PDFS - NASDAQ

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the PDF Solutions, Inc. conference call to discuss its financial results for the fourth quarter and year-end 2025 ending Wednesday, December 31, 2025. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have not yet received a copy of the corresponding press release, it has been posted to PDF's website at www.pdf.com. Some of the statements that will be made in the course of this conference are forward-looking, including statements regarding PDF's future financial results and performance, growth rates and demand for its solutions. PDF's actual results could differ materially. You should refer to the section entitled Risk Factors on Page 16 through 30 of PDF's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, and similar disclosures in subsequent SEC filings. The forward-looking statements and risks stated in this conference call are based on the information available to PDF today. PDF assumes no obligation to update them. Now I'd like to introduce John Kibarian, PDF's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Adnan Raza, PDF's Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Kibarian, please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us on today's call. If you've not already seen our earnings press release and management report for the fourth quarter and full year, please go to the Investors section of our website where each has been posted. 2025 was a transformative year for PDF. In my prepared remarks, I will summarize our current positioning, key achievements in the year and our major goals. I will also comment on the near-term business climate and our expectations for 2026. After Adnan's remarks on our financial results, we will take your questions. As we discussed last December in our Users Conference, there are semiconductor industry trends that have established PDF's opportunity today and in the future. IC manufacturing processes, both in the Wafer Fab and Assembly are creating more complex 3D structures. IC companies have moved from providing components to systems. The complexity of system manufacturing, particularly of 3D components is driving the customers to look for new ways to characterize, analyze and control production. As the industry rapidly scales to over $1 trillion in revenue, it is building manufacturing operations around the world. To operate effectively, these facilities need the collaboration of engineers and systems from the entire ecosystem of suppliers, factory operators and customers. In our industry, this means moving from a people-centric approach to an AI-driven collaboration. Finally, the chip industry is a critical driver for AI and increasingly needs to benefit from AI to keep up with the demand. These drivers, 3D manufacturing, supply chain complexity and AI present a significant opportunity for PDF to reinvent itself again. In the first half of this decade, PDF Solutions growth stemmed from our transition to an analytics platform provider. Since 2020, the company grew at approximately 20% compound annual growth rate and expanded its gross margins from the mid-60s to the mid-70s and its operating margins from basically breakeven to 20%. As we enter 2025, we believe the trends that enabled our growth as an analytics platform were accelerating greatly because of the impact AI is having on the IC industry. This acceleration meant that our customers needed us to evolve from providing an analytics platform primarily used by each of our customers independently to increasingly becoming a platform for AI-driven collaboration, both across the enterprise and across the supply chain. Our actions in 2025 spoke to our conviction of this vision. For our customers to leverage AI to drive collaboration within their organization and across the industry, they needed orchestration systems to enable aligning operational processes, sharing data and driving coordinated actions. In 2025, we signed multiple contracts with our customers to deploy our Sapience Manufacturing Hub, including a contract in the fourth quarter. Sapience Manufacturing Hub initiated from our partnership with SAP enables collaborations between engineering, manufacturing operations and finance. As our customers drive AI collaboration to their suppliers and customers, they need a secure connectivity layer. And in 2025, we acquired secureWISE, the leading connectivity platform that connects equipment vendors to the fabs. Under our stewardship, we recommitted to the core secureWISE customers, for example, closing an 8-figure contract with one of the leading equipment suppliers. We also began expanding applications with foundry customers, closing an 8-figure contract with a multinational IC manufacturing company to enable collaboration across their enterprise. As we further integrate secureWISE with our DEX network at OSATs, we are expanding collaboration to include the fabless. While orchestration enables larger data sets and the need to operate near real time, we realized it was important to also reinvent analytics. Our customers' challenge include aligning, storing and leveraging data to make decisions often driven by AI. We undertook reinventing 3 critical components of Exensio. First, we are enhancing our data model to support new use cases where the Exensio database would be used for applications beyond the native analytics it provides. Second, we are integrating an AI operations platform for data science within Exensio, so customers can use the PDF Solutions platform to build and deploy their AI pipeline. Third, we are releasing Exensio Scalable Analytics, which is designed to enable engineers to interact with data sets that previously could only be processed in batch. Progress on all 3 of these initiatives was demonstrated in 2025. In the third quarter, we announced a large 8-figure contract for Exensio Enterprise that included advanced database AI operation capabilities and scalable analytics. Also in the third quarter, we announced that we licensed the source code for Tiber AI Studio, which was previously known as cnvrg.io from Intel and began selling it as Exensio Studio AI. Exensio Studio AI is designed to enable AI scientists to use the data in Exensio as they develop and deploy pipelines at scale and across the secureWISE network to their suppliers. This is particularly valuable for our customers that have multiple test insertions as is the case with advanced packaging. In Q4, at our Users Conference, we announced Exensio Scalable Analytics. We demonstrated the ability for engineers and algorithms to interact with data sets that were previously only possible to process in batch. Intel spoke about the advantages of Exensio Enterprise and Exensio Scalable Analytics at the same conference. Finally, to collaborate and populate an analytics system and AI models, our customers need data. In that regard, in 2025, we expanded our Cimetrix Connectivity business, achieving record runtime licensed revenues. Also, in the second half of the year, we shipped 2 eProbe inspection machines to a manufacturing site for one of our customers. In conjunction with our Fire and Exensio software, this enables customers to ramp and control production of advanced 3D products through an application we call DirectScan. This customer is now able to improve production control and yields by identifying new production issues in line using the DirectScan system. So while we started the decade as a provider of analytics platform that benefited from the unique data generated from our Characterization Vehicle test chips, we ended 2025 having greatly expanded our platform to include our orchestration layer and our manufacturing solutions while reinventing the core analytics platform. As a result, we achieved record total revenue in 2025, 22% growth over the previous year and grew our gross and net margins as we benefited from scale. Our goals for the next phase of PDF Solutions growth are to establish orchestration, analytics and the data component of our platform across the industry. As we discussed at our Analyst Day, we believe this will enable us to continue to grow at 20% CAGR while expanding our margins. As we begin 2026, we see a market whose need for AI-driven collaboration is accelerating. Activity with customers has been at an elevated level across our fabless, fab and equipment customers. We see opportunities in logic and advanced memory for our Characterization Vehicle and DirectScan systems, including both in R&D and manufacturing. We expect to nearly double the number of eProbe machines in the field this year. From an IDM and fabless perspective, we anticipate increased customer activity, particularly in the second half of the year as we release more capabilities building on and expanding Exensio Scalable Analytics and Studio AI. Given our strong portfolio of secureWISE and Cimetrix products for equipment control, connectivity and remote access, we anticipate continued growth within our equipment customers. As a result, and even without the benefit from the inorganic growth that we experienced in 2025, we anticipate 2026 revenues to grow consistent with our 20% long-term growth target. I want to thank customers, employees, contractors and stockholders that helped the company achieve its success in 2025. I look forward to working with all of you to make 2026 even better. Now I'll turn the call over to Adnan for more detailed comments on our results. Adnan?

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone. Good to speak with you again today. We are pleased to review the financial results of the full year and the fourth quarter of 2025. As John said, we posted our earnings release and a management report in the Investor Relations section of our website. We expect to file our annual report on Form 10-K with the SEC by the end of February after our 2025 audit is complete. As a result, all financial results described in this call should be considered preliminary and are subject to change to reflect any necessary adjustments or changes in accounting estimates that are identified prior to the time we filed our 10-K. Please note that all the financial results we discuss in today's call will be on a non-GAAP basis, and a reconciliation to GAAP financials is provided in the materials on our website. We are pleased to again report record quarterly and annual total revenues. We finished the year strong with Q4 total revenues of $62.4 million versus $50.1 million in the same quarter a year prior. We are pleased that our total revenues for the quarter grew 25% year-over-year, ahead of our long-term growth rate target model. For the full year 2025, we generated record total revenues of $219.0 million versus $179.5 million in 2024, a 22% year-over-year increase and consistent with our guidance for the full year. As you will recall, at our Analyst Day in December 2025, we previewed plans for a new presentation of revenues, breaking the total into Platform and Volume-based. For a different insight, we also disaggregate total revenue into 2 different categories of Recurring and Upfront. Further description of these categories is provided in our 8-K filed today. Platform revenue for the fourth quarter was $52.5 million and up 20% versus Platform revenue a year prior, driven primarily by contributions from bookings -- booking the new contracts that John spoke about. Volume-based revenue for the quarter was $9.9 million, up 58% versus Volume-based revenue a year prior, driven primarily by Gainshare and secureWISE. On an annual basis, our Platform revenue was $181.0 million, up 15% on a year-over-year basis, while Volume-based revenue of $38 million was up 70% year-over-year, driven by patterns similar to what we saw during the last quarter of the year. Recurring revenue for the fourth quarter was $61.1 million, up 62% versus the same period prior year. And for the year was $205.1 million, up 41% year-over-year, driven primarily by CV systems for the leading edge and secureWISE. Our Upfront revenue was down annually for the comparable quarter and full year basis, driven primarily by the fact that in the fourth quarter of 2024, we had completed a CapEx DirectScan system sale. 2025 was an important year for PDF Solutions on many fronts. We completed our largest acquisition ever of secureWISE, finalized the licensing of Tiber AI Studio to combine with our recently announced product Exensio Studio AI and shared our product progress and road map during Users Group and Analyst Day conference. We're thankful to the many customers who spoke about PDF's breadth of product lines and the strategic relevance to their organizations. On the bookings side, we also are pleased that during the year, we were able to book new deals for Sapience Manufacturing Hub, a large deal for Exensio Analytics and a secureWISE deal with a new customer. We also shipped 4 DirectScan systems during the year to our customers, expanding their use of these tools into manufacturing. We are pleased that we ended the year with $254 million of backlog while delivering on strong revenue growth of 22% for the full year. For the fourth quarter, our gross margin came in at 77%. Operating margin was 24%, and we reported EPS of $0.30 per share. On a full year basis, our gross margin came in at 76%, operating margin was 21%, and we reported EPS of $0.94. It is worth noting that we exceeded our prior long-term target model of 75% gross margin and 20% operating margin for 2025 on a full year basis, with the reported 76% gross margin and 21% operating margin. As you will recall, we recently revised upwards both of our target margin targets to 77% for gross margin and 27% for operating margin at our Analyst Day in December 2025. Turning to operating expenses. We managed to grow our operating expenses at a slower pace than our revenue growth for both the last quarter and full year basis, which allowed us to expand our operating leverage. On a full year basis, we grew our R&D expenses by 23%, primarily from direct hires and subcontractor spend while managing SG&A spend growth to 14% with better focus on presale spending. We continue to believe we can grow the needed R&D investments and manage SG&A spend such that with revenue scale, we continue to expand our operating margins towards our target model. For the full year 2025, we reported EPS of $0.94 a share and EPS growth of 12% versus prior year EPS of $0.84 per share. During the year, we generated positive operating cash flow of approximately $24 million and spent approximately $33 million on CapEx, primarily related to our DirectScan systems and $0.2 million on share buybacks. We also spent approximately $130 million on the acquisition of secureWISE, funded with a combination of $70 million debt and balance sheet cash. We expect to spend an approximately similar amount on CapEx during 2026 compared to 2025 and expect to generate increased levels of operating cash flows during 2026 compared to 2025 as we grow our revenues and expand our margins. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended 2025 with cash and equivalents and short-term investments of approximately $42 million. Our ending debt balance is approximately $68 million, reflecting the amortization payments during the year. We are pleased with another year of positive operating cash flow generation consistent with our history, paying down our debt and funding the CapEx while growing our quarter-over-quarter cash balance. In summary, we are proud of our performance in 2025 and over the long term, remain committed to our target long-term model we set at our Analyst Day in December of 20% year-over-year total company revenue growth rate, 77% gross margin and 27% operating margin. Now turning to our financial outlook. For 2026, we look forward to another year of growth. To reiterate John's comments in our press release, for the full year 2026, we expect the annual growth rate of our total revenue to be consistent with our 20% target model. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to commence the question-and-answer session. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Blair Abernethy with Rosenblatt Securities.

Nice quarter. Just wanted to -- maybe we could just start with the DFI. So just to level set, Adnan, you said 4 DirectScan systems were shipped in the year 2025. Was that correct?

Yes, correct. Consistent with what we have spoken throughout the year, you're absolutely right, 4 were shipped during 2025.

Okay. And so what -- so -- and then in John's comments about have 2x as many in the field this coming year. Is that -- so is that 8? Or what is the total field count today, I guess, is the question?

Yes. Remember, we had also done a CapEx sale. So total in the field today is 6. So when we think about next year, you should contextualize John's comment with that. And John said nearly that many. So that's the way I would think about it.

Got it. Got it. Okay. And then on the CapEx spend, so it looks like in your supplemental, you said it's around $32.8 million, just under $33 million in 2025. So is that -- how has that come in over '26? Is it front-end loaded? Just kind of some sense of -- and what are you using it for?

Yes, we'll try to manage it evenly during the year. This year, as you saw, there was a little bit of an uplift towards the end of the year. But next year, we think it's probably even. In between a quarter, is there a little bit of variation maybe towards the middle of the year? That's possible as we look to place some orders in advance. But even give us some room towards the middle of the year.

Okay. And is -- does that -- I mean, is that positioning you for '27? Is that what this is doing? And I guess, I know you don't want to give guidance for '27 at all, but do we -- should we think of it as this is going to be the level for a while? Or just give us some sense of how much is going to be required.

Yes. I'll take that one, Blair. So yes, we -- obviously, a lot of the capital that we spent in the second half of last year was for machines we expect to ship in the first half of this year. The machines are disproportionately now on subscriptions, and we hope to maintain that again this year. So as we modeled out our long-term targets that we provided in December, we thought, okay, even if we stay at this level, but keep machines on subscriptions, you get this installed base of machines over time that all contribute. So we kind of built out assuming we stayed at this capital level and could sustain our growth. We obviously will look to increase our penetration in the market. But because of the subscription model, it becomes a workable model over time with this approach.

Got it. Got it. Great. Okay. And then just if I could, just over on the SAP relationship. I think you mentioned there's another deal there. Just how is that going? And just sort of what are your expectations for next year from that partnership?

Yes. So we continue when we meet with customers, we see increased needs for orchestration, as I said in my prepared remarks, for folks to be able to truly apply more automation, more AI to their operations, you really need that those connections between the major systems. No one is going to build the perfect database that has all information from their financial systems, their operation systems, their engineering. And then the whole purpose of Sapience is the world -- you want a consistent way when you, let's say, do costing from a finance perspective that how you look at machine time on the equipment. So you need to be able to define these orchestrations in the way you take very complex data in the operations side and summarize it for finance and vice versa. So we continue to work with SAP. And increasingly, we're talking with the system integrators as well. And you probably saw some of them present at our Users Conference around ways we can jointly market that solution. But why we like it is it gives another reason why folks want to keep engaged with us on the Exensio side. If you listen to one of the speakers at our Users Conference, they talked about, well, if one part of the organization is using Exensio, then it makes sense to use Sapience because 1/3 of the data, if you say the engineering data is in Exensio, the operations data in their MES system and the finance data in ERP, then you kind of have kind of 1/3 of it already kind of taken care of for "free." So through our partnership with SAP and the SIs, we expect to kind of build on our installed base and engineering to get to the other parts of our customer organization. If you look at the contracts for Sapience, they typically are part of the finance team's spend and the contracts for Exensio are typically the engineering team, our operations team spend. So it allows us to kind of touch and tap into another part of the organization. And we do expect selling throughout this year, just to summarize.

Okay. Great. Maybe just one quick one for you, Adnan. Just -- so how should we be thinking about your balance sheet, your debt levels over the next couple of years? Should we -- are you comfortable with the debt where it is? Are you looking at sort of paying it down again? What sort of what should we be modeling there for capital allocation?

Good question. Yes. So look, I mean, the debt, A, is structured at good rates; B, with the interest rate cuts, that's helping; C, we are a cash-generating history entity on the operating cash flow side. And we've been careful about where we needed to make the investments. I mean, Q3 to Q4, you saw us build the cash. So naturally, we will pay off the required amortization levels of the debt. But beyond that, I think we're going to carefully balance, of course, the spend on the CapEx and also try to build back the cash balance on the balance sheet before we start to think about any massive payback on the debt. But of course, our goal remains that we get out of the debt situation. We never had a -- we've had a history of not having the debt, and we'd like to get back there. So prioritizing with the other priorities and getting back to a healthy cash level and then beyond that, start paying debt, I think, with the expanding margins positions us well to start heading in that direction.

Our next question comes from Clark Wright with D.A. Davidson.

First off, great quarter. Would love to understand a little bit more about the new methodology around describing revenue and partially around your expectations for growth on the Volume-based revenue going forward? And how should we think about the cross-selling opportunity of secureWISE as we think about normalized levels going forward in 2026?

Sure. Maybe I'll take the beginning part and have John jump in on the second piece. So look, many of you have been talking to us about trying to understand the business a little bit more. So that was partly the motivation for breaking it out into the Recurring versus the Upfront. And then secondly, on the Platform versus Volume-based, if you think back over the last 5 years, the business has evolved. Prior to when we did the Cimetrix acquisition, the business was probably more platform -- was more platform-based. So as we acquired Cimetrix. And as we now have acquired secureWISE and over the years, we've also enjoyed and continue to enjoy the Gainshare. It made sense to count those 3 pieces of Cimetrix, largely the 3 pieces of obviously full definitions in the 8-K, but largely the 3 pieces of Cimetrix, secureWISE and Gainshare in our Volume-based revenue, which is -- another way to think about it is it's a revenue that will [indiscernible] to our benefit based on customers' own changes in their business, and we're happy to get that. So that's the Recurring versus Upfront and then the Platform versus the Volume.

Yes. So I think just also it kind of helps you think a little bit. The Volume revenue is typically not in our backlog. We don't have a backlog for Gainshare or on time licenses or the data usage on secureWISE. So we thought it would give some visibility on the part of the business that's really tied to our customers' success with our products, if you think about those 3 elements. And the other one gives you kind of an understanding about the part of the business that kind of is related to the backlog. Just we used to break out IYR and analytics, but then IYR became such a small percentage of the business. We felt it wasn't very instructive for the shareholders, like stockholders. So that kind of gives you the first answer, Clark, if that's adequate. And I can go on to your question about the cross-sell on secureWISE, if you like.

Yes. I mean that's helpful. Just would love to understand just going forward, just given the fact that it grew largely because of the secureWISE piece, how much of that should we be thinking about secureWISE versus what the organic growth rate is of that business?

Yes, we're not breaking out within those pieces. Look, I mean, if you go back and do the calculations, you'll see Platform revenue for us over the last many quarters even that we are sharing in the supplemental has been north of 80%. The Recurring revenue is north of 90%. So it's definitely above those levels. Overall, we'll continue to make sure that the business performs on an aggregate basis...

I think a little bit of the growth on the volume base, Clark, was Gainshare was up quite substantially in 2025 over 2024. And yes, you had the contribution from secureWISE. And actually, as I said in my prepared remarks, we had record runtime revenue licensed revenues for Cimetrix as well. So fundamentally, because the industry is at a relatively elevated level, all 3 of those things were contributing pretty meaningfully to that growth number. It wasn't just secureWISE. I think [indiscernible] part of it, but not all of it at all or nowhere near. So then I think to get to your second question on cross-sell, there's quite a few things we're doing. If you look at our runtime licenses and SDKs for Cimetrix business, we give the equipment company a development kit, so they can use our libraries and software embedded in their equipment to control the screens, the operator, the communication with the factory execution systems and the communication with the factory analytics systems, often things like Exensio. So secureWISE also provides an agent that runs on the equipment that allows for remote communication and full control of what data is shared between the equipment through the factory to the equipment vendor that the factory controls, the factory decides which engineer is able to see what data, which knobs are about to change on the tool, what data goes to the factory at what cadence -- the equipment vendor at what cadence. So the first obvious thing that we're doing is including the secureWISE agent on -- in the Cimetrix software development kit. Just to put it in perspective, in 2024, I don't remember the numbers 2025, over 8,000 tools shipped with Cimetrix Connectivity. And that is -- that's more tools than any single equipment vendor shipped. And it grew in 2025 over 2024. So this means that the secureWISE agent will be available on a lot of equipment. That's a big value to our fab customers who want to be able to use this stuff, and they're hoping that the equipment comes preconfigured. So if you look at the contract we signed in the second or third quarter -- second quarter with an 8-figure contract with the fab, they were one of their things they saw was, hey, you're already working with all these equipment vendors. You can make sure the equipment comes into our factory, at least the new equipment, preinstalled that will then save us time and effort. So that's the first place. The second piece that we're seeing is secureWISE is in virtually every 300-millimeter factory in the world with a couple of exceptions in China. So I would say 99.9 something or 99.5 or whatever it is the fabs in the world, 300-millimeter fabs in the world. But a lot of equipment vendors don't have access to it and a lot of the fab engineers can't use it. And now because a lot of our customers are building fabs around the world, they also need to have remote connectivity and the audit capabilities that secureWISE provides. So we're going back and making it available to the fabs themselves. And these are these contracts that we're signing that help the fabs also take advantage of the system. It's another cross-sell opportunity. And then thirdly, as I said in my prepared remarks, a lot of our equipment customers are now starting to sell into the assembly facilities and the OSATs as the advanced packaging becomes more sophisticated. The fabless companies also want to be able to get more data than just their tester logs from the OSATs themselves. And the OSATs are running our operations around the world, too, as they're being asked to stand up factories in Arizona and Japan and other places. So now we're starting to connect -- we're going through and integrating DEX onto secureWISE, which was our network for the OSATs because secureWISE has a lot of advanced capabilities that DEX did not have and making it available to that community as well. And that's the third and the longer pole in the tent because that's involving deploying at OSATs and integrating of our 2 products. So that kind of gives you just what we're doing with the product so far.

No, that's super helpful. And then the only follow-up I have is just around -- you made a comment during the prepared remarks around logic and memory and the role that PDF can continue to play where we're seeing significant bottlenecks that look like there's no end to. Would love to understand how PDF is continuing to build this value proposition for specifically that client base.

Yes. So I think we've, for a long time, been involved in the advanced logic fabs, and we continue on that. We do see a number of activities this year and even some for test vehicles and DirectScan, eProbe, even in some more mature, I think nodes that you consider slightly more mature on the logic side as people are trying to expand capacity. On the memory side, we've been engaged in a couple of pilots with customers on DRAM. And we expect that to ramp up this year with at least 1 or 2 of those companies as we see very positive results. And we -- I think as the DRAM is also becoming more and more 3D, they're also doing both DRAM and flash bonding of wafers, wafer-wafer bonding, the need to be able to do an electrical inspection is increasing. So we do see a number of opportunities there as well. Overall, we believe manufacturing in semiconductors is increasingly strategic for countries. So it creates the need to put factories in many countries and around the world, and the demand for semiconductors is quite substantial. The characterization capability, the DirectScan, the secureWISE networking capability and the analytics will increasingly become important to our customer base. I think we've had a lot of really exciting conversations with customers in this first month and a week or whatever this year around new opportunities for our -- for our systems.