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Analog Devices, Inc. is a global semiconductor leader that bridges the physical and digital worlds to enable breakthroughs at the Intelligent Edge. ADI combines analog, digital, AI, and software technologies into solutions that combat climate change, reliably connect humans and the world, and help drive advancements in automation and robotics, mobility, healthcare, energy and data centers. With revenue of more than $11 billion in FY25, ADI ensures today's innovators stay Ahead of What's Possible.

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Analog Devices Inc (ADI) — Q3 2018 Earnings Call Transcript

Apr 4, 202614 speakers5,552 words42 segments
ML
Michael LucarelliDirector of Investor Relations

Good morning, and welcome to the Analog Devices Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call, which is being audio webcast via telephone and over the web. I'd like to now introduce your host for today's call, Mr. Michael Lucarelli, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours. Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining our third quarter 2018 conference call. With me on the call today are ADI's CEO, Vincent Roche; and ADI's CFO, Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. For anyone who missed the release, you can find it and related financial schedules at investor.analog.com. This conference call is being webcast live, and a recording will be archived in the Investor section of our website. Now on to the disclosures. The information we're about to discuss, including our objectives and outlook, includes forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those discussed in our earnings release and in our most recent 10-Q. These forward-looking statements reflect our opinion as of the date of this call. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Our comments today about ADI's third quarter financial results will also include non-GAAP financial measures which exclude special items. When comparing our third quarter results to our historical performance, special items are also excluded from the prior quarter and year-over-year results. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures and additional information about our non-GAAP measures are included in today's earnings release and on our web schedules, which we've posted under the Quarterly Results section at investor.analog.com. Okay. With that, I'll turn it over to ADI's CEO, Vincent Roche. Vince?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Thanks, Mike, and good morning to everyone. Analog Devices had an outstanding fiscal third quarter. Our performance demonstrates the disciplined execution of our strategy as we continue to deliver value for our customers, helping them meet their evolving needs in this dynamic market environment. It also reflects our ability to deliver strong results for our shareholders while investing in growth opportunities to expand market share, continuously innovate and strengthen our position for the long term. In the quarter, revenues came in above the high end of our guided range. Our growth was once again driven by continued strength in our B2B markets, especially in the industrial and communication sectors. These strong results were supported by yet another record quarter from our Linear Tech franchise. Operating margins expanded meaningfully compared to last year, and non-GAAP EPS increased over 20% year-over-year and came in above the high end of our guidance. We also delivered very strong free cash flow, generating $2.2 billion in free cash flow on a trailing 12-month basis, translating to approximately 36% free cash flow margin. ADI's cash-generating capabilities enabled us to achieve our 2x leverage ratio goal three quarters ahead of plan, and we are pleased to announce that we have reinstated our share repurchase program. Given the long-term prospects of this business, our board has authorized an additional $2 billion in share repurchases. Now before Prashanth goes deeper into our financial performance, I'd like to continue the discussion around key market trends that are shaping our industry and the steps that ADI is taking to seize these opportunities. On the last earnings call, I spoke about the transition to 5G for wireless communications and what it means for ADI. Today, I'd like to focus on Industry 4.0, which is driving the next evolution of innovation and investment in industrial automation. For many industries, the digital factory will bring greater supply chain efficiencies, higher quality, more flexibility and a safer workplace, all contributing to higher productivity. This smart factory, in which cyber-physical systems monitor the physical processes of the factory or plant, will use additional data for decentralized decision-making, human assistance, increased safety and more predictability. This will require a mass deployment of intelligent sensors at the edge. For many decades, ADI has been viewed as the go-to edge solution provider. The place where the data is born, so to speak, and I'll highlight later how we are enabling this evolution. Although ADI is excited about this emerging opportunity, we expect this transition to take time while the deployment of today's existing sensing, signal processing and power architectures will continue to drive growth for many years. In fact, our core automation business represents a significant portion of our total industrial business today, and we're taking a long view to ensure that we keep at the cutting edge of technology and customer support. Our domain expertise is unmatched and gives us invaluable insights to understand our customers' challenges and where the markets are going. We've been investing ahead, broadening our portfolio through targeted R&D, collaborating with leading automation customers and leveraging strategic M&A to enhance our offerings to include algorithms and software. At the same time, we've extended our reach with the addition of the LTC sales force and FAEs, and the complementarity of our customer bases enables us to access more opportunities at current customers and increase penetration at new customers. We believe that these targeted investments position us to continue to grow our market share and to outperform in the years to come. For decades, our products and solutions have been adopted by many thousands of customers around the world. Their equipment is used at the factory floor level across a very diverse set of end markets such as automotive, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, smartphones, food and beverage and many others, and this is a long life cycle business. Once qualified and deployed to strict industrial requirements, customers keep using ADI's proven products. This makes this business very sticky with high barriers to entry. With a broader set of technologies and capabilities, our customers continue to turn to ADI for the best performance and precision, robustness and safety. The addition of LTC adds high-performance power to our already extensive portfolio, enabling further innovation. In fact, power plays an increasingly critical role in solving more and more of the design challenges of our customers as they further automate in space and energy-constrained areas. For example, we just recently launched a product that enables up to eight analog outputs on a card, previously unachievable due to excess heat. We succeeded by combining the signal chain expertise of ADI with LTC's power know-how to maintain an unchanged power density. Safety is also critical. These systems require essential electrical isolation barriers to protect low-voltage electronics as well as humans from high voltages. Traditionally, customers have used optical technology to transfer data across these safety barriers. However, frustrated by their lack of reliability and power, we increasingly see customers turning to ADI for our digital isolation technology. So with unique architectures and leading process technology, our iCoupler isolation solutions are significantly more reliable and can transfer data and power twice as fast as our nearest competitor. We also remove customers' industry certification pain with ready-to-use solutions, accelerating their time-to-market. As a result of all that, we have shipped over 2 billion channels and are increasing our market share and driving revenue growth well into the double digits annually. Today, as manufacturers respond to a more demanding consumer base, they are turning to more distributed and flexible architectures. With this in mind, I will focus now on two examples to highlight how innovation at the factory floor is driving new growth opportunities for ADI. The first is robotics. Across all geographies, significant investments are being made to upgrade from a labor-intensive footprint to a more sophisticated automated infrastructure. Repetitive tasks are now being performed by collaborative robots commonly known as cobots. These are smaller robots that work in collaboration with humans. While the traditional large-scale industrial robotics industry remains healthy and growing, the newer collaborative robotics market is in the early stages of growth. Collectively, this market is expected to grow at more than 10% annually, adding more than 500,000 systems per year by 2022. ADI is unique in our ability to combine all these key technologies for the traditional large-scale robots as well as the fast-growing cobots segments. Along with our traditional precision-control technology solutions, including signal chains and digital isolation, we effectively more than triple our content opportunity with the addition of power management, communications, and sensors. The second area of innovation is the flexible factory floor. Here, robots operate in tandem with many other systems, including PLC controllers and a vast array of sensors and actuators. These machines or devices are designated as either inputs or outputs. Several years ago, ADI took on the challenge of implementing an integrated software configurable I/O architecture based on our high-performance precision signal processing portfolio. With this breakthrough in innovation, ADI created a disruptive capability, allowing universal selection and configuration of many types of input and output devices. This has opened new opportunities and allows customers to easily install and reconfigure their automation equipment. In addition to flexibility, the big value impact comes in the total cost of ownership at the factory level. Significant savings for customers include eight weeks on average faster installation time, savings on engineering, and a significant reduction in factory space. Factory production flows can be adapted more easily, and these changes that could traditionally take hours can now be done in minutes. With this new capability, we've increased our SAM by an additional $200 million. Since our initial design wins at leading customers over the past year, we've substantially increased our opportunity pipeline. As we look towards the future with the digital factory, flexible architectures with an increase of robotics will enable the transformation of manufacturing. With that comes a demand for higher bandwidth, predictability of machine health, robustness, and security. Working closely with our customers, we've invested to extend our portfolio and ability to solve these challenges. In addition to offering the most robust industrial wireless networking technology, ADI is enabling the transition to newer secure connectivity architectures. We are leading the path to higher bandwidth industrial-ready Ethernet, using the latest time-sensitive networking standards. ADI's industrial deterministic Ethernet is a far cry from standard Ethernet and provides the determinism, reliability, robustness, and the security required in the hostile environment of the digital factory. Finally, our sensing and measurement technology provides contextual data, enabling predictive outcomes. ADI's depth, optical, and touch sensors are used to create safe working zones for humans while vibration, electrical, and temperature sensors are used for condition-based monitoring, predicting the mechanical wear of the machines to maximize factory uptime. So to summarize, at the edge of the factory floor where the data is born, ADI is the leader in industrial automation. This market has grown steadily for many years, and we're witnessing a new era of opportunity, innovation, and growth. While our core technologies continue to provide the foundational performance for control and precision, our new investments double our SAM and allow us to solve the emerging challenges our customers face. All in all, I'm very optimistic about what the future will bring for ADI in this new world. So with that, I'd like to hand over to Prashanth, who will take you through the financials.

PM
Prashanth Mahendra-RajahCFO

Thank you, Vince. Good morning, everyone, and let me add my welcome to our Q3 2018 earnings call. With the exception of non-op expenses, my comments on the P&L line items will be on a non-GAAP or adjusted basis, which excludes special items outlined in today's press release. As Vince mentioned, we delivered another record-setting quarter. We had 8% revenue growth, 20% higher earnings per share, with free cash flow margins at 36%. Before I get into the details of the income statement, let me cover the end markets. Our B2B revenue increased 13% year-over-year, led by double-digit growth in the industrial and communications markets. The industrial end market represented 50% of sales in the quarter and increased in the low double digits year-over-year. Growth in this market continues to be broad-based with nearly all applications and geographies increasing double digits compared to the year-ago quarter. As Vince highlighted, the factory automation market is undergoing changes not seen in decades, and customers are looking to ADI as the trusted partner to provide next-generation solutions to transform their industry and increase productivity. In the communications market, which represented 21% of sales in the third quarter, sales into both wireless and wired applications increased at a double-digit rate compared to the same period last year. Growth in our wireless business accelerated as the market continues to densify their 4G networks, accelerate small cell deployments, and begin the transition to 5G massive MIMO. This better market environment combined with our strong position across carriers with our high-performance mixed signal and RF portfolio positions our comms business for continued growth and outperformance. Our automotive business represented 16% of sales in the quarter. In line with our commentary last quarter, sales increased at a mid-single-digit rate compared to a year ago, with all applications increasing over that time period. ADI organic revenue performed well once again, increasing high single digits year-over-year. Finally, our consumer business represented 13% of sales in the third quarter and, as expected, decreased year-over-year primarily due to lower demand for products used in the portable consumer applications. Now moving on to the P&L. Revenue for the quarter was $1.57 billion, above the high end of our guidance, increasing 8% year-over-year and up 4% sequentially. Gross margins of 71.2% increased 70 basis points year-over-year, and given the mix of business, were down slightly sequentially. OpEx in the third quarter was $448 million or 28.5% of revenue. Strong revenue growth combined with operational execution resulted in operating margins at the high end of guidance at 42.7%. Non-op expenses in the third quarter were approximately $58 million, and our tax rate was approximately 6%. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share for the third quarter came in above the high end of guidance at $1.53, increasing more than 20% year-over-year. Moving on to the balance sheet. Inventory increased 2% sequentially, and days were 112 in the quarter, down 4 days from the second quarter. Disti inventory was just above 7.5 weeks, flat sequentially and up modestly compared to the year-ago quarter. We generated free cash flow of approximately $570 million in the quarter, bringing our trailing 12 months' free cash flow to a record $2.2 billion with an associated free cash flow margin of approximately 36%. During the quarter, we also paid down $430 million of debt, bringing our net leverage to 2x. Capital additions in the third quarter were $52 million, and we expect CapEx to continue to run at our model of approximately 4% of sales. During the quarter, we paid $179 million in dividends with an associated quarterly cash dividend of $0.48, representing an annual dividend payment of $1.92 per outstanding share of common stock. Overall, it was a terrific quarter and the Q4 guide is equally strong, which with the exception of revenue and non-op expenses are also on a non-GAAP basis and exclude items outlined in today's release. At a high level, we're expecting the fourth quarter to look a lot like the third quarter. We're planning for revenue in the fourth quarter to be in the range of $1.53 billion to $1.61 billion. At the midpoint of guidance, we expect our B2B markets of industrial, auto and comms in the aggregate to increase in the low double digits year-over-year. This would represent our seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year revenue growth for our B2B markets. We're planning for gross margins to be approximately 71%. We expect our operating expenses to be in the range of $440 million to $450 million. At the midpoint of guidance, this implies OpEx, as a percentage of sales, will be approximately flat sequentially, which brings operating margins in the fourth quarter expected in the range of 40% to 42% to 43%. We expect non-op expenses to be approximately $57 million and our tax rate around 7%. Based on these inputs, diluted EPS, excluding special items, would be in the range of $1.46 to $1.58. Now before we move to the Q&A session, I wanted to provide some context for last night's press release. As I mentioned earlier, we achieved a 2x leverage ratio during our fiscal third quarter, just 16 months post-closing of the Linear acquisition. Over those 16 months, we paid down $2.3 billion of debt or nearly 1/3 of the debt we raised for the deal. During the same period, we also returned approximately $850 million to our shareholders through dividends. With this milestone achieved, we can now provide more clarity on our capital allocation plans. Our first call on capital will always be to invest in the business, whether through targeted R&D, smart capital spending, or strategic M&A. These investments ensure we continue to have the right technology portfolio to increase our competitive advantage and drive profitable and sustainable growth. Given the profitability of this franchise, the long-term prospects for our business, and the benefits from U.S. tax reform, we now plan to return 100% of our free cash flow after debt repayments to investors. Under this framework, the dividend policy remains the cornerstone of our capital allocation policy. We have increased the dividend 15 times over the last 14 years and remain committed to our goal of a 5% to 10% increase annually. As you saw in yesterday's press release, we are reinstating our share repurchase program and announced a $2 billion authorization from our Board of Directors. We plan to use this approval to offset dilution and, over time, lower our share count. We believe this capital strategy will continue to deliver value for our shareholders and allow us to continue the investments necessary to meet the evolving needs of our customers in a dynamic growth environment. To wrap it up, this was another record quarter for ADI across many metrics. The strength in our business resulted in strong revenue growth and profit conversion. We see this momentum continuing for Q4, and the early achievement of our 2x leverage goal enables us to reinstate our share repurchase program.

ML
Michael LucarelliDirector of Investor Relations

Thanks, Prashanth. Okay. Let's move on to the Q&A session. Operator, could we have our first question, please?

Operator

Our first question comes from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

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CH
Craig HettenbachAnalyst

Can you hear me now?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

We hear you fine, Craig. Yes.

CH
Craig HettenbachAnalyst

Perfect. Just a question on B2B. Understanding it's double digits in aggregate, there have been some moving pieces between segments, particularly kind of autos and comms. So any color as you look into the October quarter? Just a little bit more granular between the comm business, industrial and autos for the October quarter?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Yes. Well, look, Craig, B2B remains very strong. We've had a couple of stellar years of growth and we remain in a strong zone here. The growth has been led primarily by industrial and comms, which represent 70% of our business today. So at this point, inventory is in very good shape, well managed on our balance sheets, it's in good shape in the channel and I'd say lead times are stable as well. Our overall guidance implies, as Prashanth said, our seventh consecutive double-digit year-over-year growth in B2B. We see pockets of slowing growth in industrial, but over the foreseeable future, industrial will perform at 2x to 3x GDP growth, probably at the higher end of that. Clearly, our position in comms is strong and carriers are spending more money on 4G networks while beginning to see the early stages of deployment in 5G. Given the penetration we have at key customers in wireless communications infrastructure, I believe we're poised for stellar growth in the wireless comms side of the business. Additionally, a significant upgrade cycle is taking place in the optical backhaul, so I foresee good growth there as well. Our automotive business continues to perform in the mid-single-digit growth level, which is moderate but very important to us.

Operator

Your next question is from Ambrish Srivastava with BMO.

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AS
Ambrish SrivastavaAnalyst

I just wanted to focus on the gross margin side. I get the mix change; consumer was stronger, at least compared to what we were modeling, so it came in a little bit lighter than what you had guided to, Prashanth. But if you look at the guide, that seems a little bit lighter as well. So can you just help us understand the puts and takes on gross margin, please?

PM
Prashanth Mahendra-RajahCFO

Absolutely, Ambrish. Thanks for the question. So recall that our gross margin model is to be above 70%, which is industry-leading. We are above that goal for the third quarter and the fourth quarter. You are right, margins were slightly lower. The upside was driven by communications and consumer, while the industrial mix declined to 50%, about 200 basis points from where we were at second quarter levels. As we look to the fourth quarter, similar to what Vince told Craig, our strongest growth is going to come from comms and automotive. So that mix in the businesses is driving a shift in gross margin, but still well above our model. I also want to remind everyone that we do have about another $100 million of cost synergies, which should start layering in towards the beginning of 2021 or late 2020. We expect to continue to drive gross margins up as the operations team shuts down the facility in Singapore and California. Our focus is on expanding operating margins. As long as we can drive our revenue faster than our operating expenses, we'll continue to drive profitability for this business.

ML
Michael LucarelliDirector of Investor Relations

Yes. Just one quick follow-up to that. Prashanth was talking about the fastest growth, which was sequentially, on a year-over-year basis, and the strongest growers were once again the industrial and communications markets, both growing in the double digits.

Operator

Your next question comes from John Pitzer with Crédit Suisse.

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JP
John PitzerAnalyst

I have a question regarding the consumer side. If I use your B2B guidance for Q4, projecting low double-digit growth, it suggests that the consumer business might decline about 20% for the full year, which aligns with the higher end of the 20 to 30% decline range you mentioned at the Analyst Day. I'm curious if this indicates a new baseline from which you can grow the consumer segment, or if there were factors this year that might indicate potential challenges in FY '19, particularly with that one major customer.

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Yes. So I think what you've implied is just about right, John. At this point, it's very hard to say what will happen next year. We have a good read on what the number will be this year in terms of the decline in the portable business, but it's very hard to tell what 2019 will look like just yet. It's a fast-cycle business, and we can win designs quickly, but also lose them in a very short period. I would say directly answering your question, the consumer business hasn't yet troughed in 2018, so I expect we'll see further decline in the portable part, I believe, in 2019.

Operator

Your next question comes from Vivek Arya with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

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VA
Vivek AryaAnalyst

Whilst your industrial and communication segments are doing quite well, the auto is at kind of this low to mid-single-digit growth, remaining below the peer group. Can you give us a sense of what has been done so far to perhaps fix some of the issues and what needs to be done so that you can get back to the high single-digit or double-digit growth rate that a number of your competitors are achieving?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Yes. Thanks for the question. The numbers that we've talked about are from the combined legacy ADI and LTC. The legacy ADI part of the business is growing in the high single-digit area while the LT part is in the low single digits. There are two primary components that we are working hard to correct, particularly on the legacy LT side of things. First is ensuring that our Battery Management System (BMS) business gets back onto a solid growth track. I'm very encouraged by the progress we've made there over the last two quarters, holding on to the sockets we had and finding new sockets, especially in North America and Europe in the electric powertrain. Also, we have exciting new products coming. Additionally, we are leveraging the ADI cost base where we've got fundamentally better cost structures to take our unfair share of high-performance power sockets globally. I believe it is fair to say that we'll be in this mid-single-digit growth area for the next 1.5 to 2 years, but around 2020, I expect a meaningful upward bend in the growth curve.

Operator

Our next question is from Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research.

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SR
Stacy RasgonAnalyst

I just wanted to get back to the segment growth. Were you trying to imply that everything is actually growing? I know you provide differences in sequential growth versus year-over-year growth across the segments, but are you suggesting that everything is, I guess, still flat to up sequentially? Or do you have some B2B segments that might be down sequentially, while driving double-digit year-over-year growth?

PM
Prashanth Mahendra-RajahCFO

No. Stacy, you got it right. Everything, as we move from Q3 to Q4, is up sequentially. What you see is stronger growth up sequentially. We don't guide by segments anymore, but you're correct that stronger growth is from comms and automotive. That drives some mix impact overall, responding back to Ambrish's question.

SR
Stacy RasgonAnalyst

I guess my only issue, it seems to take me above your B2B growth. Although maybe you're suggesting, when you say low double digits, that you're implying somewhere between 10% and 12%, right?

ML
Michael LucarelliDirector of Investor Relations

Correct. I think it — if it was 10%, we would have said 10%. And low double digits, to me, means probably anywhere between 10% and 12%. That's how I think about it, Stacy.

Operator

Your next question is from Tore Svanberg with Stifel.

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TS
Tore SvanbergAnalyst

A question for Vince. On the industrial market, you said it's slowing. Is that just a function of getting back to the mean from some very strong year-over-year growth rates? Is it seasonality, or are you seeing anything else going on in that end market?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Good question, Tore. From a global standpoint, what we see is that the macro economy is mainly constructive right now. The PMIs and GDP remain solid across the globe. I've spoken with several customers, and they remain optimistic about the future as well. I'd say, in the industrial business now, is good. As I mentioned earlier, there have been pockets of slower growth, driven primarily by uncertainties, particularly in the geopolitical arena, as people think through what this tariff situation means. Demand is resilient. In our guidance for B2B, we've talked about double-digit growth on an annual basis. I would say, in general, the growth is getting back to a more normalized level. In FY '17, our industrial business grew in the low 20s percent. This year, it will be in the kind of mid-teens range. Given the tougher comparisons and the current environment, although demand is strong, I think we're getting back to a more normalized 2x to 3x GDP growth level and probably at the higher end of that.

Operator

Our next question is from Chris Danely with Citigroup.

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CD
Christopher DanelyAnalyst

I guess just one sort of summary question on the end markets. So Vince, you're kind of giving us the longer-term growth of auto and industrial. How about comms? So comm looks like it's going to grow sort of in the mid-double digits this year. What do you think that should be longer term? And could you also provide a brief follow-on with regard to gross margins given that industrial is slowing? Should we think of them as sort of a flat trajectory over the next several quarters?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Yes. Good questions, Chris. At this point, I'd say given the product crop that we have and our penetration, along with the secular trends in the wireless communications area, my sense is that, even though it's a very lumpy business quarter by quarter, with 4G continuing to deploy and 5G coming on board, that this can be a double-digit growth area for ADI over the next three to four years. The backhaul market, particularly the optical side, is also capable of growing in the high single-digit area. Market conditions are better, and in general, carriers are more optimistic and working hard to bring new technologies into market as quickly as possible. I'm also confident in our deeper product crop and wider penetration. In terms of gross margins, I'll turn it over to Prashanth.

PM
Prashanth Mahendra-RajahCFO

Thank you, Vince. So Chris, the way to think about gross margins longer-term is to expect them to be flattish from where we are now. We are still ahead of our long-term model of 70%. Our industrial business has very rich gross margins, while our comms business has great margins that are not as strong as industrial. With more growth in the comms business, we expect some mix on the margins, but we anticipate it will remain flattish, in line with what we're expecting for Q4. Additionally, we expect to see about $100 million of cost synergies that should be realized toward the late 2020, early 2021 period, with the closing of our facilities in Singapore and California.

Operator

Our next question comes from Blayne Curtis with Barclays.

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ZZ
Zhenghao ZhangAnalyst

This is Jerry Zhang, on for Blayne. I just had a question on the pace of buybacks. So when should we expect the share count to eventually start trending lower? How do you think about the plan for deleveraging going forward?

PM
Prashanth Mahendra-RajahCFO

Thanks, Jerry. The way to think about our repurchase activity starts with reminding everyone that we generate a lot of cash, $2 billion-plus on a trailing 12-month basis, and we have one of the highest free cash flow margins in the S&P 500. About $700 million-plus is allocated to the dividend, which we are still targeting to grow at 5% to 10% annually, as we've done for the past 14 years. The dividend would account for mid- to high-30% of our free cash flow, leaving a substantial amount available for buybacks and debt repayments. Our goal will be to be in the market every quarter as a minimum to offset dilution, and also look to reduce share count over time. Regarding leverage, we maintain a good cash balance, typically $750 million to $1 billion, while having a revolving credit facility for another billion. We do not target specific leverage goals, focusing more on optimizing the balance sheet to maintain an investment-grade status for flexibility. Given our cash-generating capabilities, we do not aim for a net cash position. You can expect to carry some debt, being mindful of rate environments and other opportunities for investment.

Operator

Our next question is from Toshiya Hari with Goldman Sachs.

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TH
Toshiya HariAnalyst

I had a question on M&A. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your appetite for further acquisitions now that Linear is integrated as part of ADI, and to the extent you do have aspirations to buy more assets down the line, if you could talk a little bit about the technologies or conditions you would look for in a business.

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Yes. Thank you. Our overall capital allocation framework, as Prashanth outlined, hasn't changed. The long-term value of our investments, both organic and inorganic, will continue to drive our long-term profitable growth trajectory. Our approach to acquisitions has been and will continue to be very disciplined. At a high level, we focus on acquiring assets that improve our competitive moat, both from an innovation perspective. Our goal is to acquire technologies and engineering capabilities that enhance our portfolio, making it more complete to meet market demands and improve our ability to deliver value to customers. Though I won't discuss specific targets, we maintain high standards, as evidenced by past acquisitions like Hittite and Linear. Our portfolio position is strong, and we are always vigilant as markets and customer needs evolve.

Operator

And our final question comes from William Stein with SunTrust.

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WS
William SteinAnalyst

My question is about revenue synergies. Can you update us regarding revenue synergies for the Hittite acquisition, which is clearly a few years old now? I think you're starting to see revenue synergies kick in there, and what you anticipate with regard to the same issue with Linear?

VR
Vincent RocheCEO

Yes. Good question. In terms of Hittite, we have more than doubled the growth rate since taking them on board. We have been able to scale Hittite across a broader range of customers and enhance our portfolio with a more sophisticated manufacturing and quality assurance capability. Overall, we expect to see a doubling of the growth rate of the LT legacy over the next 3 to 4 years. We are in the early stages now, particularly in communications and automotive sectors, which seemed the most promising for quick revenue synergies. Overall, I believe it is a reasonable expectation to see significant growth from the integration of LT.

ML
Michael LucarelliDirector of Investor Relations

Okay. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Thank you, Will. A copy of the transcript will be available on our website, and all available reconciliations and any additional information can be found in the Quarterly Results section of our Investor Relations site at investor.analog.com. Thanks again for joining us and your continued interest in ADI.

Operator

This concludes today's Analog Devices conference call. You may now disconnect.

O