Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Dolby Laboratories conference call discussing first quarter 2026 results.
During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again press star one.
As a reminder, this call is being recorded Thursday, January 29th, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr.
Peter Goldmacher, Vice President of Investor Relations. Peter, please go ahead.
Peter Goldmacher
Good afternoon, and welcome to Dolby Laboratories first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Kevin Yeaman, Dolby Laboratories CEO, and Robert Park, CFO.
As a reminder, today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including our fiscal 2026 second quarter and full year outlook and our assumptions underlying that outlook. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made today, including, among other things, the impact of macroeconomic events, supply chain issues, inflation rates, changes in consumer spending, and geopolitical instability on our business.
A discussion of these and additional risks and uncertainties can be found in the earnings press release that we issued today under the section captioned Forward-Looking Statements, as well as in the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-Q. Dolby assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements made during this call as a result of new information or future events.
During today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is available in our earnings press release and in the Interactive Analyst Center on the Investor Relations section of our website.
With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin.
Kevin Yeaman
Thanks, Peter, and thanks to everyone for joining us on the call today. FY '26 is off to a good start.
Revenue and non-GAAP earnings came in above the high end of the range of guidance. We are making meaningful progress on the growth initiatives we discussed last quarter, and we're raising our guidance for the year.
Robert will share more details on the financials and guidance in a few minutes. Just a few weeks ago at CES, we showed how Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision are shaping how people watch, listen to, and enjoy their favorite entertainment content across movies, TV, music, sports, and user-generated content.
We hosted hundreds of customers and partners at Dolby Live, where we had demonstrations primarily focused on the in-car entertainment experience and Dolby Vision 2 for TVs. Automotive has become a major focus of CES, and we were excited to have partners highlight how Dolby is helping them transform the future of in-car entertainment.
Attendees were able to experience Dolby Atmos in cars ranging from a two-seat Porsche 911 to a Mercedes SUV, an Audi e-tron, and a full-sized Cadillac Escalade. We also showed how Dolby is playing an important role in expanding the scope of high-quality entertainment in the car.
Smash Labs demonstrated its immersive multichannel games in Dolby Atmos vehicles, and attendees got a chance to listen to Audible's fully immersive Harry Potter audiobook series featuring Dolby Atmos. The NIO Horizon, featuring Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, demonstrated how the bar is being raised on the in-car experience well beyond music to include movies, TV, gaming, audiobooks, and more.
In addition, we announced that we are partnering with Qualcomm to integrate Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision into Qualcomm's Gen 5 Snapdragon automotive platform, further extending our reach into the auto ecosystem. Also during the quarter, Mahindra released the first SUV in India with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, and Hyundai launched its first car with Dolby Atmos, a crossover SUV, in China.
Overall, we continue to be excited about the momentum in automotive, where we now have partnerships with over 35 OEMs, up from 20 OEMs this time last year. Moving on to TVs, Dolby Vision 2 was on full display at CES and was met with enthusiasm from partners, press, and attendees.
Building on the success of Dolby Vision, Dolby Vision 2 is designed to meet the evolving expectations of today's viewers and unlock the full potential of modern televisions, from mainstream sets to top-of-the-line models. Dolby Vision 2 has a variety of features that are designed to enhance all the content consumers enjoy, including movies, sports, and gaming, with even more vivid pictures and brighter colors.
When you see it, it just looks better. We got an enthusiastic response at CES from the content providers, with Peacock announcing its support for Dolby Vision 2 across movies, originals, and live sports, joining Canal+ as an early launch partner.
TP Vision, the maker of the Philips brand, announced support for Dolby Vision 2 across a variety of upcoming models, joining Hisense and TCL as launch partners. The first Dolby Vision 2 TVs will be available by the end of the year, increasing our revenue opportunity from TVs.
Additionally in the quarter, we continued to make progress on our other growth initiatives, including mobile, our video distribution program for imaging patents, and Dolby OptiView. Meta, which announced support for Dolby Vision on Instagram in November, has now begun supporting Dolby Vision on Facebook.
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has been supporting Dolby Vision on iOS and started rolling out support for Android devices this quarter. Content captured and played back in Dolby Vision drives higher engagement for social media providers and in turn increases demand for Dolby Vision on mobile phones.
In imaging patents, Roku became a licensee of the video distribution patent pool, marking the first US-based streamer to sign up for the pool. As we discussed last quarter, this pool increases the addressable market for imaging patents by expanding the available licensees from device manufacturers to also include streamers of content.
On Dolby OptiView, we continued our partnership with the NFL, with OptiView delivering RedZone through the NFL+ app and achieving record levels of streaming quality for the service. We continued to bring new customers onto the service, including Veikkaus, Finland's national lottery and sports betting operator, and SIS, short for Sports Information Services, a service provider to over 300 sports betting companies.
Veikkaus is using Dolby OptiView to reduce latency for live horse racing, improving the real-time betting experience and strengthening customer engagement. SIS has adopted our video player and has made the ability to deliver content in sub-second latency available to its customers.
We're encouraged by how Dolby OptiView is enabling our partners to increase audience engagement and revenue. To wrap up, we have continued momentum in automotive, new growth drivers for Dolby Vision in TVs, and growing adoption of Dolby Vision in social media, an important use case for mobile devices.
While it's early days, we continue to expand our addressable market to new customers with Dolby OptiView and the video distribution program. We're confident in our ability to grow Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and imaging patents at 15% to 20% per year over the next few years.
Now that Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and imaging patents is approaching 50% of our licensing revenue, it is having a greater impact on our overall growth rate. We remain excited about our position in the market and confident in our growth opportunities.
With that, I'll turn it over to Robert, who will take you through the financials in a bit more detail.
Robert Park
Thank you, Kevin, and thanks to everyone joining us on the call today. Revenue for the quarter came in at $347 million, above the high end of the guidance we shared last quarter, primarily driven by the timing of deals coming in earlier than expected and a $7 million favorable true-up for Q4 shipments.
Non-GAAP earnings per share was $1.06, also above the high end of guidance, driven by higher revenue and lower OpEx. Licensing revenue was $320 million, and product and services revenue was $27 million.
We generated approximately $55 million in operating cash flow, repurchased $70 million of common stock, and have approximately $207 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization. We declared a 36 cents dividend, up 9% from our dividend a year ago, and ended the quarter with cash and investments of approximately $730 million.
GAAP operating expenses in Q1 include a $10 million restructuring charge as we continue to streamline operations and align resources with our business priorities. Detailed licensing performance by end market can be found on our IR website.
As we share with you every quarter, trends are typically smoother on an annual basis, as the timing of recoveries, minimum volume commitments, and true-ups can drive quarterly volatility. In terms of end market performance for the quarter, it's worth noting that mobile grew by over 20% year-over-year, and broadcast revenue was down mid-teens year-over-year, both primarily driven by timing of deals.
We still expect mobile and broadcast to be up mid-single digits for the full year. Turning to guidance.
For full year fiscal '26 guidance, we are raising the revenue range to $1.4 billion to $1.45 billion. This reflects the Q1 true-up and some of our deals coming in earlier and stronger than forecasted, partially offset by slight revisions to our outlook for the year, including potential impact of memory pricing, which varies by end market and customer.
We expect fiscal year '26 licensing revenue to be between $1.295 billion and $1.345 billion, and we are targeting non-GAAP operating expenses between $780 million and $800 million. This guidance implies operating margin improvement of between 50 and 100 basis points.
We expect non-GAAP earnings per share to be between $4.30 and $4.45. Our expectations for foundational and Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and imaging patents full year growth rates are relatively unchanged from what we communicated at the beginning of the year, with Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, and imaging patents growing roughly 15% and comprising nearly half of our licensing revenue.
We expect foundational revenue to be down slightly. We also expect end market growth rates for the full year to be similar to what we communicated last quarter, with growth in other, mobile, and broadcast, and declines in PC and CE.
For Q2 '26, we expect revenue to be between $375 million and $405 million. Within that, we expect licensing revenue to be between $350 million and $380 million, and includes a large recovery that settled in Q2.
Gross margin should be approximately 91% on a non-GAAP basis, and we expect non-GAAP operating expenses to be between $195 million and $205 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be between $1.29 and $1.44.
In summary, we are off to a strong start in Q1, and we are encouraged by the progress we are making across our growth initiatives. Our financials remain solid, with organic revenue growth, high gross margins, expanding operating margins, healthy cash flows, and a strong balance sheet.
With that, we'll open the line for your questions.
Operator
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad.
If you'd like to withdraw your question, again press star one. Your first question comes from the line of Steven Frankel with Rosenblatt.
Please go ahead.
Steven Frankel
Good afternoon. On this notion of some of the upside was driven by deal timing, with deals coming in earlier than expected, do you read into that any change in the environment or customers' sense of urgency, or this is just the other side of the coin that you experienced over the last couple of years where deals tended to slip?
Kevin Yeaman
Thanks, Steve. I wouldn't extrapolate to any generalization in the macro.
I think that we're pleased to have had some of our deals come in earlier. It has the effect of kind of de-risking some of the outlook for the year.
Things are coming in about what we expected, raising guidance some to reflect the true-up in Q1, one of the deals coming in a little bigger, and that's all the normal adjustments we typically do as we come into a new quarter.
Steven Frankel
On that large true-up, could you help us understand was that in mobile and that's part of the mobile upside, or was it in another area?
Kevin Yeaman
The true-up was about $7 million, and Robert, do you want to
Robert Park
cover? It was primarily gaming and broadcast, Steve.
Steven Frankel
Okay. The strong growth in mobile, was that in part again due to signing of new deals or renewals that drove that?
Robert Park
Hi, Steve. You tend to want to look at these end markets for the full year because the timing of deals, recoveries, minimum volume commitments, particularly in mobile, can fluctuate quarter to quarter.
We still expect the full year for mobile to be up slightly.
Steven Frankel
Okay. Then one big-picture question, Kevin, the spin-off of the Sony TV venture into a partnership with TCL, does that present a opportunity over the next couple of years for you to gain some material share if Sony ends up behaving like TCL where you're basically on every SKU?
Kevin Yeaman
I don't want to comment on their pending transaction or where they might go with it, but we have very strong relationships with TCL. We also have a strong relationship with Sony, they're both good partners.
Of course, we're really focused across the board on increasing attach for televisions, and we're very excited about Dolby Vision 2 and the reception it got at CES from content providers, OEMs, really everybody who came by. We're looking to bring those first Dolby Vision 2 televisions to market by the end of this fiscal year, so as we go into next year, that's when we see that adoption cycle beginning, and that's a good opportunity for us as adopting Dolby Vision 2 for those who already have Dolby Vision, that's increased royalties.
We also think that it's a real opportunity to bring Dolby Vision 2 and the Dolby experience to those mid-range TVs, because there's a lot of discrete features of Dolby Vision 2 which upgrade the experience. When you see two mid-range TVs, like at CES we had $300 TVs side by side, it's just significantly better.
We're excited about that as we approach the end of the year here.
Steven Frankel
Great. One more quick one for Robert.
This Q1 looked more like Q1 of 2024 than 2025. Is this just timing and we shouldn't read anything into it, and the expectations for full year cash flow generation should be what we're used to?
Robert Park
That's a good question, Steve. You're right that our cash flow, particularly operating cash flow, can fluctuate quarter to quarter depending on the timing of deals, the terms, patent pool collections and distributions.
What you'd need to look at if you want to is go back to the last four quarters. It tracks very closely to non-GAAP net income, and if you look at the trailing four quarters, it's right about 100% of that, and that's what we continue to expect for the year.
If you want to peg proxy for operating cash flow, look at our non-GAAP net income, and that should be a good proxy for operating cash flow.
Steven Frankel
Great. Thank you so much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Ralph Schackart
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question.
Kevin, maybe if you could just give us an update on the new sort of patent pool monetization strategy. I think last time on the call you said it could be 10% of revenue, from my recollection, maybe within three years.
Just maybe kind of confirm if that's still the current view. Maybe more importantly, Roku is obviously a nice customer to have.
They're large, I think 100 million or so active accounts. Maybe kind of give a sense of after you have Roku here, how those conversations progressed as you look to commercialize with other partners?
Then I think there might be some discounts available, if I'm not mistaken, on the market up until, oh god, mid-year, maybe June 30th, from recollection, and how is that sort of influencing some of the conversations you're having along those lines?
Kevin Yeaman
Thanks, Ralph. Let me start with the reference to the 10%.
Remember that one of the things that I'm more excited about is the opportunity to expand our addressable market to content service providers. For 60 years we've provided technology, know-how, experience to content creators, content distributors, and OEMs, monetizing, of course, at the OEM level.
We have a couple of areas where we're adding new value that we're providing to content service providers, and that's based on more of a consumption-based revenue model. It was the combination of the video distribution program, which is reported in imaging patent licensing, which the rest of your question is about, and Dolby OptiView, which is the 10% of revenue coming from content service providers in three years.
Now, as it relates to the video distribution program question, yeah, remember that the pool was introduced because of the growth of the streaming industry and the recognition that modern video codecs are critical to the future success of these providers. We feel it's off to a good start with a handful of licensees last quarter, including some large ones in China.
As we said, this quarter, the pool signed its first US streamer with Roku. We've obviously seen a lot of these patent pools develop over the years, we feel good about the progress, good engagement across the industry.
It sounds like you've maybe been doing some good research on our website or elsewhere. There are some pricing incentives that the pool that we go through offers to incent early sign-ups.
Ralph Schackart
Great. Maybe just one for Robert.
Just in terms of the guide being at the high end, was that just combination of good stuff going on in the quarter as well as the favorable true-up, or was that maybe tilted a little bit more in favor of the favorable true-up getting the revenue to come in towards the high end of the guide? Just trying to get a sense of that.
Thank you.
Robert Park
Hi. Are you talking about the full year, Ralph?
Ralph Schackart
For the quarter, yeah.
Kevin Yeaman
The quarter, Robert.
Robert Park
Oh, for Q2?
Kevin Yeaman
Q1. Or was it Q1 or Q2?
Now I'm not sure.
Robert Park
The guide, yeah.
Kevin Yeaman
Q2.
Robert Park
Oh, yeah. Q1, Q1 is the $7 million favorable true-up and deals coming in earlier than expected, as we talked about before, in terms of the performance for for Q1.
I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about guidance.
Ralph Schackart
No, I [unclear] guidance, but maybe [unclear] a sense outside of the [unclear] true-up, I guess the quarter shaped was relative to expectations, that was the first part of the six-part, maybe how that trend line was in the quarter.
Robert Park
Ralph, you are cutting out. You got a little bit choppy on that.
Can you repeat that question, Ralph?
Kevin Yeaman
A little bit choppy, yeah. Could you?
Ralph Schackart
Sure. Can you just give me a sense of how the quarter progressed relative to expectations the true-up?
Just kind of want to get a sense of the macro. I know Kevin said much hasn't changed, but it would just be helpful just a little bit more color there if you could, please.
Thank you.
Robert Park
I would say, $7 million true-up is fairly small. It's nice that it's favorable in terms of units being a little higher than we estimated for last quarter.
The deals coming in earlier than expected, deals can ebb and flow, but it's always nice to have them in earlier. As Kevin said, it does de-risk our pipeline for the full year and gives us a little more confidence about our ability to execute for the rest of the year.
I'd say other than that, it's pretty close to what we thought it would be, and that true-up, of course, is something we don't plan for, so that's carry-through for the full year.
Ralph Schackart
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Vikram Kesavabhotla with Baird. Please go ahead.
Vikram Kesavabhotla
Hey, thank you for taking the questions. I guess I'll start first on CES.
I'm curious if you can just talk more about your takeaways from the event this year. Obviously, talked about all the demos that you had available there.
I guess what was some of the feedback from the partners and customers throughout the event, and what do you think resonated the most from some of your latest innovations?
Kevin Yeaman
It's just a great opportunity for us to engage with partners from across our ecosystem. Of course we had OEMs coming through, but also our content service partners and content creators.
As we have our own space at Dolby Live, which is pretty well-equipped to demo the Dolby experience. It's just a great opportunity to show them what's new, and we were really focused on the automotive in-car entertainment experience and Dolby Vision 2.
Of course, it's also an opportunity to talk to them about what they're seeing, how they see their opportunity, and how we can partner together. We had hundreds of groups of customers and partners coming through.
On the floor, it was mostly about the automotive experience, a lot of energy, a wide variety of cars and use cases. We also had a Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision car, whereas our story several years ago when we started was music in the car, now it is fully the complete in-car entertainment experience with Dolby Atmos, early days of Dolby Vision, but you're seeing examples of gaming content in the car, TV and movies.
Audiobooks is also a really attractive use case for our Atmos partners. Dolby Vision 2 has just been we were already getting a good reception, but we got to show it to a lot more people, and, as I said earlier, you can just really see the difference, there's a lot of excitement about that.
We're heads down working with our partners to get those first TVs out the door toward the end of this year so that we can then begin to increase the availability of that in the marketplace. That's kind of what we received.
It was a really good show for us.
Vikram Kesavabhotla
Great. Thank you for the color there.
Then I also wanted to follow up on some of the recent announcements that you highlighted in the press release. First on Peacock, you said that's the first streaming service to integrate your full suite of premium picture and sound innovations.
Could you talk more about the significance of that announcement? What do you think moved the needle in that conversation with Peacock, and what does this mean for your future relationships across the streaming landscape?
Then similarly, you also highlighted Meta now supporting Dolby Vision on Facebook following the announcement on Instagram recently as well. I guess could you talk more about how that's influencing your broader efforts in social media and your discussions with the mobile OEMs?
I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Kevin Yeaman
Thanks for the questions. Peacock did announce that they're embracing the entire suite of Dolby technologies: AC-4, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision 2.
They've become one of our first two launch partners for Dolby Vision 2, which which obviously will, come to you'll be able to experience when TVs are are available later this year. With Peacock, that's of course across movies, it's across TV, it's across sports.
They've started with Dolby they're starting with Dolby Atmos, you'll be able to experience the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics in Dolby Atmos through Peacock. We're we're really excited about them leaning into the full Dolby experience.
On on Meta, we shared last quarter that they had adopted Instagram for iOS users. They've now expanded to Facebook.
That's important to us for a couple of reasons. Obviously it's a primary use case on mobile devices, having the ability to experience Dolby Vision over your favorite social media and video sharing websites, applications are that creates demand for Dolby on mobile devices.
We also mentioned last quarter that Douyin in China began supporting Dolby Vision and that they are now expanding support to their Android users, so that's also a really strong development. Very excited about Instagram and Facebook, and we're excited about our relationship with Meta.
They're now have embraced Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision on the Oculus headset, and it's just being able to engage with with them across multiple aspects of their business is just a great opportunity to to to learn where we can help going forward in in terms of new opportunities.
Vikram Kesavabhotla
Great. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Sholl with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.
Patrick Sholl
Hi. Thank you.
Just another question on the guidance. Just curious to talk about whether on the foundational or the Atmos and Vision side of things, just how you're seeing OEMs respond to any kind of the macro issues, whether it's on tariffs or on memory, in terms of how they're kind of adjusting their device shipment views.
Kevin Yeaman
Yeah. Thanks for that.
I think, look, I think everybody is probably on a daily basis trying to fill trying to find the signal through the noise, because there's obviously a lot of things going on. As it relates to our adjustments, there weren't not material adjustments, but we update our outlook every quarter.
The reference to memory pricing in particular, obviously that's a hot topic. I would say that was some, like I said, it wasn't a a significant adjustment, and and we ended up raising guidance given the true-up and some of the strength in the pipeline.
As it relates to memory pricing and our end markets, it looks to us like the mobile end market is the one that's most directly impacted. As that relates to us, it varies quite a lot by customer.
Some customers have done more forward purchasing or other things to kind of hedge the the impact. Then, of course, most of our mobile business is driven by minimum volume commitments, the timing of renewal cycles also plays into that.
It's not a material effect overall, but there were some adjustments there. In terms of TVs, memory's not as much of a percentage of the BOM, we don't see a lot of impact.
One other area where we've heard more more noise around what the impact would be would be PC, and that's one of the markets that Robert highlighted as being down for the year for us.
Patrick Sholl
Okay. Thank you.
Then you addressed in the press release that it's the continued progress on adoption and automotive from auto manufacturers. I'm just kind of curious if with changes around US policy if you're seeing any sort of impact in how that flows through to around EVs, if that has any impact on the adoption of the various in-car offerings?
Kevin Yeaman
Because of the stage of opportunity we're at, which is getting a lot of new wins and getting on a lot of new models, we haven't noticed any impact. It's our highest-growing area within the other licensing.
I would also say that we are beginning to see more diversification geographically. We started very strong in China with EVs.
We've expanded to Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Cadillac, and the top three manufacturers in India. We're also beginning to see more gas-powered vehicles coming with Dolby Atmos as well.
Far that's not been top of mind for us. We're continuing to focus on getting more manufacturers, help them get deeper into lineups.
As I said earlier, really excited about the opportunity now to expand into the full in-car entertainment experience with Dolby Vision and all the types of content that people are going to enjoy in their car.
Patrick Sholl
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our question-and-answer session, and that does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.