GCT Semiconductor Holding Q1 2026 Earnings Call - 5G Chipset Shipments Surge 58% as Revenue Jumps 287%

Operator: Good afternoon. Thank you for attending GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.’s first quarter 2026 financial results call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. Joining the call today are John Schlaefer, GCT’s Chief Executive Officer, and Edmond Cheng, CFO, to discuss our first quarter 2026 results. During this call, certain statements we make will be forward-looking. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our safe harbor provision for forward-looking statements that can be found at the end of our earnings press release and also in our Form 10-Q that will be filed today, which provide further detail about the risks related to our business. Additionally, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

I will now turn the call over to John Schlaefer.

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Thank you, and thanks to everyone for joining us today for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. I’ll start by discussing the operational progress we’ve made during the first quarter as we drive commercial expansion of our 5G products. Following my remarks, our CFO, Edmond Cheng, will walk through the financial results for the first quarter in more detail. Building on the groundwork we laid at the end of 2025, our first quarter results reflect the advancements we’ve made on our 5G acceleration, which is reflected by growing 5G chipset shipments, expanding engagements, and continued early adoption across leading customers. In the first quarter, we delivered 3,000 5G chipsets, a sequential increase of 58% versus Q4. This growth is an important indicator that customers are continuing to move through the final stages of testing and into initial deployments.

While 5G product shipment volume today remains modest relative to the long-term opportunity ahead, we are in an early but critical step of the product cycle. Customer confidence in the performance, reliability, and integration of our 5G chipset is building, and we expect 5G chipset shipments to continue trending upward as customers advance their programs. We are also broadening the scope and depth of our customer relationships and chipset use cases. We continue to support a growing number of programs across multiple verticals, FWA, IoT, and NTN, and we are working closely with our lead customers as they move through integration, certification, and deployment planning. These engagements often push beyond traditional licensing into deeper platform-level collaboration, where our technology serves as the foundation for next-generation systems and user equipment development. Early design wins and platform integrations remain critical in establishing the framework for future volume shipments and long-term adoption.

Notably, we expanded our previously announced engagement with one of the world’s largest satellite communication providers to fast-track global 5G deployment through a reference platform agreement. Under this framework, we will provide a reference design based on our 4G and 5G chipsets to help accelerate the development of our partner’s next-generation user equipment, enabling high bandwidth and high-speed communications across satellite and terrestrial networks. This agreement reinforces GCT’s role in enabling seamless connectivity across both terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks and broadens the deployment scope of our technology. It also highlights the growing importance of GCT’s technology in enabling converged connectivity solutions that span multiple network environments. We view this as a multi-phase opportunity that can drive incremental adoption of our solution over time as next-generation user equipment platforms are introduced.

As these platforms are developed and deployed, we expect our technology to play an increasingly important role in supporting global connectivity use cases. Initial 5G chipset shipments to this partner remain on track to begin in the second half of 2026. Our focus continues to revolve around driving 5G chipset commercial traction by strengthening our supply chain and operational infrastructure to support higher 5G chipset volumes as customer demand accelerates. Supported by increasing activity from our lead customers, we continue to expect sequential growth in 5G chipset shipments as commercialization continues to scale throughout the year. Further, the headway achieved thus far reinforces our expectation and aligns with our previous product launches, such as our 4G chipsets. We believe the work we are doing now will ensure that we are positioned to scale efficiently.

At the same time, we remain mindful that the timing and pace of deployments can vary as customers finalize their rollout plans. As a result, we are maintaining a disciplined approach with a focus on execution and operational readiness moving through this next phase. Overall, we believe that the first quarter represents meaningful progress in our transition from development to commercialization of our 5G chipset. We are encouraged by the momentum we are seeing and believe we are building a strong base for continued growth throughout 2026. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Edmond to discuss our first quarter results. Edmond?

Edmond Cheng, Chief Financial Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Thank you, John. Over the past several quarters, we have noted that our path to 5G commercialization will not be defined by a single event, but rather consistent strides forward like customer sampling, inaugural commercial shipments, real-world customer deployments, and production scaling, all of which will ultimately culminate in significant revenue contribution. In the first quarter, we delivered meaningful improvements across both the top and bottom line results, driven by increased 5G chipset shipments and diligent capital deployment. As John mentioned, there is still work to be done, and these financial results are modest in comparison to the opportunity ahead. We are progressing as expected, and we remain focused on disciplined execution.Also, in supporting the expanding of the addressable TAM to include NTN, we are considering at the appropriate time to break down our product revenue into these three verticals, FWA, IoT, and NTN.

With that context, I will now review our first quarter 2026 financial results. Further details can be found in the 10-Q that will be on file with the SEC. Net revenues increased by $1.4 million or 287% from $0.5 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025 to $1.9 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026. The change was due to an increase of $0.4 million in product sales and an increase of $1 million in service revenues. The growth in product sales was led by both 4G and 5G product sales, while the increase in service revenue was driven by 5G operations, partially offset by lower LTE service revenue as we shift our portfolio to 5G.

Cost of net revenue increased by $0.6 million or 138% from $0.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025 to $1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, primarily due to higher costs driven by increased unit volume. Our gross margin increased to 49% for the three months ended March 31, 2026 from 18% for the three months ended March 31, 2025, largely due to changes in the revenue mix, especially higher margins from our service offerings and increased share of 5G and product sales during the quarter.

Research and development expenses decreased by $0.9 million or 23% from $4.1 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025 to $3.2 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026. The decrease was largely driven by a $0.5 million reduction in project-specific intellectual property expenses and a $0.4 million reduction in professional services provided by Alpha for the completion of a 5G chipset design last year. Sales and marketing expenses remain consistent year-over-year, totaling $1.1 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2025 compared to $1.2 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026.

General and administrative expenses were relatively flat year-over-year, totaling $2.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2025 comparing to $2.7 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026. Turning to liquidity, we finished the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $7.2 million. We also had net receivables, accounts receivables of $2.4 million and net inventory of $1.6 million. We have access to our at the market equity program of up to $75 million and ample capacity on the remaining $125 million of our $200 million S-3 self-registration statement, which has been effective since April 1, 2025. These resources equip us with financial flexibility to support working capital requirements, commercial readiness, and broader production efforts.

Moving further into 2026, our priorities remain consistent. We are focused on maintaining financial flexibility and disciplined capital allocation to support 5G chipset commercial traction and volume production readiness, ensuring that we are well-positioned to capitalize on the expanding 5G opportunity. With this, I will turn it back to John.

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Thank you, Edmond. The first quarter reflects sustained execution in driving commercialization. We are seeing increasing 5G chipset shipments activity, continued expansion in our customer engagements, and steady progression as customer programs move toward deployment. While still in the early stages, we are building a sustainable launch pad to position the company for long-term success across both existing and new 5G opportunities as adoption continues to grow. We believe the framework we’ve established across our technology, partnerships, and operations positions us well for this next phase of growth, and we look forward to building on this momentum throughout the year. I would like to thank our employees, partners, and shareholders for their continued support. We will update you on our progress in the coming quarters. I will now turn the call back over to the operator, who will assist us in taking your questions.

Operator: We have a question from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.

Rebecca Zamsky, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Hello, this is Rebecca Zamsky on for Craig Ellis. Revenue of $1.9 million on increased 5G chipset shipments implies like meaningful service and licensing revenue contribution alongside chipset sales. How should we think about that mix evolving as chipset volume scale through the second half of the year?

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Yeah, that’s a good question. The service revenues tend to be aligned with various contracts that we engage in and is recognized as we make actual progress against those contracts. Right now, that’s a larger portion of the quarterly sales. As the chipset sales increase, the chipset sales and product revenue will far outpace that service revenue. It’ll become a much more meaningful part and a substantial part of the overall revenue, you know, quarter to quarter as we grow. That is our growth. We’re not in the service business.

Rebecca Zamsky, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Thank you. In gross margins, the 49.3% margin was well above prior quarters. How much of this is structural, reflecting the higher margin service and licensing mix versus like a one-time in nature? How should we think about gross margins going into the second half of the year?

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Yeah. That’s a good observation. The margins for the quarter were higher than usual, and they’re higher than what we would expect when the products dominate. We’ve often said that the gross margin coming from the products as we move forward would be in the 35 and growing into the low 40s, and then we still believe that. Because the service revenue was more substantial this quarter, that’s actually resulted in a higher gross margin. In the future, because service revenue will be a much smaller portion of overall revenue, it’ll contribute less to the gross margin, and we’ll see, you know, the margin, you know, stabilizing out in the 35 and then actually growing into the 40s, the low 40 range.

Edmond Cheng, Chief Financial Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Yeah. Rebecca, in other words, our gross margin, once the chipset sales grows significantly, it would normalize to the high 30s%-low 40s%.

Rebecca Zamsky, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Lisa Thompson with Zacks Investment Research.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Hi, everyone. Glad to see some progress in getting towards profitability. I just have a few questions about, I guess, the revenue breakdown. First off, on services, I don’t know if you answered, is there anything one-time in this quarter, or do we expect numbers over $1 million going forward per quarter?

Edmond Cheng, Chief Financial Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Yeah. This on the service side, we have the licensing revenue that we have recognized in Q1. That will be considered as a one-time recognition from that sense. Going forward, we are also expecting to have our service contracts as when the milestones is achieved, and we will recognize the revenue accordingly.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Do you have a feel for what the number’s gonna be near this quarter?

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: We do, and it won’t be as high as it was in Q1. I mean, we are considering other service contracts and other engagements where that could add into the future. These tend to be, you know, in advance, they tend to be a little bit unpredictable as to when they’re gonna start. As we’ve said, they’re We recognize revenue as the milestones are achieved.

Hard to predict that in advance.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Okay. Could you just talk a little bit about the product revenue and characterize like where it came from? I think last quarter you had, I don’t know, three customers for products and one was a production order. Is that right? What did that look like this quarter?

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Let me comment on that. This quarter for products, there was at least 5 customers, that was between 5 and 7. Some of this stuff actually goes through distribution and can, you know, actually be multiple customers. At least 5, as high as 7.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Okay, good. That’s progress.

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Yeah.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Oh, yes. What should we expect for the next three quarters? Like, how’s the ramp going to work? Is there any one customer that’s going to lead the charge?

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Well, we see continued distribution and what ends up happening when our product revenue is relatively small is it can be bursty. I mean, you can see one customer come in and have a larger portion of the quarter, and then, you know, they may slow down in the next quarter and someone else picks up. But over time, I think we’re gonna have a good distribution. We’re seeing that build out now. Once we hit a steady state, I think we’ll have a good distribution of the customers.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Okay.

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: A spread of revenue across them.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: All right. Edmond, as far as operating expenses go.

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Right.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: come down quite a bit. Do we expect that level to be the same level for this quarter going forward?

Edmond Cheng, Chief Financial Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Well, this is a good run rate level from that sense. We expect in the second half of this year to ramp up our R&D expenses to match our product roadmap. We expect quarterly operating expenses to be running at about $8 million per quarter level.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Okay. Does that start in Q2?

Edmond Cheng, Chief Financial Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: That will be starting in Q3.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Okay. All right, good. That’s helpful. It looks like everything’s going well, and you’re making progress, and we’ll just see what happens. Thank you so much.

John Schlaefer, Chief Executive Officer, GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc.: Thank you, Lisa.

Operator: Thank you for joining us. That concludes our first quarter 2026 conference call. A replay will be available for a limited time on our website later today.