Synaptics Unfazed By Mobile Challenges In Corporate Update

Synaptics has issued fiscal results for its 2018 fourth quarter, ended June 30th.

Revenues for the quarter were down nine percent year over year, at $388.5 million, and the company saw a net loss for the quarter of $1.5 million. For the fiscal year, revenues came in at $1.63 billion, a year-over-year decrease of five percent; and the year saw a net loss of $124.1 million.

To some extent, the device interface specialist appears to have been hit by the same market forces that have been depressing revenues for a number of fingerprint sensor specialists focused on the mobile industry, which has seen heavy competition and plummeting selling prices. Synaptics says its revenue mix from mobile products was about 57 percent, and that revenues from this area were down 10 percent sequentially and 36 percent year-over-year.

Nevertheless, the company has been bullish about its future prospects. After acquisition talks with Dialog Semiconductor fell through at the end of July, with Synaptics reportedly balking at Dialog’s offer, Synaptics issued a statement in which CEO Rick Bergman emphasized “the tremendous value inherent in our company.” And in announcing these latest fiscal results, Bergman asserted that “[t]he transformation of Synaptics to a more diversified company with greater earnings power is well underway.”

CFO Wajid Ali, meanwhile, pointed to a “backlog of $267.3 million entering the September quarter, subsequent bookings, customer forecasts and product sell-in and sell-through timing patterns” in predicting revenues between $390 and $430 million for Q1 of fiscal 2019, and “a low single-digit revenue increase driven by growth across the majority of our product platforms” for the next fiscal year overall.

Synaptics’ corporate update arrived alongside an announcement that members of its executive team will present at the KeyBanc Capital Markets 20th Annual Global Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado, on Monday.

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August 10, 2018 – by Alex Perala