On Tuesday, Ambiq Micro (NYSE:AMBQ) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

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Summary

Ambiq Micro Inc reported strong first-quarter 2026 financial results, with net sales of $25.1 million, a 59.3% year-over-year increase driven by demand for Edge AI solutions.

Strategic expansion into non-wearable markets such as medical, industrial, and smart home sectors is gaining traction, expected to contribute significantly to revenue growth.

The company anticipates a 75% year-over-year sales increase in the second quarter of 2026, supported by rising demand for Apollo 5 and diversification across new product lines.

Ambiq Micro Inc's gross margin was 46.2%, with ongoing investments in R&D and SG&A to support product development and market expansion.

Management highlighted strong momentum in Edge AI markets, with plans to accelerate growth through product innovations such as Apollo 340 and Atomic series, projecting meaningful revenue growth for 2026.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good morning and welcome to Ambic micro first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star one again. I'd now like to turn the call over to Ms. Charlene Wan, Ambic's Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Investor Relations. Charlene, please go ahead.

Charlene Wan (Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Investor Relations)

On today's call, Ambic CEO Humi Asaka will provide an overview of the Company's performance and strategy. CFO Jeff Winsler will then discuss the quarter's financial results and second quarter outlook. Following their remarks, Scott Hansen, Ambiq Micro Inc's Founder and cto, and Aaron Gracchian, EVP of Global Sales and Marketing, will join Humi and Jeff for Q and A. Our earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of our website at www.ambig.com. we have also posted our earnings presentation on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before I turn the call over to Humi, I'd like to remind our listeners that during the course of this conference call management will discuss non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release available on the Company's investor Relations website. In addition, today's call will contain forward looking statements representing management's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date made. Our most recent annual report on Form 10K and other filings with the SEC provide more information on specific risks that may cause the actual results to differ materially from current expectations and presentations and now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Ambiq Micro Inc CEO Humi Asaka.

Humi Asaka (Chief Executive Officer)

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. We have started 2026 with exceptional momentum. The market for Edge AI is growing rapidly and is outpacing our expectations from the start of the year. Against this backdrop, our ultra low power Spot platform is driving market expansion, gaining share and reinforcing Ambiq Micro Inc as a partner of choice in a fast growing category. We expect this momentum to continue throughout the rest of the year. At the same time our pipeline continue to grow and diversify and we are investing strategically to further scale the business and extend our technology advantage. Turning to the first quarter performance, Net sales exceeded guidance with strong year over year and sequential growth from the fourth quarter of 2025. This performance was driven by broad based demand for Edge AI across our customer base. With more than 80% of units running AI algorithms order ramps for the upcoming customer, product launches and a new customer entering production. Inventory level remains lean and we are seeing an increasing number of expedited requests which reinforces our view that demand is healthy across our end markets. For the second quarter, we expect net sales to grow approximately 75% year over year with momentum continuing in the second half of the year. This outlook is supported by four key factors. First, strong and growing end user demand for Edge AI solutions. Wearables continue to evolve from basic consumer products to more sophisticated health and wellness platforms and we are seeing continued diversification across form factors including watches, display, less bands, rings and eyewear. Second, strong growth in Apollo 5 as our customer upgrade to enable next generation edge AI capabilities while maintaining ultra low power performance. Third, broader deployment of our solutions across customer portfolios with upcoming product launches and expansion into new form factors and fourth, we expect a new scaled global customer to enter mass production this year. While wearables remains a key growth driver adoption is expanding into healthcare, industrial and smart home and buildings markets as customers deploy AI directly onto devices. Increasingly, end customers expect real time insights and faster response time, driving the need to process more data directly at the edge. This rise of LLM driven agents is accelerating this shift, increasing demand for contextual real time intelligence at the edge and tighter integration between device data and the cloud. Our solutions are purpose built to support this evolution, positioning AMBIC as a partner of choice for leading players in the edge AI ecosystem. We're building on this foundation with focused action to expand into additional high value markets and develop new products that will further extend our power and performance advantage. Starting with diversification, our personal device business continue to grow and diversify. We have added multiple new customers and secured new design wins across emerging form factors including display, less bands, smart eyewear and rings. At the same time, customers are deploying more sophisticated AI capabilities on our platform including a recently secured design WIN with one of our largest customers for a next generation product line expected to enter production in 2027. Beyond personal devices, our expansion into medical, industrial and smart homes and buildings markets is gaining meaningful traction and we expect revenue from these segments to more than double in 2026. With our broad SOC platform, we offer a scalable and diverse portfolio that supports applications from entry level designs to more advanced feature rich use cases. As a result, AMBIC serves as a critical enabler of Edge AI, allowing customers to select and deploy the right solutions across a wide range of applications including real time health monitoring, intelligent audio, predictable maintenance and smart sensing and automation. We're complementing this with a steady cadence of software tools that enhance edge AI capabilities with a focus on how customers capture, process and derive value from a data at the edge. For example, by combining our ultra low power hardware with our compression kit software, customers will be able to maintain multi day battery life while storing large volumes of raw physical data and enabling real time anomaly detection at the edge. Expanding what is possible in Next generation Medical devices we are encouraged by the early traction we are seeing and believe AMBIC is well positioned to deliver growth and the diversification across customers and end market and high value use cases. Looking ahead, we expect our expanding product roadmap to further accelerate this momentum. We continue to make progress on Apollo 340, Atomic 110 and Atomic 120 which are being developed in parallel to support strong customer demand. Atomic 110 remains on track for tape out towards the end of this year with initial customer ramp in late 2027. For Atomic120 we are actively engaged with several potential alpha customers and are encouraged by the strong interest we are receiving, especially in smart glasses where customers are seeking the combination of performance and auto low power that Atomic is designed to deliver. Apollo 340 is also generating meaningful traction with multiple customers expressing interest driven by its compelling price to value positioning. We see 340 as an important enabler to expand into higher volume and more diverse opportunities, complementing the higher performance Atomic family and supporting our strategy to scale across a wider range of AI applications. In closing, we have strong momentum across the business and believe we are well positioned to deliver meaningful revenue growth this year. We continue to execute our strategic priorities and strengthen our leadership in ultra low power semiconductor solutions as we expand into new edge AI markets and advance our product roadmap. The edge AI opportunity ahead is tremendous and we are confident in our ability to capture it to to drive long term growth and value creation. With that, I will turn it over to Jeff to cover the financials.

Jeff Winsler (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you Humi and good morning everyone. We delivered a strong start to the year with first quarter net sales and gross profit up both sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2025 and year over year well ahead of our expectations. Looking ahead, we expect a meaningful acceleration in the second quarter as well as strengthening our confidence in driving meaningful growth for the full year 2026. Along the way, we are making progress in diversifying our business. Our three largest customers accounted for 86% of our sales in the first quarter of 2025. Those same three customers accounted for approximately 71% of our first quarter 2026 sales indicating that we are successfully diversifying our revenue stream to new customers and markets. Now Turning to our first quarter financial results, we delivered net sales of 25.1 million increasing 59.3% year over year driven by broad based strength across our customer base. We saw particularly strong demand from two customers supporting new product launch ramps and we also benefited from the addition of a new major customer that entered production during the quarter. Sales to end customers in China were 13.7% of total net sales compared to 6.2% in the prior year period. This increase was primarily driven by customer programs where our technology is enabling higher value edge AI functionality. Non GAAP Gross profit increased 56.2% year over year to 11.6 million. Q1 2026 non-GAAP gross margin of 46.2% was down 90 basis points year over year primarily due to a Q1 2025 non recurring credit. Excluding this one time impact, non-GAAP gross margin increased 210 basis points year over year. Turning to operating expense, non-GAAP R&D was 10.1 million up 43.3% year over year reflecting accelerated investments to support product development both across our Apollo and Atomic platforms. Non GAAP SG&A expenses were 8.1 million up 31.8% year over year driven by increased spending for go to market capabilities and public company infrastructure. Other income was 1.5 million up 1.1 million year over year due to interest earned on balance sheet cash. Fourth quarter non-GAAP net loss was 5 million, a $200,000 improvement year over year. Non GAAP net loss per share was 25 cents. We ended the quarter with no debt and 204.5 million in cash and cash equivalents. Our strong financial position provides the flexibility to invest in product development software and go to market initiatives to support our strategic growth priorities. Now turning to our outlook for the second quarter, we expect net sales in the range of 31 to $32 million reflecting the trends that Humi covered earlier. Non GAAP Gross margin between 45% and 46% driven by the continued progress on yield improvements and continued Apollo 5 scaling. Non GAAP operating expense of 21 to 22 million reflecting investments to support product development and our strategic growth priorities including 1.7 million related to intellectual property purchases this quarter. Lastly, we expect non-GAAP loss per share of $0.29 to $0.23 based on a weighted average share count of 21.38 million shares outstanding. As we think about the trajectory of our business, we have clear visibility and we're confident in continued momentum. Q2 outlook reflects the timing of multiple customer launches coming into production at the same time. Importantly, we view that as a step up in the baseline rather than a peak as those programs continue to scale and are complemented by additional ramps behind them. While we continue to expect seasonality in the fourth quarter, we expect year over year second half net sales growth to be similar to first half. We continue to expect gross margins to be roughly flat year over year as yield improvements are offset by broader industry cost dynamics. We continue to expect operating expense of approximately $85 million for the year, reflecting increases to engineering headcount, utilizing contract engineering to provide flex in our model for both upside and downside, and 7 to $10 million of intellectual property purchases necessary for product development. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Humi before we open the line for Q and A Edge AI

Humi Asaka (Chief Executive Officer)

adoption is accelerating, our pipeline is expanding and our technology continue to make us a partner of choice to enable on device intelligence. As we execute against our roadmap and scale into new markets, we remain focused on driving sustained top line growth, expanding our leadership in ultra low power edge AI and delivering long term value for our shareholders. With that, I will open the call to Questions Operator, please go ahead.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star one again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question and if you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Liam Farr from Bank of America securities. Your line is now open.

Liam Farr (Equity Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you provide us an update on the percentage of your funnel that is non wearables and how much of 1Q revenue was consumer wearables versus medical, industrial or in smart home?

Humi Asaka (Chief Executive Officer)

Right now we still continue to have a funnel of non-wearables about 1/4 of our pipeline. So we continue to have a strong growth and like I said in first quarter we grew 100% in a non wearable market and we continue to we expect to continue to grow non wearable market as fast as we've been doing.

Liam Farr (Equity Analyst)

Great. Thank you. And then with these strong results you're kind of rapidly approaching that 40 million a quarter run rate. Can you provide us an update on the timeline to do profitability and we'll maybe higher OPEX burn and maybe you know, gross margin remaining Roughly flat still, you know, keep profitability only until 2028 or is there potential for that to be pulled forward?

Jeff Winsler (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, yeah, Liam, so, so a couple questions there. The first, in terms of when do we get to that profitability? If, if you annualize the guidance that we gave for spending, we're spending roughly $21 million a quarter at 46% margin, which is what we just achieved in Q1. You need revenues roughly $47 million a quarter quarter to get to that point. You know, we just guided the quarter a little bit below that. So we've got a ways to go. That said, we made big investments in terms of accelerating our product roadmap, namely our 110 product and our 340 product. And the purpose of those investments is to pull that revenue stream in which is necessary for us to get to that revenue level. So we're, we're hopeful that that investment will allow us to pull our cash flow break even and our P&L profitability point from call it mid-2028 into early 2028 or potentially into the second half of 2027. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Tori Svonberg from Stifel. Your line is now open.

Tori Svonberg (Equity Analyst)

Thank you. And congratulations on the momentum here. Maybe to follow up on the initial question there, as far as the diversification, you talked about some of the percentages who we can. You talk about some of the use cases out of wearables that's driving that, that doubling.

Humi Asaka (Chief Executive Officer)

So let me give you some of the examples, Tori. Definitely medical market is growing the one of the fastest one outside of wearable ecg, glucose monitoring. But then we have bike computing, smart pens, battery monitors, remote controls, livestock tracking. I mean we're seeing a lot of, a lot of AI adoption outside of wearables. So we're very excited.

Tori Svonberg (Equity Analyst)

Very good. And as my follow up, you mentioned the new customer in production this quarter. I assume that's not part of the three largest. So is there a chance that this particular customer will become more than 10% of revenues this year?

Humi Asaka (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, there's a possibility that they will. Very good, thank you.

OPERATOR

A reminder, if you would like to ask a question to please press Star one. Your next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton from Needham. Your line is now open.

Quinn Bolton (Equity Analyst)

Hey guys. Congratulations on the nice results and outlook. Jeff. Just wanted to make sure I sort of cut your comments about how you're thinking for the full year. I, I think you said you would expect similar growth rates in the second half on a year over year basis. That you saw in the first half. Looks like the first half you were up about 68% over 1H25. So it sounds like you're thinking about sort of a similar 65% growth second half at 26 over second half 25. But just want to make sure I heard your comments correctly.

Jeff Winsler (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, that's correct, Quinn. You know, I think as we look at the business outlook, clearly we had strong Q1 results. We've guided a higher Q2. I, I think the, the business model, when you think about the business model, basically just the level has gone up. We've set kind of a new baseline, if you will, in terms of how to think about 2026. And we also made the comment in the call about we still expect seasonality in the fourth quarter. So the shape of the curve is pretty much in line with what we would expect.

Quinn Bolton (Equity Analyst)

Got it. The second question is your comments about gross margin being sort of flattish half over half does sound like it implies a little bit of a tick down in Q3. Q4. I know you've got obviously higher revenue in the second half. You probably have mix shift to higher ASP devices like a pipeline. Apollo 5, just wondering. It sounds like the input price increases are the biggest factor pressuring margins. Wanted to confirm that. And then second, given that you're not alone in seeing these input price increases, do you have the ability to pass along some of those input price increases along to customers to try to protect margins over intermediate to longer term?

Jeff Winsler (Chief Financial Officer)

Sure. A couple of answers there. So when we think about margins, there's two real dynamics that are happening in our business. First is we've done a lot of work to increase our yields across the product line, specifically Apollo 5, which is a ramping process for us. We've done a lot of work to try and pull in some of that yield improvement and, and make our cost base better. However, we're tempering that expectation because there are industry wide dynamics around substrate costs, piece part costs and other things that are out of our control that will potentially negate some of that good news. So we think about that margin curve as relatively flat plus or minus a point from where we're at today in terms of our ability to pass on pricing to customers. I think one of the main opportunities we have there is we have a lot of demand for our product and customers are asking us to pull in volumes pretty significantly. And you know, the cost of doing that expediting material is certainly something that we would expect expect our customers to share in terms of paying for that type of expedite. And in terms of actual ASP uplift, you know, we're, we're being very strategic about where we exercise any potential ASP uplift to end customers. We still have to be very competitive. We still want to win business. And I think we can see that we're doing a pretty good job of, of landing new business with our pricing policy.

Quinn Bolton (Equity Analyst)

Less for either boomer. Jeff, just you talked multiple times about the expedites you're seeing. Are you getting enough supply from TSMC and your OSET partners or do you think you're leaving any demand on the table given, given that acceleration in expedites?

Humi Asaka (Chief Executive Officer)

Again, you know, we have a very strong partnership from the front and back end of the manufacturing. So we are very fortunate to have a great partner to support our customers. However, the market is going much faster than we expected. Sometimes we get such a short lead time demand increase, which physically, sometimes it's, you know, almost difficult to do. So some of the order we just can't meet because of the too short of lead time. But as long as it's in the time frame that, you know, normal lead time, we be able to support, and we will, we expect us to be able to support these customers quarter after quarter.

OPERATOR

So. Excellent. Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Tory Svonberg from Stifel. Tory, your line is now open.

Tory Svonberg

Yeah, thank you. I just had two quick follow ups. First of all, you announced a new product called Compression Kit not too long ago. I'm just wondering, is that a product that you will sell exclusively with your own products or is that basically available to any other system that contains other components?

Scott Hansen (Founder and Chief Technology Officer)

Yeah, for the moment it's something that will be restricted to our products. Certainly long term, it's something that we could look at pairing with other products. But we feel that the combination of Apollo plus Compression Kit is a situation of one plus one equals three rather than one plus one equals two. So yeah, we'll restrict it for the moment to ambic products.

Tory Svonberg

That's very helpful, Scott. And my last question is on Apollo 340. So you gave some sampling timelines, anything on Apollo 340 as far as when we should start to expect some material revenue?

Scott Hansen (Founder and Chief Technology Officer)

Yeah. So just to maybe reiterate, rough timeline, it's in design right now. We expect to sample in the first half of next year. We expect initial customer ramps toward the end of next year and then more meaningful revenue in 2028. And it's going to be, I think, what everyone's going to like about this product is it's going to be quite a bit more diverse in terms of the types of customers that we're serving with it. So you know, I think everything from some of the medical products that Humi alluded to earlier to industrial sensors and smart home sensors, smart smart grid sensors, that sort of thing. And as well we'll be serving wearables, think certain form factors like smart rings as being great targets for an Apollo 340. So a really nice diversity of customers there. So we're excited about where that will go. Sounds good. Thanks again, Scott.

OPERATOR

Your next question is a follow up from Liam Farr from Bank of America securities. Liam, your line is now open.

Liam Farr (Equity Analyst)

Hi, thanks for letting me jump back in. I guess for 20, 26 and this step up, how do you see kind of this unit versus ASP mix kind of driving that growth? And is this step up more from the new programs and kind of unit based or is this combination with these new programs also providing a lot, you know, a little bit more of that premium, you know, Apollo 5 mix to kind of drive some of the ASP as well?

Jeff Winsler (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, Liam, so the answer is we're, we're expecting uplift in both, but clearly, you know, with Q1 being 56% above where we were in the same quarter last year and the strong guidance we gave in Q2, the predominant reason that we're up is because of unit shipments. That said, we're very happy with the status of our Apollo 5 ramp. It is starting to contribute more and more each quarter to our revenue profile and it gives us some ASP uplift in the overall business.

Liam Farr (Equity Analyst)

Makes sense. And then I guess as my follow up, do you maybe just provide update on your pricing strategy? I think, you know, previously it's been every generation is brought about 1.5 to 2x content uplift and that's kind of driven, you know, a pricing premium in a similar ballpark. But I guess with this, you know, really strong demand environment, it would make sense to me to see kind of more pricing benefit from your, you know, Apollo 5 and potentially even atomic kind of platforms given how much benefit they're going to be giving your customers versus, you know, the previous generation, how fast you guys are innovating.

Jeff Winsler (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, I mean certainly as we continue to proliferate Apollo 5 and Apollo 3 and Apollo 4 to multiple different markets and enable end customer edge AI to happen, we would expect to see higher value proposition and better pricing for those, those products. So I, I think, you know, in general when we think about the pricing or strategic pricing going forward, we're certainly looking at opportunities where we can maximize our ASPs across different customers and markets. Thank you very much.

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