On Tuesday, GCT Semiconductor Hldgs (NYSE:GCTS) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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The full earnings call is available at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/a2z8tovx/
Summary
GCT Semiconductor Hldgs reported a 287% increase in net revenues for Q1 2026, reaching $1.9 million, driven by increased 5G chipset shipments and service revenues.
The company achieved a 58% sequential growth in 5G chipset shipments, highlighting progress in customer testing and initial deployments.
Strategic initiatives include an expanded engagement with a leading satellite communication provider to accelerate global 5G deployment, enhancing the scope of their technology across terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.
Gross margin improved significantly to 49% due to a favorable revenue mix with higher margins from service offerings.
Management remains focused on disciplined execution and operational readiness to support anticipated growth in 5G chipset shipments throughout 2026.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good afternoon. Thank you for attending GCT Semiconductor Holdings Inc. first quarter 2026 financial results call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. Joining the call today are John Schlafer, GCT’s chief executive officer, and Edmund Cheng, CFO, to discuss our first quarter 2026 results. During this call, certain statements we make will be forward looking. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our Safe harbor provision for Forward looking statements that can be found at the end of our earnings press release and also in our form 10Q that will be filed today which provide further detail about the risks related to our business. Additionally, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statement. I will now turn the call over to John Schlafer.
John Schlafer (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you and thanks to everyone for joining us today for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. I’ll start by discussing the operational progress we’ve made during the first quarter as we drive commercial expansion of our 5G products. Following my remarks, our CFO Edmund Cheng will walk through the financial results for the first quarter in more detail, building on the groundwork we laid at the end of 2025. Our first quarter results reflect the advancements we’ve made on our 5G acceleration which is reflected by growing 5G chipset shipments, expanding engagement and continued early adoption across leading customers. Customers. In the first quarter we delivered 3,000 5G chipsets, a sequential increase of 58% versus Q4. This growth is an important indicator that customers are continuing to move through the final stages of testing and into initial deployments. While 5G product shipment volume today remains modest relative to the long term opportunity ahead, we are in an early but critical step of the product cycle. Customer confidence in the performance, reliability and integration of our 5G chipset is building and we expect 5G chipset shipments to continue trending upward as customers advance their programs. We are also broadening the scope and depth of our customer relationships and chipset use cases. We continue to support a growing number of programs across multiple verticals FWA, IoT and NTN, and we are working closely with our lead customers as they move through integration, certification and deployment planning. These engagements often push beyond traditional licensing into deeper platform level collaboration where our technology serves as the foundation for next generation systems and user equipment development. Early design wins and platform integrations remain critical in establishing the framework for future volume shipments and long term adoption. Notably, we expanded our previously announced engagement with one of the World’s largest satellite communication providers to fast track global 5G deployment through a reference platform agreement. Under this framework, we will provide a reference design based on our 4G and 5G chipsets to help accelerate the development of our partners next generation user equipment, enabling high bandwidth and high speed communications across satellite and terrestrial networks. This agreement reinforces GCT’s role in enabling seamless connectivity across both terrestrial and non terrestrial networks broadens the deployment scope of our technology and It also highlights the growing importance of GCT’s technology in enabling converged connectivity solutions that span multiple network environments. We view this as a multi phase opportunity that can drive incremental adoption of our solution over time as next generation user equipment platforms are introduced. As these platforms are developed and deployed, we expect our technology to play an increasingly important role in supporting global connectivity use cases initial 5G chipset shipments to this partner remain on track to begin in the second half of 2026. Our focus continues to revolve around driving 5G chipset commercial traction by strengthening our supply chain and operational infrastructure to support higher 5G chipset volumes as customer demand accelerates. Supported by increasing activity from our lead customers, we continue to expect significant sequential growth in 5G chipset shipments as commercialization continues to scale throughout the year. Further, the headway achieved thus far reinforces our expectation and aligns with our previous product launches such as our 4G chipsets. We believe the work we are doing now will ensure that we are positioned …
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