Qorvo Inc (QRVO) — Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks very much, Cody. Hello, everybody and welcome to Qorvo’s fiscal 2022 third quarter earnings conference call. This call will include forward-looking statements that involve risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from management’s current expectations. We encourage you to review the Safe Harbor statement contained in the earnings release published today as well as the risk factors associated with our business in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC, because these risk factors may affect our operations and financial results. In today’s release and on today’s call, we provide both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. We provide this supplemental information to enable investors to perform additional comparisons of operating results and to analyze financial performance without the impact of certain non-cash expenses or other items that may obscure trends in our underlying performance. During our call, our comments and comparisons to income statement items will be based primarily on non-GAAP results. For a complete reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today available on our website at qorvo.com under Investors. Joining us today are Bob Bruggeworth, President and CEO; and Mark Murphy, Chief Financial Officer; Philip Chesley, President of Qorvo’s Infrastructure and Defense Products Group; Eric Creviston, President of Qorvo’s Mobile Products Group as well as other members of Qorvo’s management team. And with that, I will turn it over to Bob.

Thanks, Doug and welcome everyone to our call. Qorvo delivered fiscal third quarter results above the midpoint of the outlook we provided November 3 on our earnings call. Demand during the quarter was broad-based across markets, included multiple new product categories, including 5G transmit diversity, ultra-wideband Wi-Fi 6E and 7 power management and other power solutions. In Mobile Products, Qorvo gained content in flagship and mass market 5G devices. The fundamental challenges and increased complexity lifting 5G content are being driven by network efficiency and carrying requirements for the device architectures. In addition to new 5G bands, requirements are increasing for carrier aggregation, band combinations in both the transmit and receive to maximize bandwidth to and from the device. These are long-term trends impacting 5G devices independent of tier. In addition, new industrial designs like foldable phones are increasing RF challenges demanding more advanced antenna management systems. Lastly, because Qorvo’s smartphone portfolio includes cellular RF, ATP mix, Wi-Fi in emerging categories like ultra-wideband and MEMS-based sensors, Qorvo can participate broadly across OEMs, product tiers and chipset providers. Qorvo offers a broad portfolio of key enabling technologies and Qorvo stands to benefit as connectivity continues to proliferate. More critically, Qorvo is leveraging the same competencies that placed us at the forefront of connectivity to grow in new markets. In IDP, revenue increased sequentially and growth was broad-based across markets. The integration of United Silicon Carbide is proceeding well and enhancing our opportunities in higher voltage applications that demand maximum power efficiency. These include EVs, charging stations and renewable energy systems. Now, let’s look at some of the quarterly highlights, starting with mobile. For a Korean-based smartphone OEM, we ramp shipments in support of flagship and mass market smartphone launches. We expanded customer sampling of highly integrated main path solutions as well as secondary transmit solutions, which increased content as these architectures are adopted more broadly. In ultra-wideband, we achieved an important strategic milestone, supplying our first complete ultra-wideband solution in an Android smartphone. This speaks to the strength of our core technology and highlights the opportunity across the Android ecosystem. For industrial and enterprise applications, we introduced a fully integrated module combining our ultra-wideband chipset with Nordics BLE solution to address a wide range of industrial and enterprise applications. In Wi-Fi, design activity continues to be robust. For mobile applications, we have secured new Wi-Fi 7 chip-on-board reference design engagement and began customer sampling of Wi-Fi 7 FEMs, offering superior performance and design flexibility. For home and enterprise applications, we ran Wi-Fi 6E FEMs for mesh networks and released 5 gigahertz iFEMs with BAW filtering for tri-band applications. In cellular infrastructure, Qorvo was selected by a base station OEM to supply 3.4 to 3.8 gigahertz 8 watt GaN power amplifier modules for massive MIMO 5G deployments in Europe. We see infrastructure market strengthening in 2022 worldwide, with significant growth in the rest of the world, excluding China. In automotive, Qorvo was selected to provide cellular V2X connectivity for a leading Europe-based automotive OEM. In power, we secured design wins to supply silicon carbide for onboard chargers and DC-to-DC converters in support of leading automotive OEMs in Europe and in Asia. Sales of PMICs for video processors and solid-state drives were strong as were sales of motor control solutions for battery-powered tools. To expand our power franchise, we are combining our power management and silicon carbide technologies to deliver superior levels of power efficiency in high-power applications. Our first products are for the defense industry and we are broadening the portfolio to serve additional markets, including infrastructure and automotive. In bio, we were awarded a $4.1 million follow-on contract with the NIH RADx initiative supporting a COVID flu combo assay and a COVID antigen pooling application. We also signed a channel partnership agreement for distribution in the U.S. and submitted a clear waiver application to the FDA to expand deployment in point of care settings. In both mobile and IDP, Qorvo is capturing diverse opportunities supported by multiyear secular growth drivers in 5G, IoT connectivity, defense and power. We are operating well and expanding the markets we serve while investing to sustain product and technology leadership across our portfolio. And with that, I will hand the call over to Mark.

Thanks, Bob and good afternoon everyone. Qorvo’s revenue for the fiscal year 2022 third quarter was $1.114 billion, $9 million above the midpoint of our guidance. Mobile Products revenue of $848 million was stronger than expected on higher flagship volumes. Infrastructure and Defense Products revenue was $266 million, with infrastructure and programmable power management up sequentially and year-over-year. Non-GAAP gross margin in the December quarter was 52.6%, 35 basis points above the midpoint of our guidance on better than expected mix and yields. This was the company’s fifth consecutive quarter above 52%. Non-GAAP operating expenses in the third quarter were $214 million, down $8 million sequentially on lower incentive compensation and timing of development programs. Year-over-year OpEx was up over – was up $20 million on new product and technology investments, including recently acquired company OpEx partially offset by lower incentive comp. Non-GAAP operating income in the December quarter was $372 million and 33.4% of sales. Non-GAAP net income in the third quarter was $330 million and diluted earnings per share of $2.98 was $0.23 above the midpoint of our guidance. Cash flow from operations in the third quarter was at $117 million, reflecting payments associated with the long-term supply agreement discussed on last quarter’s call. As mentioned then, we believe supply agreements allow us to advance our differentiated technology position and simplify our long-term planning. Qorvo is building longer term and more collaborative partnerships to provide our customers supply assurance and to address their product and technology needs. Capital expenditures in the December quarter were $50 million and remain concentrated in core areas such as BAW and GaAs, where we enjoyed a differentiated position and see continued growth. Free cash flow was $67 million and we repurchased $302 million of shares during the quarter. We continue to repurchase shares based on our long-term outlook, low leverage, and other factors. Turning to the balance sheet, in December, Qorvo issued its first investment grade note. The proceeds from this $500 million 3-year note were used in part to retire our $195 million term loan. As of the December quarter end, we had $2 billion of debt and $1 billion of cash. Our net debt to EBITDA increased to over 0.5 turn. Now, turning to our current quarter outlook, we expect revenue between $1.135 billion and $1.165 billion, non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 52%, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.94 at the midpoint of guidance. Our March quarter revenue outlook reflects an improving supply situation, high-volume smartphone launches and stronger IDP volumes. Forecasted revenue of $1.150 billion at the midpoint is up 3% sequentially and 7% year-over-year. We expect mobile to be flat sequentially and up around 5% year-over-year on flagship and mass tier phone launches and content gains and a more stable supply-demand situation. We project IDP to return to year-over-year growth in the March quarter, with broad-based demand supporting revenues over $300 million. Our March quarter gross margin guide of approximately 52% results in full year fiscal ‘22 outlook about 30 basis points higher than last fiscal year. We project non-GAAP operating expenses to increase in the March quarter to approximately $232 million due to increased investment in core technologies and new capabilities as well as early calendar year payroll effects. For the full fiscal year, our OpEx is projected to be just over 19% of sales, down from close to 20% of sales last fiscal year. Below the operating income line, other expenses will increase to approximately $17 million on the additional net debt. We project our non-GAAP tax rate in the current quarter to be approximately 7.5% and the full year rate to be 8.2%. Capital expenditures are projected to be around $55 million in the March quarter as we manage spend to intersect demand and support long-term supply agreements with multiple customers. We are still supply constrained in some areas and forecast to remain so beyond our fiscal year end. We continue to expand BAW and GaAs capacity along with some assembly and test to support growth. In summary, our results exceeded the midpoint of our December quarter guide. Our March quarter guide is consistent with our previous comments, including sequential growth in the March quarter. At the midpoint of our current quarter guide, for fiscal year ‘22, we expect revenue growth over 15% and operating margin over 33%. We project our full fiscal year EPS to be approximately $12.18, up 25% year-over-year. Looking beyond this fiscal year, Qorvo is well-positioned to serve secular growth trends in connectivity and power and to deliver growth in earnings and free cash flow. As mentioned last quarter, looking at the business by end market highlights Qorvo’s growth potential over the next several years. We expect solid growth on our advanced cellular products for smartphones as 5G mix grows, RF complexity increases and content expands. On broader connectivity solutions, we expect strong double-digit growth as connected devices increase and use cases proliferate. And finally, we expect infrastructure, defense and power markets to support double-digit growth as 5G build-outs pick up outside of China, defense spend mixes to higher performance electronics, and requirements increase for power semiconductors to support electrification trends. Now Cody, would you please open the line for questions?

Hi, guys. Good afternoon and thank you so much for taking the question. I guess my first question is on the supply front. Mark, I think you mentioned that supply constraints eased a little bit, but you also noted that you expect supply constraints to kind of stay around beyond the current quarter. Can you kind of elaborate on what you saw in the quarter and what’s embedded in guidance going forward? I think last quarter, you talked about gallium arsenide capacity constraints, which are internal to Qorvo and then also match that issues on the part of your customers, but if you can kind of describe what you are seeing from a supply perspective that would be helpful?

Sure. I will start and others can add. Yes, during last quarter’s call, Toshiya, we are in the midst of the most disruptive supply chain effects in the past two years. And these effects impacted and added further complexity to the demand picture. We provide the best view we could and we have seen it play out largely as expected. To your specific question on supply chain effects, they did moderate in the quarter and we expect the supply environment to continue to improve through this quarter and the calendar year. So, specifically on businesses, we are still seeing some chipset shortages in Wi-Fi, which impacted that business. In the defense supply chain, there is still some disruption COVID-related and then there are other pockets here and there, but Toshiya, it did improve as we expected. And even though we expect some continued supply disruptions in the March quarter, we expect it to be less than the December quarter.

Toshiya, this is Bob. The only thing I’ll add is we have made significant progress in bringing on our capacity in our gallium arsenide and we are in pretty good shape there. We have made good progress there. In our IDP business, some of the silicon supply in our connectivity business there, along with some of our power management systems business there, we still see tightness there. So that’s been impacting us. But as Mark pointed out, we do expect things to improve through the quarter and throughout the year.

Yes, that’s great. Thank you so much for the context. And then as my follow-up, for the March quarter, I think the guidance you provided for both mobile and IDP is pretty consistent with what you had guided to three months ago. I am guessing though, the mix, particularly within mobile may have changed, may have evolved over the past three months. Can you speak to what you are seeing in sort of the respective regions in mobile, in the U.S. and Korea and broader China? How you see those regions playing out? And as a quick follow-up to that, any sort of guidance on fiscal ‘23, I know it’s early, Mark, but any revenue looks or gross margin guidance on fiscal ‘23 would be super helpful as well? Thank you.

Yes, Toshiya, this is Eric. I will start with the mix in mobile. No particular meaningful changes we expected when we had our earnings call last quarter that we would see strength in Korea due to a lot of new design wins on ramping platforms across mass tiering and flagship as well. And those are playing out very consistent with our expectations. We did see a bit of mix shift within our China customer base. It’s clearly looking back into the December sell-out data in the channel. There was some mix shift between them. So far, we are early in this quarter, but it’s beginning to moderate back to normal. So really not any significant changes versus what we expected.

Yes. And Toshiya, on the outlook beyond this fiscal year, we will plan to provide more on our fiscal ‘23 and the rest of calendar ‘22 on our next earnings call. What we can say is based on what we guided, we know this March ‘22 quarter is stronger than typical and that’s based on the timing of phone launches, content gains and the profile of IDP demand.

Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. Two questions, if I may. First, a clarification. May you comment on the overall revenue contribution, your largest customer contributed to in the quarter? And I have a follow-up.

Karl, as you know, we don’t report quarterly what we do with our largest customer; you’ll find that when we report the K at the end of the year, we will clearly give you what our largest customer was.

Yes. I try my luck. I appreciate that.

Karl, we are consistent though.

That is true. Hey, on the guide, one of the concerns from investors is that capacity constraints may limit the adoption of 5G handsets this year. While you have less control over the number of 5G phones being sold, I was hoping you could discuss the content opportunities you see collectively from UWB wins, design engagements across Android midrange as well as what sounds like share gains in Wi-Fi for flagship devices. So if you could just discuss that that would be helpful. Thank you.

Yes. So I guess the first part of it regarding chipset constraints affecting the amount of 5G, I think to the extent that there are chipset constraints in the modem side of the business, I would assume those suppliers are going to prioritize 5G and latest technologies. So we doubt that’s going to be a major factor. When we look at, for example, our China customer base, they are still well under half their shipments are 5G. So they have got a lot of 4G shipments, especially in the export market, that will be more impacted probably than the 5G, I think. So yes, looking forward, we’re really pleased with the 606 launch and a lot of content that we talked about last quarter beginning across integrated modules and tenant control, but also, of course, UWB. It’s a great foothold for us gets our software stack proven, and that makes it a lot easier to go across the rest of the Android ecosystem. And we are already talking about wins in the consumer home devices for UWB, Xiaomi, for example, with their connected home products. And we’re beginning to put the whole Android space together for UWB. So that’s great. And then in addition to that, the integrated modules generally, power management, we definitely see both APT, average power tracking and ETIC power management systems, getting a lot of traction from Qorvo. And then lastly, of course, our antenna control solutions continue to be strong, transitioning to NIM-based as we exit the next fiscal year. So, a lot of – yes, a lot of potential areas for strength throughout the year.

Thank you.

Thanks for taking my questions. On the first one, just to clarify, I thought Mark, you said that March is stronger than typical. So what does that say about June versus seasonal trends?

Yes, Vivek, it’s a good question. And as I answered the earlier question, we’re going to refrain from talking about next fiscal year in any sort of detail until we finish this fiscal year. I think it’s just in this environment, it’s too early to call the June quarter. It really depends on volumes and some of the supply situation that we’ve discussed earlier. And as you point out, given the strength of March, we may see a sequential decline in June. But again, it’s too early to call. And in any case, we would expect a return to year-over-year growth in September if that were to happen. So that’s all I’ll say at this point.

And the follow-up to that, just a clarification on inventory if my model is right, it is up to, I think, over 114 days or so. I imagine the supply chain is tight everywhere, but what’s happening with your balance sheet inventory? And how should we think about your – the direction of that inventory, what that implies for utilization and its impact on gross margins over the next several quarters?

Sure, Vivek. And you’re right on. It’s about 115 days. So as you point out, we ended the quarter at over $700 million of inventory. I think the first thing I would say is this was in line with our forecast. And when viewed historically, it’s high, but it’s within the range of experience that we’ve had. Having said that, given our focus on cash flow and capital returns and risk management, it’s certainly higher than we want it to be and higher than it’s run over the past 1.5 years or so, we have clear line of sight in bringing it down. It’s elevated for a number of reasons, including build heads for ramps that you’re seeing now and sustained volumes and flagship and also content gains in flagship and mass tier and the increases in IDP and there are other demand factors such as supply/demand alignment in China as some share shifts there. But we’re working through those. We understand why it’s up. We forecasted it. We have a plan that rolls off over the next few quarters, and we expect more normal turns as we move through the year.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I’m going to try again on June a little bit. I expect you don’t want to give a number out. I guess Qualcomm just guided it down in June is talking about just down. Maybe you could just talk about, you have a lot more higher exposure to Android market. So maybe without giving us an actual amount, can you maybe just talk about that Android market? Obviously, there are some new ramps in terms of new modems from some vendors that you should do well with. You’re clearly growing in March. It may not be the same iOS story that others are indicating. I just kind of try to – if you could walk us through the kind of moving pieces for June, that would be helpful?

Eric, do you want to take it? Because I mean we have two parts to our business plan. We have our IDP business and our mobile. So I think we will let Eric talk a little bit about the mobile side.

Yes. I think to your point, Blayne, the Android ecosystem is pretty exciting right now and growing, especially growing exports. It’s not just a China story by any means. And high-end products from Google, for example, and in Samsung, obviously, we believe it’s going to be a very good story for us this year. And our alignment there will start out – you’re beginning to see the phones come to market. You’ll see a portion of the content, I think throughout the year, we will continue to grow content as more devices move out from them. So that will be a good story for us this year. And we mentioned Wi-Fi earlier as well. Wi-Fi across the Android ecosystem has really opened up for us since you had a 6, 6E and 7, it’s getting harder, the filtering is definitely getting harder, and they are implementing it with chip-on-board front-end solutions instead of fully integrated modules. So that’s a very good trend for us. And we’re seeing broad traction across Android with very complex Wi-Fi front-end modules now. So all of that goes to what we think is going to be a good year for us in content growth in Android.

Okay. I guess my follow-up, I did want to ask about the growth you’re forecasting in IDP for March. I think the connectivity part of IDP has been kind of flat to down. So I know supply has been a big issue. Can you talk about the drivers for that double-digit sequential growth for IDP for March?

Blayne, this is Philip. Yes, so we are seeing really strong demand in most of our end markets. If you look at the cellular infrastructure side of the business, what you see is really the deployments moving into the U.S. and into Europe. We are strongly positioned in those segments. And so we’re seeing some of those tailwinds. When you look at our defense business, defense and aerospace business, again, we continue to see big programs coming in that we’re positioned well on. And so we are excited about what that business looks like going forward. And then on power, we continue to see a lot of strength both on the programmable power management side of the business, but also on the United Silicon Carbide side of the business. And we kind of lumped those two together. We feel that we have a real strong advantage both from a technology and product side of the United Silicon Carbide side, but also as we put the silicon side of power and create system-level solutions for our customers, we see a lot of opportunities for SAM expansion in that market as well. So we feel we’re positioned well and we like where we are right now.

Yes, Blayne, I would just add that as Philip said, the growth is broad-based and virtually every business line in IDP is up sequentially and year-over-year. The exception is Wi-Fi. And that’s related to some of the chipset issues we talked about earlier. But we expect that business to pick up in FY ‘23.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to go back to the next question and double-click on the inventory topic. Are the days of inventory up primarily because of you anticipating some good growth in fiscal year ‘23? Or is it up in relationship to some of your long-term supply agreements? And maybe you can give us a little more detail on how you plan to roll off that inventory.

Sure, Gary. It’s not related to the supply agreements. It’s a combination of one, to support the growth that’s in front of us. And we’ve talked about the flagship in last year and the success we’ve had there and the strong – the atypical growth profile you see here in March. So they are absolutely demand factors. There is a demand realignment in China. And we’ve all seen that. We feel great about our position in China. And over time, on the other side of that alignment, we’re in a great position, and we’ve got agreements in place that will support the demand and working down that inventory. So we’ve got a good plan. We’ve got the guidance I’ve given before on our target 52% gross margin; that is still something we adhere to, and we’re working to expand off that. And then we will provide you more guidance in the next earnings call.

Okay. As my follow-up, I wanted to ask about some of the emerging revenue opportunities. Perhaps on the silicon carbide side, can you give us a sense of where you may be on annualized revenue run rate as we perhaps exit fiscal year ‘22? And then on ultra-wideband, is there an opportunity here in the automotive end market? I know that hasn’t necessarily been a big end market for you, but should we think about UWB as being primarily smartphone-centric for Qorvo?

So yes, this is Philip. So yes, so Gary, I’ll take that. So in terms of United Silicon Carbide, I don’t think we are giving out specific kind of revenue numbers on that business. But I can tell you that the number of opportunities that we see coming in to our sales funnel is impressive. And we feel like we have a real significant opportunity there. When you think about the world as we electrify as we go towards more carbon-neutral systems, energy efficiency is one of the key factors that’s driving that, right? And with that drives this power need to look at compound semi-type solutions. And really, that’s in our wheelhouse at Qorvo, right? That’s what we do. And so we feel really good about that business and the opportunities continue to scale. On UWB, I’m going to pass that over maybe to Eric.

Yes. Sure. When we did the acquisition of Decawave, I know one of the key markets we talked about was automotive, and that certainly hasn’t changed. There is no question that next-generation key files will be UWB based and that will grow throughout the years, up to 7 UWB points in each car plus one in each key file. So it’s going to be a great market. In terms of units, of course, it’s a couple of hundred million a year sort of automotive units. So for us, anchoring in the handset is super exciting. When you look at the 1 billion to 1.5 billion handsets available and anywhere from three to five accessories for each one before we even start talking about connected home things. So it’s going to take some time for a new technology like this to roll out. There is a lot of activity in the standards bodies. Now everybody is on board. It’s clearly happening. So that’s a broad area. We also – we mentioned one of our strategic highlights was around a module combining our UWB with the Nordic BLE and targeting a completely different segment, which is sort of enterprise and industrial IoT applications. And there are hundreds of use cases for these sorts of devices around the enterprise for asset tracking and also in industrial applications for similarly asset tracking and other things like tags. But – so it’s a broad – it’s really a broad, broad market and applications really based on very similar radio architecture. So there is a lot of leverage in our core technology development in UWB both in the software and in the hardware.

Thanks a lot. I’ve got a couple, Mark. It’s clearly, there is a large overshoot on shipments to the Chinese OEMs last year. You guys are shipping everything you use your hands on, I guess, in March and June and then we had an overshoot. It was reflected in last quarter’s guide in this quarter’s inventory. I know you don’t have hub inventory with any of the Chinese, so your visibility into what’s actually happening there is very limited. But you’ve already got a quarter now underneath your belt. What do you – given that one quarter with the burn rates going on, what you see now when do you think you’ll get more back to a normal inventory level and your shipments into China will start reflecting really sell-out versus what we’ve seen so far, which is just 'we will take everything they can get'. And then, Eric, if I could, given there are big changes in Samsung’s phone business with Broadcom out now and then move to modules in the mass tier, can we expect Samsung will break the 10% revenue level for Qorvo this calendar year? And as kind of a sub-question, given all these shifts, who do you think you are taking share from, especially in the mass tier given that was more of a quasi-discrete design, you’re gaining there? Who do you take it from? And then I have one for ADP.

Well, there is a lot there.

You should just go home.

You can pick and chose. Pick what you want to answer in that.

So, Ed look, I think that when we look at the business, okay, and we look at it from a capability perspective, what we like about our silicon carbide technology is one, we have a leadership position in efficiency in the specific technical areas that drive that efficiency, and I think that’s important. And I think that capability is why you see the business having quite a bit of traction. I mean you can see it in the release, there are announcements about onboard charging wins in automotive and DC-to-DC. I think the other piece to it is that when you look at the technology that we have, we can generate about twice the revenue per wafer – silicon carbide wafers than our competition can. So, we – because of that advantage, we feel like we have the ability to use more of a foundry model as opposed to an in-house model right now. And when you look at specifically the silicon carbide substrate supply, what we see is more and more investment in that area, and we see more and more entrants coming into that space, which we think will make that more competitive over time. So, I mean those are some of the economic dynamics that we see, okay. I would also say that, again, silicon carbide is in our wheelhouse. We are a compound semiconductor company, right. We have a lot of those relationships. So, I hear you, I understand your view, but we think there is a real opportunity there for us. And the market, let’s just talk a little bit about the market. It’s a very, very large market. And even what you may be calling niche and I would assume maybe you are talking outside of automotive, you look at IT infrastructure, you look at other areas, it’s still a very, very large opportunity. And so we feel like we have the opportunity to build a meaningful franchise. And then when you combine that with our programmable power management, where I can build systems, I can put that into module capability, which is at the core of what we do. We feel like maybe we have a better shot at it than you are giving us credit for right now. But that’s short and sweet. And I guess one last thing, I have been an executive in the power business and analog and I have been doing this for 25 years plus. And I think there is something there, I really do. I am excited about it. And I think it can be a meaningful franchise for us here at Qorvo.

Great. Thanks.

We want to thank everyone for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again at upcoming investor conferences. Thanks again. Hope you have a great night. Thank you.