Overland: Fiscal 1Q13 Financial Results

Overland Storage, Inc. reported financial results for its fiscal 2013 first quarter ended September 30, 2012.

Eric Kelly, president and CEO, said: "With the successful launch of our new clustered NAS solution in October, we have three significant new branded products that are now positioned to gain traction in the marketplace as planned, and in less than a year, we have built a significant pipeline of new branded product opportunities that continues to grow. These new products have significantly expanded our total addressable market and have allowed us to participate in new opportunities not previously available to us.

"While our fiscal first quarter has historically been a seasonally down quarter, our lower than expected total revenue is largely due to the difficult macroeconomic environment in Europe and longer sales cycles, which we believe have similarly affected our competitors. While we continued to win new business in Europe, customers delayed taking product due to the market uncertainty, which negatively affected our revenue across all our product families and has tempered our outlook for our sales in the region. As a result, we are not reiterating our guidance regarding achieving non-GAAP profitability in the fourth quarter of calendar 2012, but we believe that with our strong branded product portfolio and growing pipeline of new business, we can achieve this profitability target by the end of our 2013 fiscal year."

Recent Highlights

• Launched new clustered NAS product SnapScale X2, significantly expanding the company’s addressable market opportunity to include the $14 billion scale-out NAS market
• Gross margins for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 improved sequentially to 33.7% from 31.6%
• Announced availability of LTO-6 technology in the company’s line of NEO Series tape libraries, more than doubling user storage capacities from previous generation technology
• SnapSAN 5000 product awarded highest honor of Gold Winner in the best new IT hardware category for the Golden Bridge Awards
• ITC ruling in October beneficial to Overland’s infringement claims against BDT in district court
• Filed a petition with the ITC Commission in November requesting a review of infringement of the ‘581 mail slot patent based on the commission’s new definition of a linear array

First Quarter Fiscal 2013 Financial Results
Net revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 was $11.7 million, compared to $14.1 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and $15.3 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012. Product revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 was $6.6 million, compared to $7.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and $9.4 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012.

Gross margin for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 was 33.7%, up from 32.6% for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and 31.6% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012.

Operating expenses for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 were $8.6 million, compared to $10.0 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2012, and $8.5 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012. Stock compensation expense was approximately $1.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2013, compared to approximately $1.4 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and approximately $1.1 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012. Depreciation and amortization was approximately $0.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2013, compared to $0.4 million in the first quarter of 2012.

Net loss for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 was $4.9 million, or a loss of $0.17 per share, compared to a net loss of $5.4 million, or a loss of $0.23 per share, in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and a loss of $2.7 million, or a loss of $0.10 per share, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012.

Total cash and cash equivalents at September 30, 2012 was $7.2 million, compared to $10.5 million at June 30, 2012. At September 30, 2012, the company had $4.0 million outstanding under its credit facility.

Patent Litigation:
Based on the Commission’s evaluation of the ‘581 mail slot patent, Overland filed a petition on November 8, 2012 arguing that claims 10,12 and 16 meet the new definition of ‘linear array’ put forward by the Commission, as the Commission agrees, and thus the ITC now should decide for the first time whether the BDT products include all the other elements of these claims. If the ITC remands the ‘581 infringement issue on this basis, the Administrative Law Judge could find BDT’s products infringe claims 10, 12 and 16, which Overland believes will result in BDT no longer being allowed to ship products with mail slots into the United States.

Overland reported on October 26, 2012 that the ITC released a Notice of Commission Decision in the infringement action filed by Overland Storage against IBM, Dell and BDT. Overland has previously reported that its ITC and District Court actions against IBM and Dell have been resolved by settlement. The Notice of Commission Decision makes several key findings regarding Overland Storage’s U.S. Patent No. 6,328,766, which relates to partitioning media elements in automated media devices, and its U.S. Patent No. 6,353,581, which relates to the ‘mail slot’ feature in automated media devices. Overland views this decision by the full Commission as beneficial to pursuing patent suits in civil court and another step in the process of proving that BDT and others in the data storage industry have been using Overland’s intellectual property without permission. The company’s infringement case against BDT and its affiliates continues and Overland plans to pursue monetary damages against BDT in District Court.