Applied Optoelectronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAOI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Savageaux: Hi. Good afternoon. And congratulations on the outlook, in particular. I wanted to follow up with some questions there. I see there’s a good bit of deferred revenue that has been added to your balance sheet here, both short-term and a little long term. And I was wondering if part of that revenue increase might be some of the NRE or project development payments coming out of Microsoft in addition to product revenue. And if that’s the case, I wonder if you could try and quantify that. And I imagine that would have a real positive impact on gross margins as well or is this just all module revenue driving this increase?

Thompson Lin : You’re talking about in the guidance. How much NRE revenue or

Tim Savageaux : That’s right.

Thompson Lin : So there is some of that in there for nondisclosure reason, I can’t give you the exact toll in there, but there is some of that in there. But really, the bulk of the increase in margin is coming from increased margins on the products that we’re selling, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks. It’s not primarily being driven by NRE revenue. And that’s a relatively small amount that’s included in guidance.

Tim Savageaux : Okay. Great. And so would you say the same thing about product revenue being the bulk of the increase, the sequential increase in data center. And within that, — do you expect to see these dynamics continue around 400 gig and 100 gig in terms of outsized — where do you expect, I guess, over the next few quarters, your 400-gig revenue to go or, say, I guess you’d classify 200 gig plus as a percent of total data center revenue?

Thompson Lin : Yes, I expect the 400 gig. And you’re correct in saying it’s 200 gig plus, but for us, that’s almost entirely 400 gig. We don’t have a lot of 200-gig business — we expect that to continue to grow, both in absolute dollars and as a percent of data center revenue. That being said, I mean, I think 100 gig is continuing to track very well as well. So I think both of those things are looking good. as I mentioned when Simon asked earlier. You had another question there, Tim, I’m sorry, I forgot. Yes. I think basically, we’re just asking — I think the first part of the question, if I remember, was just basically asking is this really truly product revenue is driving the increase in revenue as well as gross margin? And the answer is, yes, it’s product revenue that’s driving it.

I mean we’re selling a lot more 100 gig and 400 gig in data center space. cable TV, as we mentioned, is down a little bit, but we do anticipate that to pick up a little bit sequentially in the guidance and that’s what’s really driving the growth.

Tim Savageaux : Great. And I could ask you a question about kind of what’s happening at your Microsoft, your biggest data center customer. So on the one hand, you look to be developing this active optical cable product or what I assume to be a very high-speed application, 800 gig, I suppose, maybe 400 as well associated with an AI build-out. And yet you’re also prior to that seeing some pretty strong increases in volumes and maybe pricing as well, given the gross margin movement on the current module product. I wonder if you can kind of relate those 2 things. I mean, we’ve seen Microsoft with a pretty dramatic uptick in spending here this quarter that’s expected to continue really for the next several quarters. So from your perspective, I’d be interested on kind of what’s happening sort of short-term versus medium-term there with regard to data center connectivity demand.