Good afternoon. Welcome to Fabrinet's Financial Results Conference Call for the Third Quarter of Financial Year 2023. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference to your host, Garo Toomajanian, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Fabrinet's financial and operating results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, which ended March 31, 2023. With me on the call today are Seamus Grady, Chief Executive Officer; and Csaba Sverha, Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on the Investors section of our website, located at investor.fabrinet.com. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the Investors section of our website for important information, including our earnings press release and investor presentation, which include our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation. In addition, today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements about the future financial performance of the company. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. These statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to revise them in light of new information or future events, except as required by law. For a description of the risk factors that may affect our results, please refer to our recent SEC filings, in particular, the section captioned Risk Factors in our Form 10-Q filed on February 7, 2023. We will begin the call with remarks from Seamus and Csaba, followed by time for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Fabrinet's CEO, Seamus Grady. Seamus?

Thank you, Garo. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our call today. We exceeded our guidance for both revenue and non-GAAP EPS in the third quarter. Total revenue in the quarter was $665.3 million, an increase of 18% from a year ago. During the second quarter, supply headwinds impacted revenue by $30 million to $35 million as anticipated. We continue to see a gradual loosening of component supply, and we expect further improvements in availability over the next few quarters. Our strong revenue performance and solid execution produced non-GAAP EPS of $1.94 in the quarter, above our guidance range and up $0.44 from a year ago. Looking at the quarter in more detail, revenue was essentially flat sequentially for both optical and non-optical communications, and was a little better than our expectations. Within optical communications, telecom revenue decreased sequentially as anticipated. This was primarily due to specific component constraints we called out last quarter, impacting silicon photonics programs and, to a lesser degree, from ongoing commodity semiconductor constraints. Datacom revenue was similarly affected by supply constraints, but the supply impact was more than offset by growth from some next-generation non-silicon photonics programs. As a result, we had a record datacom performance, producing strong quarterly and year-over-year growth. For non-optical communications, our business was up more than 30% from a year ago and was relatively stable with the second quarter as we maintained strong automotive revenue levels. Looking to the fourth quarter and beyond, we are not immune from the near-term inventory corrections being experienced in the broader optical ecosystem. While we are not a proxy for the industry, we expect the impact of inventory absorption in some product areas to be a headwind to our revenue in the fourth quarter. On the other hand, we continue to see gradual improvements and component availability. Longer-term, we believe end market growth drivers remain intact, and we continue to be optimistic about our position in the markets and our ability to execute efficiently. In summary, we delivered strong third quarter results with revenue and non-GAAP EPS that exceeded our guidance. We are seeing some demand variability as a result of inventory adjustments in the industry as well as persistent, but improving supply constraints. We remain confident in our ability to execute in this environment and deliver strong financial results. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Csaba for additional financial details on our third quarter and our guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. Csaba?

Thank you, Seamus, and good afternoon, everyone. Our revenue and non-GAAP EPS exceeded our guidance changes for the third quarter. Revenue was $665.3 million, which was up 18% from a year ago and down 0.5% from the second quarter. Demonstrating the leverage in our business model, profitability grew faster than revenue with non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.94, up 29% from a year ago and also above our guidance range. Looking at revenue in more detail. Optical communications revenue was $502.6 million, up 14% from a year ago and slightly down from Q2 as anticipated. Within optical, telecom revenue was $380.2 million, which was up 6% from a year ago, but a decline of 3% from the second quarter. This decline was primarily due to increased supply constraints for certain semiconductors used in this product as we discussed last quarter. Datacom revenue was stronger than anticipated at $122.4 million. This record level revenue was up 50% from a year ago and 8% sequentially. While supply headwinds restrained our datacom potential, strong demand for higher data rate, non-silicon photonics products more than offset those headwinds. By technology, silicon photonics revenue was $108.7 million, a 12% sequential decrease due to the supply constraint that impacted telecom revenue. By speed, revenue from products rated at 400-gig and faster was a record $221 million, up 17% from a year ago and 27% from Q2, which trends primarily from non-silicon photonics datacom products. After the record Q2, revenue from 100-gig products was $112.3 million, down 10% from a year ago and 27% from Q2. As faster data rate products continue to see strong growth, we believe revenue from 100-gig products would continue to moderate. Non-optical communications revenue was $162.7 million, slightly above our record second quarter, representing 24% of total revenue. Automotive revenue remained robust at $94.1 million, up 77% from a year ago and essentially flat with Q2. Industrial laser revenue was also relatively flat sequentially at $31 million. Other non-optical communications revenue increased from a year ago and from last quarter to $37.5 million. As I discussed the details of our P&L, expense and profitability metrics provided are on a non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release and investor presentation, which you can find in the Investor Relations section of our website. We continue to execute very well, and non-GAAP gross margin was 13.1%, up 10 basis points from Q2 and 40 basis points from a year ago. This result includes a benefit of approximately 20 basis points from FX tailwinds. Based on our hedging program, we expect these FX tailwinds to become mild headwinds in Q4. Operating expenses in the quarter were $13.2 million or 2% of revenue. This produced record strong operating income of $74.3 million, representing an operating margin of 11.2%. We continue to benefit from our strong balance sheet, with increasing interest rates. Net interest income rose to $2.9 million or $0.08 per diluted share, more than offsetting FX losses. With a more stable tieback than in the recent quarters, our foreign exchange loss narrowed to $1.3 million in the quarter or $0.04 per share. This FX loss was primarily due to asset and liability revaluations at the end of the quarter. The effective GAAP tax rate was 6.5% in the quarter, and we continue to anticipate an effective tax rate in the low to mid-single digits for the year. Non-GAAP net income was $71.8 million or $1.94 per diluted share. On a GAAP basis, net income was $1.60 per diluted share. Note that our GAAP results include a restructuring expense of $5.9 million in conjunction with the closure of our UK facility, which we discussed last quarter. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statements. At the end of the third quarter, cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investments were $538.7 million, up $11.1 million from the end of the second quarter. Operating cash flow was $37.1 million. With CapEx of $19.8 million, free cash flow was $17.3 million. During the third quarter, we bought back approximately 35,000 shares at an average price of $116.72 with a total cash outlay of $4.1 million. As of the end of the third quarter, $90.8 million remained in our share repurchase authorization. Now I will turn to our guidance for the fourth quarter. As Seamus indicated, we are seeing the impact of inventory adjustments that our customers and their customers in the optical components market. As a result, we expect telecom revenue to be down sequentially in the fourth quarter. While our Datacom business is also experiencing the same inventory headwinds, we expect the continued growth from certain high data rate programs to more than offset this impact, resulting in sequential growth in Q4. We expect our strong automotive revenue to be flat to up sequentially in Q4. We continue to see gradual easing of supply chain cost trends and expect the revenue impact of this to decrease to approximately $15 million in Q4 or about half of what we saw in the third quarter. Considering all of these factors, we anticipate revenue in the range of $630 million to $650 million in the fourth quarter. From a profitability perspective, we expect to extend our track record of strong execution in the fourth quarter. That said, as we indicated earlier, we expect the FX tailwinds we have been experiencing to turn into mild headwinds in the fourth quarter. We anticipate non-GAAP net income to be in the range of $1.76 to $1.83 per diluted share. In summary, we delivered a strong third quarter performance with revenue and non-GAAP EPS above our guidance. Our fourth quarter outlook is moderated by inventory adjustments in the optical communication ecosystem that we expect to be short-term in nature. We remain confident in our ability to execute well through this variability. And we continue to be optimistic about our market position and longer-term growth drivers. Operator, we are now ready to open the call for questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Samik Chatterjee of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I jumped on a bit late, so I apologize if I might be asking something that you touched on in your prepared remarks early. But maybe just starting off with the sort of your customers and the nature of the conversations you're having with them related to the inventory digestion, are they giving you any more color in terms of the duration of those inventory adjustments or any more color in terms of when their orders return to a more normalized pattern? Thank you. And I have a quick follow-up.

Hi, Samik. So, as you know, we're really back to getting demand of 13 weeks at a time, which we've had before the component crisis. We had longer demand, or we had a longer horizon on the demand during the component situation. But right now, we're really back to 13 weeks of rolling forecasts from our customers. We don't have great visibility beyond that. We do expect the inventory correction to be relatively short-lived. We think it's maybe two quarters, something like that, and then we should be back to more normal ordering patterns.

And maybe one for Csaba here. The gross margins continue to be quite robust. Maybe if you can give us a bit more color in terms of particularly sort of how you're thinking about the puts and takes in relation to the near-term drivers, including currency as well as the sort of the lower volume leverage that you'll have? Thank you.

Hi, Samik, thanks for the question. So we have been communicating that our gross margins have been aided by FX tailwinds in the past couple of quarters. In the recent quarter, we had about a 20 basis point sequential tailwind from that. As I also mentioned in our prepared remarks, we are anticipating this tailwind to turn into a mild headwind in Q4. So overall, with the Thai baht being now stabilized, we no longer see these tailwinds continuing in our results. However, we continue to improve our operating efficiencies. So any short-lived demand correction or even longer-term potential decrease, we have a very agile business model and a very small fixed cost base. So we are confident that we will be able to maintain our strong operating performance as well. So again, the key message here is a 20-basis point tailwind in Q3 from exchange rate earnings that amount has been about approximately 3 basis points in our Q4 numbers.

Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks, Samik.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Henderson of Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. To clarify, when you mention the shift from a 20-basis point tailwind to a 30-basis point headwind, should we interpret this as expecting a 30-basis point decline in operating margins sequentially from the March quarter to the June quarter? Is that correct?

That's correct, Alex. Yes.

Okay. Just wanted to make sure that we were in the right metrics there. So I know you don't want to go beyond the June quarter, but have you had any conversations with your partners who probably talked to the OEMs who are sitting on a fair amount of inventory on their books about what the slope is and the duration of this inventory correction that we're currently experiencing in the June quarter? And will it continue through the September and December quarters? Or how do you kind of play that scenario out over time without necessarily getting to a forecast, which I know you won't do?

Yes, that's correct, Alex. We have a certain amount of visibility, but the further away we are from the end customer, the worse that visibility becomes. We supply some to the complete network system companies, but much of what we produce goes to component suppliers who then supply the complete network system companies that deliver to the operators. As you move further along the supply chain, it becomes less clear. However, based on the signals we've observed, we believe this inventory correction is likely to be short-lived, perhaps lasting two quarters. So we think this quarter and next quarter will be affected, but we still need to see how it unfolds. Overall, we anticipate it will be relatively brief.

And then one last question, and I'll see the floor. The systems business, can you give us any clarity on how the systems business is progressing and kind of what the slope of the ramp there looks like? Obviously, that does not have the same component problem that some of those component companies have to deal with?

Yes. As you know, we have several system customers, with DZS being the most recent addition. We have completed the transfer for DZS, and we are just starting to ramp up that business. We believe there are still opportunities to secure additional system business over time, both with existing and new customers. We are actively pursuing more system business, but there are a couple of key points to consider. First, we are very selective about the systems business that aligns with our goals. We need to ensure that we are either already producing a significant portion of the component content or that we can be confident in winning a large share of the content in those systems. Secondly, the success in securing system wins is often influenced by external factors beyond our control. While we are optimistic and actively pursuing these opportunities, several conditions must be met for success. That said, we believe we are well-positioned to seek additional system business over time, which can offer substantial cost savings for customers by reducing margin stacking, while also creating new revenue opportunities for us. We remain positive and excited about this area, but as you know, there won't be much to report until we have a confirmed deal. We will continue to work hard and pursue these opportunities.

Yes, that wasn't really the question, Seamus. The question is whether there is growth in that business from an organic perspective and how we should think about it. I understand that DZS is starting to contribute in the June quarter, but it will be more prominent in the September quarter. It will take some time for them to reduce their inventory, correct?

Yes. If you refer to our earlier comments, Csaba touched on our telecom business, which significantly includes our system wins and system business in that area. This sector is experiencing inventory corrections, affecting not only the components but also the network system side. While our datacom business continues to perform well, the telecom and optical component sectors are the most impacted by these inventory adjustments.

I'll get back in queue. Thanks.

Thanks, Alex.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Troy Jensen of Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Yes, first off, congrats on the nice results, gentlemen.

Thank you, Troy. Great to talk to you.

Yes, great to be back here. So just a follow-up on datacom strength, obviously, the non-silicon photonics were up nicely, but was that specifically due to new program wins? Or is that just broad-based strength in the category?

It's a combination of factors, primarily driven by new program wins. We're currently experiencing a ramp-up of 400-gig inside the data center, which is largely complete. As this occurs, we're seeing a decline in 100-gig, while also beginning to ramp up higher data rate products at 800-gig, which is driven by new demand and applications within the data centers. We're excited about this development. So, it's a mix of both, with a ramp in 400-gig and an introduction of new non-silicon photonics-based products.

Got it. All right. And I got a couple of year gap, obviously in my coverage of you guys, but can you just remind me how long did it take to fill up Building 8, and what's the progress now with Building 9?

Building 8, let me see, it probably took us in total four, five years to fully fill Building 8. Building 8 is a 550,000 square foot facility. Building 9 is a 1 million square foot facility. So we're off the ground, and I would say off to a good start in Building 9. But unlike before, Troy, we used to talk about statistics like occupied and spoken for. We don't provide that data anymore. But we're quite happy with the progress on Building 9 at this point.

All right, understood. Good luck guys and keep the good work.

Thank you very much, Troy.

Thanks, Troy.

Thank you. We do have a follow-up question from Samik Chatterjee of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you for taking my follow-up. Just a quick one there. I think Seamus, you mentioned the inventory digestion on the telecom side. So just wondering, like when you maybe dial back, obviously, a few quarters, we have gone through a period of supply issues. Are you seeing any portions of the portfolio still being supply constrained where there are still lead times that haven't really come back to normal? And is that an additional sort of headwind that you're tackling in some parts of the portfolio, just when we check in on that and where the supply situation currently stands on most of the components you are in shortage of?

Yes. So we mentioned in Csaba's remarks, he mentioned the $15 million supply headwind in Q4, which if you take the split between Telecom and Datacom, the majority of that will be in our telecom business. But we are seeing that beginning to taper off, and I think we're probably one or two quarters away from no longer calling out a supply headwind. So it's a $15 million headwind this quarter. It was a $30 million headwind last quarter. And we really are back to a more normalized component supply situation. Like I say, Samik, I think we're probably one to two quarters away from no longer calling out the supply headwinds, hopefully.

Okay, and a quick follow-up on the 800-gig products that you're already ramping. Is there any material variation in the gross margin that those come in at relative to your 400 gig given that this is more obviously sort of leading edge of what's being done at the industry right now? How should we think about that?

No, generally newer products are maybe a little bit better margins than older products, obviously. But aside from that, the margin profile would be pretty standard for us, Samik.

Okay, thank you. Thanks for the color.

Thank you, Samik.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Henderson of Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Great, thanks. I was hoping you could give us some context around the non-speed optical products. What's going on in that segment and what your expectations are for the June quarter for that segment? Is that a big piece of the slowdown within that portion?

Yes, you're right, Alex. The non-speed rated business is affected by the inventory correction. We have multiple products and customers involved, and this situation is indeed influenced by the inventory correction. While we haven't provided specific details or quantified the impact of the correction, it is certainly a challenge for us this quarter. Additionally, a significant part of this issue is related to the non-speed rated segment of our business.

You guys normally give some indication of what that number was. I didn't hear it in Csaba's comments. Can you give us what the non-speed revenues are?

Hi, Alex, so the non-speed revenue was actually down sequentially in Q3 versus Q2 by about $10 million. So right now, our non-speed rated business is sitting at about $145 million a quarter run rate.

And can you talk about the guidance? Can you give us any sense of what you expect that to do sequentially into the June quarter?

We haven't provided guidance for that, and we do not intend to elaborate. We expect it to be down, but we are not disclosing specific numbers.

Got it, thanks.

Thank you, Alex.

Thanks, Alex.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Seamus Grady for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Thank you for joining our call today. We delivered strong third quarter results. As we look ahead, we're confident that we can execute well during periods of short-term market variability. And we remain optimistic about the long-term growth trends in the markets we serve. We look forward to speaking with you again and seeing those of you who will be attending the JPMorgan conference in Boston later this month. Goodbye.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.