Adeia Q1 2026 Earnings Call - New Customers AMD and Microsoft Drive Semiconductor and Media Growth

Operator: Good day, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Adeia’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During today’s presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the call will be open for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Chaney, Vice President in Investor Relations for Adeia. Chris, please go ahead.

Chris Chaney, Vice President, Investor Relations, Adeia: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we share with you details of our quarterly financial results. With me on the call today are Paul Davis, our President and CEO, and Keith Jones, our CFO. Paul will share with you some general observations regarding the 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 would 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.

For more information on the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual result 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-K 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.

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 made available on the Investor Relations website at adeia.com. Now I’d like to turn the call over to our CEO, Paul Davis.

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Thank you, Chris, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I’m pleased to be here to share our results for the first quarter of 2026. After last year’s strong finish, including our license agreement with Disney, we entered 2026 with significant momentum, which continued into the first quarter. We signed foundational agreements with both AMD and Microsoft, along with additional deal activity across multiple verticals. Our strong execution is demonstrated in our first quarter results. We delivered revenue of $105 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 60% and $58 million in operating cash flow.

We also continued to execute on all four pillars of our balanced capital allocation strategy, paying down our debt, which is now less than $400 million, returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, and investing in our portfolios through five strategic tuck-in acquisitions. The eight license agreements we closed during the first quarter were highlighted by AMD and Microsoft, which were among our three new customers. We closed five renewals with customers across a diverse set of verticals, including pay TV, consumer electronics, semiconductors, and OTT. I’m very pleased that in early March, we resolved our dispute and signed a seminal multi-year license agreement with AMD for access to our semiconductor portfolio, which includes our hybrid bonding technology. The agreement was reached within four months of filing litigation, underscoring the strength of our semiconductor portfolio and the effectiveness of our approach.

It also represents an important milestone for our semiconductor business and provides further momentum as we pursue additional semiconductor opportunities in both logic and memory that will be driven by continued adoption of hybrid bonding. The significance of our agreement with AMD cannot be overstated. AMD is a highly respected innovator and a leader in advanced semiconductor design. Their early adoption of chiplet architecture and hybrid bonding highlights the relevance of our technology in next-generation computing. While AMD was an early adopter, hybrid bonding is now becoming more broadly adopted across the semiconductor industry. We are seeing increased adoption in both logic and memory, supported by significant investment in next-generation architectures and increasing use in advanced semiconductors for high-volume consumer electronic devices. This adoption is being driven by AI and high-performance computing, which are fundamentally increasing power density and interconnect demands.

As traditional Moore’s law scaling reaches its limits. Our hybrid bonding and thermal management technologies have become essential to enabling continued performance gains. We believe our portfolio is well-positioned to deliver value across both logic and memory markets as the industry pushes beyond the limits of traditional scaling. The AI-driven growth in semiconductors is remarkable, with the total semiconductor market anticipated to exceed $1 trillion annually by the end of 2026. In addition to AMD, we also added Microsoft as a new customer in the first quarter, with a multiyear license agreement for access to our media portfolio. Our media portfolio has broad applicability across Microsoft’s products and services, including its consumer electronics and social media businesses, such as Xbox and LinkedIn.

In recent weeks, we also expanded our presence in e-commerce with a new license agreement with L’Oréal, adding another global brand to our expanding customer base in e-commerce. While e-commerce remains a relatively small portion of our revenue to date, our growing momentum and robust pipeline in this market gives us confidence that it could be much more significant in the future. We continue to make steady progress towards reaching our long-term goal of $500 million in annual licensing revenue. Our strong start to 2026 reinforces our confidence in that trajectory. A key driver of this progress is our ability to add new, high-value customers such as AMD and Microsoft, agreements that provide sustainable recurring revenue streams. These new deals are contributing to the continued diversification of our business.

In the first quarter, non-pay TV recurring revenue grew 28% year-over-year, reflecting further expansion into growth markets. Our most significant growth market is semiconductors. The rapid evolution of AI and high-performance computing is driving fundamental changes in chip design, including the broad adoption of chiplet architectures with hybrid bonding. Our agreement with AMD is an important validation of our position in this space. Other leading logic and memory companies are following similar paths, and we believe hybrid bonding will play an increasingly central role across both logic and memory applications for years to come. In addition, demand for high-performance memory continues to grow rapidly, particularly in NAND and high-bandwidth memory. We are already seeing contributions from earlier agreements with NAND manufacturers, and we expect further adoption as production volumes scale.

We are also beginning to see early indication that these technologies are expanding beyond data centers into consumer devices, which represents an additional long-term high-volume opportunity. Importantly, as AI and high-performance computing workloads continue to scale, thermal management becomes a critical constraint. Our RapidCool technology is designed to address these challenges, and we continue to make meaningful progress. Through further development, we have improved its cooling capability to approximately 5 watts per square millimeter, up from 3 watts less than a year ago, and interest from potential partners continues to grow. Our IP portfolio remains the foundation of our business. Since the beginning of 2023, we have grown our portfolio from approximately 10,000 to over 13,750 patent assets. While we have delivered strong double-digit growth in recent years, we expect portfolio growth to moderate over time.

We believe our portfolio today is well-positioned to support multiple licensing cycles in both our core and growth markets, and our innovation engine is primed to continue to refresh these licensing cycles well into the future. We continue to invest strategically in both organic R&D and targeted tuck-in acquisitions to ensure we maintain and enhance the value of our portfolio over time. In the first quarter, we increased our M&A activity, closing five tuck-in IP portfolio acquisitions across a wide spectrum of technologies focused on growth areas. We are very proud of these accomplishments. We continue to focus on expanding our customer base, which includes our history of developing long-term relationships. This has been a primary objective as we invest heavily in our portfolio development to support the ever-evolving technology solutions that help drive our customers’ products and services.

Despite our tremendous track record of renewals, we occasionally find ourselves in customer disputes on the value of our portfolios. To that end, we are disappointed we could not reach acceptable terms for a renewal with Dish Network after their agreement expired at the end of March. Dish and their predecessor companies have been customers for decades, and throughout many renewals over the years, they have enjoyed the use of our IP. Since the last renewal, we have continued to innovate, add to our portfolio, and strengthen our relevance within the pay TV industry. In the past few years, we’ve successfully signed agreements with Hulu + Live TV, Optimum, formerly Altice, Verizon, and Frontier. Even through litigation, we keep the channels of communication open for the purpose of reaching terms on a license agreement, which is our ultimate goal.

Leveraging our success with recent similar situations with Optimum, Disney, and AMD, each of which was resolved efficiently and relatively quickly, we are confident we will reach successful outcomes with Dish and DirecTV. Our technologists remain at the forefront in their fields and are often panelists or speakers at industry conferences. We are recognized as market leaders and innovators and are actively engaged in the ecosystems in which we operate. I’m proud we were named one of the top 100 global innovators by LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. We earned this recognition based on the quality and strength of our portfolios and the measurable improvements we’ve made in our innovation impact over the past two years. Unlike rankings based solely on patent volume, this award highlights companies driving meaningful advances in technology, and that is exactly what our teams do every day.

We had a strong first quarter, and we have built meaningful momentum to start 2026. I’m particularly pleased with the addition of AMD and Microsoft as new customers, both multi-year agreements that expand our presence in key growth markets and strengthen our recurring revenue base. Our strong financial performance supports continued investment in our portfolio and ongoing balance sheet improvement. With a growing and diversified pipeline, we believe we have multiple paths to achieve our objectives for the year. Before I turn the call over to Keith, I would like to address the other news we announced today. As noted in the press release, after much consideration and consultation with my family, I have informed the board of my intent to step down as CEO later this year to focus on my health and other personal pursuits.

As I reflect on my last 4 years leading Adeia, including through its separation from Xperi, I could not be more proud of what the company has accomplished. Our exceptional leadership team has transitioned the company from being primarily reliant on the pay TV market to one with robust and diversified revenue streams supported by our evolving and growing IP portfolios and technology leadership. Our balance sheet is strong, having cut our debt nearly in half since separation, and we are positioned well for continued growth. I have committed to the board that I will continue in my current role until a successor has been identified and appointed and through any necessary transition period. During this period, it will be business as usual as I remain focused on driving the team toward achieving our goals for 2026 and setting us up for continued long-term success.

Our goal is to find the next leader for Adeia by the fourth quarter. The board has engaged a nationally recognized search firm. I am confident we will find a leader that will continue the successes we have built and drive the next phase of growth for the company. I want to thank my family, the executive leadership team, and the board for helping me through this difficult decision. I also want to thank the dedicated Adeia employees that are at the heart of all of our success. I will now turn the call over to my friend and our CFO, Keith, to cover our financial results.

Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Adeia: Thank you, Paul. I’m pleased to be speaking with you today to share details of our first quarter 2026 financial results. During the first quarter, we delivered strong financial results within our expectations. Revenue of $104.8 million was driven by the execution of 8 deals across a diverse mix of customers, including semiconductors, consumer electronics, pay TV, and OTT. During the quarter, we signed 3 new license agreements highlighted by AMD and Microsoft. Our recurring revenue during Q1 was $66.3 million as compared to $94.5 million in the prior quarter. The decrease in our recurring revenue was due to both subscriber declines and the timing of renewals with certain pay TV customers.

Additionally, we were impacted by the timing of revenue as a result of the structure of our license agreements with both SanDisk and Kioxia, which contributed no revenue in Q1, but will contribute meaningful revenue in the following quarters. We expect our quarterly recurring revenue to grow over the course of the year, reaching approximately $90 million at the end of the year. I would like to discuss our operating expenses, for which I’ll be referring to non-GAAP numbers only. During the first quarter, operating expenses were $42.9 million, a decrease of $6.3 million or 13% from the prior quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower variable compensation as a result of exceeding certain performance targets in last year’s fourth quarter. Research and Development expenses decreased $1.2 million, or 7% from the prior quarter.

The decrease is primarily due to lower variable compensation and outside service costs, which was partially offset by seasonal personnel costs. Selling, general, and administrative expenses decreased $4.6 million, or 18% from the prior quarter, primarily due to lower variable compensation costs and lower spending on outside services, which was also partially offset by an increase in seasonal personnel costs. Litigation expense was $6 million, a decrease of $513,000 or 8% compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to lower spending on Disney due to the resolution of the litigation in the prior quarter, partially offset by new litigation matters. Interest expense during the first quarter was $8.5 million, a decrease of $894,000, primarily attributed to our continued debt payments and due to lower variable interest rates during the period.

Our current effective interest rate, which includes amortization of debt issuance costs, was 7.3%. Other income was $1.7 million. It 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 606. Our Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $62.3 million, reflecting an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 60%. Depreciation expense for the first quarter was $492,000. Our non-GAAP income tax rate was 21% for the quarter. 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 $115.8 million in cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and we generated $58.5 million in cash from operations. As demonstrated by our results, the first quarter has historically been a very strong cash generation period for us. This strong financial performance allowed us to execute on all 4 pillars of our balanced capital allocation approach. This includes paying down our debt, repurchasing shares, paying our dividend, and making 5 tuck-in portfolio acquisitions. We made $28.1 million in principal payments on our debt in the first quarter and end the quarter with a term loan balance of $398.6 million.

I am also happy to announce that based on our strong financial performance, Standard & Poor’s has upgraded their credit rating on us to BB from BB-. In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 446,000 shares of our common stock for $10 million, bringing the remaining amount available for future repurchases to $150 million under our current stock repurchase program. We paid a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of common stock. Our board also approved a payment of another $0.05 per share dividend to be paid on June 15th to shareholders of record as of May 26th. Now I’ll go over our guidance for the full year 2026. We are reiterating our prior guidance. Our 2026 revenue guidance range is $395 million-$435 million.

As we mentioned in our previous call, our sales pipeline was and continues to be very strong. Overall, we continue to see the first half of the year and the second half of the year being relatively equal in terms of revenue contribution, with the second quarter being modestly lower than the first quarter. Operating expenses are expected to be in the range of $184 million-$192 million. We expect interest expense to be in the range of $34 million-$36 million. We expect other income to be in the range of $5.5 million-$6.5 million. We expect a resulting adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 55%. We expect the non-GAAP tax rate to be 21% for the full year. We also expect capital expenditures to be approximately $2 million for the full year.

As I conclude my remarks, I want to say this is obviously a challenging day full of emotions for me and the company. On a personal level, Paul is not only an incredible leader and boss, but also a dear friend that I cherish. Knowing Paul, this decision was very difficult for him and his family. Paul should take great pride in having helped to cultivate a legacy that will further propel Adeia to a great and promising future. As we look across the semiconductor and media landscapes, we continue to see broad adoption of our foundational technologies. We find ourselves at the right place at the right time. Speaking on behalf of all our employees, we take pride in this success. It is driven by the tireless and dedicated efforts of our entire team. The culture we have created will continue to thrive.

Our future is bright, and I cannot be more excited about the opportunities that lay ahead of us in the coming years. With that, it brings an end to our prepared remarks. I’d like to turn the call over to the operator to begin our question and answer session. Operator.

Operator: At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. We request to limit yourselves to 1 question and 1 follow-up. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities: Thank you, congratulations on the great results. Congratulations, Paul, on making this decision. Hope you, it is a gradual departure. Thank you for leading the company. My question is around the AMD license and how much was it on retroactive royalties? You know, I guess things that we wouldn’t see reoccurring in future years. Can you give, like, a percentage of what the upside was?

Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Adeia: Hey, Kevin. In terms of the AMD, kind of getting to the granulars of the revenue breakout, that’s something that we not really in a position to do in detail. The AMD agreement’s not only significant for us in terms of being one of our first licensees in the logic space, as we kind of go forward, there’ll be meaningful revenue contribution to us. You know, just in terms of color, they will be in this quarter a greater than 10% customer, that does include a retroactive amount that we recognize. More importantly, going forward, they most likely find themselves in a position where they would be greater than a 10% customer for us going forward. It’s something that’s very meaningful for us going forward.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities: Okay, thanks.

Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Adeia: Top 10 customers.

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Kevin, just, yeah, just to be clear-

Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Adeia: Top 10 customers

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: They won’t be a 10% customer going forward. Hey, Kevin, thanks for the kind remarks.

Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Adeia: Yeah

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Thank you for that. Appreciate it.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities: Sure. Yeah. The other question I had was around the tuck-in technology acquisitions. Were there any scientists or employees that are included with that, or were they only patents?

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Hey, Kevin. We focus right now primarily on patent portfolios that we think can be really helpful to our growth areas, and that’s what these ones are. We do evaluate and look at ones that are broader than that. For the most part, what we have been acquiring have been, you know, primarily patent acquisitions. In this case, very consistent with what we’ve done over the last couple years. They, you know, we did 5 relatively small tuck-in acquisitions individually, you know, they start to add up. They’re in growth areas. For instance, like, e-commerce and automotive was a focus area this past quarter.

But we look in all of our growth areas, including, you know, semiconductors, you know, continue in OTT like we’ve done before, with a number of acquisitions over the last couple years. Yeah, that’s where we’ve where we focus on, but we do explore other types of acquisitions as well.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities: Okay, great. I’ll get back in the queue.

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Thanks, Kevin.

Operator: Before going to the next question, again, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Hamed Khorsand with BWS Financial. Your line is open.

Hamed Khorsand, Analyst, BWS Financial: Hey, thanks for taking the question. First off, could you just talk about the IP funnel that you have on the licensing end that balances out Q2 and Q4 through the Q4, and how you’re looking at that, given these big announcements you’ve had in Q1 so far?

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Yeah. Thanks, Hamed. you know, really appreciate the question. you know, when we look at our pipeline, as Keith mentioned, you know, it’s quite robust and, you know, we have remained multiple paths to get to our, you know, guidance range that we noted. It really comes from, you know, a number of areas, including core markets, including pay TV, where we still have opportunities there. Then e-commerce opportunities, and as well as, you know, consumer electronics, social media, and OTT, you know, that remain opportunities for us. Then semiconductors, of course. It’s really across our different verticals. it will be a mix of both renewals and new deals.

New deals are still important for us to be able to, you know, hit our goals for the year, and we’re entirely focused on that, as we have been last year as well. Those new deals are so important because they really continue to diversify our revenue and add new streams that we’re able to, you know, offset some of the known declines we have. If you look at our growth in non-pay TV recurring revenue, you know, it continues to be very robust, right? 28% year-over-year this quarter, which continues a trend over the last, you know, 4 or 5 quarters that we’ve had, and so we’re really proud of that.

Hamed Khorsand, Analyst, BWS Financial: Okay. Thank you.

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Thanks, Hamed.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group. Your line is open.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I guess firstly, you touched on maybe moderating the rate of growth of the portfolio, although I think 5 tuck-in acquisitions would be on the high end of. You know, what you’ve done to date. Can you maybe, you know, help us balance whether it’s a shift in strategy to be more focused on external portfolios at this point or just kind of how things fell?

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Yeah. I would say it’s continues to be a mix, right? I think that’s really important to us. One that’s heavily weighted towards internal innovation. I think that’s what, you know, we see the most value from. That’s what our customers focus on as well. We’ve had a 85 15 split for 85 internal and 15 external for quite some time now. It’s a metric that we like to maintain. We’re not, you know, religious towards it. It can vary from time to time. On the strategic acquisition side, we truly look for things that can, you know, round out our portfolio. It can swing one way or the other, where we do have, you know, more activity in a given quarter.

And it can lead to, you know, that number being a little higher at any given time. Over a longer period of time, I think that 85-15 split is something that we like to maintain. We’re still doing a ton of internal innovation and have been since separation, we’ve really ramped that. You’re seeing that both on the semiconductor and the media side of our business.

Matthew Galinko, Analyst, Maxim Group: Thank you. My follow-up would be on capital structure, given, you know, the continued reduction in debt balance and I think you mentioned an upgrade to your credit rating. Does that change anything as far as your, you know, plans or thoughts on cash levels you wanna keep on hand or kind of your leverage ratios or anything? Does anything change?

Keith Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Adeia: Hey, Matt, how you doing? Thanks for the question. You know, we find ourselves at a great spot, and I just couldn’t be more proud of us as a company and kind of how we’ve operated. What we’ve talked about before in the past is that there’s a certain amount of debt that we as a company that we’re comfortable carrying. We had talked about historically that being between $300 million-$400 million. Just through our hard work and disciplined efforts, we find ourselves in that threshold right now. Another nice little tailwind and benefit that we get from all that too, is we had a nice upgrade from Standard & Poor’s to that double B rating, which is gonna be very advantageous to us.

With that being said, the timing in the market for us to refinance right now is not Optimum. What we’ve seen, really since the war’s kind of broken out is that interest rates have been a little bit more on the rise. We would like to see things settle out before we get into the market and to refinance our debt. With that being said, our timing is that we’ll be active, and my ultimate goal or our ultimate goal is kinda have a new debt put in place at least 12 months before the debt matures, and that debt matures in June 2028.

With that being said, we’re actively looking, and we are thinking about fixed structures that we can put in place that’s gonna allow us to get more cash flow back into the business, to do more tuck-in acquisitions and return more capital to shareholders. In terms of that, we definitely have a very defined plan. It really comes on the heels of tremendous execution of deleveraging our balance sheet. You know, once again, thanks for that question and we’re right where we want to be.

Operator: I’ll now turn the call back over to Paul Davis for closing remarks.

Paul Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Adeia: Thank you, operator. Once again, I would like to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication. Also to our shareholders, partners, and customers for their ongoing support. Thanks to everyone for being with us today.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.