Earnings Call Transcript - CEVA Q3 2024

Operator, Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Ceva Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Kingston, Vice President-Market Intelligence. Please go ahead.

Richard Kingston, Vice President-Market Intelligence

Thank you, Jason, and good morning everyone. Welcome to Ceva's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me today on the call are Amir Panush, Chief Executive Officer; and Yaniv Arieli, Chief Financial Officer of Ceva. Before handing over to Amir, I would like to remind everyone 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 our market positioning, strategy and growth opportunities, market trends and dynamics, expectations regarding demand for and benefits of our technologies, our sales pipeline and backlog, our financial goals and guidance regarding future performance, and our expectations regarding utilization of our stock repurchase program. Ceva assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information which speak as of their respective dates. In addition, following the divestment of the Intrinsix business, financial results from Intrinsix were transitioned to a discontinued operation beginning in the third quarter of 2023, and all prior period financial results have been recast accordingly. We will also 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 on our Investor Relations website. 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?

Amir Panush, CEO

Thank you, Richard, and welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter delivered another impressive consecutive performance executing effectively against our strategic plan and exceeding market expectations. Our results surpass targets with both top-line revenue growth and non-GAAP fully diluted EPS coming in above projections. Total revenue for the quarter came in at $27.2 million, up 13% year-over-year, benefiting from our innovative product offerings to the market and positive tailwinds in both our licensing and royalty businesses. Our backlog and pipeline continue to improve, and we are in a healthy position as we head into the fourth quarter and 2025. As a result, we are raising our guidance for the full year 2024, which Yaniv will elaborate on later in the call. In licensing, the third quarter produced several important milestones for Ceva which reinforce our strategy of delivering leading-edge IP that enables smart edge devices to connect, send, and infer data. Highlights include the first licensing deal for our NeuPro-Nano embedded AI NPU, multiple deals for our PentaG 5G advanced, wide access network and satellite communications platform, and a high-profile smartphone OEM customer for our New Space spatial audio software. Overall, licensing revenue came in at $15.6 million, up 12% year-over-year, with 10 deals completed in the quarter across all geographies and with multiple OEM customers. In royalties, the momentum in the consumer and industrial end markets continued to drive 15% year-over-year royalty revenue growth to $11.6 million, and year-over-year royalty revenue growth for the fourth successive quarter. Before I provide more color on our business, I want to reiterate that we are steadfast in our belief that our broad IP portfolio is highly synergistic with the most pressing needs of semiconductor companies and OEMs as they develop their Smart Edge products and rely on our unique IP to advance and augment their internal developments. The level of global customer engagement we are experiencing today is the highest I have seen during my time with Ceva and provides us with tremendous insights and opportunities to partner with some of the world’s leading fabless companies and brands across their short and long-term roadmaps. Our technology leadership across multiple core disciplines and commitment to long-term partnership is key to winning licensing deals that garner higher licensing fees, improved royalty rates, and overall better economics. The third quarter provided multiple proof points that our “connect, sense, and infer” strategy is operating in full flow, with deals signed across our IP portfolio and the continuous trend of customers licensing multiple technologies from our portfolio for their products. In connect, we expanded our market leadership and customer base in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and UWB with new deals across all platforms, including our newest Bluetooth 6 IP. More significantly, we signed a strategic licensing agreement with an innovative OEM for its development of a 5G advanced modem based on our PentaG 5G-Advanced Wide Access Network and Satellite communications platform. This OEM intends to build a transformative peer-to-peer satellite network constellation that will enable ubiquitous 5G communications globally and bring cost-effective cellular IoT services to the masses. As the only IP provider with a comprehensive modem platform for 5G-Advanced communications, we are the partner-of-choice for any systems company or OEM looking to develop advanced wireless communications ASICs. Our leading-edge IP and deep wireless expertise significantly reduce the entry barriers for the development of these highly complex chip designs. The economics and scale of this deal reflect the trust they have placed in Ceva for this project, and we are incredibly proud to partner with this OEM to help make their vision a reality. In addition to this strategic deal, and illustrative of the broad market opportunities we are seeing for our 5G-Advanced IPs, we signed two other agreements this quarter – one with a leader in 5G cellular IoT modems and another with an automotive semiconductor for their next-generation V2X vehicle-to-everything communications chipset. These deals, combined with the two large deals signed last quarter and our robust pipeline for 5G-Advanced IP cement Ceva’s position as the leader in this market. Our market leadership translates into higher license fees per deal, higher royalties per unit, and creates sticky, long-term relationships that are incredibly beneficial to Ceva’s business. In sense, we continued to expand the market penetration for our RealSpace spatial audio software. We signed a new licensing deal with a high-profile smartphone OEM to include RealSpace in multiple SKUs of headphones and TWS earbuds, with the first products expected to launch in the first half of 2025. This OEM specializes in developing smartphones and accessories with incredible detail for aesthetic design while delivering a unique user experience. Overall, we are experiencing increasing interest in our RealSpace software in multiple categories of products due to the excellent user experience based on our superior spatial audio and head tracking technology. Our ability to deliver this software on embedded platforms across multiple architectures and on higher-end smartphone and PC platforms is a key driver for this demand. In the case of this OEM, our superior solution quality, reflected in the tight integration of our spatial audio rendering and head tracking technologies, and coupled with our capability to efficiently support the full product integration and tuning, helped us to secure this deal. As I've mentioned previously, the royalties for software licenses directly to OEMs are at the higher end of our overall range, and the customers get to market faster than typical semiconductor customers involved in lengthier chip design programs. In inference, while training neural networks in the cloud is the most practical way of developing new AI models, inferencing is the path to monetizing these investments. The preferred way to inference is to process it on the Smart Edge device itself, due to the near-zero marginal cost of performing each query in addition to other benefits such as lower latency and privacy. From laptops, smartphones, and self-driving cars, scaling all the way down to tiny neural networks on power-constrained IoT devices, the industry is experiencing unprecedented demand for power and cost-efficient solutions to run AI on-device. In line with this trend, we secured our first licensing deal this quarter for our NeuPro-Nano NPU, which was only introduced in June of this year, a significant milestone for our embedded AI product line. Embedded AI is highly synergistic with our connectivity and sensing offerings from the high-volume end markets we serve to the customers we work with and through the growing need for connectivity, sensing, and AI to be increasingly integrated into every Smart Edge device. This specific customer is an existing licensee of our Bluetooth dual-mode IP, which it ships in high volume today in their wireless audio chips. These customers required a highly efficient NPU to add to their products for audio and other embedded AI processing in order to increase performance and add new AI-based features. NeuPro-Nano was the outstanding choice for them due to its single-core, highly efficient architecture that can execute CPU, ESP, and neural network workloads with high performance and low energy utilization all in a small area. This deal is indicative of our belief that many of our existing connectivity customers will require an NPU for their product road maps and is reflected in multiple opportunities in our pipeline. Through our proven relationships, based on market success together, we are very well positioned to capitalize on this and license our NeuPro-Nano IP, which leads to higher royalties on each device. In addition to signing the first licensee in the third quarter, we also achieved other important milestones for embedded AI. We delivered a second higher performance implementation of NeuPro-Nano that is available for customers now, giving them another option for their NPU requirements. We also expanded access for AI developers to rapidly develop, train, and deploy advanced embedded machine learning applications for the NeuPro NPUs via partnership with Edge Impulse, whose platform is widely used in the AI developer community for IoT devices. These developments are part of our strategy to leverage our significant investment in AI to create a strong growth engine for CEVA. Overall, I am incredibly pleased with licensing performance in the quarter, and through the key build signs in each domain we specialize in. There is a clear indication that our strategy is working and resonating with our customers worldwide. Turning now to royalties. Continued strength in consumer and industrial IoT end markets helped us to achieve 15% year-over-year royalty revenue growth and delivered the second highest quarterly unit shipments in CEVA history of 522 million units. Cellular IoT units were at an all-time record high, while Bluetooth and Wi-Fi continue to be very robust. Overall, combined shipments of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular IoT surpassed 400 million units in the quarter for the first time, an impressive milestone for our IoT connectivity product line. We also drove sequential and year-over-year growth of TVs and PCs powered by our sensor fusion software. Smartphone shipment volume was down moderately on a sequential and year-over-year basis, and muted 5G O-RAN shipments reflected the software environment for 5G operator CapEx this year. Of note, we saw several of our customers ship record volume of their CEVA powered products, reflecting a combination of improved demand and continued market share gains, particularly in the wireless connectivity space. Overall, I remain very confident in the resilience of our royalty business with many different customers and end markets contributing to the fourth sequential quarter of year-over-year royalty growth. Our royalty pipeline continues to show strong momentum with a growing number of customers preparing to launch CEVA powered products, spanning wireless combo chips, new 5G and cellular IoT use cases, vision and sensor fusion for radar systems, and spatial audio software to name just a few. Now, I will turn the call over to Yaniv for the financials.

Yaniv Arieli, CFO

Thank you, Amir. I'll start by reviewing the results of our operations for the third quarter of 2024. Revenue for the third quarter was $27.2 million, up 13% compared to $24.1 million for the same quarter last year. The revenue breakdown is as follows; licensing and related revenue was $15.6 million, reflecting 57% of total revenue, increased 12% year-over-year. Royalty revenues were $11.6 million, reflecting 43% of our total revenue, increased 15% year-over-year. Gross margins came below our guidance at 85% on GAAP and 87% on a non-GAAP basis, compared to 90% and 92% on GAAP and non-GAAP basis, respectively a year ago. This is mainly due to strategically beneficial customization work associated with key 5G advanced deals we signed recently. Our ability to provide the most advanced 5G platform IP, together with customization expertise to the semiconductor and OEM community, is highly compelling and is enabling us to sign deals with higher licensing fees, higher royalty rates, and creates sticky long-term relationships. Total gross operating expenses for the third quarter were $25.9 million at the higher end of our guidance due to slightly higher equity-based compensation expenses. Total non-GAAP operating expenses for the third quarter excluding equity-based compensation expenses, amortization of intangibles, and related acquisition costs were $21.4 million, just over the mid-range of our guidance and at the same expense level as the second quarter. Non-GAAP operating margins and net income were 8% of revenue and $2.1 million, 14% and 30% higher than operating margins of 7% and operating income of $1.6 million recorded in the third quarter of 2023, respectively. This plays well with our commitment to increase growth and profitability in line with new IP developments and disciplined expense growth. GAAP operating loss for the third quarter of 2024 was $2.6 million as compared to a GAAP operating loss of $2.7 million for the same period in 2023. GAAP and non-GAAP taxes were $1 million lower than our guidance and affected by the geographies of deals signed. GAAP net loss for the third quarter of 2024 was $1.3 million and diluted loss per share was $0.06 as compared to a net loss of $2.8 million and diluted loss per share of $0.12 for the same period last year. Non-GAAP net income and diluted income per share for the third quarter of 2024 increased significantly, by 137% and 133%, to $3.4 million and $0.14 respectively, as compared to net income of $1.4 million and diluted income per share of $0.06 reported for the same period last year. With respect to other related data, shipped units by Ceva licensees during the third quarter of 2024 were 522 million units, up 4% from the third quarter 2023 reported shipments, and 13% higher sequentially. This is the second-highest quarterly shipments in Ceva’s history. Of the 522 million units reported, 72 million units, or 14%, were for mobile handset modems. 414 million units were for consumer IoT markets, up 4% from 398 million units in the third quarter of 2023. Of note, royalty revenues for consumer IoT increased 21% year-over-year, due to shipment growth for our higher ASP products. 36 million units were for Industrial IoT markets, up 50% from 24 million in the third quarter of 2023. Bluetooth shipments were 306 million units in the quarter, down slightly by 2% year-over-year. Cellular IoT shipments were a record all-time high of 48 million units, up 37% year-over-year, and Wi-Fi shipments also increased significantly, to 47 million units, up 100% year-over-year. Overall, a strong mix of shipments across our key end markets delivered year-over-year royalty revenue growth for the fourth successive quarter. As for the balance sheet items, as of September 30, 2024, Ceva’s cash and cash equivalent balances, marketable securities, and bank deposits were approximately $158 million. In the third quarter of 2024, we repurchased approximately 186,000 shares for approximately $4.2 million. Earlier today, our board of directors authorized a new increase of 700,000 shares to the existing 10b-18 repurchase program. As of today, just over 1 million shares are available for repurchase under the program after giving effect to this expansion. We believe in our future business prospects and intend to take advantage of the program to increase shareholder value. Our DSO for the third quarter of 2024 is 51 days, better than the 59 days in the prior quarter. During the third quarter, we generated $0.4 million cash from operating activities. Our ongoing depreciation and amortization was $1.0 million, and the purchase of fixed assets was $0.4 million. At the end of the third quarter, our headcount was 431 people, of whom 354 are engineers. Now for the guidance for the fourth quarter of 2024 and the full year. As evident from the last two quarters, our annual growth plans progress well. Also, as Amir stated earlier, our backlog and pipeline improved, both for the fourth quarter of 2024 as well as for 2025. Therefore, we expect overall revenues for the year to be higher than the last two guidance’s we provided earlier, and at a new higher range of 7%-9% growth. We continue to manage our OpEx closely and implement cost control measures from time to time. This would enable us to double our non-GAAP operating margins and operating profit for 2024 over 2023 and also generate stronger earnings power and double our non-GAAP fully diluted EPS. As for the fourth quarter, total revenue is expected to be in the range of $26.5 million to $28.5 million. Gross margin is expected to be approximately 88% on a GAAP basis and 89% on a non-GAAP basis, excluding aggregate of $0.2 million of equity-based compensation expenses and $0.1 million associated with the acquired intangibles. This is a bit lower than originally expected due to the higher allocation of engineering efforts to support key 5G advanced customers. GAAP OpEx is expected to be in the range of $25.2 million to $26.2 million. At the average level of the last two quarters of our anticipated operating expenses for the fourth quarter, $3.7 million is expected to be attributed to equity-based compensation expense and $0.2 million for the amortization of acquired intangibles and $0.3 million for the expense related to the business acquisitions. Non-GAAP OpEx is expected to be similar to the last two quarters and in the range of $21 million to $22 million, reflecting our continued expense control and enabling stronger earnings power. Net interest income is expected to be approximately $1.2 million. Taxes are expected to be approximately $1.4 million pending deal geography closures, and the share count is expected to be 25.3 million shares. Jason, you could now open the Q&A session please.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Kevin Cassidy from Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst

Yes, thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on the impressive results. I would like some clarification regarding the gross margin. The reduction in gross margin is due to the engineering time being spent on developing a custom 5G modem platform, which will carry over into the next quarter. Is there a possibility of further extension? Also, I want to understand if this platform will eventually become a standard device that you will license to other companies.

Amir Panush, CEO

Good morning, and thank you for the question. In our cost of revenues and IP business, we do allocate R&D resources when customizing for our customers, particularly for strategic large deals. We've already completed a couple of significant agreements in the 5G modem space earlier this year, and now we've signed a third one in the third quarter. These deals involve specific customization requests that require additional work for these customers. Importantly, our expertise and capabilities remain with CEVA for future projects. This may slightly affect our margins for this quarter and possibly a few additional quarters, but it simply reflects the allocation of R&D costs to revenue rather than an overall increase in expenses. On an annual basis, we are still expecting our non-GAAP margins to be around 89% to 90%. Overall, while there’s a bit more investment in the top line, the situation hasn't shifted dramatically.

Yaniv Arieli, CFO

Yes. I would like to add more about our strategic vision for driving the company and the business. As I mentioned previously, our long-term goal is to be a true partner for our customers and deliver enhanced value from the technologies we offer. With the 5G advanced platform, we are providing a comprehensive platform that includes not only DSP and processing technology but also complete L1 modem technology, both hardware and software. This intellectual property is something we are developing, and we plan to expand it across our entire customer base. In this specific case, along with other deals made over the year, we are also offering additional customization and support to our customers. This approach will lead to improved long-term economics in terms of licensing and royalties as we continue to grow our connectivity IP portfolio.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst

Okay, great, thanks for that clarification. As you design with this platform, is there an opportunity for Wi-Fi on the platform overall?

Amir Panush, CEO

Kevin, that's a great question. So in this specific case, we are starting with the 5G advanced platform, but we have multiple customers that are looking to add to this platform Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and other technologies. So definitely, on top of what I said strategically, more value and economics per deal is really creating and adding more content of the digital wireless connectivity. Furthermore, moving forward, we will see adding AI or neural network capabilities in terms of the processing that we provide in these types of connectivity platforms with the NeuPro-Nano that we talked about today, as well as the other NPUs we have in our portfolio. So definitely what we see is, and I'm very happy with how I see the strategy that we put in place, that we are executing that exactly to our plan and driving more and more value along with the economics of the deals to our customers with the multiple connectivity technologies and then on top of that AI.

Kevin Cassidy, Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from Chris Reimer from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Chris Reimer, Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about the licensing deals. You announced 10. I think it was on the press release. It's a little lower than your run rate for previous quarters. I'm just wondering, is that significant or reflecting maybe some deal slippage into next quarter? Anything you can speak to that?

Amir Panush, CEO

Yes, thanks for the question, Chris. The numbers can vary slightly from quarter to quarter because of the licensing business. However, we are quite pleased with both the number and the quality of the deals we have secured, which we consider even more critical. Each quarter's mix can change. Currently, we are highlighting several deals with multiple OEMs that should enhance our financial performance going forward, along with our advanced wireless connectivity solutions. Annually, we generally see around 50 deals, although this can fluctuate each quarter. Ultimately, we prioritize the quality of our deals over the sheer number, as well as how well our technology is being received by our customers.

Chris Reimer, Analyst

Got it. And just on the backlog and pipeline you mentioned the improved momentum. So how would you describe it now versus at the beginning of the year?

Amir Panush, CEO

Yes. So a few things on that. First, on the pipeline that I highlighted as well in the prepared remarks. The pipeline that I see today is the highest that I've seen since I joined the company at the beginning of 2023. And that goes back to we really see our strategy fitting very nicely with the market needs across all our technologies of connect, sensing, and infer, and through the key end markets which we are targeting as part of the Smart Edge. In terms of backlog this quarter for Q4, we are in a position right now that the backlog is strong. With that overall, we raised the guidance for annually and to some degree for this quarter. So we're in a good place, and I'm very happy with how I see the execution coming together.

Chris Reimer, Analyst

Great. Thanks for that. That’s it for me.

Operator, Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Amir Panush. I'm sorry, we have another question. We have a question from Gus Richard from Northland. Please go ahead.

Gus Richard, Analyst

Yes. Thanks for taking the question. Just real quick, there's been a little bit of a shift obviously from spending to gross margin as you customize to do some custom work for customers. Is that the way we should think about the model, is gross margins in 2025 coming into the high-80s and a little bit lighter on the R&D line?

Amir Panush, CEO

Hi. Good morning. I'm not sure we're not talking yet about the 2025 model for this year and the guidance for Q4. If you plug that in, you will get that the year is around the 89% to 90% so in line with the 90% we've been around for a long time. We're not changing our model. It's not becoming a service company. It's just specific, very specific deals in very specific areas that are needed because of the excitement of 5G advanced; we won three consecutive deals in the last two quarters. So, very strong execution on that. It happens to be that some need more work. So one of those deals that we signed now in Q3 will have a few more quarters of work and support for that specific customer, but we're not changing the model. We're still an IP company, and it should be in the 90% range, 1% or 2% up or down, but it's not changing anything dramatically in this aspect.

Gus Richard, Analyst

Got it. And let me just try asking the question another way. Are you seeing increased demand for customization beyond 5G advanced as more OEMs get into the business of building their own chips; they don't have the design expertise? I'm just wondering, you're not going to be a design services company, but OEMs need more help than a semiconductor company, and I'm just wondering if that's giving you an opportunity to do a little more customization work and obviously, drive higher licensing and royalty down the road but paying upfront and a little bit lower gross margin. That's the nature of the question.

Yaniv Arieli, CFO

Yes. Gus, I'll address that. It's a good question. And the way Amir was framing it is that when we look at the different deals and what we offer to our customers, for us, it's less about the so-called level of customization and more about the value that we offer them. Definitely, with the multiple connectivity technologies and the ability to put them together as a so-called pre-tested pre-integrated with the software stack on top of that, we are bringing more and more value to our customers, and that resonates very, very well with OEMs or large semiconductor companies that have those gaps you alluded to or mentioned. So definitely we see us as a better fit to drive higher value type of deals, both on the licensing and the long-term royalty that can bring. We are very happy that our strategy is now getting executed and resonates very well with the customer base. With that to the most part, most of our customers, because we are doing the pre-integration and software integration to the platform by ourselves in advance, will be an IP that is offered off the shelf and will increase more and more in value and capabilities. Here and there, we have the opportunities to expand our IP and into new markets and with new customers; we will see here some customization on support. But that's part of at the end of day our IP offering as we provide it to OEM and semiconductors that really have those gaps.

Amir Panush, CEO

And Gus, I'll add to that that if you try to quantify this, we signed 40 to 50 deals a year. It's less than a handful of deals per year that need to be customized. The bulk of the business is off-the-shelf IPs that we develop and then license as is. So it's really sporadic deals over a year. If two or three fall in the same timeframe of one or two quarters, then this is why we saw this 87% this quarter versus the 90-ish we really see on a normal quarter.

Gus Richard, Analyst

Got it. I understand. Thanks so much.

Amir Panush, CEO

Sure. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from Martin Yang from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Martin Yang, Analyst

Thank you for taking my question. My question is on Wi-Fi very strong shipment quarter. Is there any additional color you could provide on underlying markets or products that contributed to the strength in Wi-Fi? That's the first question. Second question is do you think this level of shipment is sustainable versus roughly an average of $30 million in the preceding quarters?

Amir Panush, CEO

Yeah. Mark, good question. First I would say that overall, not just Wi-Fi, across Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Cellular IoT combined, definitely this is a record quarter for us, illustrating the strategy and execution that we have been driving for a while to penetrate and create a leadership position in the connectivity Smart Edge market. So we are very, very happy with where we are and how we see the royalty moving forward and so far. Specifically on Wi-Fi, actually I would say we are early in the ramp. As we've pointed out during the Analyst Day last year, Wi-Fi shipments volume in terms of the potential royalty ramp and overall volume shipments is still a significant growth area for us. What drives it is we are penetrating more market share by our customers that license our technology really reaching production. And once they reach production, they're also reaching more platforms, which increased the volume of shipment over time. So definitely our expectation in the long run, as we look at 2025, 2026, and 2027, we expect the Wi-Fi volume to increase significantly with good success as we have seen with our Bluetooth technology. Now, it can vary quarter-over-quarter; it depends on the market condition. But overall, the baseline that drives that tailwind, which are the 30 or more customers that have already licensed our Wi-Fi 6, is that we expect those customers to move more to production, which will increase ship volume over time.

Richard Kingston, Vice President-Market Intelligence

Hi Martin, this is Richard here. Just to add a couple of points to Amir's answer. One of our customers who showed quite a big jump in shipments in the quarter indicated that some of their customers are starting a new inventory restocking process. I think this is backed up by TSMC's earnings report recently where they talked about the strength in IoT. So there's definitely a move to a big volume of IoT chips with connectivity coming into the market right now. It's been seen at the fabs and also in the supply chain as well. So that definitely bodes well. And with our large customer base there that Amir alluded to, we can see that to continue to grow. Obviously, quarterly, we don't have any control over, but the trend is definitely heading in the right direction.

Martin Yang, Analyst

Got it. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Amir. That's it for me.

Operator, Operator

The next question …

Richard Kingston, Vice President-Market Intelligence

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Amir Panush for any closing remarks.

Amir Panush, CEO

Thank you. On behalf of the Ceva team, thank you for joining us today. We delivered another strong quarter on the back of continuing business momentum and increased demand for our IPs. The semiconductor industry has returned to good growth, driven by AI. Through our stellar customer base, we are already seeing this growth through our royalty business with four consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth. With our leading-edge portfolio of technologies that enable smart edge devices to connect, sense, and infer data, we are realizing many licensing opportunities with the world's leading semiconductor companies and OEMs, which ensure we are well positioned to meet our long-term growth objectives. We look forward to meeting many of you during the fourth quarter on the road at investor conferences and non-deal roadshows. Richard, I will hand over to you to wrap it up.

Richard Kingston, Vice President-Market Intelligence

Thanks, Amir. 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 Investors section of our website. With regards to upcoming events, we will be participating in the following conferences: the 13th Annual ROTH Conference Technology Conference on November 20 in New York; the Barclays 22nd Annual Global Technology Conference on December 11 in San Francisco; the Northland Growth Conference 2024 2.0 on December 12 being held virtually. We'll be at CES 2025 from January 7 through 10 in Las Vegas. The following week, we'll be at the 27th Annual Needham Growth Conference on January 14 and 15 in New York. 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 all, and goodbye.

Operator, Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.