What's Driving Ambarella Forward in 2019

Technology

Published: March 6, 2019 9:55 am

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 11:51 pm

When Ambarella Inc. (NASDAQ: AMBA) reported its most recent quarterly results after the markets closed on Tuesday, the firm said that it had $0.14 in earnings per share (EPS) and $51.1 million in revenue. That compares with consensus estimates of $0.04 in EPS and $50.9 million in revenue, as well as the $0.47 per share and $56.94 million posted in the same period of last year.

Gross margin for the latest quarter was 60.6%, compared with 64.7% for the same period of last year.

In the fourth quarter, Ambarella repurchased a total of 104,160 shares for total consideration of roughly $3.5 million. Under the $100 million repurchase program that began on June 5, 2018, the company has repurchased a total of 1,792,156 shares for total cash consideration of about $68.1 million through the end of this quarter.

Looking ahead to the fiscal first quarter, the company expects to see gross margin in the range of 59% to 60% and revenues of $47 million, give or take 3%. Consensus estimates call for breakeven earnings and $50.22 million in revenue for the quarter.

Fermi Wang, president and CEO, commented:

Strategically, fiscal 2019 was one of the most important years in Ambarella’s 15 year history as the company continued to execute on its transformation from a pure video processing company to a computer vision company. We taped-out and sampled three 10nm computer vision system-on-a-chip devices and commenced mass production of one of the devices, all in the fiscal year. Despite the decline in our consumer electronics business, and the geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds, we have and will continue to focus our investment on computer vision. While it is early in the computer vision adoption cycle, we are excited about expanding our portfolio and having more customers enter mass production.

Shares of Ambarella were last seen up 10% at $44.66 on Wednesday, in a 52-week range of $43.36 to $44.99. The stock has a consensus price target of $44.56.