Silicon Motion: Fiscal 1Q25 Financial Results

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation announced its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2025.

For the first quarter of 2025, net sales (GAAP) decreased sequentially to $166.5 million from $191.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Net income (GAAP) decreased to $19.5 million, or $0.58 per diluted American depositary share (“ADS”) (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $21.6 million, or $0.64 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the fourth quarter of 2024.

For the first quarter of 2025, net income (non-GAAP) decreased to $20.3 million, or $0.60 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $29.4 million, or $0.87 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the fourth quarter of 2024.

All financial numbers are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.

First Quarter of 2025 Review
“Despite the challenging macro environment in the first quarter of 2025, we executed our plan and delivered quarterly revenue at the high end of our guided range and delivered another quarter of gross margin expansion,” stated Wallace Kou, president and CEO, Silicon Motion. “Our industry leading PCIe Gen 5 controller experienced stronger than expected demand during the quarter, partially driven by growing AI inference demands from white box server makers leveraging more mainstream hardware components. Our eMMC and UFS controllers also experienced better than expected demand given a rebound in the smartphone market and our ongoing market share gains. While the near-term remains challenging given the broader economic challenges associated with tariffs and potential trade wars, we remain focused on delivering strong, sustainable long-term growth through product diversification; expanding into new markets; and growing market share across our portfolio of consumer, enterprise, automotive, industrial and storage solutions.“

Key Financial Results

Other Financial Information

During the first quarter of 2025, we had $11.7 million of capital expenditures, including $7.0 million for the routine purchases of testing equipment, software, design tools and other items, and $4.7 million for building construction in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Returning Value to Shareholders
On February 6, 2025, we announced that our Board of Directors had authorized a new program for the Company to repurchase up to $50 million of our ADSs over a six-month period. In the first quarter of 2025, we repurchased $24.3 million of our ADSs at an average price of $56.96 per ADS.

Business Outlook
“We are rapidly expanding our market opportunities as we invest in new products and enter new markets, which we anticipate will drive improved revenue and profitability for many years to come. In 2025, we expect to benefit from the introduction of several new products, including our 8-channel PCIE Gen 5 controller, our 4-channel PCIe Gen 5 controller targeting the mass market that will be introduced in late 2025, our higher-end UFS 4.1 and new low-cost UFS 2.2 controllers that will ramp in the second half of 2025. We introduced our first MonTitan enterprise/AI-class products at the end of 2024, and we expect these to ramp-up production with our first customers in the second half of 2025. Additionally, we continue to expand our automotive product portfolio and our market share across multiple applications. While the near-term environment remains challenging given the macro environment, including the potential impact of tariffs and potential trade wars, we continue to believe we will see a strong rebound in the consumer markets in the second half of 2025, enhanced by our new product introductions, and we continue to target a revenue run rate of $1 billion as we exit the year.“

For the second quarter of 2025, management expects:

* Projected gross margin (non-GAAP) excludes $0.1 million of stock-based compensation.
** Projected operating margin (non-GAAP) excludes $3.1million to $4.1 million of stock-based compensation and dispute related expenses.

 Conference Call and Webcast:
The Company’s management team held a conference call on April 30, 2025. A webcast of the call is available on the company’s website.

Discussion of Non-GAAP Financial Measures
To supplement the Company’s unaudited selected financial results calculated in accordance with US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”), the Company discloses certain non-GAAP financial measures that exclude stock-based compensation and other items, including gross profit (non-GAAP), gross margin (non-GAAP), operating expenses (non-GAAP), operating profit (non-GAAP), operating margin (non-GAAP), non-operating income (expense) (non-GAAP), net income (non-GAAP), and earnings per diluted ADS (non-GAAP). These non-GAAP measures are not in accordance with or an alternative to GAAP and may be different from similarly-titled non-GAAP measures used by other companies. We believe that these non-GAAP measures have limitations in that they do not reflect all the amounts associated with the Company’s results of operations as determined in accordance with GAAP and that these measures should only be used to evaluate the Company’s results of operations in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP measures. The presentation of this additional information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measure. We compensate for the limitations of our non-GAAP financial measures by relying upon GAAP results to gain a complete picture of our performance.

Our non-GAAP financial measures are provided to enhance the user’s overall understanding of our current financial performance and our prospects for the future. Specifically, we believe the non-GAAP results provide useful information to both management and investors as these non-GAAP results exclude certain expenses, gains and losses that we believe are not indicative of our core operating results and because they are consistent with the financial models and estimates published by many analysts who follow the Company. We use non-GAAP measures to evaluate the operating performance of our business, for comparison with our forecasts, and for benchmarking our performance externally vs. our competitors. Also, when evaluating potential acquisitions, we exclude the items described below from our consideration of the target’s performance and valuation. Since we find these measures to be useful, we believe that our investors benefit from seeing the results from management’s perspective in addition to seeing our GAAP results. We believe that these non-GAAP measures, when read in conjunction with the Company’s GAAP financials, provide useful information to investors by offering:

• the ability to make more meaningful period-to-period comparisons of the Company’s on-going operating results;
• the ability to better identify trends in the Company’s underlying business and perform related trend analysis;
• a better understanding of how management plans and measures the Company’s underlying business; and
• an easier way to compare the Company’s operating results analyst financial models and operating results of our competitors that supplement their GAAP results with non-GAAP financial measures.

The following are explanations of each of the adjustments that we incorporate into our non-GAAP measures, as well as the reasons for excluding each of these individual items in our reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures:

Stock-based compensation expense consists of non-cash charges related to the fair value of restricted stock units awarded to employees. The Company believes that the exclusion of these non-cash charges provides for more accurate comparisons of our operating results to our peer companies due to the varying available valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types. In addition, the Company believes it is useful to investors to understand the specific impact of share-based compensation on its operating results.

Restructuring charges relate to the restructuring of our underperforming product lines, principally the write-down of NAND flash, embedded DRAM and SSD inventory valuation and severance payments.

Dispute related expenses consist of legal, consultant, other fees and resolution related to the dispute.

Foreign exchange loss (gain) consists of translation gains and/or losses of non-US$ denominated current assets and current liabilities, as well as certain other balance sheet items, which result from the appreciation or depreciation of non-US$ currencies vs. the US$. We do not use financial instruments to manage the impact on our operations from changes in foreign exchange rates, and because our operations are subject to fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, we therefore exclude foreign exchange gains and losses when presenting non-GAAP financial measures.

Realized/Unrealized loss (gain) on investments relates to the disposal and net change in fair value of long-term investments.