our investment in shows will pay off in future sales. We're exhibiting at 2 trade shows focused on sensors this quarter. Today and tomorrow, we're at Sensors Converge in Silicon Valley, which is North America's largest event of its type, where we're focused on robotics and the Artificial Intelligence of Things, or AIoT. We have a strong benefit proposition for those markets, including small size for precise motion and smart sensor edge computing for easy integration with AI. Next month, we'll exhibit at Sensor+Test in Germany, which is billed as the leading international trade fair for sensors, measuring and testing technology. In addition to robotics and AIoT, the German show is a chance for us to highlight our power conversion products for cars and charging stations. In addition to trade shows under our own banner, some of our distributor partners will be at those and other trade shows for the spring trade show season. Now we'd like to open the call for questions. We switched to Google Meet for questions since Amazon Chime has been discontinued. The instructions have changed slightly. [Operator Instructions]
Jeffrey Bernstein: It's Jeff Bernstein from Silverberg Bernstein Capital. Nice to see the revenue growth this quarter. Congratulations on that. I had a couple of questions. First, the call quality at first wasn't great. And I just want to make sure I got the numbers right on the increase in nondefense sales and the decrease in defense sales in the quarter?
Daniel Baker: Daniel, do you have those?
Daniel Nelson: Yes, the decrease in defense sales was 67% as per our prepared remarks, and the increase in product sales was 21%.
Jeffrey Bernstein: Okay. That's great. And then, Dan, I had a question. You talked about getting some new distribution in isolators. And I was wondering, your isolators work very differently than the photonic isolators that other people use. And I would assume that they have a better mean time between failure, but also use less power and dissipate less heat, which are becoming very important in data centers. How applicable are they for the kind of power regimes that they're moving into in the new AI data centers? And what do you think the power and heat dissipation savings would be from using your isolators?
Peter Eames: Jeff, this is Pete Eames. I can try to answer this question for you. Typically, our power conversion products operate at higher frequency than our competitors. And this higher frequency produces an improved efficiency. As you hinted, overall efficiency is very important, but it tends to be a small percentage, maybe a few percent. But again, this adds up to be a very important benefit. Data centers use a lot of power, and the small efficiency improvements can make a big difference.
Jeffrey Bernstein: Is Semi the kind of guy who is in a position to get you into some rack designs and things of that nature that go into the AI infrastructure?
Daniel Baker: You mean the new distributor, Jeff?
Jeffrey Bernstein: Yes.
Daniel Baker: Yes, they are. They service EMSs, electronic manufacturing services. And so that's a lot of high-volume manufacturing for new designs. So that's one of the reasons why we thought it was a very good fit.
Jeffrey Bernstein: That's great. And then you guys put out some marketing materials during the quarter which talked about some end-of-lifing of parts by Texas Instruments and ADI. And I just want to understand what that was all about?
Daniel Baker: Well, unlike conventional semiconductor manufacturers, we're committed to long-term support of our customers and our products. So for us, it isn't just a financial decision where we would haul a product if it doesn't have enough volume. We believe that our -- if our customers design our parts in, that -- they have an expectation that we're going to be in it with them for the long haul. So when some of the conventional semiconductor manufacturers discontinue parts, in many cases, we can offer alternatives. So that was -- you're probably referring to one of our customer newsletters where we referred to some of those parts, some of those packages that were being discontinued by conventional semiconductor manufacturers where we could offer a better part, better stability and better supply [Technical Difficulty].
Ittai Eden: Can you hear me?
Daniel Baker: Yes.
Ittai Eden: This is Ittai Eden from Principal. Congrats on the quarter. I'm curious if we should be expecting next year given the capacity effectively doubled as of the end of this quarter, whether we should be expecting revenue to more or less double as well?
Daniel Baker: Yes. Good question, Ittai. Our goal is to grow. We don't give -- as you know, we don't give specific guidance, but we're optimistic. The global semiconductor market is improving. We have ample inventories. We have exciting new products. And as you mentioned, we have quite a bit more capacity. So we see a bright future.
Ittai Eden: That's helpful. And if I heard it correctly, the data center opportunity, while, call it, zero today is somewhat building. Can you describe or put any numbers to what you see the opportunity as a percent of the business or when or how you see it shaping up over time? That would be helpful.
Peter Eames: Yes, I can jump in on this one, Ittai. Yes, it's difficult to quantify something like this. So we don't sell directly to data centers. We sell to subassembly manufacturers who build the systems in data centers. So it's difficult to directly connect the data center growth to isolator volumes.
Ittai Eden: Got it. And then maybe if you can discuss any anecdotal wins or examples of maybe pipeline or backlog, specifically in robotics and how that's trended, that would also be great.
Daniel Baker: Well, we had a number of customers that are in robotics and other emerging markets or high-growth markets such as energy conversion. So some of the places where our sensors get used in robotics is on the, what's called the end effectors which are the hands or fingers of the robot, if you will, because we offer the smallest sensors available and much more precision. So for delicate operations, those are the sorts of things where our sensors shine. Those would be delicate operations for end effectors and also things like surgical medical robots that typically work on much smaller scales than other types of robots. [Operator Instructions] Any other questions? Well, if there are no other questions, we were pleased to report a 27% increase in earnings for the quarter, driven by a 34% increase in nondefense product sales as industry conditions improve and new products gain traction. We also completed a major expansion and deployed new equipment. We look forward to speaking with you again in July for our first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call. A replay of this call will be available on the Investor Events page of our website at nve.com and on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/nvecorporation.