Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Coherent Corp. FY ‘24 First Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Paul Silverstein. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. Today on the call, we have Chairman and CEO, Dr. Chuck Mattera; and a number of executives who Chuck will introduce in a moment. Yesterday after the market closed, Coherent issued a news release and posted a shareholder letter along with an updated investor presentation in the investor relations section of our website. Both of these documents were furnished on a Form 8-K. This morning we filed our 10-Q. Today's conference call will be available for webcast replay in the investor relations section of our website. Before I turn the call over to Chuck for his opening remarks, please note that following our September overview webinar on our communications market, we plan on hosting our second market overview webinar focused on our industrial market, to be held on December 14th. I want to call everyone's attention to our shareholder's letter, which contains our traditional financial statements that were previously set forth in our earnings press release, along with detailed information around our operating performance, key trends, and outlook. We plan to use both of this morning's call to answer questions from analysts in the investment community. I also want to remind everyone on this call that we will refer to forward-looking statements, including all statements the company will make about its future performance and market outlook and actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in the first quarter 2024 shareholder letter and in our SEC reports. Coherent assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their respective dates. Also during this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the shareholder letter. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Coherent Chair and CEO, Dr. Chuck Mattera. Chuck, please go ahead.

Thank you, Paul. Leadership development is among the most important jobs of the CEO. Given how extensive our disclosures are in the shareholder letter, I have the following senior leaders with me on the call today. They are Interim Chief Financial Officer, Rich Martucci; Chief Strategy Officer and President of the Materials Segment, Dr. Giovanni Barbarossa; EVP of Lasers, Dr. Chris Dorman, who came to us through the Coherent acquisition; Sohail Khan, EVP of our Wide-Bandgap Technologies Silicon Carbide business; our Chief Commercial Officer, Magnus Bengtsson, who leads our global sales and service organization, and who also came to us through the Coherent acquisition; Chief Marketing Officer, Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi; and EVP of our Telecommunications Business Dr. Beck Mason, a recent market hire and one of the industry's top leaders, who chose to come to Coherent as a place to grow. They will participate in the Q&A fireside today to provide investors with a rich source of information about the depth and breadth of our markets, technologies, operations, and overall business, especially our leadership talent. And I'm sure you'll enjoy interacting with them today. In the first quarter, the Coherent team did a good job executing in the midst of a challenging macroeconomic environment. We posted revenue of $1.053 billion, which was slightly above the midpoint of our guidance, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.16, which was above the midpoint of our guidance. Operating cash flow was $199 million, which marked sequential and year-over-year improvement. We invested $62 million in capital equipment and we retired $19 million of debt. Macroeconomic headwinds and uncertainty continue to affect many of our end markets and will continue to constrain our near-term growth and visibility. Our first quarter results, however, demonstrate the success of our diversification strategy. While some of our markets remain challenged, our silicon carbide business, in which we recently announced $1 billion of investments by Mitsubishi Electric and DENSO, enjoyed another quarter of strong demand. We also saw a second straight quarter of extremely strong demand for our AI-related datacom transceivers and components. Both of these are indicative of the breadth and differentiation we offer to market leaders for disrupting the status quo and underpinning the irreversible megatrends that we enable. In addition to continuing to invest in our core assets, we are taking substantive actions to ensure that we improve our operating performance, especially to drive recovery in our margin structure, including through global integration, transformation, and realization of our synergy plan from the Coherent acquisition, as well as our previously announced restructuring activities. Turning now to our guidance for the second quarter of fiscal ‘24, we expect revenue of approximately $1.05 billion to $1.175 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of approximately $0.14 to $0.32. Our guidance for fiscal year ‘24 is revenue of approximately $4.5 billion to $4.7 billion, which is unchanged from our previous guidance, and non-GAAP earnings per share of approximately $1 to $1.50, which is also unchanged from our previous guidance. While our annual guidance remains unchanged, this simply reflects the confidence we have in that guidance, and we continue to believe that we still have real opportunities to exceed those results by several hundred million dollars, as we discussed last quarter. We will not hesitate to increase our outlook as we gain improved visibility regarding our ability to capitalize on these opportunities within fiscal year ‘24. Before we turn to your questions, I would like to say how appreciative and proud I am of our employees whose tireless dedication is setting the stage for now, next, and beyond. Coherent is well positioned with differentiated technology, exceptional talent, and high quality, efficient manufacturing platforms capable of delivering products to the market that are growing at high single digits to double digits. I believe that we are better positioned than others to take full advantage of our existing market positions and to grow deeper into these markets because of our growing scale and customer intimacy and trust. We are a trusted and valued partner with the industry leaders and that trust and intimacy creates stability in our core business and it also creates a flywheel effect of growth opportunities that many other companies simply don't have. We have tremendous upside and platform cost optimization from the ongoing integration, special restructuring, and transformation projects over the next few years. We have a track record to prove our likelihood of success. We have a good plan and roadmap to take advantage of all of these assets and the opportunities the markets are offering today, and to take advantage of the recovery and anticipated growth in our markets. We have a team of world-class technologists, industry pioneers, and executives with a demonstrated capability for identifying and capitalizing on market megatrends. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Paul.

Thanks, Chuck. We will now open the call to analyst questions. Please direct your questions to Chuck, who will decide who is best to respond. Kevin, please go ahead.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Our first question comes from Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, Samik.

Hi. Can you hear me now, Chuck? Yes, I can hear you.

Good morning, Samik.

Yes, good morning, Chuck. Thank you for your comments. I’d like to start by mentioning that last quarter, you discussed in the shareholder letter the planned capacity increase and the additional orders you could receive from customers if this capacity ramp is successful or surpasses your current expectations. Could you share your insights on the potential to exceed this capacity ramp? What challenges are you facing, and how are you approaching customers to secure additional orders for AI applications and the 800G transceivers in relation to that capacity ramp? I have a follow-up question after this. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Samik. Samik, I'm going to ask Giovanni to take that because he's got a view all the way from the laser through the transceiver. Giovanni?

So, hey Samik, thanks for the question. So I would say, generally speaking, we're doing better than our expectations, but it's very much a moving target in terms of the opportunity here, in the sense that the target's getting higher and higher, particularly as we said in the shareholder's letter, as the engagement with new, significant AI players are increasing, particularly those players that we have not been historically strong with. So we think that the overall opportunity is getting larger and our ability to meet this larger and larger opportunity obviously gets more complex, and more challenging, but I think we have the entire team focused on several of the needs to ramp, which are not only related to the supply chain, because as new products, and this is a very new product, 800G, there are all these MPI-related challenges to bring up to speed, you know, the manufacturing lines, the test equipment, and of course, supply chain, as we said, but most importantly, to ensure that we deliver high quality products to our customers in the volumes that are required to ramp.

Thank you. And so for my follow-up, if I can just ask about the long-term guidance that you gave in the shareholder letter about 40% gross margin and 20% operating margin that you're looking at. Can you share some thoughts about how you're thinking about making progress towards that in relation to cost versus what you need in terms of top-line recovery to get to those margin levels? Any thoughts around how much of that we get from cost savings that you're outlining versus any level of volume recovery that you need? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Samik. Rich?

Thank you. We will benefit from ongoing cost reductions, which include our restructuring and synergy plans, higher volumes as mentioned in our guidance, a better mix of higher-margin products, and continued long-term leverage to enhance our new product introduction efforts, as well as vertical integration to improve margins.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks for taking the call.

Thank you, Samik.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ruben Roy with Stifel. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you for letting me ask some questions. I wanted to follow up on Samik’s question, Chuck, and talk about just sort of the AI transceiver, NPI launches, the delta between sort of your full-year guidance and sort of what you're holding back? Love to hear some details outside of the supply constraints. Sounds like there's some qualification milestones needed. Is that product specific, customer specific? If you could give us some details on how you expect those qualifications to ramp near-term and what's left to be done before you actually start seeing some revenues?

Yes. Thank you, Ruben. Giovanni?

Thanks for the question. I mean, as we said earlier, new products generally require an incubation period in the manufacturing line to reach the quality, the yields, and the performance that we promised. So those are generally true for any product. This 800G is significantly more challenging than any other product we had before that came to this same type of market. So I think the complexity comes from the fact that while we are ramping for the orders that we already have, we're also engaging, as I said, new players in a meaningful way to further extend our opportunity in the near future. Therefore, eventually, as Chuck mentioned in his remarks, to see an upside for the overall market that we can address. So it's a combination of serving needs that we have short-term versus the needs to continue to increase the pipeline, the funnel of new opportunities for 800G with additional customers beyond those that we're already engaged with.

Thanks, Giovanni, for the detail. For my follow-up, on telecom, data points remain pretty negative. And nice to hear you guys talk about bottom here coming out of September quarter. Can you give us some details on what you're thinking in terms of it sounds like inventory's driving some of your view for the rest of the year, but starting in the December quarter, if you can give us any detail on how you're thinking about that business, whether it's market share or what's driving your view on a recovery, starting here near-term, however gradual that might be?

Beck?

Yes, sure. I think in the telecom softness, it's a combination of end market softness and inventory digestion at our customers. We have been staying very close to our customer base on this, and we see progress modestly coming through FY ‘24 and the rest of the quarters on their inventory digestion. Then we see gradual improvement in the end market demand really progressing through FY ‘25.

Okay, thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Maybe just on growth margins, was the weakness versus expectations on a mix of categories or just are there any higher costs that are needing to be paid to kind of clear some of the 800 gig transceiver bottlenecks to be mindful of? And then maybe just as a second question, just any more clarity on how you guys are thinking about debt repayment in fiscal ‘24? Thanks.

Okay, Meta. Rich?

Yes. So the margin weakness is a result of several factors. One was the lower volume that we incurred in the quarter. Unfavorable mix are the main key drivers. However, as well, we did experience prior period underutilization that hit the P&L as well. For debt reduction, right now we're anticipating $200 million of pay down for the year.

Great. Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold of Raymond James. Your line is open.

Great, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to get a bit of a clarification type question here in that, unlike last quarter's shareholder letter, and by the way, we like the way you're doing this, it's helpful. This one did not mention explicitly several hundred million of AI-related datacom sales in the outlook. And I'm just wondering how you'd like us to interpret that exclusion versus the prior quarter's letter? And then I've got a quick follow-up.

All right. Simon, thanks for your question. I'd like to get us back to basics. We have the guidance. The guidance is the guidance. I made some additional comments this morning to give a sense that we're still aiming to do more. But I don't want to get into a mode where we're going to have guidance and then guidance on top of the guidance. So we just want to get back to the basics. That's what we're doing. And as I indicated today, we might have some upside to it that we can achieve. For sure, we have upside as an opportunity. Okay?

That's very helpful. Thank you. And then in terms of this AI pipeline of business, I'm just wondering if you could help us bracket how much of this is hyperscale exposure? And how much of it is non-hyperscale? And what I'm getting at is trying to understand a little bit about the customer mix and concentration of the pipeline. Thank you.

Sanjay will take that, Simon. I can tell you, it grows every day. Sanjay?

Yes, thanks Chuck. So last quarter, Simon, we did 60% of our business came from hyperscalers, and this is both direct and indirect sales into hyperscalers. Does that help?

Thank you. Yes, it does. I guess I'm wondering about the pipeline more so than the most recent quarter.

So our pipeline is still pretty strong. We expect that in fiscal ‘25, for example, we believe that 80% of our datacom transceiver revenues will be from hyperscalers. A lot of it, the majority of it, is driven by AI/ML.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

Simon, thank you for your feedback too on the letter.

Thanks, Simon.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jed Dorsheimer with William Blair. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question here, guys. I guess, first question, just want to shift from most of the others around the 800G and just on some of your comments around the consolidation in compound semis, you mentioned this, one if you could give a little bit more color on maybe metric fab. And then two, on the new product introduction, you talked about reducing or improving cycle times. Could you talk about where they're at now and where you hope to get those to? Thanks.

Thank you for the question. When we acquired Finisar, we took on several wafer fabs that were fully utilized at that time. As we moved products and manufacturing lines between sites, we were able to determine the optimal footprint for our compound semiconductor manufacturing. We are currently working on this process, which has taken time. We have announced several shutdowns of smaller fabs and plan to transfer and integrate those manufacturing lines into our largest fab located in Sherman, Texas. While we have some other fabs in Europe and North America that will remain standalone because it would be too costly to relocate those product lines and the qualifications required are not viewed as advantageous, we have decided that for gallium arsenide products, especially those based on gallium arsenide VCSEL technology and some indium phosphide products, Sherman, Texas will serve as our center of excellence.

I'll take the second part, Jed. Thanks for your question regarding MPI cycle times. I would say one thing I think you know that we're built for speed. This place is organized for a great sense of urgency about everything we do. One of the benefits we have with our global footprint is we can do things 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is not so easy for everybody else to say. I would tell you that I can't give you a baseline generically, because we have so many platforms and products in the company, but I will point out that using AI in this last year, our teams have demonstrated a factor of two reduction in the cycle time for launching new products from our fiber laser business. That is going to be a contagious example that goes around the company. I think that AI is going to be a great driver, but it's not the only thing that we need to do. So a factor of two everywhere is a starting point for the mindset of the management team. Okay?

Got it. Thank you. Just as a follow-up, on the silicon carbide business, we are seeing greater restrictions on raw materials from China. I'm just wondering, graphite is an important component to both the furnaces, as well as the input material. Could you just update on supply chain exposure and if any in terms of how you see specific to graphite? Thanks.

Thanks, Jed. Hey, Sohail, are you out there?

Yes, yes. Jed, thanks for your question. First answer is no, we don't have the exposure. We have multi-sourced for both this material and the other components. We have put in place long-term agreements. None of our graphite suppliers have the basics coming from China.

Thank you, Jed.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, guys, for taking my questions. I'll also echo my happiness with the shareholder letter. Keep it up, please. I'm going to follow up on the topic of telecom. I guess one of the questions I had, looking at some reports here in earning season so far, including last night, we were seeing some inventory burns still taking place at the equipment level here. I'm wondering why you're seeing some start of a pickup here. And to the degree to which you can describe it, how much of this recovery is coming from transceiver-type products like ZR that you pointed out to shareholders with the letter versus things like WSSs and ROADMs?

So thanks for the question. Right now, I think what we're seeing is a little bit more strength on the WSS and the ROADM, the amplifier and that portion of the business. Really, as our customers are burning down inventory right now, we're starting to see different product lines there have a small pickup this quarter, and we think that's going to continue to perform in double digits for the second-half of FY ‘24. Our transceiver-based products see a lot of design and activity happening right now. There's a lot of RFQs and RFPs, especially for new technology products like our 100 gig Coherent ZR, and there's an increase in RFP activity around 800 gig, which is expected next year. We think that's very positive for that segment, but we think that growth will be more delayed towards the latter half of FY ‘24 and early FY ‘25 from a ramp perspective. Does that help provide a little more color?

Yes, that does. Thanks for that. My follow-on question will be in the display market. I think you talked about service utilization that has increased here sequentially, I think even a nice 20% number if I remember correctly, but still below your year-ago levels here. Wonder if you have any visibility into those utilizations continuing to improve and perhaps even get back to year-ago levels, and then does this imply or just give you better visibility on further CapEx orders within the display unit?

Good morning Richard, thank you very much. Chris Dorman?

Yes, in display the utilization of the OLED tools drives the service revenue. It's worth remembering that there are two factors in terms of utilization. It's the number of phone screens that are produced. But there's a multiplying factor in terms of the percentage of phones which are using OLED screens, and that has led to an uptick in the service revenue, the utilization of the Excimer lasers, and that will continue through the year.

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Sidney Ho with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Great, thank you. Good morning. I want to switch gears over to the industrials market. You seem quite confident that the business will improve in the second-half of fiscal ‘24. Can you talk about which subsegments do you think will lead to recovery between semi-cap, display, precision manufacturing, and aerospace? Particularly interested in your comments in Precision Manufacturing, you're seeing second consecutive order of growth, and some customers are requesting shipments on short notice, but that's quite different than what we are hearing from other broad-based semiconductor companies?

Okay, Sidney, good morning. This is Chuck. Sidney, we may have two or three people that have an angle on this, but we'll start with Sanjay.

Yes, thanks, Chuck. So in terms of our industrial market group, it's broken up into verticals, so we have our precision manufacturing vertical, our semi-cap vertical, our display vertical, and aerospace and defense. We are really excited about semi-cap. That market for us has been growing very steadily, quarter-over-quarter, and year-over-year. So we continue to see a lot of demand both from existing customers and new customers, and the envelope of applications seems to continue to improve. On precision manufacturing in particular, that is a market that is a lot more sensitive to macro. However, we do have certain areas of very strong growth, such as electric vehicles, so our stock market's growing at a 15% CAGR, the medical device market is turning around, and that's growing also fairly well. We've got some really big bright spots within precision manufacturing. I think Chris covered the display question earlier.

Do you want to add anything to that, Chris?

Yes, I would say that semiconductor capital equipment inspections are also showing growth. It remains strong. Our customers continue to pull on a strong backlog there.

Great. Okay, Sidney.

Okay, great. That's helpful. My follow-up question, though, I just want to follow up on the silicon carbide. You called the near-term demand for the silicon carbide business remains pretty robust, but recent data points from the industry seem to be more mixed in the past few weeks with demand for EVs maybe slowing down a little bit. Can you give us a sense of what you are seeing in terms of demand? Are you doing better than others, because you're gaining share? I'm also interested to see how the pricing side of things are. Are you seeing more competition in terms of prices? Thank you.

Thank you, Sidney. Hi Sohail.

Okay. Sidney, we have to look at the market not on a one-quarter basis because this is a market that is on a growth trajectory. It will continue to grow at close to a 30% compound growth rate over the next five to 10 years. One announcement from one vendor pushing in and out does not define the market. Overall market strength is there and the market adoption is there. Yes, when you have growth and many players are coming in, there will be price pressure. It is natural in any growth market. But we see strong growth and very good traction with large customers with long-term agreements in place.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Sidney.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hi, this is Blake Freeman on Vivek. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to go back to your AI opportunity. I know one of your competitors recently made an acquisition to enter the AI data cloud transceiver space. First, was hoping you can provide any clarity on the margin generator from higher speed AI-related transceiver products? And if you think this growing competition also creates any pricing risk in the market?

Thanks for the question. First of all, this clearly validates the investment thesis we had for the acquisition of Finisar years ago, so we had that vision which, as you can see, was a pretty good one. It reinforces the strength of the market that we are witnessing today and the upside potential that we all see. I think generally speaking, from vertical integration, scale, and technology differentiation, we are still the market leaders, and that's explained why we see the funnel, the pipeline for new engagement around 800G increasing daily in the sense that we believe that we have an opportunity that maybe we have not considered in the recent past to penetrate hyperscalers where we have been historically not as strong as we would have liked to be. Generally speaking, the competitiveness of the landscape is there. I think we welcome competition and I think we are very well positioned with the three attributes which I mentioned to compete and continue to grow and take advantage of the, again, the strategy we deployed years ago when we identified AI on demand as being a key driver for the growth of our business.

Got it, and then just as a follow-up on the silicon carbide side. I know there's certainly a supply-demand imbalance in the market. Just trying to get your thoughts around as there's more device vendors in the market who are kind of bringing materials production in-house. How should we think about the growth opportunities for Coherent, and I guess, your thoughts on the relative growth in the materials market versus the device market longer term?

Okay, thanks for your question. So, Sohail?

Yes. We see a demand on both ends that even if you say there are lots of suppliers in the market, people are still looking for good MOSFETs, MOSFETs that will be rugged, MOSFETs that will have high reliability and MOSFETs, which can address the future needs that are getting more and more integration and the amount of current and power you can handle. We see very strong demand on the device side from our customer engagements. On the material side, there is also strong demand for 200 millimeter, and there are very few limited choices. As you know, we were the first one to introduce the 200 product to the marketplace. We feel pretty good about it. Yes, there is competition, but competition reaffirms there is a strong demand for it.

Great, thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna. Your line is open.

Hey guys, congrats on the results and guidance and thanks for the question. I guess my question is around backlogs. So that's now increased two quarters in a row. Is this a sign, you guys think of the bottom? Does this mean we can grow revenue each quarter as we move through next year? Or are there some decent timing and fulfillment issues here in this backlog that would disturb that kind of linear pattern?

Okay, thanks a lot Chris. Good morning. Chris, I'm going to ask Magnus just to make a general comment about the overall pulse from the marketplace as he sees it from the point of view of the demand. And we'll see if there's a follow-up.

Good morning, Chris. Appreciate the question. So let me just talk a little bit about customer engagement, perhaps. I would say that customer engagement is really robust, and we see orders continuing to grow across the end market. Customers today, there's certainly the inventory digestion issues we mentioned with some of our end markets, but customers are really focused on innovation. The design wind funnel, the outlook that we have looks very robust across most of our markets. So we would expect that trend to continue.

Great. Thank you. Perhaps as a follow-up to someone else's question, did you guys get to take a look at the Cloud Light deal, or did you guys get to look at the Intel Cifo sale to Indiscernible, and were any of these deals interesting or perhaps in your opinion threatening in any way either? Thank you.

Okay, Chris. Giovanni, do you want to take that?

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question. No, we were not engaged. We don't need a contract manufacturer to add to our existing manufacturing lines. We believe that, as I said earlier, we welcome the competition. We think it's going to be a stronger competitor. So we endorse that, but as I said earlier, it's also an endorsement of our strategy, which we deployed years ago to be in this market at this time, be a leader with a larger scale and the broadest portfolio of differentiated components and sub-assemblies for to serve this market.

Thanks, Giovanni.

Looks like a nice.

Thanks, Chris.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Tom O'Malley with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just had one on the segments. So in your $4.6 billion guide for the year, could you give us a little more color on what you expect the comm business to do and then more specifically within the comm business, what you're expecting the telecom business to do and what the datacom business will do? I ask because there's obviously some big movements inside of the telecom and datacom business, and I'm just trying to get a little better feel for what you guys expect for growth last year. Thank you.

Okay, Tom, good morning. We're not going to give business unit guidance, and I think Rich can just make a general overall comment. I think at the midpoint, we're up 11% in the second-half compared to the first-half. There's some puts and takes across the segments. You want to say anything else, Rich about it?

No, that's right on.

Okay. If you have any specific question about the telecom market, Beck can take it, but he's not going to give you guidance in the second-half of the year.

Sure, I guess just the trend looks as though the high-speed data comm business looks as though it's the big driver of growth. Could you talk about, historically, you guys have said that within your comm business, the transceiver business is below corporate gross margins. In these new products, particularly in 800G, are you seeing a creative gross margins with those new higher speed products or are those still below corporate gross margins? Thank you.

Okay, this is a good question. Well, Rich will take it, but I would say at the launch point with all the things that we have going on, what we were at today, we’re driving to improve is just a general comment for the company. We have lots of flywheels turning inside the company all the way from the front end fabs where we're still adding capacity to keep pace with FY ‘24 demand, although that's a challenge, because it keeps going up, but especially because we believe FY ‘25 is going to be that much more exciting. Rich, make a general comment about the margins, if you would.

Sure. On the margins, the average is about where we are at as a company, but we fully expect, as we go through the learning curve, that the margins will increase going forward.

Yes.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Mark Miller with The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Thank you for the question.

Good morning, Mark.

I'm doing fine. Good morning. I just wanted to pursue a little more from your guidance. It looks like you're projecting improvements in margins going forward. You listed several things in your letter to shareholders. Is that being driven by higher revenues? I guess I have a similar concern about transceivers in terms of they being accretive to overall margins, especially when you're seeing strong growth there. So I'm just wondering what's driving the expectations for higher margins? Is it just higher sales or mix?

I'll take that. This is Rich. Thank you. As I mentioned before, our ongoing cost reduction, including our synergy and restructuring plans, and higher volume, as noted in our guidance, better mix of product on higher margin product as we move forward throughout ‘24, and our long-term continued leverage of our NPI. Anything that we can also get from our vertical integration where it drives margin improvement, we'll be implementing that as well.

Last question is the data centers. A couple of firms like Cigar and Western Digital are finally saying they're seeing light at the end of the tunnel with their data center customers. I'm just wondering what you're seeing in terms of data center business?

Sanjay, do you want to discuss it?

Yes, sure. So within our data comm business, there are two drivers. The biggest one today is AI, which is growing at a 47% CAGR. Our traditional non-AI business, if you will, is growing at a slower clip. But together, still the market is continuing to grow at a 20% CAGR long-term. So we are pretty excited about that market.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital. Your line is open.

Hey, yes, good morning guys. Yes, thanks for taking the questions. Chuck, I guess just sticking on transceivers and the higher speed. Do you have any sense if your position, I guess, how your position from a share perspective going forward? Would you expect to, I guess any view on expectations to maintain share going forward, gain share going forward, any context there would be helpful. And I have a quick follow-up, thanks.

I believe that we're in a great position. I believe that if you look even beyond 800G, given the portfolio that we have, the products coming through the funnel, that we're going to be able to continue to not only maintain that position, but we're counting on growing it.

And are you guys seeing, just given all the activity in AI, any greater urgency from your engagements around 1.6T? You know, you've given a lot of great context, actually, this calendar year, with regards to sort of timelines, industry 1.6T adoption. You made reference, I think, in the slide deck today to 3.2T. Any greater urgency there given what's going on in AI and any context around your kind of market positioning with regards to that. And that's it for me, thanks.

Okay. Thanks, Ananda. Sanjay?

Yes, it's clear that with AI, we need to increase speeds and do so sooner. We're making significant strides towards our 1.6T goal and believe we will be among the first to achieve it. We anticipate that the market will start transitioning to 1.6T around fiscal 2025. I want to emphasize that we have all the essential components ready, particularly the DFB-Mach-Zehnder laser, which is a 200G laser that we showcased at ECOC. We are progressing well in this regard. I hope that clarifies things.

That's great. Appreciate it, guys. Yes, no, that's super helpful. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Ananda.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Dave Kang with B. Riley. Your line is open.

Good morning, yes. Good morning. Thank you. Just regarding your data comms, I was wondering if you can provide what the mix was between 100 gig, 400 gig, 800 gig?

Yes. Please, Sanjai.

So the high-speed which we define as 200G and above was 70% of their revenues last quarter.

So I assume the remaining 30% is 100 gig. How should we think about, I mean, first of all, are they growing? And what do you think their runway is, and how should we think about pending decay eventually?

Yes, I mean, the slower speeds are typically today non-AI related, so they're not growing as fast as 800G and even some parts of 400G. But long-term, we still believe those speeds are still going to continue to grow, especially as the AI kind of moves towards the edge of the networks.

Got it. And my follow-up is regarding your CapEx. How should we think about CapEx for this fiscal year? And then fiscal ‘25 after you get that $1 billion investment from two Japanese companies? How will that drop off in ‘25 after silicon carbide investments?

Okay, two great questions, Dave. Rich, will you take those?

Yes. Right now, we're still holding to the full-year guidance that we previously gave of $350 million to $400 million for FY ‘24. On the silicon carbide for FY ‘25, obviously the investment will offset what we thought we were going to invest in ‘25.

Dave, when we close, we will run through in that next quarter revisions to our guidance. In the reporting quarter after the close, we'll update and give a strong sense of what we see both for ‘24 and give at least a glimpse of ‘25. Okay?

Got it. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you, Dave.

Kevin, can we go on to the next speaker?

Our next question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Good morning, Tim.

Tim, your line is on mute.

Good morning, Tim.

Sorry about that. Good morning, a couple of math questions here I think with some significant implications maybe. First one is on results and guide telecom versus datacom. And I think the anecdotal commentary is about inventory digestion on the cloud side, but if you look at how that's proceeding, it seems like most of the weakness sequentially was in telecom, going from 40% to 29% on a declining number. So, we talk in order book versus revenues, and we’re talking about those comments. Am I looking at that right? As you look at the guide, is most of that sequential growth, about $75 million bucks, in comms, and is that some AI starting to shift or telecom bouncing back or how will we characterize that? And I have a follow up.

Okay, well I think there's really two questions. Beck will take the one that's market related, and Rich will take the finance.

Sure, I mean on the telecom side, we see that growing modestly this quarter, and then we see double-digit growth recovery in the second-half of this fiscal year for our telecom revenues, right? I can comment on the ratio that was relative to the revenue last quarter.

Exactly. Okay. Tim, would you repeat the second part of your question for Rich?

Let me go on to the third part. And of course, there's a rich history of multi-part questions here with numbers of this call. But that is the overall question I'm saying I'm going to ask is what is the absolute size of your AI backlog, but I'm going to try and get there in a couple of parts, which is you talked about an order increase last quarter that was entirely networking driven, 30%. That seems like it's $300 million. There's some commentary here in the call about, despite orders coming down, the AI backlog going up 200%. So I'm going to give you a chance here just to give us a number for what you got in backlog that you would consider AI, whether that's all 800 gig or not?

Yes, I don't think we can give you that. What I can tell you is it's a substantial and meaningfully material one-off. But I'm not going to give you the number.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, thank you, Tim.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Hi, Thanks. Good morning. So you seem to be suggesting some recovery in the second-half on both the OLED side and the WFE side of the business? The OLED side, I think we understand what's happening with service utilization going up. What's your line of sight in terms of deployment of new Excimer laser tools in the second-half of fiscal ‘24, as well as your line of sight on the WFE improvement in the second-half?

Yes, as you mentioned, service utilization, uptick in the Excimer business for display in the near-term. In the long-term, the principal movements in the display market will be around the adoption of OLED technology in laptops, tablets, and IT panels. We are engaging with customers on Gen 8 investments. The timing of those Gen 8 investments should be clear early calendar year ‘25, and we'll be well-positioned to work with our customers on the expansion of OLED capacity for tablets and laptops, which would be incremental to our current business. We've developed solid-state technology in line with the challenges of maintaining a sensible cost level for those larger OLED panels. In the long-term, we see migration with TVs into the micro LED markets, which we're investing heavily in developing new tools for. Jim, did you have a second one?

Yes, the other question was just, and maybe I'll just group this into one last question on the balance of that laser and industrial business. It sounds like you're feeling relatively positive about the WFE portion of the business. Back-end semi, is that going to continue to be relatively weak? And are you assuming looking at precision manufacturing beyond the current quarter that the recovery there is still fairly uncertain? Is that a good way to characterize the outlook for this part of the business?

Yes, front-end semi remains strong. The reasons for that are that the customer relationship in the front-end semi market is a long-term roadmap. We engage, we partner with our customers in terms of developing that long-term roadmap. We develop lasers specifically for our partners in that area. It's more than a sale. The relationship lasts for 20 years in terms of one particular laser technology. The service component of the semi-cap business is very significant. We go on this long-term journey which gives us more certainty in the service business of the emergence of the semi-cap inspection market. So we get a great deal of visibility through our customers on that. In terms of back-end, it is softer. The recovery is taking longer, potentially the end of the fiscal year to see any change there. Precision manufacturing, PMI, as Magnus mentioned before, the recovery is around the end of the year. But all of that, the precision manufacturing, and the back-end semi is offset by the strength in display and the strength in semiconductor coupled equipment for inspection.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you.

Okay, Jim. Thanks for your question.

And I'm not showing any further requests at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to our host for any closing remarks.

Kevin, thank you. I want to thank all the analysts on the call for your thoughtful questions. As always, if we could be of any help throughout the quarter, please feel free to reach out. I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.