Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Corsair Gaming's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded, and your participation implies consent to such recording. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Ronald van Veen, Corsair's Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Corsair's financial results conference call for the second quarter ended June 30, 2024. On the call today, we have Corsair CEO, Andy Paul; and CFO, Michael Potter. Andy will review highlights from the quarter, and Michael will then review the financials and our outlook. We will then have time for any questions. Before we begin, allow me to provide a disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. This call, including the Q&A portion of the call, may include forward-looking statements related to the expected future results of our Company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to are described in the earnings release and other SEC filings. Note that until our 10-Q has been filed, these numbers are preliminary. Today's remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Additional information, including reconciliation between non-GAAP financial information to the GAAP financial information is provided in the press release we issued after the market closed today. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Andy.

Thank you, Ronald, and welcome, everyone to our earnings call. Q2 is always the lowest revenue quarter of the year for us, and this year is no exception. However, current macroeconomic trends and lengthened refresh cycles have caused this quarter to be weaker than expected. In our two business segments, the gamer and creator segment showed good growth, with revenue up approximately 20% year-on-year. We've launched some exciting products over the last 9 months, which have increased our footprint and market reach. This includes our K65 wireless keyboard, which quickly became the best-selling keyboard in the U.S. according to third-party data in Q2. The gaming components and systems segment, which makes components used for self-built PCs and also for gaming systems, was a different story. There we see market dynamics where incredibly exciting new games and gaming hardware technology is on the horizon, but not here yet, which is causing many consumers to hold off with upgrades or new builds. We saw a dip in this components market of approximately 15% year-on-year. Additionally, some pressure on average selling prices and channel inventory reduction led to a year-on-year drop of 32% in this business segment. To expand on the market trends and conditions, it's helpful to put a 5-year lens on recent activity. We went through a surge of activity during the COVID lockdown, where third-party data showed that the demand for gaming headsets approximately tripled and the self-built PC market approximately doubled. Three years on, having emerged from the lockdowns, the gaming headset market, which is the best indicator for peripherals, is now roughly double the size it was pre-COVID, while the self-built PC market, which we can see from third-party data on cases and power supplies, is roughly flat to pre-COVID levels. Refresh cycles are clearly lengthening on high-priced items like $2,000 plus gaming PCs. We see GPU cards that used to refresh every 18 to 24 to 30 months and some highly anticipated complex games like Grand Theft Auto 6 have been pushed to 2025, while others like Call of Duty Black Ops 6 are expected to be released soon this year. We think that our historical view of a 3 to 5-year refresh cycle may now be looking more like four to six years in these current economic conditions. Also weighing on the market is the fact consumers are acting with caution and are getting used to July Prime Day. As a result, sales in the immediate months before Prime Day appear to drop. And as a quick preview, our Prime Day sales in July were quite successful, with most categories outperforming compared to last year. Looking at an overall view of the gaming market, we see that the installed base of gaming hardware, post-COVID, is at an all-time high. Gaming ads continue to rise, generation by generation, and incredibly exciting new games and new AI-packed gaming technology are on the horizon. In fact, the gaming hardware space looking into 2025 has never looked more exciting. AI continues to move into every piece of gaming hardware, as we'll be able to use technology to make devices more adaptive and able to customize their settings to a gamer's playing ability. And we expect to see new generation GPU cards within the next 6 months. In our gamer and creator peripheral segment, we are seeing good growth with revenue up 19.6% year-over-year. This is the third successive quarter of high teens percentage growth. We are benefiting from a slight improvement in the overall market, combined with our success entering new parts of the market, which will drive our long-term growth. We intend to continue to grow the gamer and creator peripheral segment organically, as well as with strategic acquisitions. We expect this business will become larger than our traditional components business within a few years. This year alone, we launched teleprompters, PC controllers, mobile controllers, as well as many other innovative new products in the existing categories. We also recently announced our entry into the SIM racing market with products showcased at Computex. Separately, as noted in today's earnings press release, we remain interested in the SIM racing brand Fanatec, owned by Endor AG. Although we were disappointed to see the company file for insolvency, we remain hopeful that we can acquire this company. Moving on to our components and memory businesses, we continue to dominate the market with leading market share in most categories. We intend to continue that trend while running these businesses as efficiently as we can from a cost standpoint while we wait for the market to recover and return to growth. Overall, our long-term fundamentals remain strong, and we continue to be well-positioned to benefit from a strong refresh cycle when new GPUs launch later this year. We're excited about continued strong growth in our core gamer and creator peripheral segment. Let me now turn the call over to our CFO, Michael Potter, for details on the financials. Michael, please go ahead.

Thanks, Andy, and good afternoon, everyone. This quarter was particularly challenging due to lower-than-expected demand in the high-end gaming components and systems market where we have a leading market share. This had a significant impact on our profitability due to lower-than-expected revenue and our operating cost base not yet being adjusted. It also had an impact on cash as we paid for inventory that has not yet been sold. However, as Andy discussed, we continue to expect a better second half due to normal seasonality and our new product introductions. To partially mitigate the near-term impact of lower revenue, we implemented additional cost-saving measures in July and will continue to reduce operating expenses where needed to better align with the reduced sales levels in the short term. In terms of specifics, Q2 2024 net revenue was $261.3 million compared to $325.4 million in Q2 2023. For the first 6 months of 2024, net revenue was $598.6 million, down from $679.4 million in the year-ago period. European markets contributed 33% of our Q2 2024 revenues compared to 34.3% in Q1 2024, while the APAC region accounted for 10.9% of our Q2 2024 revenues compared to 13.8% in Q1 2024. Turning now to our segments, the gamer and creator peripheral segment contributed $94.2 million of net revenue during the second quarter compared to $78.8 million in Q2 2023. For the first 6 months of 2024, gamer and creator peripheral segment revenue was $201.2 million compared to $167.1 million in the same period of 2023. The gaming components and system segment contributed $167.1 million of net revenue during the second quarter, down from $246.7 million in Q2 2023. Memory products contributed $81.8 million in Q2 2024 compared to $108.9 million in Q2 2023. For the first 6 months of 2024, gaming components and system segment revenue decreased to $397.4 million from $511.7 million in the first half of 2023. Revenue from memory products decreased to $206.7 million from $240.2 million. Overall gross profit decreased to $149.7 million for the first 6 months of 2024 compared to $168.2 million in the first half of 2023. Gross profit in the gamer and creator peripheral segment was $35.7 million compared to $25.5 million in Q2 2023. Gross margin was 37.9% compared to 32.4% in Q2 2023. We're pleased to see the continued rebound in this business and believe we're on track for further improvements, while sales volume continues. The gaming components and system segment gross profit was $27.4 million, compared to $57.3 million in Q2 2023, reflecting lower sales volume. Gross margin was 16.4%, compared to 23.2% in Q2 2023. Our memory products gross margin in this segment were 11.5% for the second quarter compared to 14.6% in Q2 2023. Second quarter SG&A expenses were $70.4 million compared to $70 million in Q2 2023. Second quarter R&D expenses were $17.4 million compared to $15.6 million in Q2 2023. This reflects our investments in support of our expanded product line and new areas, including mobile controllers and SIM racing. We expect R&D to decrease in Q3 given the number of new products we have already launched in 2024. As additional color, we are executing on cost savings and took additional action in July, including the reduction of approximately 100 employees and will reduce some external expenses, which will lower operating expenses in the second half of 2024. We remain committed to controlling operating expenses while continuing to support growth in our gamer and creative peripheral segment, which has higher operating expense demands for R&D and marketing. GAAP operating loss in the second quarter of 2024 was $24.7 million compared to a loss of $2.7 million in Q2 2023. Second quarter adjusted operating loss was $3.8 million compared to adjusted operating income of $15.9 million in Q2 2023. Adjusted operating income was $11.6 million for the first half of 2024 compared to $34 million in the first half of 2023. Second quarter net loss attributed to common shareholders was $29.6 million, or $0.28 per diluted share, compared to net income of $1.1 million, or $0.01 per diluted share, in Q2 2023. On an adjusted basis, second quarter net loss was $6.8 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, compared to an adjusted net income of $9.8 million, or $0.09 per share in Q2 2023. For the first 6 months of 2024, adjusted net income was $2.7 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, compared to $21.8 million, or $0.20 per share in the first half of 2023. Finally, second quarter adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $1.2 million compared to a gain of $17.8 million for Q2 2023. For the first 6 months of 2024, adjusted EBITDA was $16.8 million compared to $38.3 million in the year-ago period. Turning now to our balance sheet, we ended Q2 with a cash balance, including restricted cash, of $94.6 million. We continue to maintain a healthy balance sheet with sufficient cash to fund the development of our expanding product portfolio. We expect to further reduce inventory during the third quarter as we move into the traditionally stronger second half, which will also generate additional cash. In particular, we expect to sell an inventory that we ordered based on higher expected demand. This is concentrated in components inventory, which has a longer technology refresh rate, and we anticipate selling that inventory in the second half and turning it into cash in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. We ended Q2 with $180.9 million of debt at face value, and our $100 million working capital revolver remains undrawn and fully available. Overall, we expect liquidity to remain excellent for the rest of 2024, allowing us to be flexible as opportunities present themselves. In terms of the full year 2024, we are updating our previous outlook to reflect the market softness Andy discussed earlier. We now expect total revenue in the range of $1.25 billion to $1.35 billion, adjusted operating income in the range of $48 million to $63 million, and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $60 million to $75 million.

With that, we're now happy to open the call for questions. Operator, will you please open up the call for Q&A?

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, just on the self-built DIY PC kind of memory component, you talked about recovery pushed out in terms of the refresh, kind of now 4 to 6 years, but still expecting GPU refresh in the next 6 months. Can you talk about the potential for further delay, or are you confident it should be on the horizon? Maybe you can give a little bit more color just on how to forecast potential downside, or given the macro, do you think that given historical presence and the data you are seeing, it should be relatively in short order?

Yes, so there's two things on that. One is, obviously, we're privy to confidential information from our partners that I can't share. What I'd say on the standard release of cards is that the market is all kind of agreeing. All the buzz around the market is that the new cards will come out either very late this year or early next year. Now what will that do in terms of buying activity? Clearly, every 2 years up until now, or every 18 months to 2 years, Nvidia or AMD has been launching graphics cards. So if they launch in Q1, that would be more like 30 months. So that's a delay. Now, the second thing is what do we expect that refresh cycle to look like? We are pretty convinced that a refresh cycle after COVID, where the PC component business basically doubled, has to be followed by an echo of that huge surge. For an echo not to occur would mean that all the people that came into the market to buy, new people that came to the market to build gaming PCs, which we think was almost the same number that previously existed. All of those would have to go away and not ever upgrade, which we don't believe to be true. So we're pretty sure there will be a strong refresh next year. And obviously, once we get into new graphics cards for the higher end where people are using these cards to build $2,000 to $3,000 machines, that is much more where we operate, and we have high market share.

Okay, great. Just a second quickly follow-up, if I may, just on the peripheral creative business. It's nice to see nearly 20% growth year-over-year with nice margins. Just curious how sustainable it is, and from a high level, any latest updates in terms of the consumer as it relates to the peripherals? I mean, do you still see more white space to drive up the average selling price over the next few quarters?

Well, yes, so actually this is a very interesting question. And I'll take it in a few different parts. Firstly, the overall peripheral business is twice the size of what it was pre-COVID. So if you look at headsets, which is kind of the bellwether of the gaming market, it's the first thing gamers usually buy. The number of headsets sold during the COVID period tripled from pre-COVID, so 2019 to 2020, and at this point it's still 2x. So there's a healthy market that's growing there in terms of the number of people that are getting into gaming and buying gear. Now this year compared to last year, the market has been relatively flat, but what we've seen in general is that the market is bifurcating a little bit, so there's a fair number of very low-end peripherals at low average selling prices that we really don't participate in. The average selling prices from the major suppliers, you know who those are, are typically going up. I think this is something I talked a lot about when we did the IPO - that I thought there was a lot of expansion possible as people who have been gaming for a while are happy to pay more for products with extra features. At the same time, we’ve seen in any enthusiast-type products, whether it would be skiing or golf, people tend to buy more expensive gear with added features.

Thanks, and good afternoon. Andy, the comment in the release about the gamer peripheral segment perhaps becoming larger than components over time, I mean, that's an intriguing comment. I guess maybe if you could walk us through that dynamic in terms of maybe what you see as normalized growth rates in both sides of the business, and maybe how that's informing your product development as you think about the next few years. Then I have a follow-up.

Yes. Well, look, first thing, this has always been our plan. From the pure math of it, we have very, very high market share. Let me start with the growth numbers. So we've seen historically, because we've been doing this for a long time, right? We've seen historically 5% to 10% market growth on the gaming PC market. In other words, those people building two $3,000 gaming PCs. But we've seen 15% market growth on peripherals, and this has been over a sort of 10-year period. Now that's obviously been shaken up a bit by the explosion during COVID, and now we're on the back side of it still. But so that just gives you a sense of the market dynamic. We're still seeing generational shifts with more and more people doing gaming. In other words, Gen Z are gaming more than millennials, and millennials are gaming more than Gen X and so on. There's more and more people gaming, and the entry point is always a headset or a gaming keyboard. Regarding the potential for white space for us, we have a very low market share in peripherals and we have very high market share in components. As things move forward, we will obviously try and gain more market share, but realistically, we will grow at or slightly above the growth rate of components because we already have extraordinary market share. With peripherals, we have so much space to grow that it wouldn't be out of the question for us to double the size of our business in a few years. On top of that, this is where we're doing all the acquisitions. We're looking at all the small companies in the peripheral or enthusiast space. There are many sub-$100 million companies that we can absorb and run much more efficiently than they can on their own. That’s the game plan. So a combination of organic growth and acquisitions will grow that. This year, we already expect that we'll make more gross in our peripheral segment than our component segment, and that’s where we are focusing most of the resources. It obviously takes a lot more R&D and marketing to be successful in the peripheral space where the products are much more complicated. That gives you a sense of where we're allocating both acquisition dollars and operating expenditures to grow that segment.

Okay, thanks, Andy. And then, Michael, I guess in terms of understanding the pathway back to growth, maybe the shape of Q3 versus Q4. Looking into Q4, what are the indications you're seeing around demand, your ability to meet that demand, and perhaps the role that promotions will play in driving retail sell-through this year from what you are able to gather at this point?

So we continue to expect the normal seasonal effect with the second half bigger than the first half and around the same sort of numbers we've talked about in the past; roughly 55% back half, 45% first half approximately. Usually, Q3 accelerates off of Q2, and then Q4 is even bigger. That tends to be the pattern we see. We don't expect anything particularly different this year. In terms of supporting growth, in my comments, we certainly have inventory ready now, so it's not a shortage that we have there. New products should be ready to hit the market in sufficient amounts to support demand as well. I don't think it will be an issue for us to support demand for the second half of the year.

Okay, thanks. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. So, on the peripheral segment, Michael, anything to the step down in gross margin in Q2 versus Q1? Is the 40% you achieved in Q1 too optimistic for '24? And on the SIM racing products that you launched back in early June, any early read on the receptivity you've seen for that line, and then I have a follow-up.

I'll let Andy talk about the SIM racing products a little bit, but just in terms of margins and things, around 40% is achievable. Q2, normally we just have lower unit volumes, so there’s a little bit less fixed cost absorption, plus there’s a mixed difference as well in the second quarter. But it was otherwise relatively similar to the first quarter, which had the 40%. Promotional activities usually step up during the Christmas selling season in Q4, but we haven't seen anything abnormal. The indications from Prime Day just passed are that people will discount, but they weren't extreme like they were in previous years.

Yes, and I'd say also, Drew, that we've spent the last couple of years retooling most of the base technologies in our gaming peripherals. So our keyboards today look quite different from the keyboards of 2 or 3 years ago when the trends were slightly different. One of the things we concentrated on was how to get the cost structures right so that we could get back to target levels. Regarding SIM racing, we showed a prototype chassis at Computex. Everyone that saw it loved it. That's not due to go into production later. We are also trying to acquire the company Fanatec from Germany. We're all in on SIM racing, and I think next year is going to be a big year. The market is strong and growing, with all the fundamentals there. In an environment where people's budgets are somewhat stretched, it's actually more affordable for those who enjoy racing to do SIM racing at home rather than take their car to the track. With the success of Drive to Survive and F1’s success in the U.S., there are many new enthusiasts getting into this hobby. Exciting times ahead.

Got it. Okay. And then on the components business, you discussed the new GPUs launching late in calendar '24 or early '25. What is factored into your guidance for '24 at this point? Does the timing have any bearing on Q4, or does it not matter? Is the sale of your products coincident with the launch of the GPUs, or is there a lag effect?

Yes, it's a complicated question. What tends to happen, what I've seen in the past, is that as soon as the specs are out and people understand what the future looks like, then they make buying decisions. There are a lot of people who wait until they see the specs of the new cards and then perhaps go back and buy the previous generation since it's a much better deal. So there's a little bit of that. You get most hesitation in the market before any of the specs come out. This is the situation we're in now where everyone's got the idea that because the technology that's used in AI chips is migrating to GPUs, everyone's anticipating great things from the new cards. That tends to drive it. There are many people— and we saw this during COVID— the first thing they tend to do is buy a case to start the build. Some builds take a weekend, while others may take 3 months. The last thing they typically put in is the graphics card. So we would expect that as we get toward Q4, once the specs come out, and people decide it's time for them to build a new machine, there's a reasonable chance that we can start selling cases and some of the other products before then.

Hey, thank you. Just looking at your components and systems margins, I think they were the lowest they've been in about five years. Could you elaborate on that and talk about what kind of margin recovery you are baking in for the rest of the year?

I think there are two things. Michael mentioned this earlier. There's a certain amount of fixed overhead that applies to margins with a much lower revenue base, which moves them down. Yes, we are having to retool some of these products, especially in power supplies and in some cases, to meet the current trends and demands. There will be a little bit of inventory clear-out of old products in Q2. So yes, I wouldn't expect the margins that we were seeing in Q2 to be repeated in Q3 and Q4. I believe we will do much better.

There's also a little bit of a shift to lower average selling price products for us. We generally make lower margin percent on lower ASP products and higher margin percent on higher ASP products. As we move closer to the end of the year and the newer graphics cards start driving more of the buying pattern, the ASPs should increase again, which should help margins as well.

Hey guys, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Could you comment on the competitive environment? Have you seen any competitors behave irrationally just given the softer than expected market conditions in the first half?

Well, the major competitors, no, in general. I mean, obviously, there's always someone that discounts heavily, but we just went through Prime Day and we didn't see anything extreme. There are a lot of new brands showing up from factories in China where the market is definitely weaker than it was due to higher unemployment and a worse economic situation. So we see quite a lot of new brands appearing, especially on the Amazon marketplace, at relatively reduced prices. That's the main observation I would make. But this is where I was talking earlier about the average selling prices of headsets. We are seeing a market bifurcation. There’s a significant chunk of very low-cost peripherals out there now. The major manufacturers, ourselves, Logitech, Razer, et cetera are managing to raise their average selling prices and doing reasonably well.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then, quick follow-up, you recently announced a partnership with TD SYNNEX, which I imagine is geared towards peripherals, maybe something like your Elgato products. Can you just talk about that partnership and what it can mean for your business?

Yes, it's really around our B2B group. We've got a small B2B group where we're seeing demand from broadcasters and universities. Yes, the most promising product lines that we are selling, actually the most things we sell out of that group are systems and Elgato gear. Adding TD SYNNEX, we also added CDW last year, putting together the whole channel to grow that business.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today and for your continued support. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact our Investor Relations Department, and we look forward to updating you next quarter. Thank you and have a good evening.

Thank you everyone for joining us on the call today and for your continued support. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact our Investor Relations Department. We look forward to updating you next quarter. Thank you and have a good evening.