Adeia Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Adeia EPS Results

• Actual EPS: N/A
• Consensus EPS: $0.26
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Adeia Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: $88.96 million
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Adeia Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/5/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Monday, May 5, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Adeia (NASDAQ:ADEA), together with its subsidiaries, operates as a media and semiconductor intellectual property licensing company in the United States, Canada, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and internationally. The company licenses its patent portfolios across various markets, including multichannel video programming distributors comprising cable, satellite, and telecommunications television providers that aggregate and distribute linear content over networks, as well as television providers that aggregate and stream linear content over broadband networks; over-the-top video service providers and social media companies, such as subscription video-on-demand and advertising-supported streaming service providers, as well as content providers, networks, and media companies. It also licenses consumer electronics manufacturers, which includes producers of smart televisions, streaming media devices, video game consoles, mobile devices, content storage devices, and other connected media devices; semiconductors, including providers of sensors, radio frequency components, memory, and logic devices; and social media companies that allow users to stream and upload user-generated content. The company licenses its innovations under the Adeia brand name. Adeia Inc. was formerly known as Xperi Corporation and changed its name to Adeia Inc. in December 2019. The company was incorporated in 2019 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Adeia Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Adia reported Q1 revenue of $88 million and generated $57 million in cash from operations, ending the quarter with a stronger cash position and an unchanged full-year 2025 outlook supported by over 80% contracted revenue.
• The company signed 10 license agreements in Q1, including four new deals in social media, OTT, semiconductors (notably a U.S. professional sports league for streaming), and renewals maintained a >90% customer retention rate.
• Adia’s patent portfolio grew 4% to over 12,750 assets, supported by $5 million in tuck-in acquisitions in microLED and imaging to strengthen both semiconductor and media verticals.
• Operating expenses rose 4% to $40.9 million due to patent development and personnel costs, litigation expense increased 54%, interest expense fell to 7.9% effective rate, and adjusted EBITDA was $47.3 million (54% margin).
• Full-year guidance was reiterated at $390–430 million revenue, $166–174 million operating expenses, and ~59% adjusted EBITDA margin, with continued caution on macroeconomic volatility and disciplined spending.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Adia's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, the call will be opened for questions.

[Operator]

I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Chaney, Vice President and Investor Relations for Audio. Chris, please go ahead.

[Christopher Chaney, VP - Investor Relations at Adeia]

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we share with you details of our first quarter twenty twenty four financial results. With me on the call today are Paul Davis, our President and CEO and Keith Jones, our CFO. Paul

[Christopher Chaney, VP - Investor Relations at Adeia]

will share

[Christopher Chaney, VP - Investor Relations at Adeia]

with you some general observations regarding our first quarter, and then Keith will give further details on our financial results and guidance. We will then conclude with a question and answer period. In addition to today's earnings release, there is an earnings presentation, which you can access along with the webcast in the IR portion of our website. Before turning the call over to Paul, I'd like to provide a few reminders. First, today's discussion contains forward looking statements that are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and therefore are subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances.

[Christopher Chaney, VP - Investor Relations at Adeia]

For information on the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from what we discuss today, please refer to the Risk Factors section in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10 ks and our quarterly report on Form 10 Q. Please note that the company does not intend to update or alter these forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after this call. To enhance investors' understanding of our ongoing economic performance, we will discuss non GAAP information during this call. We use non GAAP financial measures internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We have therefore chosen to provide this information to enable you to perform comparisons of our operating results as we do internally.

[Christopher Chaney, VP - Investor Relations at Adeia]

We have provided reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the earnings release, the earnings presentation, and on the Investor Relations section of our website. A recording of this conference call will be available on the Investor Relations website at audio.com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Paul Davis.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Thank you, Chris, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm glad to be here again to share the results and progress we made in the first quarter. We are off to a great start to the year. We generated $88,000,000 in revenue and $57,000,000 in cash from operations, which was in line with our expectations. We also executed on all four elements of our balanced capital allocation strategy and ended the quarter with an even stronger cash position.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Before I get into the details on the progress we made in the first quarter, I want to highlight that our full year 2025 outlook remains unchanged despite the volatility in the current macroeconomic environment. We feel confident in the resilience of our business model even in times of uncertainty. Over 80% of our full year revenue outlook is supported by contracted revenue. Our average contract term is five years, so our visibility is not measured in quarters but in years. And thus, our business is less impacted by near term economic volatility.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

The vast majority of our customers are well established leaders in their industries. We have built a strong track record of building long term relationships, renewing customers again and again with many relationships spanning over twenty five years. As a result, our business model has proven to be stable and resilient. Lastly, our focus on growth aspects of our business, including OTT, semiconductors, and adjacent media markets, is paying dividends. Our Q1 twenty twenty five recurring revenue is up modestly year over year as compared to Q1 of twenty twenty four, even when taking into account the anticipated declines in Pay TV.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

And

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

when

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

you look at the non pay TV parts of our business, recurring revenue is up an impressive 25% year over year. Turning now to our first quarter momentum. We signed 10 license agreements, highlighted by four agreements with new customers in key growth areas, including social media, OTT, and semiconductors. I'm proud of the progress we made in signing new customers. Adding new customers is critical to our growth strategy, and we are executing well on this front.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Over the past two quarters, we have signed 20 license agreements, including eight new deals. We further expanded our already impressive social media presence with yet another new customer in the first quarter. Social media is an area where we've made great progress, having signed most of the major players over the last few years. As our media portfolio has continued to grow, particularly in areas such as imaging, video, and content delivery, so has its applicability to social media. Another significant new customer we signed in the first quarter was a leading international multiplatform media company for their OTT offerings.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

OTT is one of our high priority growth markets because of our media portfolio's applicability to it and its growing subscriber base. Having penetrated only a portion of this market today, we see a significant opportunity as we continue to pursue large customers in this key growth area. We also signed a new long term license agreement with a major U. S. Professional sports league for access to our media portfolio.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

The relevance of our video assets to their online streaming offerings was a driver for this new customer, and we're happy to have added them to our OTT vertical. We are excited to welcome a large domestic manufacturer of analog and mixed signal semiconductor devices as a new customer in the first quarter. Hybrid bonding continues to gain adoption due to its cost, power, and performance advantages and is a key driver to our new semiconductor deal flow. In addition to these four new deals, we signed six renewals during the first quarter. '4 of these renewals were in pay TV, and the others were in OTT and consumer electronics.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

One pay TV renewal was with SK Broadband, a leading IPTV provider of high quality media and telecommunications services in South Korea. And another was with domestic pay TV provider Frontier Communications. Renewals are vital because they support our ongoing revenue stream and provide a stable, predictable foundation upon which we can grow in the future. These renewals continue our strong track record of over 90% of our customers renewing their license agreements with us. We are on track to deliver sustainable long term growth.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Existing customer renewals maintain a recurring revenue stream, while new customer license agreements are the primary growth catalysts. In media, we expect that declines in pay TV will be offset by new customers in OTT and adjacent media markets such as e commerce, ad tech, and gaming. In semiconductor, adoption of hybrid bonding in logic and memory devices and our continued success signing volume based agreements with customers ramping new products provides an additional avenue for growth. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we grew our total patent portfolio by another 4% to over 12,750 patent assets. We anticipate the growth of our portfolio to moderate through the rest of the year.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Our focus on expanding our portfolios has been a clear differentiator and creates value for our customers. But increasing our numbers is not our primary goal. Rather, we aim to focus our efforts on expanding and diversifying our portfolios to meet the evolving needs of the markets we serve. While over 85% of our patent assets are generated organically through our R and D efforts, we augment our internal growth through actively searching for patent assets we believe will accelerate our growth opportunities. Last quarter, we acquired two IP portfolios for $5,000,000 in total.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

One was in micro LEDs, an area that has synergies with our hybrid bonding IP and that we believe expands our value proposition with customers in this market. We also acquired an imaging portfolio, which has a broad applicability today across several of our growth verticals such as e commerce, social media, and automotive. Our strong cash generation has enabled us to balance our capital allocation between investing in growth through strategic tuck in acquisitions, improving our balance sheet through significant deleveraging and returning capital to shareholders through dividend payments and share repurchases. Keith will share additional details on our progress during the first quarter in a moment. Before I turn the call over to Keith, I'm happy to note that Sandeep Vizh has been nominated to join our Board of Directors, replacing Raghu Rao, who will be retiring from our Board after our upcoming shareholder meeting later this week.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Sandeep's extensive expertise in the technology sector, particularly in semiconductors and intellectual property, combined with his significant leadership experience as a CEO and board member will be invaluable as we continue to execute our strategic growth initiatives. Additionally, his deep understanding of the technology landscape will be a tremendous asset as we continue to drive innovation and expand our market leadership. On behalf of the entire team at Adia, I want to express our gratitude to Raghu for his outstanding contributions over the past several years. Now I'll turn the call over to Keith for a review of our financial performance. Keith?

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

Thank you, Paul. I'm pleased to

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

be speaking with you today to share details of our first quarter twenty twenty five financial results. During the first quarter, we delivered revenues of $87,700,000 driven by the execution of 10 license agreements across a diverse mix of end markets, including OTT, semiconductor, social media, pay TV, and consumer electronics. I am pleased to note that we added four new customers during the period, which helps drive our long term growth objectives. We are encouraged by the continuation of the strong momentum we saw exiting last year. Now I'd like to discuss our operating expenses, for which I'll be referring to non GAAP numbers only.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

During the first quarter, operating expenses were $40,900,000 an increase of $1,400,000 or 4% from the prior quarter. Research and development expenses increased $362,000 or 2% from the prior quarter. The modest increase in the first quarter is primarily due to ongoing patent development and related filings, as well as increased personnel costs. Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased $964,000 or 5% from the prior quarter, primarily due to lower corporate administrative costs and lower variable compensation. Litigation expense was $5,900,000 an increase of $2,000,000 or 54% compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to increased spending associated with our ongoing litigation with certain Canadian pay TV operators and with Disney.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

Interest expense during the first quarter was $10,600,000 a decrease of $1,700,000 from the prior quarter due to the benefit of a lower interest rate following the successful repricing of our term loan in January 2025 and due to our continued debt repayments. Our current effective interest rate, which includes amortization of debt issuance costs, was 7.9%. Other income was $1,700,000 and was primarily related to interest earned on our cash and investment portfolio and due to interest income recognized on revenue agreements with long term billing structures under ASC six zero six. Our adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $47,300,000 reflecting an adjusted EBITDA margin of 54. Depreciation expense for the quarter was $509,000 Our non GAAP income tax rate remained at 23% for the quarter.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

Our income tax expense consists primarily of federal and state domestic taxes as well as Korean withholding taxes. Now for a few details on the balance sheet. We ended the first quarter with $116,500,000 in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and generated $57,100,000 in cash from operations. We made $17,100,000 in principal payments on our debt in the first quarter and ended the quarter with a term loan balance of $470,000,000 As a result of our strong cash generation, we executed a stock buyback during the first quarter, repurchasing approximately 760,000 shares of our common stock for 10,000,000 During the first quarter, we paid a cash dividend of $05 per share of common stock. Our Board also approved a payment of another $05 per share dividend to be paid on June 17 to shareholders of record as of May 27.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

We continue to remain acquisitive and during the first quarter, we acquired patent portfolios associated with both our media and semiconductor businesses. We acquired Imaging Assets, which adds to the strength of our current media portfolio and are increasingly important as the underlying technology becomes more widely adopted in both consumer electronics and social media end markets. SCENE is a longer term growth driver. We acquired MicroLED assets that helps us further diversify our semiconductor portfolio and expands our potential customer base. Now I'll go over our guidance for the full year 2025.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

We are reiterating our prior guidance for the full year 2025. We expect revenue to be in the range of $390,000,000 to $430,000,000 as we are pleased with the progress we are making on executing and converting our sales pipeline. We would like to note that our second quarter could be impacted to the extent that certain deals ultimately signed in the second half of the year. If this were to occur, second quarter revenue would be similar to our first quarter revenue. We expect operating expenses to be in the range of $166,000,000 to $174,000,000 Within that guidance range, we anticipate that our litigation expense will increase in Q2 due to the timing of certain legal matters.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

Our revenue and expense guidance reflects the progress and trajectory of the business as we see it today. While we have not been impacted in the short term by market dynamics, we are mindful of the broader implications of a potential economic downturn. As a result, we are carefully monitoring the broader macroeconomic environment and remain prudent in in our spending. We expect interest expense to be in the range of 41,000,000 to $43,000,000 We expect other income to be in the range of 4,000,000 to $4,500,000 We expect a resulting adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 59%. We expect the non GAAP tax rate to remain consistent at roughly 23% for the full year.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

We also expect capital expenditures to be approximately $1,000,000 for the full year. The first quarter was in line with our expectations. Our pipeline of sales opportunities continues to grow and evolve across both our media and semiconductor businesses. Coupled with the deal momentum we realized over the last several quarters, it gives us confidence not only in our near term outlook, but also our long term growth prospects. That brings it into our prepared remarks, and with that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to begin our question and answer session.

[Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer at Adeia]

Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. Your first question comes from Kevin Cassidy of Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

[Kevin Cassidy, Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities]

Yes. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on landing all the new deals, very impressive. And what caught my interest the most is the new U. S. Professional Sports League for online streaming.

[Kevin Cassidy, Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities]

Would you consider this is this a breakthrough that you might be able to get other sports leagues to sign up also? Or do you I guess maybe you can talk about the size of that market and what the strategy would be from winning your first client.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Great question. Yeah. We're really happy with the new new deal execution.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Getting four new deals done in a quarter is quite the achievement. The one that you mentioned, the the US Professional Sports League is one that we're certainly particularly proud of. It it is an area that we've been focused on as many of these sport leagues sports leagues have really added to the video content and interactive nature of their websites and their offerings generally. And so, we do think this could lead to more. Now we do categorize this within our OTT vertical because of the streaming nature of of many of these services.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

But, yeah, we're very pleased by it and and think it could be the first of several.

[Kevin Cassidy, Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities]

Yeah. Maybe just one other question on that is, is there a potential for turning that into a betting features also?

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Yeah. I mean, as you know, Kevin, we certainly have sports gambling as part of our one of our verticals. That is something that we continue to explore. That adjacent market is a little further out than some of our others that are more near term like e commerce, ad tech, and automotive to a degree. But we're certainly continuing to explore and engage with a number of potential customers on sports gambling as well, and it could be an inroad, as you know.

[Kevin Cassidy, Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities]

Okay, great. And just one other question on the micro LED and the imaging portfolio that you acquired. Do those currently have licenses attached to them? Licensees, I should say.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Yeah. No. Great question. They they don't. You know, we often are buying patent assets that we don't don't come with existing revenue stream, but we that we see a really opportunity for us to take them on and and and add to our portfolio.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

You know, with micro LED, we've we've included that in our semiconductor portfolio. What's interesting to note there, Kevin, is is that a lot of the micro LED supply chain and ecosystem will look, we believe, like the semiconductor industry and they're going to need to adopt semiconductor related technologies and processes. So we're excited about the synergies there and what that can mean in terms of adding new potential customers. And also importantly on that one, as we think about new technologies and semiconductors for AI, as you think about silicon photonics and the like. And so we think there's a lot of potential with that portfolio.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

It is a more mid to long term opportunity for us, but one that we're very bullish about.

[Kevin Cassidy, Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Hamed Khorsand with BWS Financial. Your line is open.

[Hamed Khorsand, Principal at Beating Wall Street(BWS)]

Hi. So first off on this semiconductor announcement you have, is that the big one you were expecting last year?

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

No. It's not, Hamed. As we noted on the call, that that that deal is still out there to be had. This was a smaller opportunity for us, but one that continues to show progress, in the adoption of hybrid bonding, which also drove this deal as well.

[Hamed Khorsand, Principal at Beating Wall Street(BWS)]

Okay. And then as far as the OTT is concerned, where are you seeing the opportunities? Is it coming from the international market like the one you announced? Or are there still viable options here in domestic market?

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Yeah, well, as you know, we're currently in litigation Disney. We also have another very large OTT opportunity that's out there that remains unlicensed, that's domestic. And then we do have international opportunities as well. There are, I would say, bulk of the opportunities are in The US and are domestic, but we do have international licensees today and are continuing to explore, and and get new deals done in the international market as well. But the larger, revenue opportunities are are here in The US for us.

[Hamed Khorsand, Principal at Beating Wall Street(BWS)]

Okay. And then how big is the social media opportunity? I thought it was quite small for you in the past, so you've announced one. Is there any more you could announce?

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

You know, when you look at our, penetration in social media, we now have roughly 90% of the social media, you know, market, license. So it is, largely a licensed opportunity. Now where we do have opportunities is in renewals that are coming up, new deals are harder to come by just because we have most of the market licensed. This was though a new customer that we licensed, which we're really happy to add them to the otherwise long list of social media companies that we have already under license. So as we have talked about before, the social media opportunity will continue to expand though in terms of the use cases where video and imaging becomes more and more important to those companies, and so we think there's some opportunity to continue to expand the revenue that we get from existing customers as well.

[Hamed Khorsand, Principal at Beating Wall Street(BWS)]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

This will conclude the question and answer session. I'll turn the call to Paul for closing remarks.

[Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer at Adeia]

Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for being with us today. Before we go, I'd like to thank our employees for their continued dedication and hard work. We will be attending the Needham TMT Conference on May 9 and the Maxim Virtual TMT Conference on June 4. We look forward to seeing you at these and other upcoming events. Thank you for joining us today.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Christopher Chaney, VP - Investor Relations
• Paul Davis, Chief Executive Officer
• Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Kevin Cassidy, Senior Research Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities
• Hamed Khorsand, Principal at Beating Wall Street(BWS)