Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Matt Ramsay: Hock, I think in some of the prepared script that you guys disclosed that you’re now sort of in the compute offload ASIC franchise, the fiscal year was $2 billion. And I think that’s maybe a third higher than it was last year. It looks like some of the — you guys did an event on that business earlier in the year, and things really jumped up in fiscal €˜18 and then kind of leveled off a bit in terms of revenue. And this is a pretty big, I guess, acceleration in that compute offload business. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the trends there. And are you seeing a broadening of the customer base or maybe higher volumes per tape-out as you go down the node stack? I’d just be interested in seeing some of the trends there. It seems like hyperscale really wants custom silicon at this point. Thanks.

Hock Tan: Yes, you’re right in that regard that we have multiple programs from the hyperscalers on custom or semi-custom silicon, or largely collectively we call as offload compute. And they all have — do their own. So, that’s — in one way that’s very positive and very opportunistic for our technologies to be deployed. On an ongoing basis, the tricky thing in all this is more will come on, the rate of ramp is harder for us to predict. These are very lumpy programs, fairly large and lumpy, which is why we can get to $2 billion and a raise — an increase of like, as you correctly say, a third from a year ago. But it’s lumpy. And the trend is very hard for me to chart out unless you ask for it over the next five years. And even then, if you look it five years, it becomes a question now, would these hyperscalers revert to merchant silicon versus continuing to use custom ASICs, and that poses another issue for me to figure it out.

But if you ask for me over the next year or two, where it will go, I’d be honest and say I’m not positioned to give you really a good forecast.

Operator: And one moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo.

Aaron Rakers: Hock, I wanted to go back to the prior comment you had made, and I want to make sure I’m clear on it. I think possibly within the context of lead times, you talked about customers, I think it was giving you forecast that were notably longer. I just want to understand a little bit of the context behind that comment earlier. Any kind of — appreciating that you’re not giving backlog, any kind of context around that lead time discussion would be helpful.

Hock Tan: We haven’t in any major substantive way changed our lead times by any means, as I’ve said before, and we kind of go along on that practice mode. And we have forecast, but we’re really not talking about forecast either as it relates to the previous comment. I think I was referring to backlog and paper that we use. And as I said before, even on those papers, we have with customer request dates for shipments, we scrub that date and then scrub each of those demands before we ship it out in the current quarter or the preceding quarter, depending on what it is. But we don’t — we have forecast. But obviously, we’re not giving you any indication of our forecast at this point simply because we are still grinding our way through the backlog.

Operator: One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Toshiya Hari with Goldman Sachs.