NVE Q3 2025 Earnings Report

NVE EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.63
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

NVE Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

NVE Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2025
• Date: 1/22/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

NVE (NASDAQ:NVEC) (NASDAQ:NVEC) is a technology company that develops and manufactures devices based on spintronics, a field that uses the spin of electrons to create electronic components. The company’s products are designed to provide sensing, data transfer and other electronic functions in applications where low power consumption, small size and high reliability are important.

NVE offers magnetic sensors, couplers and isolators, including standard and custom components for industrial, medical, automotive and other electronic systems. Its product portfolio includes devices used to detect magnetic fields, transfer data across electrical isolation barriers and interface with control systems. The company has also developed spintronic technology for nonvolatile memory and energy-harvesting applications.

Based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, NVE serves customers and original equipment manufacturers in the United States and international markets. The company was established in 1989 and has focused on commercializing spintronic technologies for more than three decades. NVE’s leadership is headed by Daniel A. Baker, who serves as president and chief executive officer.

NVE Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Total revenue for Q3 decreased 25% and net income fell 27% year-over-year, driven by a 22% drop in product sales and a 74% decline in contract R&D revenue amid industry inventory gluts.
• Gross margin expanded to 84% from 80%, reflecting a more profitable product mix and a higher proportion of direct-to-customer sales over distributor channels.
• R&D expenses rose 61%, reaching 17% of revenue, and funded the launch of new wafer-level chipscale sensors billed as the world’s smallest devices for medical, robotics, and mechatronics applications.
• Capital expenditures of $4–5 million over fiscal 2025–26 are in progress, with $1.16 million spent to date, new production machines deployed, and a 62-month lease extension plus facility upgrades to increase manufacturing capacity.
• Sales and marketing investments grew 12% as NVE added direct sales staff, boosted trade show activity, and rolled out evaluation boards—such as Arduino-compatible sensor breakout kits—to accelerate spintronic product adoption.

Presentation

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Good afternoon and welcome to the NVE Corporation Conference Call for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024. I'm Dan Baker, NVE's President and CEO. I'm joined by Controller and Principal Financial Officer, Daniel Nelson. This call is being webcast live via YouTube and Amazon Chime, and it's being recorded. A replay will be available through our website, nve.com, and our YouTube channel, youtube.com/nvecorporation. All participants are currently in listen-only mode. After our presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. After my opening comments, Daniel Nelson will present our financial results. I'll cover R&D, sales and marketing, and CapEx, and we'll open the call to questions. We issued our press release of the financial results and filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q in the past hour following the close of market.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Links to the press release and Form 10-Q are available through the SEC's website, our website, and on X, formerly known as Twitter. 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 uncertainties related to the economic environments and the industries we serve, and risks and 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 annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31st, 2024. 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 strong earnings despite continued challenges in the semiconductor industry.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Daniel Nelson will cover the financials. Daniel.

[Daniel Nelson, Controller and Principal Financial Officer at NVE Corporation]

Thanks, Dan. Total revenue for the quarter ended December 31st, 2024, decreased 25% compared to the quarter ended December 31st, 2023, due to a 22% decrease in product sales and a 74% decrease in contract research and development revenue. The decrease in product sales was due to continued inventory gluts, particularly in the distributor channels, driven by weak chip demand and a slow recovery in industry sectors and markets we serve. The decrease in contract R&D revenue was due to the completion of certain contracts. Gross margin for the quarter was 84% compared to 80% the prior year quarter. The increase in gross margin percentage was due to more profitable product mix and a larger portion of direct rather than distributor sales.

[Daniel Nelson, Controller and Principal Financial Officer at NVE Corporation]

Total expenses increased 40% for the third quarter of fiscal 2025 compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2024, due to a 61% increase in R&D and a 12% increase in SG&A. The increase in R&D was due to increased investments in new product development activities. The increase in SG&A was primarily due to increased sales and marketing activities and additional sales staff in the past quarter. Interest income for the third quarter of fiscal 2025 decreased 4% due to a decrease in marketable securities and lower yields on recently purchased marketable securities. In addition to operating income, we reported other income in the third quarter of fiscal 2025 of $135,000, primarily from the reclaiming of precious metals used in our manufacturing process. Net income for the quarter decreased 27% with a decrease in revenue.

[Daniel Nelson, Controller and Principal Financial Officer at NVE Corporation]

It was a profitable quarter with 84% gross margin, 58% operating margin, 60% net margin, and earnings of $0.63 per share. For the first nine months of fiscal 2025, total revenue decreased 18% due to a 20% decrease in product sales, partially offset by a 72% increase in contract R&D. Net income for the first nine months was $11.2 million, or $2.31 per diluted share. For the fiscal year to date, gross margin was 85%, operating margin was 63%, and net margin was 60%. Now I'll turn the call back to Dan Baker to cover the business. Back to you, Dan.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Thanks, Daniel. I'll cover R&D, sales and marketing, and CapEx. As Daniel mentioned, we've significantly increased our investment in R&D. We spent 17% of revenue in the past quarter on R&D. Additionally, we do customer-sponsored R&D, which is included in the cost of sales. As a result of the efforts of our R&D team, we introduced new wafer-level chip-scale products in the past quarter. The new products are billed as the world's smallest devices of their type, which allows for smaller, less intrusive medical devices and more precise robotics and mechatronics. Our YouTube channel has a demonstration. A key element of our sales and marketing strategy is evaluation boards. Evaluation boards allow customers to easily visualize, create, and implement great new designs with our unique products.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

A new evaluation platform connects to the popular Arduino line of single-board computers and uses one of a dozen angle or rotation sensor breakout boards. There's more information on our website, and our YouTube channel has a demonstration of the new platform. Turning to CapEx, we've previously discussed plans for $4 million-$5 million in capital investments over the next two fiscal years, fiscal 2025 and 2026. We've already spent $1.16 million through three quarters of this fiscal year, fiscal 2025. We deployed one new machine in the second quarter. We're working on another new machine now, and we'll have a several million dollar machine scheduled to arrive next quarter, the June quarter. In the past quarter, we reached an agreement to extend our building lease an additional 62 months through May 2031. The agreement also includes a $100,000 improvement allowance. We believe the allowance will cover our expansion.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

We filed the amendment to the lease agreement with the SEC. Links to the amendment are available on our website and the SEC's website. Construction work for expansion began in November, shortly after we agreed to the lease extension, and was completed last week. Next up is a new electrical service and other infrastructure upgrades to support new equipment. The investments in facilities and equipment will increase our capacity and capabilities, including the capability to manufacture wafer-level chip scale parts, such as the ones we recently introduced, in high volume. Now we'd like to open the call for questions. To ask a question from a phone, press star seven to unmute, or from a browser or Chime app, click the raise my hand icon under the meeting chat that's at the bottom of the left column and unmute yourself to speak. Please state your name and affiliation before your question.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

To prevent background noise, please mute your line after asking your question.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Hey, Dan. It's Jeff Bernstein.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Hi, Jeff.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

How are you?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Good.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

A couple of questions here. Just give us a little better feeling about what's going on in direct business. You talked about inventory liquidation continuing in distribution. What are you seeing in terms of orders fulfilled in the quarter, turns kind of business, any other feel for how the demand is at end customers?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Yeah, that's a good question, Jeff. So our direct sales have held up relatively well. Those customers tend not to buy through distribution. And as Daniel mentioned in the prepared remarks, there's a lot of inventory in the distribution channel that needs to be burned off. So those sales, those direct sales tend to be higher margins because we don't have distributor discounts in the middle. And so that's the reason that our margins are so exceptional and our profitability metrics, despite the downturn in the revenue, are quite strong.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Gotcha. Any color you can put around how bookings have been going with those direct customers or anything around your book and ship kind of business?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

In general, the outlook has been positive. When we talk to our customers, when we talk to our distributors, they see things improving. They see industry conditions improving. It's taking longer than anyone would like, but we're very optimistic about the future, and the fundamentals of our business are strong.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Gotcha. And so do you get the sense that consumption is actually above what you're selling into the channel now?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Yes, almost certainly, because the distributors in the channel are trying to bleed down their inventory. So they're selling, but they're often not buying until their inventories are back to historical levels.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Gotcha. Okay. And then just a couple of questions on end markets. So both Sonova and Starkey, the big traditional hearing aid players, are out with new platforms that incorporate real-time AI chips, etc. Seem like they probably draw a lot of power in what's a very tiny package. Can you just remind us the offerings that you have that potentially go into hearing aids and what your thoughts are around your TAM development there?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

We provide sensors. So as you mentioned, Sonova, for example, has introduced a platform with artificial intelligence, and the technology helps the so-called speech and noise problem, which is a significant problem for hearing aids. So it's a great development and hopefully will improve uptake of hearing aids as they can help more people. NVE sensors provide inputs for artificial intelligence. Better information about the environment means better results from AI. So we're optimistic about those trends, about the need for more inputs and richer data to feed these artificial intelligence and other increasingly sophisticated algorithms.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Okay. And then the puck business has been a source of volatility for you guys. I think it was stronger last quarter. What's happening there this quarter?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

So those sales, as you know, can be lumpy and vary quarter to quarter based on procurement schedules, but that business has been strong. It's a relatively small part of our business, but we received some orders recently spread out through the future, but we're certainly optimistic about long-term defense sales based on what we see now.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Gotcha. And just Abbott reported today it looked like all of the product areas that you might play in were reasonably strong. And obviously, they have some exciting new products there. Any color on just the medical device business overall?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

As you can imagine, we also look at Abbott's reports and we communicate with them. They reported decent growth, 6% overall growth in rhythm management, which is an area that we participate in. That's encouraging, and they've reported that that's more than the overall growth in the cardiac rhythm management market. As far as the specifics, we're bound by confidentiality, but our technology enables smaller devices, which is important for leadless pacemakers and other emerging technology, and we can detect extremely small magnetic fields, which is another key advantage for deeply implanted medical devices, so it's an area where we see considerable future potential.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

All right. Thanks very much, Dan.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Thank you, Jeff.

[Peter Kravitz, Founding Principal and Partner at Province, LLC]

Hey, Dan, this is Pete Kravitz from Florida. I met you at the shareholders' meeting. How are you?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Yes. Good to talk to you, Pete. We're dipping. We might be warmer than you are.

[Peter Kravitz, Founding Principal and Partner at Province, LLC]

It's very rare, Dan, but that's probably the case. I had a couple of questions. Actually, Jeff mentioned something about AI chips. And I was wondering, with your MTJ parts, are they? I know you're focused on sensors, but MTJ, does that have potential to be part of AI chips and for energy reduction, power consumption reduction?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Yeah. So MTJ stands for magnetic tunnel junction, and it's one of the core platform technologies that we have. And it's useful in a number of areas. Sensors is certainly one. Also useful in memory. And we make memory and memory-related devices for the defense business and the puck business that Jeff alluded to in his comments. So yes, they're low power, which allows for ubiquitous sensing. And much as the possibilities for artificial intelligence for medical devices for hearing aids, artificial intelligence and the artificial intelligence of things is driven by data. So the intelligence is only as good as the data that comes into it, and sensors provide that data. So while we don't directly make artificial intelligence processors, we participate in that revolution by providing the information that feeds the intelligence of the AI engines.

[Peter Kravitz, Founding Principal and Partner at Province, LLC]

Great. Thank you. And then with GMR sensors, I mean, your sensors are much more accurate than Hall sensors. I mean, and we spoke about this at the shareholder meeting. What's the potential over time for NVE spintronic sensors to replace Hall sensors?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

We see excellent potential for GMR, which is Giant Magnetoresistance, which is our legacy technology, the technology that the company was really founded on. We still sell a lot of those sensors. They're still best in class. Hall effect sensors, as you know, are semiconductor-type sensors. They are not as precise, as accurate, or as power-efficient as our spintronic sensors. We see excellent opportunities to replace those sensors in many applications. The one area where we don't try to compete with Hall effect sensors is they can be very inexpensive because it's mature technology. The tooling has probably long since been written off, and they can be sold pretty cheap. Our goal is not to sell cheap sensors. It's to sell the world's best sensors. We do see ample opportunities for spintronic sensors replacing older types of sensors.

[Peter Kravitz, Founding Principal and Partner at Province, LLC]

Terrific. Thank you. And I just want to say good luck with the expansion. Sounds like you've got the new lease in place and equipment's coming in. So keep up the good work. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Thank you. We hope if you're here this year that we'll have some exciting things to show you.

[Peter Kravitz, Founding Principal and Partner at Province, LLC]

Fantastic. Thank you.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Any other questions? You can press star seven from a phone to unmute or unmute from the Chime app or browser.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Hey, Dan. It's Jeff Bernstein again. I meant to ask you about there was a mention of an additional expense in selling and some increased staff, I guess. Can you just give us the lowdown on what you're doing in terms of adding sales folks?

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Exactly. Yes. So I'm glad you asked. We are doing more direct sales, so more trips, more trade shows, and more marketing. So that's newsletters. I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we design evaluation boards, and we almost have a continuous flow of evaluation boards so that our customers can try out our products easily and prove out their designs. So we feel that that's important for our sales. So we have staff working on that and staff working on vetting and modeling for our customers' designs, supporting our distributors, and getting out and talking to our customers.

[Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital]

Thanks.

[Daniel Baker, President and CEO at NVE Corporation]

Thank you. Well, it looks like there are no other questions in the queue. So again, we were pleased to report strong earnings despite challenging conditions. We appreciate your attention and look forward to speaking with you again on our fiscal year-end earnings call in early May. A replay of this call will be available on the investor events page of our website, nve.com, and our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com/nvecorporation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Daniel Baker, President and CEO
• Daniel Nelson, Controller and Principal Financial Officer

Analysts

• Jeffrey Bernstein, Partner at Silverberg Bernstein Capital
• Peter Kravitz, Founding Principal and Partner at Province, LLC