MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc. Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

Thank you, Olivia. Good morning. And welcome to our call to discuss MACOM’s fourth fiscal quarter and fiscal year 2021 financial results. I would like to remind everyone that our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as defined in the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed today. For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could result in those differences, we refer you to MACOM’s filings with the SEC. Management’s statements during this call will also include discussion of certain adjusted non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of GAAP to adjusted non-GAAP results is provided in the company’s press release and related Form 8-K, which was filed with the SEC today. With that, I’ll turn over the call to Steve Daly, President and CEO of MACOM.

Thank you, Steve, and good morning. I will begin today’s call with a general company update. After that, Jack Kober, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide a more in-depth review of our fourth quarter and full-year results for fiscal 2021. When Jack has finished, I will provide revenue and earnings guidance for the first fiscal quarter of 2022. Then we will be happy to take some questions. Our fourth fiscal quarter financial results represent continued improvements in overall performance. Revenue for Q4 was $155.2 million, and adjusted EPS was $0.61 per diluted share. Notably, we exceeded a 30% adjusted operating margin, which is an important milestone for the MACOM team. With another quarter of strong cash flow, we ended our fiscal year with $345 million in cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet. For the full fiscal year ending October 1, 2021, revenue was $607 million, and adjusted EPS was $2.15 per diluted share. We are pleased to report 14.5% year-over-year revenue growth and 126% year-over-year earnings growth. Our financial results this year would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of all our employees. In spite of certain supply chain challenges and COVID-19 headwinds, we met our internal corporate goals, our new product development schedules, and our revenue and earnings targets. I would like to thank the entire team for their extraordinary efforts and commitment. MACOM is fortunate to have such a hardworking and dedicated management team and employees. Our Q4 and full-year book-to-bill ratio was 1.2:1. In our turns business, it was approximately 13% of total revenue. We believe that the strong Q4 bookings reflect market share gains from a few large long-term I&D orders, which will ship over multiple quarters, as well as orders being placed by customers one or two quarters ahead of required ship dates due to longer than normal manufacturing cycle times. Our strong bookings over the course of FY2021 allows us to start FY2022 with a higher than typical backlog. We continue to manage various supply-related interruptions and challenges due to COVID-19 and production capacity limitations with certain semiconductor, package, and substrate technologies. Our operations planning and logistics teams have done an excellent job managing through these industry dynamics, and they are working around the clock to meet customer commitments. Fiscal Q4 revenue by end market was generally as expected, with Industrial and Defense at $75.1 million, telecom at $46.6 million, and data center at $33.5 million. I&D was up 5% sequentially, telecom was down 3% sequentially, and data center was up around 1% sequentially. For fiscal year 2021, I&D was up 44%, data center up 10%, and telecom down 10%. In FY2021, our top 10 end customers represented 26.5% of our total revenue. Our revenue concentration on any one product was less than 1.6% of our total revenue. We maintain a diversified technology portfolio as well as a very diversified customer base with thousands of customers. Our Industrial and Defense end markets performed well during fiscal Q4 and for the 2021 fiscal year. Our success in this end market is the result of the efforts that we began in 2019 within our engineering groups to revitalize our portfolio of RF and microwave products, including increasing the pace of new product introduction, expanding to fill in the gaps of our product lines, developing new innovative technologies, and re-engaging major customers with a more focused sales and marketing effort. More recently, we have also begun ramping up efforts to cross-sell our optical and high-performance analog products to Industrial and Defense customers, which creates a sizable growth opportunity for us. Overall, I am pleased with the level of engagement our sales and business development teams have had at major defense OEMs over the last few quarters, involving a variety of ground, airborne, ship-based programs, including radar, electronic warfare, avionics, and RF and optical communication applications. These programs are typically long lifecycle programs, and we expect they will contribute to our growth in FY2022 and beyond. Our telecom end market revenue was slightly down in Q4, primarily due to softness in the 5G market, which was offset by strong demand in broadband access and DOCSIS 3.1 cable TV infrastructure markets. MACOM has a broad CATV product portfolio, including single-ended and differential amplifiers, transformers, power dividers, combiners, couplers, and diplex filters. 5G represents a large growth opportunity for MACOM as worldwide demand for approved connectivity at higher data rates grows. In addition, we see growth opportunities in PON, CATV infrastructure, microwave radios, and SATCOM during FY2022, primarily driven by strong end-market dynamics, new product introductions, and market share gains. Our data center end market revenue was essentially flat in Q4. Nevertheless, we believe data center remains a large growth opportunity for MACOM. We expect new product introductions will be the primary driver for growth for us in this market. Some examples include 25G DFB lasers and 50G CW lasers, photo detectors, laser drivers, and transimpedance amplifiers. I’ll note that earlier this week, we announced a new linear equalizer product line, which will support high data rate applications, including active copper cables used inside the data center. We believe our strategy to collaborate with leading DSP chip suppliers allows MACOM to stay focused on designing and producing the industry’s next-generation high-speed TIAs and laser drivers. I’ll note with the ramp-up of 400G ZR and data center interconnects, we are seeing increased interest in the development of coherent solutions for next-generation 800G and higher data rates for connections both between and within data centers. Coherent ZR technology typically utilizes silicon photonic objects along with a coherent DSP transmit QAM-modulated optical signal on a single wavelength. MACOM is a leading merchant supplier of modulator drivers and linear TIAs for coherent modules, and we are currently in volume production with 32 gigabit, 64 gigabit, and 96 gigabit product families. We are also beginning to see the proliferation of coherent optics into the access market with low-cost tunable 100G solutions. As a merchant supplier, we are working with our module customers in the data center and enterprise markets to support their development of coherent optics with our existing product portfolio and are developing new products, as the requirements for higher bandwidth continue to emerge across all market segments. We had many technical accomplishments in fiscal 2021, and I would like to highlight a few. First, we internally documented 43 new invention disclosures. We formally submitted 49 new patent applications to the U.S. patent office, and we were awarded 44 new patents. Innovation and invention are critical to our future success, and I would like to congratulate our engineering community for their excellent work in this area. Second, during the year, we introduced over 130 standard products, and we expect to grow product introductions in FY2022 by an additional 35%. In addition, we had great success with our custom IC development activities, which complement the build-out of our standard product portfolio. During the year, we supported approximately 20 customer-funded major IC developments and many smaller unfunded projects. Further, I am pleased to provide a progress report on four important strategic technology developments. First, our 0.14 GaN on silicon carbide process transfer from AFRL is on plan, and our fab and device engineering teams have done remarkable work over the past 12 months. To date, we have verified the processes, small signal performance, and more importantly, we have measured over 4.5 watts per millimeter at 25 volts at X-band frequencies. We believe this power density performance is extremely competitive. In the coming months, we will be optimizing the process with the goal to achieve even higher power levels. I’ll note, we have recently designed a mimic power amplifier and processed it on both the AFRL and MACOM processes. With the exception of power levels, we have almost identical performance. During FY2022, we plan to complete the installation of new backside process equipment, as well as installing atomic layer deposition or ALD capability for device passivation. We recognize we have a lot of work ahead. However, our engineering results to date are compelling, and we believe that in time we will capture market share in the high-frequency GaN mimic market. Second, we are making excellent progress on our silicon photonics product development. As I reported last quarter, we are now working with our fab partner on producibility in yields. Third, our pure carbide high-power GaN amplifier product line continues to expand since its introduction over one year ago. Notably, we recently released three additional high power products including a 60-watt narrow band C-band product for radar and two general-purpose 15-watt broadband products operating at DC to 12 gigahertz and 30 megahertz to 3.5 gigahertz. And last, as a reminder, our 1000-volt chip capacitor product line or KV CAPS is fully production released, and we are beginning to take orders and gain traction in the market. KV CAPS are ideal for high voltage applications where small size and reliability are critical. As we look ahead to fiscal year 2022, our priorities include further accelerating and streamlining our new product development process. Gaining market share by staying focused on addressing customer needs and providing continuous engineering support, strengthening our competitive advantage by introducing new products based on MACOM’s proprietary semiconductor processes, increasing our direct business with major OEMs, and further optimizing the efficiency of our operations to improve profitability and cash flow. Our organization is lean and can move quickly to ensure we capture market share. We believe that making modest internal investments in our business can provide opportunities to achieve a higher than average return on invested capital, which supports our goal of establishing best-in-class profitability.

Thank you, Steve, and good morning everyone. We continue the trend of improving profitability during the fourth fiscal quarter ended October 1, 2021. Revenue, gross margin, operating margin, and earnings per share all showed improvement on a sequential and year-over-year basis. Adjusted operating margin exceeded 30%, which is a notable milestone for the company. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $155.2 million, up 1.7% quarter-over-quarter. As expected, the sequential improvement in revenue was driven primarily by an increase in industrial and defense. Data center was up modestly, partially offset by a modest decline in telecom end market. For the full fiscal year, revenue was $607 million in fiscal 2021, up 14.5% from $530 million in fiscal 2020. On a geographic basis, domestic customers represented approximately 46% of both our fiscal Q4 and fiscal year 2021 results. These amounts represent increases from the approximate 36% and 41% of sales to domestic customers in fiscal Q4 2020 and fiscal year 2020 respectively. Adjusted gross profit in fiscal Q4 was $94.9 million, or 61.1% of revenue, another 80 basis points sequentially. Adjusted gross margin for the full fiscal year 2021 was 59.6%, up 460 basis points from 55% in fiscal 2020. The strong gross margin performance for fiscal year 2021 was the result of a variety of ongoing initiatives that we’ve touched on in the past. We have numerous internal actions focused on improving the efficiency of our operations, including optimizing yields, reducing scrap, cycle time enhancements, and supply chain management. We’ve also been focused on pricing across our product lines and customer base. We believe all of these efforts will support our gross margins to continue to be above 60% and over time further contribute to additional gains in gross margins. Total adjusted operating expense was $48.1 million consisting of R&D expenses of $30.2 million and SG&A expense of $17.9 million. Total operating expenses were sequentially flat from fiscal Q3 levels. For the fiscal year of 2021, total adjusted operating expense was $191.2 million, down 2.4% from fiscal year 2020 levels. For fiscal year 2022, we believe that operating expenses will increase as we expand sales and marketing activities and enhance our R&D capabilities by investing in new programs to support our future growth, while also continuing to be very disciplined with our discretionary spending. Adjusted operating income in fiscal Q4 was $46.8 million, up from $43.9 million in fiscal Q3. Adjusted operating margin was 30.2% for fiscal Q4, sequentially up from 28.7% in Q3. Adjusted operating margin in excess of 30% represents a new record for MACOM since we went public back in 2012. For fiscal year 2021 adjusted operating income was $170.3 million compared to $96 million for fiscal 2020, representing a 77% year-over-year increase. Depreciation expense for fiscal Q4 was $5.7 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $52.5 million. For fiscal year 2021, our last 12 months adjusted EBITDA was $194 million compared to $124.5 million in fiscal 2020, representing a 56% increase year-over-year. Adjusted net interest expense for fiscal Q4 was $1.4 million, sequentially flat from fiscal Q3. Fiscal year 2021 adjusted net interest expense was $11 million, down from $23.3 million in 2020, primarily due to the restructuring of debt in March of 2021. Our adjusted income tax rate in fiscal Q4 remained at 5% and resulted in an expense of approximately $2.3 million. Our cash tax payments were $200,000 for the fourth quarter and $1.6 million for fiscal year 2021. We expect our adjusted income tax rate to remain at 5% for fiscal 2022. Fiscal Q4 adjusted net income was $43.3 million compared to $40.3 million in fiscal Q3. Adjusted earnings per fully diluted share was $0.61, utilizing the share count of 71.1 million shares compared to $0.57 of adjusted earnings per share in fiscal Q3. For fiscal year 2021, adjusted net income was $151.9 million, more than double fiscal year 2020 income of $67.1 million. Fiscal year adjusted EPS was $2.15 compared to $0.98 in fiscal year 2020. Now moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow items. Our Q4 accounts receivable balance was $84.6 million, up from $71.6 million in fiscal Q3. As a result, day sales outstanding were 49 days. Our accounts receivable balance reflects an increase over prior periods as our revenue has been increasing and also due to more shipments occurring later in the quarter as compared to prior quarters. Inventories were $82.7 million at quarter end, down a little less than $1 million sequentially. Inventory churns were flat sequentially at 2.9x during the fourth fiscal quarter. Our fiscal Q4 cash flow from operations of approximately $40.8 million was down $4.1 million sequentially, primarily due to the increase in accounts receivable balances. Capital expenditures totaled $5 million in fiscal Q4, fiscal 2021 CapEx of $18 million was up slightly from $17.6 million in fiscal 2020, primarily attributable to investments in our fabs as well as R&D infrastructure. We expect CapEx to increase in fiscal year 2022 and be in the range of $30 million to $35 million as we continue to invest in our internal fab and production capabilities as well as R&D equipment. Free cash flow was $35.8 million for the fourth fiscal quarter and $130.5 million for fiscal 2021. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments for the fourth fiscal quarter were $345 million, up $36 million from fiscal Q3 and up by $11.8 million versus the same quarter in the prior year. As a reminder, in March 2021, we repaid $100 million of our outstanding term loans and also entered into a $450 million convertible note arrangement, utilizing the proceeds to further pay down our outstanding term loans. Our long-term debt currently consists of $450 million of convertible notes due in 2026 and $121 million remaining on our term loans due in 2024. Neither of these arrangements requires any principal repayments until the maturity. We also have $29 million of finance leases. With the improvements in trailing 12-month EBITDA, we exit the fourth quarter with a net leverage ratio of around 1.7x and gross leverage of 3.1x, down from 3.4x and 5.5x, respectively, in fiscal 2020. During September, Standard & Poor’s upgraded our credit rating from B to B+. We view this as a recognition of our operational and financial achievements during the fiscal year and our continued efforts to strengthen our balance sheet. These improvements across the business would not have been possible without the teamwork and dedication of the entire MACOM organization. I would like to note that MACOM is a diverse business with a strong financial model and possesses many opportunities to grow and expand as we execute our strategic priorities moving into fiscal year 2022 and beyond. I will now turn the discussion back over to Steve.

Thank you, Jack. MACOM expects revenue in fiscal Q1 ending December 31, 2021, to be in the range of $157 million to $161 million. Adjusted gross margin is expected to be in the range of 60% to 62%, and adjusted earnings per share are expected to be between $0.60 and $0.64, based on 71.4 million fully diluted shares. In fiscal Q1, we estimate Industrial and Defense revenues to be flat, data center to be down 10%, and Telecom to be up 15%. As I have noted, we maintain a long-term perspective on executing our strategy, and we are confident that we can continue to improve our financials and take market share in the months and years ahead. Based on the opportunities in front of us, we believe that MACOM has the potential to achieve at least 10% year-over-year revenue growth in FY2022. In addition, we believe our business model has leverage to improve profitability. Our product portfolio is stronger than it was a year ago, and for this reason, we are confident we can meet or exceed our FY2022 targets. I would now like to ask the operator to take any questions.

Thank you. And our first question coming from the line of Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my question. Steve, on the last call, you kind of outlined this march to $1 billion or so in terms of sales by 2025. So that implies a low double-digit growth CAGR and you were above that trend line in the last fiscal year. Just curious to get your thoughts as you start the new fiscal year, you’re starting Q1 at a growth rate that’s below that trend line. What helps you accelerate later in the year? Just give us some puts and takes as you start the year? And what role do supply constraints kind of play as you think about the growth prospects for the coming year?

Sure. Thank you, Vivek. I think our comments from the last call still stand. I think we are on a good trajectory to hit our long-term goals of $1 billion, so not much has materially changed since those comments were made three months ago. I will say that we are starting the year with almost a near-record backlog. We have been diligently working on bringing better and better products to market. So I think we’re in a stronger point today than we were, say, a year ago. I also would just highlight not to look at any one particular quarter as a bellwether of sort of long-term growth because we are in dynamic markets, and we are constantly seeing some markets accelerate and others decelerate at different times. So I wouldn’t read too much into any particular quarter. And I’ll also just highlight that the underlying growth driver for our business is new products. As I talked about in my prepared remarks, we continue to increase the velocity of new products that we’re bringing to market. So generally speaking, I think we’re on plan. As I noted in the script, we think we can achieve at least 10% year-over-year growth. This is similar to the messaging that we gave really a year ago at this time when we looked into our fiscal 2021.

Got it. And then one more question on the supply side. Which is the bottleneck? Is it the ability to get your components out? Is it the ability of somebody else in the supply chain, which is gating your growth because the customer cannot complete the bill of materials? What is the real bottleneck for you? Or is the bottleneck somebody else in the industry? And what is changing or can change to help ease those bottlenecks over the next few quarters? Thank you.

Thank you. So I think we see both dynamics at play. First one being our ability to, let’s say, get capacity or deliver products on the required schedule. So we are constrained in certain areas there. And those areas would revolve around, in some instances, semiconductor technology or package technology and also in some instances, OSAT capacity, which is the assembly and test portion. So there are some constraints there. And then I would say, within the last three months, we have seen some of our customers actually coming up short on components necessary for them to build their systems, and that has resulted in push-outs of schedules and whatnot. But I have to say one thing. I view these as short-term issues. These are not going to stand in the way of MACOM growing and hitting its long-term targets. We look at these issues as tactical issues that our operations team needs to manage and work with our customers. The fact that we have such a diversified business, I think, puts us in a very enviable spot. As I highlighted in my remarks again, the highest volume product that we sold last year was less than 2% of our total revenue. So we have a very diverse business. While there are constraints in the industry, we are not getting too focused on that. We are focused on developing the new technologies and the products that we need to grow over the long term.

Maybe we’ll take the next question.

And our next question coming from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Great. Congratulations on the nice results and outlook. Steve, I wanted to ask two questions on the Data Center business. You guided it down 10%. Wondering if there’s any specific factors for the weakness in the December quarter. And then a follow-on question. You mentioned the new equalization product for active copper cables. It seems like there’s growing interest for active copper cables to extend reach in the data center. I’m just wondering if you could give us your outlook for the adoption of active cables in the data center and where your opportunities may lie with that product? Thank you.

Sure. Thank you. So maybe I’ll make some broader comments on our business in the data center and then talk about some of the sub-product areas that we address. So to put things in perspective, I’d just highlight first that the data center is one of our smallest end markets; it’s the third smallest. In fiscal year 2019, we had about $114 million of revenue. In fiscal year 2020, that grew to $126 million in revenue. Then last year, it grew to $138 million in revenue. Looking out over the next 12 months, we think that there’ll be continued growth in the range of 8% to 10%. So that will be four consecutive years of growth in the data center. This is also with the backdrop of our legacy AMCC business tailing off. We had expected about a $15 million decline in fiscal year 2022 compared to fiscal year 2021. So I’ll mention those points as the backdrop. As we ended fiscal year 2021, we had a very strong backlog. Our book-to-bill in the Data Center segment was the strongest of the three. But when you start to look at our business in the different areas where we sell our products, we see a lot of different moving parts. For example, our core business of 100G CWDM4 analog solutions for optical modules has been down in the last few quarters. Our lead customer’s volumes are down 30% to 40%. However, we’ve been gaining market share at other accounts, offsetting that decline, which we see as a good thing. We see that as diversifying our overall business. Looking into full fiscal year 2022, we expect our core 100G CWDM4 business to grow. The other two areas that we’re very active in are active optical cables, where we sell products for both 25G and 100G applications. The 25G business last year was very strong, primarily due to build-out in international markets, but has slowed this year and we think that will continue to slow in the next few months. The 100G applications for active optical cables have also declined due to inventory levels. Some of our customers are also facing issues in obtaining other components, which is impacting our ability to ship to them. However, we are expecting growth from 100G and 400G DR1 and DR4, which are very strong PAM4 platforms. We are also seeing growth in data center from crosspoint switches. We haven’t talked about that a lot recently. We sell into two applications in the data center: redundant switching and areas requiring very low latency. Our sophisticated 160 x 160 crosspoint switches sell into this market. We are also seeing growth in 400ZR applications. As the market is growing, MACOM’s leadership position with modulator drivers and TIAs comes into play. We have the industry’s best drivers and best TIAs. As this market begins to develop, where coherent is coming closer to the data center and inside the data center, we think that will drive growth. We’re excited about the new active copper cable product line as we have core competency there. We’re not quite sure how big it could be. Passive cables remain one of the highest volume areas within the data center, so we will have to wait and see how the adoption rate of active solutions will unfold. Our products support 50G, 100G, 200G, and 400G applications. We’re working with companies producing copper cables interested in our products, so there are a lot of moving parts within the data center.

Okay. Thank you for the great color.

You’re welcome.

And our next question coming from the line of Tom O’Malley with Barclays. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just want to hit on another one of the large segments in telecom. You had talked about earlier this year some weakness in front haul. You’re obviously guiding that business up pretty strong in December. Is that a return to some growth there? And then if you could just address some of the supply issues that we’re hearing on that side of the business that would be really helpful.

Yes. In terms of telecom, it’s a very diverse end market. It’s one of our potentially most diverse and possibly fastest growing over the next three to five years. Your question about weakness in front haul, I would say that it’s at a steady run rate at the moment, which is definitely lower than where it was 1.5 years ago. I wouldn’t categorize it as weak. I would say that there’s a steady pull of products for 5G front haul, but not at the rate that it was 1.5 years ago. Where we’re seeing growth in telecom is certainly cable infrastructure and PON, and we think these areas will continue to grow over the next one to two years. Our activity on the RF side of 5G telecom infrastructure has made great progress with our front-end modules and power amplifiers. Our GaN on silicon carbide power amplifiers are starting to gain traction, and we expect growth from that product line over the next 12 months.

That’s helpful. And then just as a follow-up, we’re seeing some consolidation in the optical universe this morning with Lumentum and Neo. Could you talk about – I know it’s very early here, and you guys probably just learned about it this morning as well. But could you talk about downstream impact there, obviously, you’d assume that there’s some analog componentry that you’re selling across multiple customers. How do you think that consolidation may impact you guys?

Yes. I haven’t really thought about that, and that hasn’t been a focus for MACOM here in the last 24 hours. This industry has seen consolidation, and we’ll continue to see consolidation in our position in the market as a merchant supplier to companies that build RF, microwave, optical, and telecom equipment. From our perspective, at a very high level, nothing has really changed from that merger or any other mergers that may happen in the future.

Our next question coming from the line of Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Yes. Hey guys. First of all, congratulations, once again, solid execution and avoiding a lot of supply issues that the industry is seeing. Steve, if I can ask you on that question, did you happen to leave any revenues behind? I know you mentioned some supply issues, but I was curious if you would characterize the amount that you might have left on the table?

Yes. I’ll just make a comment and maybe ask Jack to help answer that question. When we put forward our guidance for the next quarter, we take all things into consideration, including customer schedules and availability of material. We come up with what we consider a reasonable target for the next period. In areas where we think there may be supply constraints, we have to factor that in and then make a judgment. I would view all of that activity as normal business operations. I don’t look at that as leaving revenue on the table, and that’s not how we look at it. We focus on servicing the customers and what we can do in a reasonable amount of time. We don’t necessarily want to start putting a dollar value on what revenues we might have shipped in the past. But Jack, maybe you can help answer the question more completely.

Yes. Thanks, Steve. Good morning, Harsh. I think we performed as expected when we set our forecast. There can be a certain amount of variability with any forecast as the quarter evolves. It’s through that interaction that we’ve had with our customers and to some extent with our suppliers as well that we’re able to end up coming in where we did. We haven’t put a number on the impact to any one quarter. As Steve had mentioned earlier, it has become part of our day-to-day processes rather than a one-time issue we’re dealing with.

Understood, guys. And if I can ask a two-part question here for my follow-up. So with data center, the initial turn that happened in MACOM two years ago when you came on was data center was going to grow, and then we had a little bit of a setback for the customer, I think last quarter, a quarter ago, something like that. As you look out into the next year, do you think data center will overgrow that 10% number and contribute to growth? Or will it be in line with the rest of the corporate number?

Sure. The first part of your question, as we look at the three markets, we’re estimating today that Industrial and Defense and data center will be in the range of 8% to 10%, and telecom will be around 15% for year-over-year growth figures. That’s our best estimate today. We want to caveat those comments as it’s still early in the year, and a lot can happen in the next 12 months. As for your question about margin structure at a $1 billion run rate, it’s difficult for us to specify right now. As we launch our products, we are focusing on ones with above-average margins to drive additional profitability. However, quantifying specifics at this point remains challenging.

Good morning, guys. Great job on the quarterly and fiscal year execution and strong margins. The team has had a strong execution on new product introductions across all of the end markets. I believe that you guys had a target to grow new product introductions by 15% last year. How does that translate to the 130 new standard products that you talked about at the bottom of the call? Did you hit that 15% target? And just as importantly, what’s the profile of gross margin across those new products? I would assume the majority of them are above current corporate gross margins, but wanted to get your views.

Sure. We did hit our targets in terms of new product introductions last year. Looking into FY2022, we’ll be launching even more products, accelerating the rate of product introduction across all of our different business units. We don’t typically break out gross margins by end market or product line, so I can’t comment further on that. We’re always focusing on improving profitability while also increasing absorption and ensuring that our fabs are full. It’s a balance to maintain volume with pricing at some point. However, we have significant leverage in our business model to grow without incurring significant incremental costs. Jack, maybe you can talk about that for a moment.

Yes. We have a variety of different gross margin profiles that our new product introductions meet. The current business model has certain products manufactured internally along with others that are outsourced. This provides leverage when expanding our top line without meaningfully impacting incremental costs. We’re focused on improving our bottom line in addition to top-line growth from new products.

Yes. Thanks for that. You already have a strong position in metro and long-haul coherent optics, TIAs, drivers. It’s good to see you leveraging that on the new coherent 400ZR DCI technology. Does the team already have design wins for modulator drivers and coherent amplifiers with qualified 400ZR pluggable module vendors? Will these products contribute to revenues this fiscal year?

Yes, we do have customer traction, and we do expect a modest contribution in fiscal 2022. The major growth will come in 2023. We’re focused on supporting a wide range of module manufacturers looking to enter this market. Our leadership in optical technology positions us well, and we’re optimistic about our growth trajectory in the next one to two years.

Yes. Thank you. Two questions, if I may. First, you’ve continued to transition the business overall to industrial and aerospace applications that tend to have product cycles longer than your average. I was hoping you could discuss some of the key drivers as you look into your fiscal 2022, such as selling more of a module and/or subsystem versus a discrete solution.

The vast majority of our business is component-based. The growth this year will not come from modules, although we do packaged assemblies in some RF and microwave product lines that include a few active devices and substrates, and may be a connectorized box. We don’t view that as a subsystem in the next 12 months, though we are targeting that market. We opened a remote design center focused on high-frequency modules and subsystems, which is an area of strategic interest.

Thank you for that. I appreciate that. From my follow-up, I wanted to focus on data center and your comments regarding expected growth. Is the growth of 100 gig coming from outside the U.S.? When do you expect your PAM-4 solutions to reach revenue crossover versus NRZ products, as you gain these opportunities with 100 and 400 gig on Tier 1 offerings? Thank you.

Yes, much of the growth for the 100G CWDM4 is indeed coming from international markets. It’s difficult for me to estimate when we’ll see crossover with PAM-4 solutions versus NRZ products, so I can’t really comment on that at this time.

Yes. Thanks. Good morning. Just a clarification regarding some of the fiscal 2022 growth numbers that you’ve mentioned. If I heard you right, with telecom about 15% a year, and then data center and I&D up each about 8% to 10% year-on-year, it suggests that all of the sequential growth you get through the year comes from data center, with the other segments kind of being flat. Is that interpretation correct? And could you address whether there is a seasonal aspect to it, or is that just data center driving all of the incremental growth?

There’s some truth to what you’re saying, but we’re not providing specific guidance on sequential growth. Certain markets will experience growth and decline at different times throughout fiscal 2022. We saw that in the past quarter where telecom was down, I&D was up, and data center was flat. Expect variability in growth rates on a sequential basis; the three end markets should grow, with telecom projected at a minimum double-digit growth. Sure. Pricing is strategic in areas where we believe we have strength, but we are in competitive markets. Customers compare their component performance against competitors. There’s no broad opportunity to increase pricing; instead, we evaluate it strategically to gain market share while optimizing profitability. In cases of cost increases, we absorb them first. If not possible, we may pass some along to customers.

Yes. Thank you. Congratulations on the operating margin milestone. My first question is regarding automotive certification; when can we expect revenue from MACOM in automotive, and which applications might gain traction earlier?

We currently have some parts in production for automotive customers. These are primarily on the RF side of our technology. We want to expand into Lightwave, capacitors, and power management. Our high-performance analog team is also studying new standards for high-speed data connectivity in automobiles. We see automotive as a long-term growth opportunity, with some near-term initiatives particularly in high voltage capacitors.

Great. Thank you for that. Could you just give us a bit more detail on the DFB laser business, timing, ramps, and so on?

We announced the Clear Diamond portfolio in June 2021, targeting telecom applications. Five months later, we are gaining market share, with numerous customers qualifying the product. We support various protocols including devices for international 5G and CWDM6 for China. Our laser business is positioned for strong growth in fiscal year 2022, which could extend into the data center as well.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I want to touch on the supply side, noting that you mentioned Southeast Asia COVID issues that others have reported. Last quarter, you noted higher risk execution in Q4. How do you see that risk as we head into Q1? Is it still there, or has it improved?

One concern last quarter was shutting down certain countries, resulting in factories operating below capacity. However, that situation has improved. Countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia are returning to normal, significantly lowering those risks.

Great. Thanks. Regarding base station deployments in China, it appears to be slowing. Can you provide your outlook for China mainland over the next 12 months?

We expect steady, moderate growth in China. While many tenders were released earlier for 700 megahertz, we have little exposure to that market. Deployment will be muted. Our focus is on market share and introducing our newest products to enable growth, particularly in areas beyond China.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I want to go back to telecom growth drivers. Could you rank order how you think PON, cable infrastructure, microwave radios, and SATCOM will impact your telecom growth in FY2022?

It’s difficult to rank those markets; they will grow at different rates throughout the next 12 months. We expect 15% year-over-year growth overall in the segment, with strong contributions from cable infrastructure and PON. The current cycle is multi-year, not just one year. We aim to gain market share in 10G PON where we have a strong presence. Thank you, Olivia. I’d first like to apologize to all our attendees for the two interruptions on the call today. We’ll have to work on our infrastructure here to ensure that doesn’t happen again. In conclusion, I’d like to thank all our employees for their support during fiscal year 2021, and we look forward to a great fiscal 2022. Thank you for attending.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.