Ceva Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 10, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: CEVA reported 13% year-over-year revenue growth to $29 million, with licensing and related revenue up 21% to $18.2 million and non-GAAP operating margin expanding to 11% from 3% a year earlier.
  • Positive Sentiment: Customers increasingly adopted CEVA’s broader hardware and software platforms, including NeuPro-M AI IP for a major AI and computing platform company and complete connectivity and baseband solutions. Management said these deals should increase licensing value, customer stickiness, and future royalty opportunities.
  • Positive Sentiment: Royalty trends improved, supported by wireless connectivity, automotive AI programs, and smartphone share gains. CEVA shipped 567 million powered devices, up 16% year over year, while Wi-Fi shipments rose 28% and cellular IoT shipments reached a quarterly record.
  • Positive Sentiment: CEVA raised its 2026 revenue growth outlook to 13%–15% from 12% previously, and now expects non-GAAP operating income to grow approximately 70% and non-GAAP net income approximately 50% year over year.
  • Negative Sentiment: Management cautioned that memory pricing, supply constraints, and component-cost inflation could affect second-half handset demand, although it still expects normal seasonality and continued market-share gains. Bluetooth shipments declined 16% year over year and industrial IoT units fell from 24 million to 19 million.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Ceva Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good day, and welcome to the CEVA, Inc. Q2 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad, and to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Richard Kingston, Vice President, Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CEVA's Q2 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Amir Panush, Chief Executive Officer, and Yaniv Arieli, Chief Financial Officer. Before handing the call over to Amir, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide investors with additional insight into our core operating performance. Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results are included in the earnings release issued this morning and available on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Amir. Amir?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter, with revenue increasing 13% year-over-year to $29 million, fueled by licensing and related revenue growing 21% to hit highest level in three years. The quarter also benefited from a sequential recovery in royalty revenue, driven by continuing momentum across wireless connectivity, ramping automotive AI programs, and market share gains in smartphone. During the quarter, we signed 10 licensing agreements, including two with first-time customers and two directly with OEMs. More important than the number of agreements is the quality of those agreements. Increasingly, customers are adopting broader platforms and deeper collaborations that strengthens both our near-term licensing business and our long-term royalty opportunity. I would like to focus today on two themes that we believe highlight an important shift in the semiconductor industry and explain why CEVA and our technologies are increasingly well-positioned for long-term growth.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

The first is the continuing migration of intelligence from the cloud to the smart edge. This is a trend we have discussed for several years and one that is increasingly driving demand for our higher performance, connectivity, sensing, and AI technologies. During the quarter, we announced that we believe is one of the most strategically significant AI licensing agreements in CEVA's history. A leading global AI and computing platform company selected our NeuPro-M NPU IP for its next generation custom AI silicon. This agreement is significant for several reasons. First, it represents a new category of AI customers for CEVA. Historically, our AI licensing activity has primarily been with semiconductor companies and device OEMs.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

This customer develops both the hardware platform and the operating system, allowing us to collaborate at a much deeper level by optimizing not only the NPU hardware but also the AI software stack for its models, applications, and workloads. The expertise we gain through this engagement extends well beyond a single customer program. Co-optimizing AI hardware and software at the platform level will strengthen both our hardware and software roadmaps and further enhance our AI offering for future customers. Broadly, we believe this agreement reflects an important industry trend, where companies with some of the world's large engineering organizations are increasingly choosing to leverage proven AI IP rather than developing every component internally. For these companies, the question is no longer whether they have the engineering capability to build an NPU, but whether doing so represents the best use of their engineering resources.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

By licensing production-proven IP, they can focus their investments on the hardware, software, and AI experiences that differentiate their platforms while reducing development risk and accelerating time to market. The second trend we are seeing is customers increasingly adopting broader platform solutions rather than individual IP blocks. Two agreements from the quarter illustrate this well. A high-volume U.S. semiconductor company chose to adopt a complete chip built on our Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth Low Energy IP, originally developed in partnership with another CEVA customer, rather than licensing the underlying IP blocks individually. The decision reflects the same preference for production-proven complete solutions over developing internally or licensing component IP. Separately, another U.S. customer expanded a relationship that began with a single baseband component by adopting our complete baseband processing subsystem.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

As semiconductor development becomes increasingly complex, customers are recognizing that leveraging proven subsystem IP can significantly reduce engineering effort and execution risk, all while accelerating time to market, enabling them to concentrate their internal resources on the technologies that most differentiate their products. These are different customers and different technologies, but they demonstrate the same underlying trends. Companies are increasingly choosing production-proven hardware, software, and system expertise delivered as a complete platform, rather than assembling individual IP blocks themselves. For CEVA, this expands both the scope and value of our engagements. Broader platform adoption increases our content per design, deepens our integration into customer products, and creates larger, longer-term customer relationships, and increases the royalty opportunity associated with each customer platform as those products enter production. These successful outcomes also validate the strategy we have been executing over the past several years.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

We have invested in expanding our diverse portfolio beyond individual IP blocks to more complex hardware and software platforms across connectivity, sensing, and AI. As customers look to accelerate development while reducing execution risk, we believe this positions CEVA to capture a greater share of silicon content in future designs. Beyond these strategic engagements, activity remains broad-based across our business. In addition to the AI and platform wins I just discussed, we signed multiple follow-on agreements with existing customers alongside our new customer engagements, demonstrating our ability to both expand long-term relationships and consistently win new business. At Core Connectivity, we secured customer engagement spanning the United States, Europe, China, and the broader Asia-Pacific region, reinforcing the global demand for our technology.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

We also expanded our sensing portfolio with the launch of our Microsoft-certified RealSpace Elevate embedded application software, extending our spatial audio technology into the PC gaming market for the first time. Taken together, these achievements reinforce the strength of our connect, sense, and infer offering to enable Physical AI use cases. While AI is creating exciting new opportunities for CEVA, connectivity remains the foundation of Physical AI and continues to be the entry point for many of our customers' relationships. Increasingly, those relationships expand over time as customers adopt additional technologies across our portfolio. Now, turning to royalties. We are beginning to see the benefit of the broader customer engagements we have been building over the past several years translate into an increasingly diversified royalty business.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Royalty revenues increased both sequentially and year-over-year, supported by continuous trends across our wireless connectivity portfolio, a growing contribution from automotive AI deployment, and share gains in smartphones. Wireless connectivity remained particularly strong, with healthy year-over-year growth in both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth shipments, while cellular IoT shipments reached another quarterly record. In automotive, customer programs continue to ramp, reflecting increasing AI content in next-generation vehicles. Overall, the quarter demonstrates the continued evolution of CEVA business and the continued market leadership of our IP. We are expanding the breadth of our licensing engagements, increasing the value of every customer relationship through broader platform adoption, and building a more diversified royalty engine. Together, these trends reinforce our confidence in both our near-term outlook and our long-term growth opportunity. With that, I'll turn the call over to Yaniv to review our financial results.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Thank you, Amir. Good morning, everyone. I'll now review our financial results for the Q2. Revenue for the Q2 increased 13% year-over-year and 7% sequentially to $29 million, reflecting another exceptionally strong licensing quarter and continued improvement in our royalty business. Our trailing 12-month licensing and related revenue increased 13% to around $70 million. The revenue breakdown is as follows. Licensing and related revenue increased 21% year-over-year to $18.2 million, reflecting 63% of our total revenues and our strongest licensing quarters in three years. Importantly, the strength of the quarter reflects the broader platform engagements Amir described earlier, which not only increase licensing and related revenues today, but also expand the future royalty opportunity associated with those customer programs. Royalty revenue was $10.8 million, reflecting 37% of our total revenues, compared with $10.7 million for the prior year.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Period and up 17% sequentially, reflecting continued strength across wireless connectivity and automotive AI and share gains in smartphones. Gross margin was 87% on GAAP basis and 88% on non-GAAP basis, in line with our guidance. GAAP operating expenses were $27.5 million below the low end of our guidance range. Non-GAAP operating expenses, excluding equity-based compensation expenses, amortization of acquired intangibles, and acquisition-related costs, were $22.3 million, at the low end of our guidance. GAAP operating loss improved to $2.1 million compared to $4.5 million in the Q2 of last year. Non-GAAP operating income increased to $3.1 million compared with $0.8 million in the prior year. While non-GAAP operating margins expanded to 11%, up from 3% a year ago. Both measures also improved significantly on a sequential basis, demonstrating continued operating leverage.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Net financial income was $1 million compared to $2.1 million in the Q2 of 2025 and below our guidance of $1.7 million, primarily due to foreign exchange effects related to our Israeli shekel-dominated lease obligations. Income tax expense was approximately $1.8 million, slightly above the guidance, reflecting the geographic mix of licensing and royalty revenues recognized during the quarter. GAAP net loss was $2.9 million or $0.10 diluted share, compared with GAAP net loss of $3.7 million or $0.15 per share in the Q2 of 2025. Non-GAAP net income increased 28% year-over-year to $2.3 million, while non-GAAP diluted earnings per share increased to $0.08 compared to $0.07 in the prior year period. On a sequential basis, both non-GAAP and net income and diluted earnings per share doubled.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

With respect to other related data, during the quarter, customers shipped 567 million CEVA-Powered devices, an increase of 16% compared to the Q2 of 2025. Of those shipments, 61 million units or 11% of the total were mobile handset modem shipments compared with 55 million units in the prior year period, reflecting improving smartphone royalties driven by stronger market share in entry-level smartphones, together with continued expansion in the premier tier. Consumer IoT increased to 487 million units compared to 409 million units a year ago. Industrial IoT shipments were 19 million units compared to 24 million units in the prior year. Despite the lower unit volume, industrial royalty revenues increased 7% year-over-year, reflecting a richer mix of higher-value products, including automotive AI and wireless infrastructure.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Looking at our connectivity technologies, these shipment metrics continue to demonstrate the breadth and diversification of our royalty base across multiple end markets. Bluetooth shipments decreased 16% year-over-year to 295 million units. Cellular IoT shipments reached another quarter record of 68 million units, up 3% year-over-year. Wi-Fi shipments increased 28% year-over-year to 80 million units. As for the balance sheet items, we ended the quarter with approximately $221 million in cash equivalents, marketable securities, and cash deposits, providing significant financial flexibility to support continued investments in our technology roadmap while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation, including selective strategic M&A opportunities. Days sales outstanding were 70 days. During the quarter, we generated $5.8 million of cash from operating activities. Depreciation and amortization expenses were $0.8 million, where capital expenditure totaled $0.6 million.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

At the end of the quarter, we employed 406 people, including 327 engineers, reflecting our continued investments in innovation while maintaining disciplined expense management. Turning to the outlook. We delivered a strong H1 of 2026, supported by strong licensing execution, improving royalty trends, and meaningful expansion in non-GAAP profitability. Just as importantly, the quality of the customer engagement we secured during the H1 provides a strong foundation for future growth across both licensing and royalties. Reflecting our H1 performance and current visibility, we are raising our full-year revenue outlook. We now expect 2026 revenue to increase between 13% and 15% over 2025, compared with our previous expectation of 12% growth that we shared at the end of the Q1.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

We continue to expect the H2 to be stronger than the first, consistent with our normal seasonal profile, while recognizing that memory pricing dynamics and broader supply constraints remain important industry variables. On the expenses, we maintain our previous guidance. Total non-operating cost of revenues and operating expenses are still expected to increase by approximately 8% on an annual basis over 2025, as we continue to invest in our roadmap while carefully managing cost mitigation and foreign exchange hedges. As a result, the stronger revenue growth, together with disciplined expense management, we now expect non-GAAP operating income to increase approximately 70% year-over-year, while non-GAAP net income is expected to increase approximately 50%, both above our previous expectations. Q3 guidance: Revenue is expected to be in the range of $30.5 million-$34.5 million.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Gross margin is expected to be approximately 87% on GAAP basis and 88% on non-GAAP basis, excluding approximately $0.2 million of equity-based compensation expenses and $0.1 million of amortization of acquired intangibles. GAAP operating expenses are expected to be between $28.2 million and $29.2 million, including approximately $5.4 million of equity-based compensation expense and $0.1 million for amortization of acquired intangibles and $0.1 million for acquisition-related costs. Non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be similar to the Q2 level between $22.5 million and $23.5 million. Net financial income is expected to be approximately $2 million. Income tax expense is expected to be approximately $1.9 million. Weighted average diluted share count is expected to be approximately 28.2 million shares on GAAP basis and 30 million shares on non-GAAP basis. Rocco, we are ready to take the questions now.

Operator

Yes, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Today's first question comes from Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Kevin Cassidy
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong result. You had mentioned about a large company bringing their wireless design in-house rather than buying someone else. Is that a trend you're seeing longer term? Maybe you could talk about the trends you're seeing for more integration of technologies vertically within your customers.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Definitely, Kevin. Good morning, and thanks. Definitely we see it as a trend. As part of our strategy, as I mentioned also on the previous calls, was to really come with a complete offering of IP, including the RF IP. What we see, some of the customers are basically looking for a complete turnkey offering that they can so-call integrate into their complete portfolio and taking that very quickly in terms of time to market and proven technology and solution. Definitely we see some of those OEM and semiconductors companies looking to get the full solution from us.

Kevin Cassidy
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. What does that mean for CEVA? Does that mean a little more stickiness to your IP, if you're selling more to one customer or, I guess just less CapEx involved? I guess, this is a positive trend for CEVA?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Kevin, thanks for that question. That's definitely a very positive trend. It actually brings three additional values for us. One, on the agreement itself, the licensing agreement, what we see, both the licensing in terms of the deal size as well as the future royalty is meaningfully higher than just selling the component IP. Also on top of that, it's really the stickiness with the customers. That helps the customers to reduce their own engineering effort and relying more on CEVA capabilities, which at the end of the day, drive the strongest stickiness moving forward.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

As well as really, it helps significantly in the discussion of the mix versus buy. It's harder for large companies to rely on CEVA technology if we provide only partial solution or just part of the components IP. The more we're offering the complete solution, it's easier for them and drive more the decision towards buying IP from CEVA rather than doing that internally. Overall, this is a very positive trend and fits very well to our strategy of how we drive our engineering activities and overall innovation in IP.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Kevin, maybe would add one more thing, that in the wireless markets, there are new trends that come every couple of years, every year to two years, depends on the technology itself, new standards and new features. By being able to provide those, we also have recurring revenues of new licensing deals for every one of these enhancements going forward. It's a very strong stickiness mechanism also because of the nature of those wireless connectivity that get upgraded and updated all the time. We're able, obviously, to do that.

Kevin Cassidy
Kevin Cassidy
Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, great. Congratulations again.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Thank you.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Thank you, Kevin.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Suji Desilva at Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Hi, Amir. How are you? Congratulations on the progress here. Amir, you talked at length about how you're engaging deeper with the customers, maybe a hardware, software integration, perhaps more sort of product development effort. Is this going to result in more custom IP blocks or more continued standard products? Will it affect how we should think about royalty rate for you guys? Is that the right framework to think about these kind of engagements?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah. Definitely overall... Thanks for the question, Suji. Overall, within our mix of licensing agreements, we do see more, I would call it, custom solutions offering and demands from the market. That, again, that goes along very nicely with the trends of how we're investing in our resources and what we see as a potential in the market. Going back to your point on royalty, it's actually where we see significant potential increase of those royalty as the royalty per unit that we can extract by providing the custom offering and the complete offering, is meaningfully higher than a component IP.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

For example, we talked about a very strategic new AI deal that we've just signed with one of the top large OEMs out there that have both operating system capabilities and hardware and software. That level of integration and customization drives significantly much higher royalty per unit, that we will get versus our typical NPU offering.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Okay, Amir. That's great. Thanks. Then my other question is on the edge AI market and the trend toward edge AI from the cloud. There's a lot of chip and IP sort of opportunity there from various players. I'm wondering if there are any particular end applications that are initially good opportunities for you as you see traction in the edge AI market, or where we should think about your best near-term efforts opportunities are?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

We definitely see that in the high-end compute edge markets, whether it's the PC, the mobile, those type of application. We also see it right now entrenched very deeply in the automotive for ADAS system. What we will see more is into robotics, humanoids. This is right now coming also into play.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth Capital

Okay. Thanks, Amir. Thanks for the input.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Thank you, Suji.

Operator

Our next question today comes from Natalia Winkler with UBS. Please go ahead.

Natalia Winkler
Natalia Winkler
Analyst at UBS

Hi. Thank you so much for taking my question. I had two. One is on the smartphone. You mentioned improving share of the entry smartphone as well as the premium. Could you please speak a bit more? What are you seeing there and, maybe what's kind of helpful, from the standpoint of share gains on the entry-level smartphone for you guys?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah, Natalia. Thanks for the question. Related to the entry point customer or the lower tier customers in the handset mobile market, definitely we've seen a very meaningful recovery in the royalty between Q2 and Q1. This quarter, we've seen very nice recovery. We're also seeing that they are basically gaining market share against their competition. Overall, we see this as a very positive momentum as we go into the H2 of the year. Definitely, the other large U.S. OEM, the expectation is they will go more with their internal modem, that should provide for us also a market gain share as we move into the H2.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

I'll add some more color. UNISOC, our Chinese customer in the low-cost smartphone, first is moving gradually more and more to 5G from being the de facto leader volume-wise in the 4G and the prior generation. That means also higher ASPs for us. If you Google or look around, you'll see that they have won a few dozens of different design wins recently in the last quarter, with good brands, local and Chinese brands, including Vivo, Xiaomi, which in the past used MediaTek more extensively. These are nice design wins. As long as this continues, both market share gains for them and volume expansion, with the higher 5G share in that market going to UNISOC, that will also benefit CEVA. This is an important high-volume market for us as well.

Natalia Winkler
Natalia Winkler
Analyst at UBS

Understood. Thank you. That's very helpful. The second question I had was, now that ARC has been acquired by GlobalFoundries, are you guys seeing any additional momentum in your licensing business, maybe for the NPU licensing business with that transition?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah, definitely, we see it as a tailwind for our business moving forward, especially for NPU and UWB product line, and where the competition will be more favorable for us, because we really focus on that IP as a complete platform, while over there it will be done differently. That's a good point, Natalia. We will definitely see there as a tailwind and helping us to compete better in the U.S. and the Western world with our NPUs. We just signed one of those very strategic deals this quarter as part of that momentum.

Natalia Winkler
Natalia Winkler
Analyst at UBS

Awesome. Thank you.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Thank you. Rocco, next question. Hello? Rocco, are we taking more questions?

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Sorry, everybody. Just hold on one minute. We're trying to get reestablished here with the call center.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Sorry, everyone. We're still trying to work this out. Sort of lost the operator.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Hi, just in the interest of time here. I'm going to see if any of the other analysts in the queue want to email me their questions, and I'll read them out and we can answer that way, if that makes sense. If any of the analysts in the queue want to email me directly now, I'll ask the question on the line. Thanks. Hi there. Okay. I have a couple of questions that have just come in over email. First one is from Joseph Cardoso at JPM, JPMorgan. He wants to follow up on the entry-level smartphone momentum and maybe tie that back to the risks we're hearing at the low-end portion of the market, given the component cost inflation. How are you thinking about the risks there, and are you starting to see any signs of risk there or generally across the portfolio on that front?

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Yeah. I think we've talked about this in the past, that the low-end smartphones, in a sense, need much less memory, and the more high-end devices, which are higher priced these days, and there's still to supply to high demand. We haven't seen, at least in the last couple of quarters, a significant issues around that. They're still part of the constraint in the market, but to a less degree than the higher-end, $1,000 phones type. It's still a play in the industry. No doubt it hurts margins and the supply. For the time being, if we look sequentially from Q1 to Q2, we've seen a tremendous increase in volume. Part of it is seasonal, and that means that our customer was able to address that and supply the demand that they've planned to, at least. For us, we saw significant increase both in volume and dollars.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah, maybe I'll add to that. Yeah. Overall, with the trends that we've seen from Q1 to Q2, with the typical seasonality and our customers actually gaining in new sockets, we expect good seasonality, expansion in the H2 as well. Having said that, definitely the memory shortage has an impact on the wireless handset industry, and it's hard to quantify exactly how that will make an impact in the H2. Overall, we expect continued expansion, seasonality of our customers' volume as we go to the H2.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Great. Thanks. Another question here from Josh Buchalter at TD Cowen. Josh asks, can you provide more context on how NeuPro is being used by new custom silicon engagement? Any details on the functionality that ship and timeline to materiality?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah, great question. First, let me a little bit explain more really about the engagement and the utilization of our NPU IP. First, as we go, for example, in this case, into more custom silicon offering, what we are doing with the customers, they have a very good, deep access to our core architecture of our IP. Then together, we basically go and define what additional special features, capabilities, and with that, specific neural networks will be run on our silicon and hardware IP in a very efficient way. The holy grail here is, one, to be able to run special networks with special features and capabilities, but not even less importantly, to be able to run them in a very high efficient performance, so-called token per power, in terms of latency, all those very important metrics for edge devices.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

What these customers, with their ability of accessing the complete software stack, including the operating system across all their product lines, helps for both of us together to optimize it even further. That's a big plus both from how you can use our IP, which is very deeply configurable, as well as how we can work together on the complete hardware, software, operating system integration. In terms of timing, this is engagement that started, typically within few quarters, our customers go to a tape-out, and then from then, a few quarters between close to about 1.5 years to two years, they go to production.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Even though this is a custom offering, we expect it to go, in terms of the timeline, the same as with any other kind of IP and product that we are offering in that domain. We don't expect it to be any time longer because very quickly we can configure the solutions and optimize it with this customer. That's the very unique approach that we have with our IP and capabilities, and what helps us actually to win that socket with that large customers against so-called doing on their own.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Thanks, Amir. We have another question here from Gary Mobley at Benchmark, a StoneX company. Gary asks, when we talk about the U.S. customer in the quarter adding a baseband subsystem in addition to the DSP, are we referring to RF in this case or is it something else?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

It's a complete basically. Sorry. Can you repeat the question? Just to make sure.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Sure. Sorry. The U.S. customer that we said upgraded to the complete baseband subsystem in the quarter, were we relating to RF in this scenario, or is it some other sort of function in the subsystem that they upgraded-

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yes.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

From just DSP?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Okay, thanks. This is related to a WAN, a wireless access subsystem with complete satellite constellation. This is a complete so-called modem technology, but excluding the RF. It's the all MAC baseband technology, hardware and software, complete offering, complete subsystem. While we are hardening that to the specific product, also it's not what the customer needs.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Okay. We have a question here from Charles Shi at Needham. He asks about the full-year guidance. Full-year guidance is now raised 13%-15%. Can you provide more details on the growth of licensing and royalty relative to the company average growth?

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

Yeah, sure. If we look at the first two quarters of last year, the licensing and related revenue run rate was $15-ish, $16 million. When you look at the H1 of this year, the first two quarter was $17.8 million and now $18.2 million, the $18-ish million. There is no doubt from all what we explained today, the solution aspect of providing not just standalone IP, but a full solution to our customers, whether it includes multiple technology, wireless or other, whether it includes RF and now it's part of their wireless offering or AI, and sensing technology. This enabled us, at least in the first part of the year, to increase significantly the licensing and related revenue level. We believe that these levels can continue. This is at least our plan. This is part of our internal forecast.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

We don't break down licensing and royalties, but guide on a full revenue basis. We do have a strong pipeline for these types of deals and do believe that we are and have achieved a step function with adding AI, which is a significant part of our revenue these days, about 20%. We've seen that last year, we've seen that in the first part of this year. This continues, and it doesn't replace anything. We could see that it is an increase to our overall licensing and related revenue. That's on one hand. On the royalty front, the annual guidance, the higher annual guidance, is also part seasonal shift with a stronger H2. If you look at the last three years, every H2 of those last three years, volume-wide, we increased north of 30% year-over-year for the full H2.

Yaniv Arieli
Yaniv Arieli
CFO at CEVA

We do believe that seasonality will play in our favor with other aspects of new royalty payers, like automotive, that started only this year, the beginning of the year. On top of that, the market share gains in smartphones that we mentioned, and the combo Bluetooth, Wi-Fi type of solution that are a better solution to our customers and higher ASPs to us. All this in place puts us in a stronger, as Richard mentioned, 13%-15% year-over-year growth and significant improvement in operating margins as we are keeping expenses tight and managing all these R&D investments with growth in the top line. We're looking at about 70% growth in non-GAAP operating margins year-over-year and about 50% growth in net income year-over-year. That's part of our enhanced guidance for the remainder of 2026.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Thanks, Yaniv. I have another question here. This is from Martin Yang at Oppenheimer. It's a two-part. First part is, do you see more platform companies in your pipeline? How big of an opportunity is that in the broader context of your business? Maybe answer that first and I'll do the second one afterwards.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah. Overall, as I mentioned previously, we definitely see this as a growing trend, both in terms of the market needs, our customer needs, as well as what we can offer with our complete portfolio of IP. I cannot break down specifically what portion would be solution, what more component IP. The important thing is that this really helps us to drive a continuous increase in our licensing, and we've seen it through the H1 of the year that has been stronger than what so-called what we originally expected as well as the actual results.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

That helps us to drive also or to guide the H2 to be stronger than what we discussed just last quarter. Overall, this is a very positive trend. This will help us to drive more licensing, but the exact portion of each can fluctuate between quarter-to-quarter and not something that specifically I can sort of point to.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Okay. The second part from Martin relates to Bluetooth HDT. It asks, does a HDT class design win carry a materially higher royalty per unit than your current Bluetooth designs? When does the HDT royalties start contributing?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah. First, yeah, the HDT, it's much improved technology, both from throughput that it support as well as the new use cases it can support. Definitely that helps us to drive higher royalty per unit versus the legacy Bluetooth 6.0. Even more so, with this technology, we are also now offering a complete solution with our RF IP supporting HDT. The combination of the two increase even further the royalty per unit that we can get for those sockets. Overall, we will see it as a positive trend. Volume ramp will start towards the end of this year, and the significant ramp, of course, will go through 2027, 2028. The customer action that we have announced with, they are basically right now ramping that product in the marketplace. Very soon we will start seeing royalties of that platform as well.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Thank you. I've got a question, just we can briefly address it. It's multiple analysts have asked about this, but I'll relate this one to Charles Shi at Needham. Asking about, for the H2 of the year, are we assuming normal seasonality for mobile handsets in the H2 of the year? At the same time, are we assuming a significant market share gain at a premium-tier mobile vendor in the H2 of the year? Those two kind of tied in together.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Overall, we're assuming the seasonality as we've typically seen for our current so-called mobile customers, with the caveat that, of course, we need to take into account the memory allocation challenges that the mobile market is going through. On top of that, definitely, we are expecting the gain share with our U.S. customers as they continue to use more their internal models. Both are in play.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Great. Thanks. Just one last question here. Going back to Joe Cardoso at JPMorgan. He asked about Wi-Fi units. They declined sequentially in the quarter following a few quarters in a row of sequential expansion. Just curious if you could dive into the drivers of the volatility in the quarter, and how you're thinking about trajectory for Wi-Fi going forward.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah. Actually, I wouldn't look at one specific quarter, so-called, on a sequential level. Overall, year-over-year, we continue to see very significant growth of any of our technology, including Wi-Fi and wireless connectivity. It's more related to our customer mix and when they ramp their own specific product. Some of those high volume can actually start in Q3 and Q4. I would expect our Wi-Fi shipments to continue to go very nicely year-over-year through the rest of the year as well.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Great. Thanks. I think that's all we'll take for now. Amir, do you want to go to the CEO closing remarks, please?

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

Yeah. Thanks, Richard. In closing, this quarter reinforces our confidence in the direction of the business and the strength of our IP. We are seeing increasing demand for our technologies across AI, connectivity, and sensing. Strong adoptions of broader hardware and software platforms, and continued diversification of our royalty base. At the same time, our licensing momentum is translating into improving profitability and gives us confidence in raising our outlook for the year. The opportunity ahead of us continues to expand as intelligence moves to the edge and more companies develop custom silicon to differentiate their products.

Amir Panush
Amir Panush
CEO at CEVA

With our connect, sense, and infer portfolio, we believe CEVA is uniquely positioned to enable that transition. Just as importantly, we are seeing customers engage with us at the broader platform level, increasing both the strategic value of our relationship and our long-term royalty opportunity. The momentum we've built in the H1 of the year gives us confidence heading into the H2. Richard, back to you.

Richard Kingston
Richard Kingston
VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA

Thanks, Amir. Thanks everybody for keeping your patience with us there. As a reminder, the prepared remarks for this conference call are accessible through the Investors section of our website. With regards to upcoming investor events we will be attending, here are some of the conferences. The Rosenblatt Sixth Annual Technology Summit Part 2, August 17th and 18th, being held virtually. The Seventh Annual Needham Virtual Semiconductor and SemiCap Conference, August 19th and 20th, being held virtually. The Stifel 2026 Tech Executive Summit, August 24th and 25th in Deer Valley, Utah. Jefferies Semiconductor, IT, Hardware and Communication Technology Conference, August 25th and 26th in Chicago. Benchmark StoneX TMT Conference, September 10th in New York, New York. Further information on these events and all events we will be participating in can be found on the Investors section of our website. Thank you and goodbye.

Executives
Analysts
    • Richard Kingston
      VP of Market Intelligence, Investor and Public Relations at CEVA
    • Amir Panush
      CEO at CEVA
    • Kevin Cassidy
      Analyst at Rosenblatt Securities
    • Suji Desilva
      Analyst at Roth Capital
    • Natalia Winkler
      Analyst at UBS
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