Good day, and welcome to the CEVA, Inc., Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Kingston, Vice President of Market Intelligence and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CEVA's fourth quarter and full-year 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Amir Panush, Chief Executive Officer, and Yaniv Arieli, Chief Financial Officer of CEVA. This is Amir’s first earnings conference call with CEVA, and I wish him all the best in his role as CEO. Before we start, I just want to take you through some forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. I’d like to remind you that today’s discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that if they materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of CEVA to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding market trends and dynamics, including projected declines in the global semiconductor industry in 2023 and the long-term demand opportunity for our technology; our market position, strategy, and growth drivers, including with respect to licensing and royalties, Wi-Fi, 5G, and software; demand for and benefits of our technologies; expectations and financial guidance regarding future performance, including our belief in our long-term royalty growth prospects; guidance for 2023; and our plans to host an investor event in the second half of the year. For information on the factors that could cause a difference in our results, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These include: the scope and duration of the pandemic, including continued restrictions in China; the extent and length of the restrictions associated with the pandemic and the impact on customers, consumer demand, and the global economy generally; the ability of CEVA’s IPs for smarter, connected devices to continue to be strong growth drivers for us; our success in penetrating new markets and maintaining our market position in existing markets; the ability of new products incorporating our technologies to achieve market acceptance; the speed and extent of the expansion of the 5G and IoT markets; our ability to execute more base station & IoT license agreements; the effect of intense industry competition and consolidation; global chip market trends; and our ability to successfully integrate Intrinsix into our business. CEVA assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide a more meaningful analysis of our core operating results and comparison of quarterly results. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release we issued this morning and in the SEC filings section of our investor relations website at investors.ceva-dsp.com. With that said, I’d like to turn the call over to Amir who will review our business performance for the quarter and provide some insight into our ongoing business. Amir?

Thank you, Richard. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today. I want to start this call by sharing how excited I am to be part of CEVA and to lead this incredibly talented organization through its next stage of growth. Although I have only been with the company for a little over six weeks now, I have been highly impressed with three important factors: First, the people. The team is passionate about their work and the success of the company, fostering a great corporate culture of collaboration and drive. Second, a world-class portfolio of innovative wireless connectivity and smart sensing IPs. There is no greater indicator of the success of CEVA to date than to realize that more than 50 CEVA-powered devices were sold every second in 2022, reaching a record 1.7 billion devices over the course of the year. Third, I believe the market opportunity for CEVA’s technology has never been greater. The markets that we serve, including Wireless IoT, 5G, and Edge AI, are some of the fastest-growing in the semiconductor industry. We are conducting a review of each of our product lines to ensure that we are investing our resources in the areas with the highest potential for growth. Once I have this in place, I look forward to sharing the details of it with you at an investor event, which is planned to take place in the second half of the year. Turning to our performance for the fourth quarter. We reported another solid quarter, despite the weak economic backdrop, with continued strong momentum in our licensing business and resilience in our royalties. We signed 2020 licensing agreements in the quarter, with notable strength in 5G, where we signed three agreements, and Wi-Fi 6 with four agreements. We also signed a strategic deal for our Ultra-wideband IP with a global leader in automotive semiconductors for their digital car key initiative. Other customer agreements signed in the quarter target AI for in-memory computing, smart audio, connectivity for smartphones, TWS earbuds, wearables, sensor fusion software for set-top-box remotes, and more. Royalty revenue was down compared to last year, reflecting the broad macro/consumer weakness and elevated inventory levels. For the full-year, we delivered record total revenue of $134.6 million, an increase of 10%, driven by strong licensing demand throughout the year across our extensive IP portfolio. Revenue from licensing, NRE, and related for 2022 reached $89.3 million, an increase of 23% year-over-year, the fourth sequential year of growth. We signed 76 new licensing and NRE agreements, up from 73 last year. Licensing is a precursor for royalty revenue, and this record licensing year further reinforces our belief that the royalty revenue opportunity for CEVA continues to expand. I will elaborate shortly on what I believe the drivers for CEVA’s business will be in 2023 and the royalty opportunity ahead. In terms of full-year royalties, our annual royalty revenues were down 9% year-over-year to $45.4 million, with the largest decline in our handset baseband royalties, which were down 24% year-over-year, primarily due to the continued ramp down by a customer of ours who was replaced by a competitor for 5G chips at a large U.S.-based handset OEM. To a lesser extent, smartphone sales in emerging markets, a stronghold for our China-based customer, were impacted by the global slowdown. Moving to our base station and IoT category, despite the weak global consumer demand in the second half of the year, we still managed to achieve record royalty revenues generated by a record 1.4 billion devices. Bluetooth royalties grew 11% year-over-year, generated from a record 1 billion unit shipments. Base station RAN royalties also grew, up 14% year-over-year, while lower shipments and royalties from PCs, robot vacuum cleaners, cameras, and other consumer-related technologies affected many of our customers. Overall, I’m encouraged by the strength and potential of our royalty business and believe that our diversified customer base and end markets ensure that CEVA is on a positive trajectory with promising long-term royalty growth prospects. In terms of future growth drivers, I would like to highlight three important areas where CEVA has an excellent opportunity in licensing and royalties: Wi-Fi, 5G, and software. The first is Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is one of the fastest-growing connectivity standards and the most in-demand technology for IoT. The Wi-Fi 6 standard was architected with low power IoT in mind, enabling even battery-powered devices to remain working for up to years at a time. This, coupled with higher throughput at lower power and increased robustness, has brought unprecedented demand for Wi-Fi for many end markets and use cases. Accordingly, the overall Wi-Fi for IoT TAM is expected to exceed 4.4 billion units annually by 2024, according to ABI Research, and continue to grow at a CAGR of 9% through 2027. CEVA is the industry’s dominant Wi-Fi 6 IP provider, with more than 30 licensees to date. Wi-Fi expertise today is scarce, with few companies possessing the majority of the know-how. We are one of the few with this expertise and, through our licensing model, we are successfully lowering the entry barriers for companies to develop Wi-Fi 6 chips. Moreover, the royalty opportunity for Wi-Fi 6 is still ahead of us. Many of our customers are expected to come to market in 2023 and 2024 with their Wi-Fi 6 chipsets. In licensing, we have already started to sign up Wi-Fi 7 lead customers for what will soon become another Wi-Fi upgrade cycle. The second area is 5G. While 5G has been deployed in developed markets in the last few years, the main use case up until now has been in smartphones. However, the scalable throughput, low power, and low latency of 5G mean the technology is applicable in a much broader set of end markets and use cases. There is a lack of expertise in cellular, and at CEVA, we have this in-house, built over decades. We already have licensed our 5G DSPs and platforms to many companies for 5G macro base stations, Open RAN, Active Antennas, Fixed Wireless Access, 5G-V2X, and 5G RedCap for cellular IoT. The most recent Ericsson Mobility Report highlights Fixed Wireless Access and cellular IoT as the two areas with tremendous growth opportunities in the coming years. In addition, much of the world’s 5G network coverage has yet to be built out, and soon we will see the 5G-advanced rollout beginning in mature 5G markets. In the next few years, I believe CEVA has the opportunity to license our 5G IP even more broadly, being capable of helping any company that wishes to develop a product to capitalize on the market opportunity brought about by 5G. The third is software. Over the past number of years, CEVA has increasingly been investing in the development of software IP in order to move up the value chain and to further differentiate our solutions. Our software portfolio today includes some highly sought-after technologies, including spatial audio, AI-based environmental noise cancellation, voice recognition, and IMU-based activity detection. Our strategy is to license these software IPs directly to OEMs and ODMs for their end products, rather than to the semiconductor chipmakers. This is where we can unlock the true value of the software and generate incremental royalties for CEVA with higher ASPs. We already have a strong presence in the smart TV, PC, and robot vacuum cleaner markets with our sensor fusion software and will continue to invest and look for strategic market opportunities to drive strong growth in our software business. An excellent example of this strategy at work is from CES last month, where boAt, India’s leading wearables brand, ranked Number 1 for wearables in India and Number 5 for wearables worldwide, launched new premium spatial audio wireless headphones. These headphones are powered by a Bluetooth Audio SoC featuring our Bluetooth 5 IP and our audio DSP. In addition, we also licensed our MotionEngine Head Tracking software directly to boAt, which is used as part of the spatial audio solution. We believe that spatial audio will become mainstream in the mid/high-end TWS market segments, which, according to Techno Systems Research (TSR), will surpass 400 million pairs annually by 2025. We are currently running evaluations with many headset OEMs to demonstrate the capabilities of our spatial audio and other sound-related software packages with this market in mind. So, in summary, CEVA delivered a good year against a tough macroeconomic backdrop. We reached record revenues, driven by strong licensing demand for our products. We signed a record number of deals in the year and shipped a record number of devices. My thanks is to my predecessor Gideon and the entire CEVA team worldwide for their great contribution in 2022. I would also like to thank our partners, suppliers, and our shareholders for their confidence and support. As I look ahead into 2023, I see many opportunities ahead for the company. I have full confidence in, and believe, that we have the people, the technology, and the processes in place to drive CEVA forward and be even more successful. Our comprehensive IP portfolio is in high demand and we will continue to develop outstanding products that our customers rely upon us for. Once myself and the team solidify and define what our future strategy will be, I look forward to taking you through this later in the year. As for our expectations for 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the global semiconductor industry is projected to decline by 4% in 2023. Many public semiconductor companies that reported earnings in the last two weeks have taken a muted view on 2023, particularly regarding the first half of the year. We also see these trends, but I want to reinforce my belief that CEVA’s long-term growth potential remains strong, as the continued digitalization of all things electric will continue to drive long-term demand for semiconductors. Finally, I want to sincerely wish you and your families a successful and joyful 2023. I look forward to meeting many of you at conferences and non-deal roadshows throughout the year. Now, I will turn the call over to Yaniv for the financials.

Thank you, Amir. Welcome on board. We’re glad to have you here and good luck. I’ll start by reviewing the results of the operations for the fourth quarter of 2022. Revenue for the fourth quarter was slightly down 2% to $33.4 million, as compared to $34.1 million for the same quarter last year. The revenue breakdown is as follows: Licensing, NRE, and related revenue was $22.5 million, reflecting 67% of total revenues, up 5% from $21.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2021. Royalty revenue was $10.9 million, reflecting a third of total revenues, down 14% from $12.7 million for the same quarter last year. Quarterly gross margins came in better than expected on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. Gross margin was 82% on a GAAP basis and 85% on a non-GAAP basis, compared to an 80% and 82% guidance on both of them respectively. Non-GAAP quarterly gross margin excluded approximately equity-based compensation expenses of $0.4 million and amortization of acquired intangibles $0.4 million. Our total GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter was above the high end of our guidance at $29.1 million due to $1.3 million associated with retirement expenses of executives, an impairment cost of $0.3 million associated with the closing of an office, and a lower allocation of Intrinsix’s NRE costs from R&D into cost of revenue, as well as higher compensation-related expenses. Our non-GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter, excluding Technical Difficulty.

We’ve reconnected Yaniv’s line. Yaniv, please proceed.

Thanks. Do you know where we were disconnected? Sorry guys. Anyway, let me pick up here. On the margins, margins GAAP came in at 82%, and non-GAAP at 85% compared to our 80% and 82% guidance, better than expected. Our total non-GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter came in higher at $23 million, and our GAAP expenses came in at $29.1 million. This is due to three aspects. One is $1.3 million associated with the retirement expenses of executives, an impairment cost of $0.3 million associated with the closing of an office, and a lower allocation of Intrinsix’s NRE costs from R&D into the cost of revenue line, as well as higher compensation-related expenses. Our GAAP tax benefit for the quarter came at $1.7 million, mainly associated with the adjustment of the result of the implementation of the U.S. tax reform rule 174, and on a non-GAAP tax was $1.7 million of expense representing 24% of pre-tax non-GAAP income. U.S. GAAP net income for the quarter was $1.9 million and diluted EPS was $0.08 for the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to $3.9 million net income and 17% diluted EPS for the fourth quarter of 2021. With respect to other related data, the shipped units by CEVA’s licensees during the fourth quarter were 375 million devices, down 10% from the fourth quarter 2021 reported shipments. Of the 375 million units reported, 67 million or 18% were handset baseband chips. Our base station and IoT product shipments were 308 million units, up 10% sequentially, but down 8% year-over-year. Bluetooth shipments were 220 million for the quarter, up 10% sequentially, and cellular IoT units were up 75% sequentially, to 25 million units. Wi-Fi shipments were also up 5% sequentially, to a total of 37 million units. As for the year, our total shipments increased 3.5% year-over-year to 1.7 billion devices, an all-time record high. Annual shipments of handsets were down 14% year-over-year to 328 million devices. The decline is attributable to the socket loss by a customer at a key OEM who was replaced by Qualcomm for 5G modem chipsets, and overall weak smartphone demand globally in the second half of the year. Our base station and IoT product royalty revenue continued to grow and reached a new record level of $29.2 million, up from $28.6 million in 2021 and $22 million in 2020. In terms of units, base station and IoT product unit shipments were up 8% year-over-year to almost 1.4 billion devices. Despite the macro events and economic turmoil, our non-GAAP net income from 2022 increased 23% to $18.8 million from $15.3 million reported for 2021. As for the balance sheet items, at the end of the year, our cash, cash equivalent balances, marketable securities, and bank deposits were approximately $148 million. In 2022, we repurchased approximately 219,000 shares for approximately $7 million and we still have around 280,000 shares available for repurchase. DSOs for the fourth quarter continue to be lower than the norm at 34 days. During the fourth quarter, we generated $3.4 million from cash from operating activities. Ongoing depreciation and amortization were $1.7 million, and the purchase of fixed assets was $0.6 million. At the end of the fourth quarter, we had 485 people onboard, of whom 403 were engineers. Now, turning to our outlook. As Amir discussed earlier, the smartphone and consumer electronics markets continue to suffer from soft demand and elevated inventories. Also, the technology sector is undergoing project expense adjustments and realignments. We expect this softness to continue into the first half of 2023 and anticipate that both our licensing and royalty revenues will be lower sequentially, while picking up the pace in the second half of the year. Due to this uncertain economic outlook and reduced visibility across the industry, we will refrain from giving annual revenue guidance for 2023 at this time. We will revisit this topic and do our best to provide more information when visibility improves. In general, our licensing, NRE, and related revenues business continue to generate good customer traction across our diversified portfolio. In royalties, we believe the strength of our base station & IoT customers will see this category continue to grow in 2023, primarily in the back half of the year. Handset baseband royalties are anticipated to decline further in 2023, offsetting partially the growth in our base station and IoT royalties. On the expense side, we implemented cost control measures and may extend those measures as we monitor the market. However, we also plan to continue and invest in our growth drivers and will update further on this topic in our upcoming investor event planned for later this year. Overall, we expect GAAP cost of goods expenses for 2023 to increase by $0.5 million to $1.5 million, and our non-GAAP COGS expenses to increase by $2.5 million to $3.5 million. GAAP OpEx for 2023 is expected to decrease by $3 million to $4 million, and non-GAAP OpEx for 2023 is expected to increase by only $1 million to $2 million. Our non-GAAP tax rate for 2023 is expected to be just over 30%, due to utilization limitation of withholding taxes in our Israeli subsidiary. Specifically for the first quarter of 2023, based on what we are seeing across the industry, the soft macro consumer weakness is expected to continue in the first half of the year. For the first quarter, our expectations are in line with industry trends. We continue to monitor our licensing pipeline and our royalty business closely, so we can respond to the changing market dynamics. Gross margin is expected to be similar to the fourth quarter of last year, approximately 82% on a GAAP basis, and 85% on a non-GAAP basis, excluding an aggregate of 0.4 million of equity-based compensation expenses and 0.4 million for amortization of acquired intangibles. OpEx for the first quarter is expected to be lower than the fourth quarter of 2022, in the range of $26.8 million to $27.8 million, including an expected $3.6 million of equity-based compensation, $0.3 million to the Intrinsix holdback-related expenses, and the same amount for amortization of acquired intangibles. Our non-GAAP OpEx is expected to be just slightly higher than the fourth quarter of last year, at a range of $22.7 million to $23.7 million. Net interest income is expected to be approximately $0.7 million. Taxes for the first quarter, 30% on non-GAAP basis. And share count for the first quarter, 24.3 million shares. Rocco, you could now open the Q&A session.

Thank you, sir. Today's first question comes from Matt Ramsay with Cowen. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon and good morning to everybody. First of all, Amir, congratulations and welcome. I think all of us look forward to working with you going forward. I guess the first question I would have is, sort of a big picture one for you, and you mentioned in your prepared remarks that you'd be, sort of giving a broader strategic update later in the year, but I wonder if you might share a few thoughts of first impressions as you've sort of taken over as CEO, just areas of focus, impressions of the traditional license royalty business versus intrinsic and the strategy there? Just any big picture thoughts. And then I have a follow-up on the model. Thanks.

Yes, sure, Matt. First, very nice talking with you and thanks for the wishes. As for my observations since I joined the company for the last six weeks within the company, I would say, generally speaking first, it's really great to see the diversified technology and portfolio that we have overall. I think that our technologies are really addressing the key market trends in the semiconductors. More specifically, as I mentioned in the remarks, if you look at Wi-Fi, 5G, and our software capabilities, all those things are really contributing to a very good potential long-term in terms of the growth for the company. And then with that, of course, I'm looking at how we are investing our R&D activities to really foster that potential growth long-term for the company.

Got it. Thank you for that. Yaniv, I wanted to ask a few questions on the model, realizing that it's volatile times out there, but you guys, sort of mentioned in the script that you think the first half of the year revenue-wise for the company will follow industry trends and I think it's maybe worth spending a little bit of time and double-clicking on that and just giving your view of what industry trends are. I mean, we follow the semi's market broadly; the industry trends right now in auto and industrial are different from any of the consumer-facing markets. There's certainly some inventory corrections. There's the potential for disruption and then reopening in China. So, I guess to ask the question bluntly, I don't know what that normal trends are right now. So, if you could kind of give us a little more on thoughts of how you're thinking about the first half of the year, that would be really helpful. Thanks guys.

Yes, sure. Excellent question, and no doubt that you helped me partially address that as well. Let's back up for Q4. If you look at some of the royalty trends in Q4, we were up sequentially in Bluetooth units; we’re up sequentially in Wi-Fi; and were up sequentially in cellular IoT. We were up in most of our core market other than handsets, which have their own dynamics. If we look at the markets for the first half of the year and some of the commentary that was addressed by public companies and earnings, and you exclude the industrial and automotive, because those are markets that for now at least we don't have any meaning for royalties at all. We have life design wins in automotive, but no royalties yet. In Industrial, this is a market that we're working on, but again, it's not one of our existing royalty drivers. Most of our markets are coming from consumer. It could be laptops that are down with sensor fusion. It could be consumer devices that are now down. In the beginning of the year, or at least the first part of it of the year. It could be vacuum cleaners and the like. These are the – some of the – and of course, handset. Handset is something we still have the headwinds for handset, and the market themselves are soft. Across the industry, you could hear that from multiple players, big ones in the 5G, but also in the low and mid-term play, which we are much more focused on in this era. So, taking all that into account, we are probably looking at high single digits type of sequential lower revenues, again from a very high level because we have so many different market segments in consumer. We did see the softness in Q4, which will probably prolong into Q1 as well in cameras and these types of more really more consumer type of devices. So, I think that for now, with the inflation concerns with the macro, with all the things going on, we're taking a more prudent/industry, but more focused. Approach in the royalties. The licensing is still robust, a lot of interest, but we are seeing downsizing – companies downsizing and refocusing the R&D efforts. So that's something that we want to be aware of and cautious if we encountered that in Q1 or in the beginning of the year. And as soon as companies align and get out of that mode, being an IP company could also help out come out of, I don't know if there’s a recession or slowdown, but even if you cut R&D groups or teams, there is an option to outsource, whether it's services from intrinsic or IPs from CEVA or the combination to help you bootstrap and get a bit quicker to the market. So, these are the trends you want to be a bit more careful like most of the industry in our domain; that’s where the guidance is coming from. And I think everybody looks in quite an optimistic way in the second half of the year.

Thanks for the insights. I appreciate it. I have one last quick question before I rejoin the queue. Can you provide any visibility on potential growth acceleration in the 5G infrastructure sector? I understand this market has been significant for the company and has experienced some volatility each quarter. Regarding your comments about reacceleration, I presume this is primarily consumer-driven. Are the trends in the wireless infrastructure sector different? Thank you very much; I appreciate it.

Sure. The trends are different. The trends are different, and from our experience, there's no real seasonality in 5G. It's release spending by the operators and decisions of when to implement new networks. We had a nice year; 2022 was one of the highest years we had, higher than 2021 on 5G base stations. If you look at some of the commentary and design wins that Nokia is discussing and talking about the Indian market opportunities and maybe some other sockets that they're gaining back sharing, it could be an exciting year. Unfortunately, we don't know the timing and when we'll see those royalties exactly kick in and that's aside from our experience in the past, but the trends for 2023 should be positive because of those design wins.

Yes. And I would add to what Yaniv said, I believe our two lead customers. We expect them to gain some market share and overall this market to do well this year, but as Yaniv said, on one hand, there's no seasonality there. On the other hand, it's hard to predict exactly how the rollout will look like, but generally speaking, we're looking at that optimistically.

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Kevin Cassidy of Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks for taking my question and welcome, Amir. Just to follow up on Matt's question, just to clarify it. Was that royalties that you're saying would be down high single digits, or does that include licenses? Is there a slowdown in licensing also?

We're taking right now everything in that respect; the royalties are due to the consumer slowdown and handset weakness that we're seeing around us. And I can see it more from a conservative approach of some of the companies that have been loaning off or readjusting their R&D investments we don't know yet the outcome. We don't know how quick they'll be back in the business of new design starts. We haven't seen too many examples of that yet. We are reading the news of different layoffs and the bigger companies and the readjustments of projects. So, I think we're right now looking at all of the numbers altogether with that single-digit and that's how we are looking at the licensing; it is still strong. We saw it in Q4, and that didn't happen yet in Q4. Although those trends may have played a little bit and started already a while back. So, we hope we don't bump into them, but that's some of the macro that we see around this.

And maybe I'll add a little bit more color on that. I would say that fundamentally the business is as strong as it has been on the licensing. So, really, we don't – I don't see and we don't see basically anything fundamental that drives so-called different outcomes in terms of our abilities to drive licensing in the market. It's just that with the many kind of project changes and realignment of investments that just our customers across the semiconductors are going through. There are projects that can change in terms of timing on one hand. On the other hand, there are projects that may potentially could have been done internally now coming out, so-called to work with us on those opportunities. So, there's a mixed bag of things that can move as we go through the quarter. And that's why we are looking at it that way.

Okay, thanks for that. And maybe just what's interesting is the software licenses, and it looks like you're going into a new customer base of end products. What's the go-to-market strategy there? Are you hiring a new sales force for that, or I guess just how do you address those new customers?

I would say two things. First, as far as a previous acquisition that we have done, we got capable people to go and drive this type of so-called business models, but in addition, we are putting a dedicated team to go and drive those activities as we see it as a meaningful growth opportunity for us, again, to diversify our product offering and also how we offer those products in the market to drive stronger and longer-lasting royalty bases for us.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Suji Desilva with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Hi, Yaniv, Richard, and Amir. Best of luck in the new role. So maybe to follow up on the last question there on licensing and a longer-term question perhaps. In the past, if you look back, aside from the recent volatility, the licensing run rate, if we think about licensing and software kind of growing, what kind of – would that be a similar revenue run rate or what kind of multiple effect with adding software have to your licensing run rate longer term?

Yes. It's a great question, obviously, and we have demonstrated for many years the licensing business, which is a precursor for royalties and a nice mark that you're technology is relevant in the different markets that you play in. I don't think that has changed. We didn't give annual guidance this year like we normally do, at least at the beginning of the year, and we want to look at it there as we move along. But when we look at the consensus that are out there for CEVA, we're not too far off from our internal planning. That's one thing that I would say. We don't know the ins and outs of – is the licensing going to be stronger, is it royalties; when exactly which one of them will pick up, but from a macro perspective, licensing is strong. We've seen that throughout 2022, including Q4, which wasn't for some companies wasn't that easier, was a different environment. We're still increasing and investing in R&D, less, a bit less this year, maybe refocusing, maybe fine-tuning. I don't remember a year that we have only guided $1 million to $2 million of non-GAAP OpEx increase. So, we're really looking also conservatively on the expense line, but with that said, all the different markets and all the different trends that Amir talked about in the prepared remarks are still very relevant to the different geographies and the different segments in the licensing space.

Yaniv, you're referring to calendar 2023 revenue consensus? Was that what you're referring to in your remark?

Yes. Yes, overall for us.

Great. Actually, my follow-up question is another long-term question. If I do the math in your calendar 2022 base station IoT royalty and units, it sounds – it seems to be about $0.02 ASP. I know Bluetooth is lower and the others are higher. I'm wondering if longer-term if there is an opportunity for that ASP to uplift or whether Bluetooth will keep that kind of lower ASP would continue to dominate the units and keep that ASP around $0.02.

So, what we try to avoid is coming – to come up with our price list on earnings calls. I think it's not something that is typical. But we would say from the chip price in the industry and the complexity, Wi-Fi chips are probably two to three times more expensive than the Bluetooth one, therefore the ASP for us needs to be in that type of magnitude anywhere between two and maybe sometimes three, depending on the end markets. So, that's a big potential. I think we've talked about reaching a billion Bluetooth devices last year. Wi-Fi hopefully or should get there in a very short period of time, two to three years, we should be in the same run rate with higher ASPs. So, the opportunity for us in the IoT space, and a lot of solutions today are coming out in combo solutions, both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. So that could be as well a very interesting offering that's part of the growth in our base station IoT. That has not changed, not necessarily with the – we don't want to put a cent to it, but the magnitude of those numbers are very applicable today as well.

Yes. I will tend to add to that. If you really look, so-called moving from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi and then from there to 5G and then from there to our AI technologies and more comprehensive than the core DSP on its own with additional hardware accelerators and so on. And as we move also to software, overall, you can see an increase so-called ASP per device that again in terms of the long-term perspective of our royalty base, and I'm very, very optimistic about how we see this moving forward as we go through the coming few years.

Okay. Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Chris Reimer with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. You mentioned the decline in consumer demand affecting your customers and the fact that you are looking at conservatively and taking away the guidance that you previously used to give. My question is, is there something that makes you think that the second half of the year will be stronger? I think you mentioned that currently it's just very weak right now, but potentially the second half will be stronger? Is there something in customer behavior that you've seen maybe from last quarter to this quarter that changed? Or is this something that your customers are telling you that get back to us in the second half, or I'm just wondering if there's anything concrete to that?

Yes, sure, sure. It's not coming from CEVA; it's really coming from the industry in many, many different customers. If you look at some of our – even CEVA’s customers, whether it's Cirrus Logic, NXP, or ON Semi, or peers like Silicon Labs, Skyworks, a lot of players that we have managed together, first did not give guidance and also believe that the second half without them just macroeconomics not necessarily, whether it's inventory build-outs, whether it's the consumer softness, will clear out that cycle that everybody has been talking about for the last maybe six to nine months will clear off at the second half of the year. We're in a good position to gain a royalty, much higher royalties in the second half than the first half and that's where we're coming from. Nothing specific that our customers told us so that we realize just now; again, you saw the numbers or seeing the numbers for Q4. We are coming from a strong point, but with that said, this is where the trends in the markets are.

Yes. And I would tell us that we're looking for semiconductor industry and inventory levels and all that we expect those to go down as we move forward through the year. So-called things will open up, and consumer will come in with stronger demand after several quarters that were more challenging. And that's in terms of that, yes.

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Martin Yang at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is on licensing. Can you maybe comment on whether you see any geographic concentration for licensing activities last year? And is there any tailwind, the positive effects from China's reopening into 2023 regarding your licensing activities?

Good question. Let's look at China overall, both royalties and licensing because I don't recall the top of my head percentage of licensing on a worldwide basis, but China is about 50% of our revenues. That means that in order to get royalties from some of the big royalty payers for us, whether it's 5G, whether it's handsets, whether it's Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi, are coming from China. That means that the licensing activity has been robust there for many, many years, plus minus COVID shutdown, but even in those months or quarters, we saw that many companies around the world including China know how to work from home and it all works out well, and we closed deals also from remote. So, that has been the case. I'm not sure anything has changed around that. We have a new sales team in Europe, so one of the bigger opportunities for us is to focus on the European market in licensing. This is something that we'll probably give more focus this year. The U.S. I think also is something that we've been doing for the last three years. It started with Hillcrest and the team that we acquired and added the sensor fusion technology where two years ago was we added intrinsic, so we have about 100 people today, mostly R&D in the U.S. with new markets and new opportunities and enhanced business models. So, I think Amir has a lot of insight. We'll try to help them make it, but there's no doubt it's not just China. We don't see any big changes right now, but it's the overall macro environment; layoffs are happening everywhere. And companies are just trying to call their next steps and maybe make do things a little bit more efficiently, and that's the real concern that we are sharing with you guys, nothing specific other than that. Amir?

Yes. But I would say in terms of licensing again, as we look at the first half of the year, I see across Europe, the U.S., and some Asia Pacific multiple, very nice opportunities coming. Specifically on the comment on China, I share that belief that as the economy will open up more and more, investments into this type of technology will enhance as we go into the second half. So overall, again fundamentally, we believe that licensing is overall in a good place and it's quite diversified across the globe.

Got it. I have one more question on licensing. When it comes to the share of the deals you’ve signed, particularly the share of connectivity, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ultra-wideband versus vision, sound, and AI, do you expect some of the mix shifts changing among those larger components within the deals within your licensing agreements in the next, let's say, two to three years?

Indeed, indeed, I'll start with the easier one, which is AI. AI, we've been talking a lot of about for a while. AI is not just a generic self-contained processor, but it's really part of all our product lines these days, and you could find it in a 5G base station, or you could find it in a vision camera-based device, and that's something unique that CEVA could have as AI on the edge and with lots of different processors and technology that we're offering. So, that's one aspect of it. The other is the combination. When we talk about some of the high-end audio solutions that are coming out to the market, it both has – and we showed it at CES. It was a nice demo there. Whoever joined us and visited us in Mobile World Congress will have the same solution. You could have the spatial, the spatial audio; you could have Bluetooth connectivity, you could have head sensors. We have different technologies combining. Some of them are processor-based, and some of them are software-based. The more we could add the higher ASPs both on the licensing and further down on the royalties that is part of our trend. And if you could add every once in a while and help our customers with services or NRE, what we call co-creation, that's part of the CEVA offerings today into the semiconductor space.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question today comes from David O’Connor of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions and welcome, Amir. Maybe just to start, you talked about the portfolio review in your opening remarks, what's the potential outcome of this portfolio review? I mean, are there areas of the business you may think are more non-core? That's my first question. Second question is on the uptick in the second half. Is there any big new designs that are coming to market that can help in that uptick in the second half? And a final question, Ultra-Wideband on the strategic deal; can you give us any indication what geography that was in? And what the licensing pipeline for Ultra-Wideband looks like? Thank you.

Yes. So, in terms of looking at our portfolio of investments and what I would like to make sure and I'm working with the team is basically to make it the most efficient into the growth areas that we see with the most potential in terms of the business model potential and the market potential with where we can basically be the most competitive with our technology. So, that's the portfolio analysis that I'm doing with the team. And of course, with that, I would like to make sure that we are putting the investments in again, there has potential growth areas for us, as well as where we can mostly differentiate. In terms of the UWB, actually this is a very exciting technology that for many, many years hasn't been able to really take off. Now with the penetration into some of the smartphone OEMs, we see that now we're propagating into multiple use cases across the IoT domains, things related to inter-positioning, to security, to car keys, and automotive, and also very secured and low-power type of connectivity that will complement very nicely also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. We are very strong portfolio of IP and technology to enable our partners to go very quickly to market with this type of technology. Of course, how big that market will be is still to be seen, but overall, I see considering the fundamentals values of this technology and now that the ecosystem is really supporting to take that off, I'm very bullish on the potential of this technology, but time will tell, and I believe we really have a very strong technology to support our partners as that takes off.

By the way, this was an APAC region type of deal, the automotive one. And the question on M&A. The first question, what was that, David?

Yes. There was just a third part, just on the H2, the second half uptick. I understand that the markets may swing back, but just is there any other new design wins coming that are ramping, any big ones there that may help accelerate that uptick in the second half? Thank you.

Yes, I would say a few potential new customers that have been designing, whether it's a Wi-Fi 6 design that can go into production, whether it's some of the ramp-ups in the 5G design wins that our customers want. We showed that at CES; those were very nice headsets with one of India’s top OEM brands in wearables, and that could come in nice volume as soon as that picks up. So, there are obviously quite a few; we have north of 30 Wi-Fi deals, and hands were only in production. So, lots of customers potentially could get in. I think we talked about either this year or next year, but those are all lined up.

I think of what I would summarize; down that potential that we see stronger growth or stronger volume coming into the second half of the year is really as you look at the combination of what we talk about the Wi-Fi, the 5G, and supporting the non-handset domain and base stations, as well as the software, right? All those things, we've already licensed to many, many customers, and we have many more in the pipe. We see that's really with very good strong potential as we go to the second half.

Okay. Thank you. And our next question today comes from Gus Richard with Northland. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks so much for taking the question, Amir. Welcome aboard. Hope all goes well for you. Just a quick question on licensing NRE. I know you don't split those out, but could you give us a sense of the growth trends of those two different segments of that business? Is licensing growing a little faster or is NRE?

I think it varies on the design wins. You could sometimes see it also in the gross margins just from a technical point of view. Q4 was relatively high margins. We're starting the year as well. I would say that probably the later part of the year, there are some very interesting deals that we're lining up on the NRE side. So, those 85% non-GAAP margins would probably slip a bit, but then that would be the contributor to the top line service revenues. So, we think that is a very nice combination, especially today the opportunity for companies that laid off R&D staff, but still want to get into connectivity, but still want to get help to get a product out when the market picks up, whether it's six months from now or nine months from now; that's the time to invest, and instead of internal headcount, they could use outsourcing. These are the opportunities also in the service business that we're focused on and obviously the cocreation, which is a combination of the IP and services. So, I don't think we have a seasonality in this business; it's just based on and driven by deals that we sign, but there is a very good interest across that side of the business as well. We think that should be picking up anywhere from the second quarter onwards, specifically for 2023.

Got it. And then on the royalty side, ARM has been lifting pricing on their latest version of ARM, and I'm just curious, is there either any pricing pressure or do you have any ability when you sign these contracts to modify your royalty rates and sort of just royalty rates go up with increasing content?

There are two things that help us with royalty rates. Either it's what we offer and the combination of more IPs or higher-end devices versus lower-cost devices or end-markets. For example, if you are targeting a Bluetooth for a more advanced hearing aid device versus a consumer device, which is much more high quality. Those are obviously true for any TV or true for any consumer device that differs in the pricing. So, I would say end-markets are Number 1. Number 2 is the offerings, software, or processor types that will also – customers – we are partners of our customers. We want them to succeed because that's the only way we could succeed. So, from time to time, they talk to us. We try to offer them newer technologies, the different rates, royalty rates, and enhancements. So, that's an ongoing process; the win-win situation is that the customer gets the right technology to be successful and sell products. We move from one product to another to a newer one, then we're able to also get higher licensing fees and get higher starts in royalties. So, I think those are the three aspects that really determine the price for us.

Okay. Got it. I'll stop there. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Richard Kingston for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in CEVA. As a reminder, the prepared remarks for this conference call are filed as an exhibit to the current report on Form 8-K and accessible through the investor section of our website at investors.ceva-dsp.com. With regards to upcoming events, we will be participating in the following conferences: Mobile World Congress, February 27th to March 2nd in Barcelona, Spain; 35th Annual Roth Conference, March 12-14, in California Further information on these events and all events we will be participating in can be found on the investors section of our website. Thank you and goodbye.

Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.