Poly Announces First Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 Financial Results

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., July 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Plantronics, Inc. (NYSE: PLT) ("Poly" or the "Company") today announced first quarter results for the period ending June 27, 2020. Preliminary highlights of the first quarter include the following:

"We are working aggressively to fulfill elevated headset demand driven by the hybrid working trend as we navigate product shifts and supply chain challenges," said Robert Hagerty, Chairman of the Poly Board of Directors and Interim Chief Executive Officer. "We continue to make progress on the transformation necessary to achieve the objectives of the integrated company and return to profitable growth."

"In light of the current macroeconomic uncertainty, we have been accumulating cash to maximize financial flexibility and liquidity," said Charles Boynton, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "As our business and the economy stabilize, our capital allocation strategy will focus on reducing leverage while maintaining appropriate liquidity."

Highlights for the First Quarter 2021

• Headsets demand remained elevated and voice solutions challenged as customers continue to work from home. Backlog at quarter-end was approximately five weeks.
• The Company's in-house manufacturing site in Tijuana, Mexico resumed production in early May after reconfiguring to implement specific safety protocols. The factory is capable of running at full capacity, but supply constraints continue to affect production.
• Poly announced a new family of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) solutions and completed the Teams certification of the Studio X30 and X50 video bars. Poly also received Teams re-certification on six headsets for a total of 16 certified Teams headsets, and now offers the largest number of Teams certified endpoints in the market.
• Poly's next-gen video solutions, including the Studio X30, Studio X50, and G7500 became the first certified Zoom appliances in the market. In addition, the company announced participation in Zoom's Hardware-as-a-Service offering featuring Poly video bars and phones.
• LogMeIn announced that the Poly Studio X30 and X50 video bars are now available in bundled solutions for GoToRoom.
• The Company resolved several longstanding litigation matters, which will reduce Legal expenses going forward.
• The Company ended fiscal Q1 with $263 million in cash and short-term investments.

Dividend Suspended

On April 9, 2020, the Poly Board of Directors suspended the quarterly cash dividend.

Business Outlook

The following statements are based on the Company's current expectations, and many of these statements are forward-looking. Actual results are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from the Company's expectations. Please refer to the Forward Looking Statements Safe Harbor section of this press release below.

The following represents the expected range of financial results for the second quarter 2021 (all amounts assume currency rates remain stable):

Conference Call and Earnings Presentation

Poly is providing an earnings presentation in combination with this press release. The presentation is offered to provide shareholders and analysts with additional detail for analyzing results. The presentation will be available in the Investor Relations section of our corporate website at investor.poly.com along with this press release. A reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP results is provided at the end of this press release.

We have scheduled a webcast to discuss first quarter fiscal year 2021 financial results. The webcast will take place today, July 28, 2020, at 2:00 PM (Pacific Time). All interested investors and potential investors in Poly stock are invited to join. To listen to the webcast, please access the webcast link from our Investor Relations website at investor.poly.com.

A replay of the webcast will be available shortly after its conclusion and can be accessed from our Investor Relations website at investor.poly.com.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Information

To supplement our condensed consolidated financial statements presented on a GAAP basis, we use non-GAAP measures of operating results, including non-GAAP net revenues, non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP net income, adjusted EBITDA, and non-GAAP diluted EPS. These non-GAAP measures are adjusted from the most directly comparable GAAP measures to exclude, or include where applicable, the effect of purchase accounting on deferred revenue, charges associated with the optimization of our Consumer product line, stock-based compensation, acquisition related expenses, purchase accounting amortization and adjustments, restructuring and other related charges and credits, impairment charges, rebranding costs, other unusual and/or non-cash charges and credits, and the impact of participating securities, all net of any associated tax impact. We also exclude tax benefits from the release of tax reserves, discrete tax adjustments including transfer pricing, tax deduction and tax credit adjustments, and the impact of tax law changes. We adjust these amounts from our non-GAAP measures primarily because management does not believe they are consistent with the development of our target operating model. We believe that the use of non-GAAP financial measures provides meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity and helps investors compare actual results with our historical and long-term target operating model goals as well as our performance as a combined company. We believe presenting non-GAAP net revenue provides meaningful supplemental information regarding how management views the performance of the business and underlying performance of our individual product categories. We believe that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing our performance and when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods; however, non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered in isolation of, or as a substitute for, or superior to, net revenues, gross margin, operating expenses, operating income, operating margin, net income or EPS prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Forward Looking Statements Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements relating to our intentions, beliefs, projections, outlook, analyses or current expectations that are subject to many risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements and the associated risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: (i) our beliefs with respect to the length and severity of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak, and its impact across our businesses, our operations and global supply chain, including (a) our inability to source component parts from key suppliers in sufficient quantities necessary to meet the high demand for certain product lines, including our Enterprise Headsets, which negatively impacted our sales during the quarter; and continued uncertainty and potential impact on future quarters if these sourcing constraints continue and/or price volatility occurs,  which could continue to negatively affect our profitability and/or market share, (b) our expectations that the virus has caused and will continue to cause, an increase in customer and partner demand, including increased demand in collaboration endpoints due to a global, work from home workforce, (c) expectations related to our voice product lines, as well as our services attachment rate for such products, which have been, and may continue to be, negatively impacted as companies have delayed returning their workforces to offices in many countries due to uncertainties related to the continued impact of COVID-19; (d) expectations related to our ability to fulfill the backlog generated by supply constraints during the quarter, to timely supply the number of products to fulfill current and future customer demand, including expectations that our manufacturing facility in Tijuana, Mexico will continue production at the capacity necessary to meet such demand, (e) the impact of the virus on our distribution partners, resellers, end-user customers and our production facilities, including our ability to obtain alternative sources of supply if our production facility or other suppliers are impacted by future shut downs, (f) the impact if global or regional economic conditions deteriorate further, on our customers and/or partners, including increased demand for pricing accommodations, delayed payments, delayed deployment plans, insolvency or other issues which may increase credit losses, and (g) risks related to restrictions or delays in global return to worksites as a result of COVID-19, which continues to impact our employees worldwide and our customers, which has negatively impacted our voice product lines for the quarter, and restricted customer engagement; and (h) the complexity of the forecast analysis and the design and operation of internal controls; and (ii) our belief that we can manufacture or supply products in a timely manner to satisfy perishable demand; (iii) expectations related to our customers' purchasing decisions and our ability to match product production to demand, particularly given long lead times and the difficulty of forecasting unit volumes and acquiring the component parts and materials to meet demand without having excess inventory or incurring cancellation charges; (iv) risks associated with significant and abrupt changes in product demand which increases the complexity of management's evaluation of potential excess or obsolete inventory; (v) risks associated with the bankruptcy or financial weakness of distributors or key customers, or the bankruptcy of or reduction in capacity of our key suppliers; (vi) risks associated with the potential interruption in the supply of sole-sourced critical components, our ability to move to a dual-source model, and the continuity of component supply at costs consistent with our plans, which has negatively impacted in the quarter and may continue to impact our ability to timely supply product to meet our customer demand; (vii) expectations related to our services segment revenues, particularly as we introduce new generation, less complex, product solutions, or as companies shift from on premises to work from home options for their workforce, which may result in decreased demand for  our professional, installation and/or managed service offerings; (viii) expectations that our current cash on hand, additional cash generated from operations, together with sources of cash through our credit facility, either alone or in combination with our election to suspend our dividend payments, will meet our liquidity needs during and following the unknown duration and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; (ix) expectations relating to our ability to generate sufficient cash flow from operations to meet our debt covenants and timely repay all principal and interest amounts drawn under our credit facility as they become due; (x) risks associated with our channel partners' sales reporting, product inventories and product sell through since we sell a significant amount of products to channel partners who maintain their own inventory of our products; (xi) our efforts to execute to drive sales and sustainable profitable revenue growth; (xii) our expectations for new products launches, the timing of their releases and their expected impact on future growth and on our existing products; (xiii) our belief that our new Partner Program will drive growth and profitability for both us and our partners through the sale of our product, services and solutions; (xiv) risks associated with forecasting sales and procurement demands, which are inherently difficult, particularly with continuing uncertainty in regional and global economic conditions; (xv) uncertainties attributable to currency fluctuations, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates and/or new or greater tariffs on our products; (xvi) our expectations regarding our ability to control costs, streamline operations and successfully implement our various cost-reduction activities and realize anticipated cost savings under such cost-reduction initiatives; (xvii) expectations relating to our quarterly and annual earnings guidance, particularly as economic uncertainty, including, without limitation, uncertainty related to the continued impact of COVID-19, the macro-economic and political climate and other external factors, puts further pressure on management judgments used to develop forward looking financial guidance and other prospective financial information; (xviii) expectations related to GAAP and non-GAAP financial results for the first quarter and full Fiscal Year 2021, including net revenues, adjusted EBITDA, tax rates, intangibles amortization, diluted weighted average shares outstanding and diluted EPS; (xix) our expectations of the impact of the acquisition of Polycom as it relates to our strategic vision and additional market and strategic partnership opportunities for our combined hardware, software and services offerings; (xx) our beliefs regarding the UC&C market, market dynamics and opportunities, and customer and partner behavior as well as our position in the market, including risks associated with the potential failure of our UC&C solutions to be adopted with the breadth and speed we anticipate; (xxi) our belief that the increased adoption of certain technologies and our open architecture approach has and will continue to increase demand for our solutions; (xxii) expectations related to the micro and macro-economic conditions in our domestic and international markets and their impact on our future business; (xxiii) our forecast and estimates with respect to tax matters, including expectations with respect to utilizing our deferred tax assets; (xxiv) our expectations related to building strategic alliances and key partnerships with providers of collaboration tools and platforms to drive revenue growth and market share; and (xxv) our expectations regarding pending and potential future litigation, in addition to other matters discussed in this press release that are not purely historical data. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements.

We do not assume any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as the result of new developments or otherwise.

For more information concerning these and other possible risks, please refer to our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 8, 2020 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as recent press releases.

Financial Summaries

The following related charts are provided:

• Summary Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements
• Unaudited Reconciliations of GAAP Measures to Non-GAAP Measures

About Poly

Poly is a global communications company that powers meaningful human connection and collaboration. Poly combines legendary audio expertise and powerful video and conferencing capabilities to overcome the distractions, complexity and distance that make communication in and out of the workplace challenging. Poly believes in solutions that make life easier when they work together and with our partner's services. Our headsets, software, desk phones, audio and video conferencing, analytics and services are used worldwide and are a leading choice for every kind of workspace. For more information, please visit: www.poly.com.

Poly and the propeller design are trademarks of Plantronics, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Plantronics, Inc.