环球电子 (UEIC) 2026年第三季度业绩电话会：调整后每股收益增长逾一倍

环球电子（UEIC）公布2026财年第三季度营收同比基本持平，而降本举措推动调整后营业利润和每股收益实现增长。互联家庭业务的增长部分抵消了家庭娱乐业务的持续疲软。

核心要点

• 净销售额为8940万美元，同比下降约1.3%，但较7320万美元环比增长22%。
• 互联家庭业务营收增长13.4%至3380万美元，得益于暖通空调（HVAC）需求及近期推出的恒温器产品。暖通空调业务营收同比增长19%。
• 家庭娱乐业务营收降至5560万美元，低于上年同期的6080万美元，主要由于订阅广播需求下滑。
• 调整后营业利润增长逾一倍至370万美元，同时调整后稀释每股收益增至0.17美元，高于上年同期的0.08美元。
• 调整后毛利率降至26.3%，低于上年同期的29.1%，原因是零部件成本上升及不利的汇率变动抵消了制造效率提升、关税降低以及更有利的销售结构带来的积极影响。
• 管理层重申2026财年调整后稀释每股收益指引为0.45美元至0.65美元。UEIC在前九个月已实现0.42美元。

核心财务业绩

业务与经营表现

互联家庭业务是UEIC的主要增长引擎。公司已开始向一家大型暖通空调（HVAC）OEM厂商出货智能恒温器方案，管理层表示需求超出了客户的最初要求。此外，UEIC还拿下了大金（Daikin）面向亚洲市场的主力无线遥控器项目，并在其面向欧洲市场的第四代Wi-Fi平台中获得了更大份额。

公司与荷兰能源企业Eneco及美国多户住宅物业管理公司Stella联合推出了TideTouch恒温器和控制中枢。管理层表示，这些项目为硬件销售增添了经常性收入来源。

在家庭娱乐业务方面，UEIC被选定为两项运营商遥控器项目的独家供应商，两项目均定于本季度投产。其免电池遥控器已在首家客户实现量产，并被第二家客户选用。公司还获得了一笔200万台遥控器的订单，用于支持在印度制造的精简型无机顶盒解决方案。

降本举措仍是业绩改善的核心。调整后营业费用在第三季度同比下降20%，前九个月则下降21%（即减少1640万美元）。管理层预计，8月和10月采取的举措将额外带来约250万美元的年化成本节约。

存货降至7010万美元，低于2026年初的7780万美元。存货周转天数改善至约95天，上年同期为128天。前九个月经营现金流为1660万美元，资本支出总计270万美元。

管理层指引

管理层重申2026财年调整后稀释每股收益指引为0.45美元至0.65美元，2025财年为0.31美元。UEIC在2026年前九个月已实现0.42美元。

公司已实施附加费及永久性提价措施，管理层预计按年化计算将可收回已确认通胀影响的大约四分之三。随着客户通知期届满及新采购订单的下达，大部分收益预计将于2027年第一季度开始显现。

管理层预计第四季度存货将小幅增加，原因是鉴于印刷电路板（PCB）和电容器的交付周期延长，UEIC正为2027年的项目储备锁定关键材料。

风险与关注事项

• 零部件及大宗商品通胀仍对毛利率构成重大拖累，而提价弥补成本的举措传导至客户订单仍需时间。
• 人民币走强推高了成本，并加剧了利润率压力。
• 存储器及元器件成本上升正在对家庭娱乐市场造成压力。
• 受流媒体竞争影响，订阅广播电视需求仍处于结构性下滑之中。
• 随着AI基础设施占用大量供应商产能，印刷电路板（PCB）和电容器的交货周期已从数周延长至数月，这进一步提升了预测准确性以及提前采购的重要性。

财报电话会议完整实录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference call over to your first speaker today, Ryan Hochgesang with Universal Electronics. Please go ahead.

Ryan Hochgesang

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us for the Universal Electronics Third Quarter of 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. By now, you should have received a copy of the press release. If you have not, please visit the Investor Relations section of the website. This call is being broadcast live over the internet. A webcast replay of this call, including any additional updated material, non-public information that might be discussed during this call, will be available on the company's website at www.uei.com for 90 days.

During this call, management may make forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company and cautions you that these statements are just projections and actual results or events may differ materially from these projections. These statements include the company's goals, focus, strategies, and opportunities, market trends, including in the connected home and the home entertainment markets, expectations with respect to customer orders and customer demand, including short-term and long-term demand, R&D and product development activities, restructuring plans and actions, including expected benefits and timing, and financial projections and forecasts, including revenue, gross profit, operating profit, and net income, adjusted free cash flow, cash, cost reductions, and working capital, our ability to respond to business and regulatory changes, such as tariffs, and macroeconomic conditions and expectations with respect to our ongoing litigation. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update these statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after today's date and refers you to the press release mentioned at the beginning of this call and the documents the company has filed with the SEC, including its 2025 annual report on Form 10-K and the periodic and current reports filed or furnished since then.

In management's financial remarks, adjusted non-GAAP metrics will be referenced. Management provides adjusted non-GAAP metrics because it uses them for budget planning purposes and for making operational and financial decisions and believes that providing these non-GAAP financial measures to investors as a supplement to GAAP financial measures helps investors evaluate UEI's core operating and financial performance and business trends consistent with how management evaluates such performance and trends. In addition, management believes these measures facilitate comparisons with the core operating and financial results and business trends of competitors and other companies. A full description and reconciliation of these adjusted non-GAAP measures versus GAAP are included in the company's press release issued today. Joining me today are Chief Executive Officer and President Wade Jenke and Chief Financial Officer Raymond Ho. Wade will provide an overview of our business and Raymond will deliver our financial results. It's my pleasure to introduce Wade Jenke. Please go ahead.

Wade Jenke

Thank you, Ryan, and thank you all for joining us. This is my first quarterly call since the board appointed me as CEO and President in August. I'm pleased to see the organization embrace the change and jump right into business with energy and passion to make UEI even better than before. Let's talk about top line. Net sales were $89.4 million compared to $90.6 million a year ago. Compared to the previous quarter, sales were up 22%. Connected Home grew nearly 14% to $33.8 million, led by climate control, where HVAC revenue grew 19% year-over-year. Home Entertainment was $55.6 million compared to $60.8 million, reflecting difficult market conditions around memory and component cost inflation, and subscription broadcast demand is still in structural decline due to streaming competition.

Let me provide an update on product sales and market. For Home Entertainment, we were selected as the sole source on two operator remote programs scheduled to enter production this quarter. The battery-free remote entered mass production with its first customer, and a second customer has since selected it. We also received an order for 2 million remotes supporting a streamlined version of our set-top boxless solution to be manufactured in India, an offering that matters more as rising memory costs make set-top box itself harder to sell. For Connected Home, our Smart Thermostat program began shipping to a major HVAC OEM and is now ramping, with demand running above the customer's initial requirements. With Daikin, we won the primary wireless remote program for the Asian market, and a larger share for the fourth-generation Wi-Fi platform for Europe. Our TideTouch thermostat and hub launched with the leading Dutch energy utility partner Eneco and with Stella, a U.S. multi-dwelling property management provider, adding a recurring revenue element to the hardware as we sell.

On profitability, margin remains under pressure. Adjusted non-GAAP gross margin was 26.3% compared to 29.1% a year ago. Higher purchasing costs and unfavorable currency exchange more than offset lower tariff rates and better sales mix. Input costs remain a material drag, and very little of what that is is specific to UEI. Component and commodity pressure has been broad across our industry, and it reaches us on a lag because we built a forecast against orders already placed. In response, we have put in place surcharges and permanent price adjustments that on an annualized basis recover roughly three-quarters of the inflation we have identified. That benefit builds as notice periods run and customers place POs, so it will come through slowly, but the majority will be starting in Q1 of 2027. The balance of our inflationary costs, we will continue to work through sourcing and design to recover the cost and offset.

Let me provide a progress report on our reorganization to reduce structural costs. Adjusted non-GAAP operating expenses were $19.9 million in Q3, down $4.9 million, or 20%, from a year ago. Through nine months, adjusted non-GAAP operating expenses were down $16.4 million, or 21%. In August and October, we took further permanent cost reduction actions, which represent approximately $2.5 million in additional annualized cost savings. The clearest way to see the progress we have been working on is through the earnings trajectory across the year. In Q1, we reported an adjusted non-GAAP loss of approximately $0.10 per share, while in Q3, we earned $0.17 per share on an adjusted non-GAAP basis, more than double the $0.08 we earned a year ago on slightly lower revenue. Adjusted non-GAAP operating income improved to $3.7 million in Q3, compared to $1.6 million in Q3 of 2025.

Our focus on working capital optimization is working well. We ended the quarter with $41.4 million in cash and equivalents, up $9.1 million this year. On inventory, we improved and ended the quarter at $70.1 million, down from $77.8 million at the start of the year. Inventory days are down roughly to 95 days from 128 days a year ago. Operating cash flow was $11.1 million in Q3 and $16.6 million through the nine months. Lead times on printed circuit boards and capacitors have extended from weeks to months as AI infrastructure absorbs supplier capacity. In this environment, forecast accuracy is important to avoid buying reactively at a premium, and we are committing crucial material ahead of time for 2027 where demand carries across programs. As a result, we expect inventory to build modestly in Q4.

Looking forward, our message is unchanged. We continue to expect adjusted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.45 to $0.65 for fiscal 2026, compared to $0.31 in fiscal 2025, consistent with our prior guidance. Through nine months, we have delivered $0.42. When we look at our outlook for the year, we said it would be grounded in execution rather than in a demand rebound. Q3 is further evidence of our progress. Earnings more than doubled year-over-year on slightly lower revenue. The cost base is still coming down and net cash is nearly twice what it was three months ago. The credit belongs to the team that absorbed a great deal of change and kept doing what customers count on us for: delivering the programs in production today and designing the ones that follow.

With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Raymond Ho, to walk through the quarter in more detail and review our outlook.

Unknown Speaker

Thanks, Wade, and good afternoon, everyone. I will walk through our third quarter 2026 financial performance with a focus on profitability, cost discipline, cash flow, and balance sheet strength, and then touch briefly on our outlook for the remainder of the year. Turning to our third quarter results, net sales were $89.4 million, compared to $90.6 million in the third quarter of 2025, a decline of approximately 1.3%. Revenue was essentially flat year-over-year, as growth in Connected Home largely offset continued pressure in Home Entertainment, and it represents a meaningful sequential improvement from the $73.2 million we reported in the second quarter. Connected Home net sales were $33.8 million compared to $29.8 million in the prior-year quarter, an increase of approximately 13.4%. The increase was driven primarily by stronger sales in the HVAC market and increased sales of our recently launched thermostat products. Home Entertainment net sales were $55.6 million compared to $60.8 million a year ago, primarily reflecting lower demand for subscription broadcasting products. This decline was partially offset by improved performance in our retail business.

GAAP gross margin was 26.3% compared to 27.7% in the prior-year quarter. Adjusted non-GAAP gross margin was also 26.3% compared to 29.1% in the prior-year quarter. The third quarter of 2025 excluded a $1.2 million impairment charge related to the shutdown of our Mexico manufacturing facility. The year-over-year change in gross margin was primarily driven by higher component costs due to market conditions and the strengthening of the Chinese renminbi, which reduced gross margin and had an adverse impact of nearly 6%. These headwinds were partially offset by lower labor and manufacturing costs resulting from productivity improvement, the closure of our Mexico manufacturing facility, and lower tariff rates.

Throughout the quarter, we remained highly focused on cost discipline and structural expense reduction. GAAP operating expenses decreased by $8.9 million year-over-year to $20.7 million, and adjusted non-GAAP operating expenses declined by $4.9 million or approximately 20% to $19.9 million. As a percentage of net sales, adjusted non-GAAP operating expenses improved to 22.2% from 27.3% in the prior-year quarter, reflecting continued progress in aligning our cost structure with current revenue levels. R&D expenses declined to $4.3 million from $6.7 million in the prior-year quarter. SG&A expenses declined to $16.4 million from $22.1 million in the prior-year quarter. The prior-year quarter included a one-time charge of $1.3 million related to the abandonment of an office lease. Excluding that item, the decrease reflected our ongoing cost reduction initiatives, including organizational right-sizing and our continued control of discretionary spending, including travel and professional fees. Through the first nine months of the year, we continue to benefit from the global reduction in force and related cost actions we initiated earlier in the year, which have given us a leaner, more agile cost structure focused on cash generation and profit improvement.

GAAP operating income for the quarter was $2.9 million compared to a GAAP operating loss of $4.5 million in the prior-year quarter. Adjusted non-GAAP operating income more than doubled to $3.7 million compared to $1.6 million in the prior-year quarter. Adjusted non-GAAP operating income as a percentage of net sales expanded 2.4% to 4.1% compared to 1.7% last year. GAAP net loss was $0.3 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $8.3 million, or $0.62 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2025. We generated adjusted non-GAAP net income of $2.3 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, compared to adjusted non-GAAP net income of $1.1 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, in the prior-year quarter.

Now turning to cash flow and the balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter were $41.4 million compared to $32.3 million at December 31, 2025, an increase of $9.1 million so far this year. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $11.1 million, and for the first nine months of 2026 was $16.6 million. Cash flow benefited from working capital actions, including reduction in inventories and timing of payables and accruals. Capital expenditures for the first nine months were $2.7 million. We also continue to reduce debt and strengthen liquidity. Borrowings under our lines of credit were $19.4 million at September 30, 2026, down from $24.1 million at December 31, 2025. Available borrowing resources in the U.S. were $46 million compared to $42.5 million at December 31, 2025. At quarter-end, there were no borrowings outstanding under the U.S. credit line.

Now turning to our outlook for fiscal year 2026, we remain focused on the areas within our control: cost discipline, profitability, working capital management, and cash flow. We expect our actions to further align our cost structure to market realities, improve profitability versus last year, and strengthen our financial flexibility. For the full year 2026, we are reaffirming our prior guidance. We continue to expect adjusted non-GAAP diluted EPS to range from $0.45 to $0.65, compared to $0.31 per share in fiscal 2025. With $0.42 of adjusted non-GAAP diluted EPS delivered through the first nine months, our guidance remains unchanged as we continue to execute against our 2026 business plan.

Thank you all, and I will hand it back to Wade.

Wade Jenke

Thanks, Raymond. As I complete my first quarter as CEO, many thanks to our employees who have carried a great deal of change this year and to our customers, suppliers, and the board for their continued support. The plan we are executing is directed at what matters to shareholders: improving profitability, cash, and rebuilding financial flexibility. With that, operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator

At this time, I am not showing any questions within the queue. I would like to turn the call back over to management for any final thoughts.

Ryan Hochgesang

Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us on our Q3 earnings call. Have a fantastic day, and we look forward to the next call.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference call. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect. Have a great evening.

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