Corsair Gaming, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRSR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Corsair Gaming, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRSR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 7, 2024

Corsair Gaming, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.12109 EPS, expectations were $0.13. Corsair Gaming, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Corsair Gaming’s First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded, and your participation implies consent to such recording. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Ronald van Veen, Corsair’s Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you. Sir, please begin.

Ronald van Veen: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Corsair’s financial results conference call for the first quarter ended March 31, 2024. On the call today, we have Corsair CEO, Andy Paul and CFO, Michael Potter. Andy will review highlights from the quarter and Michael will then review the financials and our outlook. We will then have time for any questions. Before we begin, allow me to provide a disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. This call, including the Q&A portion of the call may include forward-looking statements related to the expected future results of our Company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties.

The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to are described in the earnings release and other SEC filings. Today’s remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Additional information, including reconciliation between non-GAAP financial information to the GAAP financial information is provided in the press release we issued after the market closed today. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Andy.

Andy Paul: Thank you, Ronald, and welcome, everyone to our Q1 earnings call. 2024 is starting out as expected with new products driving a rebound in peripherals growth. Our Gaming and Creator Peripherals segment has continued its impressive performance, achieving 20% year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter of 2024 after 16% year-over-year revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2023. We are very pleased that growth is coming from all product lines. This was across Elgato with its popular Stream Deck products, SCUF Gaming with the successful recent launch of PC controllers, and Corsair peripherals with several new keyboards, headsets and mice. We were particularly pleased to see the gross margin lift to 40% with these new product launches.

We fully expect to build on this momentum over the coming quarters with an exciting lineup of planned product launches, some of which we will discuss on the call today. Demand was more subdued in the component market as is normal in this stage of the GPU cycle. In the short-term, the self-built PC market is stable with the next surge expected in late 2024 and 2025, when next-gen GPUs and CPUs are launched. We are also already seeing some benefit in the pricing of our most popular DRAM modules as gamers are using higher DRAM capacity for faster gameplay. Give you a sense of how big the memory opportunity is, it is estimated that 95% of steam gamers have less than 16-gig of memory in their systems. That represents a huge opportunity for us. We continue to have high market share in the component space, which we are focused on further growing, led by a strong planned product launch schedule, including several recent launches with our 2500 & 6500 Series Cases, iCUE Link RX Series Fans, and CORSAIR ONE platform upgrade.

As we look forward, 2024 will be an exciting year of innovation with an impressive slate of new Corsair products, as we broaden our category reach. We’ve done a lot of work as part of our product selection and development. As a result, we expect both our upcoming mobile gaming controller and our upcoming SIM racing product line will be two standout launches for us. Corsair Racing is set to launch at Computex in June 2024. We have developed a total experience engineered to offer a fully immersive SIM racing experience. This is a high growth category, especially as Formula One continues to gain interest in the U.S. Corsair will have a unique advantage in this market because of our ability to produce all the relevant components for a SIM racing setup combining our new racing components with our gaming PCs, curved monitors, and PC peripherals.

We are also excited for the upcoming launch of our SCUF mobile gaming controller. This is one of the market’s fastest growing areas and represents a very large global opportunity for us, which we expect will become another important long-term growth driver. And we are very encouraged with our recent launch of the new Elgato Neo product family, which is targeting a different and more casual user base than our traditional prosumer Elgato customers. The response has been very positive and we expect sales to ramp through 2024 and over the coming years. This is one of the largest launches in Elgato’s history. By combining high-end performance with plug-and-play simplicity, we make live video calls and livestreams easier and more professional looking.

This is another large segment of the market that we expect to be additive to our growth as we expand our market share. Our launch included the Wave Neo microphone, Facecam, Key Light, capture card and Stream Deck. We also expect this will help drive even faster growth in our expanding Stream Deck ecosystem. In addition to launching the new models, our Stream Deck application marketplace continues to rapidly add new users. As of Q1, over 40% of the estimated Stream Deck installed base have opened accounts on the marketplace website. Given the popularity of Stream Deck, we expect the marketplace will become a very meaningful new revenue stream over the coming years. On our last call, we highlighted proactive actions we were taking to increase our operational efficiency, including moving production of many of our SCUF controllers to our factory in Taiwan, closure of an expensive UK factory and expansion of our Atlanta facility.

Adding to this, our efforts in regional and retail expansion are also progressing well. We’ve anticipated revenue boosts in the latter half of 2024. We’ve successfully expanded the retail presence of Corsair’s full suite of Gamer and Creator products, introduced the Drop product line to retail channels, expanded our SCUF Gaming product lines in retail, and strengthened our partnerships with several major online retailers. These initiatives solidify our position in the market and set the stage for continued growth and success in the years ahead. Finally, we remain active on the M&A front, which is a key driver in the Peripheral segment. Our recent acquisition of Drop is fully integrated and contributing. This builds on our impressive track record of success with Elgato, SCUF, and five other M&A transactions.

We are carefully evaluating opportunities as part of the regular course of business, and we will look to pursue those that fit our long-term growth plans from a product and brand standpoint and valuation. Looking forward to the balance of 2024, we did not expect growth in the gaming components and systems segment until the next family of GPU cards launched, which we expect will be late 2024 or early 2025. For the Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment, we expect significant growth, especially for new products we recently launched and more that we are about to launch. In addition, as we mentioned in our last update, we’ll be entering two new product categories in 2024, SIM racing and mobile controllers. We expect the overall gaming market to now resume back to historical growth levels as the effects of the pandemic recede into history.

Let me now turn the call over to our CFO, Michael Potter for details on the financials. Michael, please go ahead.

Michael Potter: Thanks, Andy, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to report a solid start to 2024, especially for a key Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment, and gross margins in general. We expect to build on the start with improved revenue growth and EBITDA expansion in the second half. The success of our new products is driving market share gains and margin expansion with notable growth in our Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment. Overall, our markets remain healthy and we continue to execute on our organic business with an eye on accelerated growth through M&A, given our track record and strong financial position. In terms of the specifics, Q1 2024 net revenue was $337.3 million compared to $354 million in Q1 2023.

European markets contributed 34.3% of our Q1 2024 revenues compared to 38.6% in Q4 2023, while the APAC region was 13.8% of our Q1 revenues compared to 9.9% in Q4 2023. Turning now to our segments. The Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment contributed $107 million of net revenue during the first quarter compared to $88.9 million in Q1 2023. The Gaming Components and Systems segment contributed $230.3 million of net revenue during the quarter compared to $265 million in the year-ago period. Memory products contributed $124.9 million in first quarter 2024 compared to $131.3 million in Q1 2023. Overall gross profit in the first quarter was $86.6 million compared to $85.4 million in Q1 2023, primarily reflecting mix. Gross margin increased 160 basis points to 25.7% compared to 24.1% in Q1 2023.

We achieved this expansion despite challenges such as increased freight costs stemming from turmoil in the Red Sea and resulting delays necessitating incremental air-shipments. The Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment gross profit was $43.6 million compared to $26.6 million in Q1 2023. Gross margin was a record 40.8%, up 1,080 basis points compared to 30% in Q1 2023. The Gaming Components and Systems segment gross profit was $43 million compared to $58.8 million in Q1 2023. Gross margin was 18.7% compared to 22.2% in Q1 2023 reflecting mix and continued cost headwinds. Our memory products gross margins in this segment were 14.5% for the first quarter compared to 15.8% in Q1 2023. First quarter SG&A expenses were $80.2 million compared to $67.5 million in Q1 2023, while R&D expenses were $16.6 million compared to $16.8 million in Q1 2023.

We continue to invest in support of new category leadership products in both our Components and Peripheral segments with recent major introductions from Elgato and SCUF Gaming and major new category launches coming in SIM racing and mobile gaming. Consumer response has been very positive and we are encouraged with the momentum we are building as we continue to take market share. As a result of our investments in SG&A, GAAP operating loss in the first quarter of 2024 was $10.2 million compared to operating income of $1 million in Q1 2023. First quarter adjusted operating income was $15.4 million compared to $18.2 million in Q1 2023. First quarter net loss attributable to common shareholders was $12.5 million or $0.12 per diluted share as compared to a net loss of $1.1 million or $0.01 per diluted share in Q1 2023 On an adjusted basis, first quarter net income was $9.5 million or $0.09 per diluted share compared to $11.9 million or $0.11 per share in Q1 2023.

First quarter 2024 adjusted EBITDA was $18 million compared to $20.6 million in Q1 2023. Drop was neutral as expected in Q1, and with the integration behind us, we continue to expect it to grow as we move through 2024. Turning now to our balance sheet. We ended Q1 in a strong financial position with a cash balance, including restricted cash of $130.2 million. We ended Q1 with $184 million of debt at face value, and our $100 million working capital revolver remains undrawn and fully available. We further reduced debt in Q1 and plan to continue doing so over the next coming quarters. Given our strong balance sheet, we have the flexibility to continue decreasing debt while also allocating resources to invest in our operations, which includes actively seeking out further M&A opportunities.

These strategic initiatives are designed to accelerate our growth and increase profitability over the long-term. In terms of our outlook, we are affirming our outlook for the full-year 2024. We continue to expect total revenue in the range of $1.45 billion to $1.6 billion, adjusted operating income in the range of $92 million to $112 million and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $105 million to $125 million. Assuming we maintain the same debt and cash balances in 2024, we would expect to have approximately $2 million in net interest expense per quarter. We are using an effective tax rate of approximately 18% to 22% for 2024 and full-year weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately 107 million to 110 million shares. As a reminder, we are expecting normal seasonality this year with Q2 typically being the lowest revenue quarter of the year.

We also expect year-over-year strength in our Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment throughout the year. In summary, we are pleased with our strong growth in the Gamer and Creator Peripherals segment. And with our continued strong market share, we expect to achieve increased growth in the second half of 2024, led by our new products and expansion into two major new categories. Our balance sheet is strong and we remain committed to investing in the products that will drive our growth and further market share gains across both peripherals and components. With that, we are now happy to open the call for questions. Operator, will you open up the call for Q&A?

See also Largest Insider Buys: Top 10 Stocks and 10 Weakest Militaries in Africa.

Q&A Session

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we’ll begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from George Wang from Barclays. Please go ahead with your question.

George Wang: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I have two quick ones. Firstly, can you give a little bit more color just about the component and memory business? Definitely weaker than expected kind of partially drove the kind of with the overall below expectation. You guys talk about no growth until new GPU/CPU launch in the second half as well as 2025. So now what’s the refresh growth rate for this year? Based on my model of thinking, it’s tracking kind of slight decline on a year-over-year basis. Just curious how confident you are in terms of kind of a tangible rebound in a few quarters?

Andy Paul: Well we see every GPU cycle, if same thing happens. And we are now, I mean, the rumors were already out of when NVIDIA is going to launch their new cards. Obviously they haven’t officially announced when it is. But the rumors out there are saying end of this year, early 2025. And so people will start gearing up for that. And in fact, a lot of times people start building machines in advance of the new cards, so building a machine to take it. So that’s why we’re expecting Q4 to be pretty good. But this year, the early adopters are definitely going to wait for that new card, and that’s offset by the mainstream customers that are now using the less expensive cards to build gaming PCs. So overall, that gives you, as you say a flat to slightly down market depending on which part of the world.

George Wang: Okay. Great. Secondly, can you kind of address regional and the retail expansion kind of you talk about kind of in the prepared remarks, and also I notice that Asia still a smaller mix versus total kind of the low-teens, so that – likely some opportunity on the Asia expansion. So maybe you can talk about your investment in the retail as well as the regional expansion?

Andy Paul: Yes. Sure. Well there’s a few things going on. In the U.S., we are expanding into additional retailers. We’re expanding our footprint into Walmart and Target with some of our new product lines. Worldwide, you are right, Asia has been the weakest part of the globe and that’s mostly because China is not doing well. As you probably know, there’s some pretty big unemployment in the youth in China. So we’ve switched our attentions now to really double down on Korea and Japan, where we see lots of opportunities and we have a much lower market share there than we do in other parts of the world. So we’d expect Asia to bounce back, but not in China, but in places like Korea and Japan. Europe is doing quite well. I just spent a week in Europe with all our sales guys and they’re extremely positive. And the U.S. is also pretty strong in a lot of gaming categories. But in the self-built PC market, as we just said, we’re waiting for the new cards.

George Wang: Okay. Great. I’ll go back to the queue.

Operator: Our next question comes from Drew Crum from Stifel. Please go ahead with your question.

Andrew Crum: Okay. Thanks. Hey guys, good afternoon. On the Gamer and Creator segment, was there anything unique during the period that drove the record gross margin performance and do you see that as sustainable going forward, or should we assume it falls sequentially? And then I have a follow-up.

Andy Paul: Well, no. We’re expecting that this is where it should be. There’s a few things going on from a mix perspective. And I think as you know, we invested in some of the supply chain from our Elgato product lines. So we have one manufacturer that developed with us the Stream Deck. We bought a significant amount of that company and that allows us to increase our margins quite substantially, and that actually is the biggest part of our Elgato portfolio now. So that’s driving very healthy margins. We’ve had a really good bounce back with SCUF, which again is direct-to-consumer and very high margins. So a lot of this is mixed in the different parts of the Gaming and Creator segment. We’ve got some parts that are very high, 50% margin kind of categories that drive the mix up.

But our traditional gaming peripherals categories, which is keyboards, mice and headsets, has also sequentially been increasing. So I would hope that we’ll use this margin as a base and keep building from here.

Andrew Crum: Okay. Helpful. And then Andy, in your prepared remarks, you talked about the mobile gaming controller and the new SIM racing product line you’re launching in June. Any way you can size the TAM for both of those? Thanks.

Andy Paul: Well, very roughly, I mean – and the reason I say very roughly is there’s not a lot of really good crisp data. I would say the SIM market as best we can tell is probably around a $1 billion now. And we’re going to enter the top half of that initially. So we’re not going to be making $100 or $200 steering wheel kits. We’ll be making products for people that are spending a few thousand dollars on a rig same way as you do with our PC categories. Plenty of market for us to ramp up to a $100 million or $200 million there. The mobile gaming is a little less, and when everyone’s thinking that can easily get to a $1 billion, it’s probably not there yet. But it is one of the fastest growing categories. And what we want to make sure there is that we can stay in the $100 or $100 plus ASP area and not be pulled into the $50 category. So that’s another one where we’re going to stay in the premium end of the market.

Andrew Crum: Got it. Okay. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Our next question comes from Aaron Lee from Macquarie. Please go ahead with your question.

Aaron Lee: Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just to start in general, any color you can provide on the general state of the consumer. And do you still feel like there’s room to push up ASPs or pass on costs?

Andy Paul: Well, that’s an interesting question. I mean, as I said, and I remember it distinctly in the IPO presentations, my feeling was that gaming hardware in general, would follow the trend of sports equipment rather than consumer electronic hardware. In other words, it would keep going up as new features are found to enable people to play games better. And that’s exactly what’s happened. So if you look at the headset or keyboard market people are quite comfortable now paying $200 or $300 per headsets and $200 or $300 for keyboards, whereas you go back 10 years, these were firmly $50 to a $100 markets. So the ASP continues to go up. Now in the component space, a lot of this depends on what happens with the power needs of GPUs. But we do think that when we listen to Jensen’s talks, he’s absolutely [helping on cramming] as much horsepower as you possibly can.

And that tends to use a lot of power. So we think the next generation is going to be power hungry as the first 4,000 cards were. And so that tends to mean people are starting to use 800 to 1,000 watt power supplies rather than 500 or 600 watts. So I think in the component space, we’ll see a healthy – maintain maybe a little bit up on the ASPs, but gaming peripherals, there’s plenty of room to grow.

Aaron Lee: Got it. Thank you. And then just on some of these new product launches. You’ve obviously launched several new categories over the past few quarters. Are there any categories that have surprised you or stood out in terms of the demand and growth potential? Thank you.

Andy Paul: Yes. I think the best success we’ve had compared to our expectations was our PC controller that we brought out from SCUF. And we knew that a lot of people had transitioned from console to PC and liked to use a console star controller to play PC games. Certainly some of them, and of course, the whole Call of Duty League moved from console to PC. So we brought out a controller that was PC only. I must admit, I was a little skeptical that that would confuse some of the consumers that realized they were buying something that then wouldn’t work on a PS4 Xbox. But in fact, the demands been overwhelming and we were sold out for the first six months. So that one has been very impressive. The other thing that surprised us was the Teleprompter that Elgato brought out.

And that literally has been sold out ever since we launched in, I think, October or November. We’re just now starting to get inventory in place. So we’ve taken the casual and the prosumer streaming market by storm there. And I think everybody that has seen this thing that regularly does video calls, wants to buy one.

Aaron Lee: Understood. Thanks for all the color. Appreciate it.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Colin Sebastian from Baird. Please go ahead with your question.

Unidentified Analyst: Hey, it’s [indiscernible] for Colin Sebastian. Thanks for taking our question. Just one from us. [Indiscernible] seen the Peripheral segment at a 40% gross margin this quarter. Are you seeing any relief in freight cost so far in Q2? And then do you think you’ll be utilizing air freight this quarter to the same degree that you did in Q1? Thanks.

Andy Paul: Well, I certainly hope not. In some cases air freight occurs because we are so successful on product launches that we get sold out and we have to air freight them, but we keep increasing our inventory of new launches to take care of that. So I certainly hope that’s going to go down. The vast majority of our gaming peripherals are fairly small. So it doesn’t have the same effect on freight as things like power supplies and cases. Those are things that really get affected when the rates go flying up because we just can’t keep put as many into a container. But having said that, I mean the overall effect of the Red Sea container issues, I don’t know how much people realize that the cost went flying up in Q1, had quite an effect as Michael mentioned earlier on both cost and lead time. But yes, I think, Q2 we would expect air freight definitely to go down and we’ll get some benefit from that.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen at this time, I’m showing no additional questions. I’d like to turn the floor back over to CEO, Andy Paul for closing comments.

Andy Paul: Well, thank you very much everybody for attending the call and thanks for your continued support. Any further follow-up questions, please contact our Investor Relations department and we look forward to updating you next quarter. Thank you and have a good evening.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, with that we’ll conclude today’s conference call and presentation. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.