Coherent, Inc. (NASDAQ:COHR) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Ruben Roy: Thanks very much and congrats team on the execution and solid results. I guess, Chuck, I wanted to follow up on Sanjai’s commentary. Which is – the question, I guess would be sort of around longer-term expectations and the CAGR and the CAGR has been moving around on kind of your overall datacom transceiver expectations, so I think in the shareholder letter last night, 21%, which is great, but it’s down a little bit from the previous assumption. And so I guess the question would be, what are the moving parts in sort of how you guys are thinking about the longer-term CAGR? Is that you part – are there parts of telco in that? Or is it just datacom that you’re considering and any kind of additional detail on how you’re thinking about longer-term growth would be helpful? Thank you.

Chuck Mattera: Thank you, Ruben. Thanks for the question. Sanjai?

Sanjai Parthasarathi: Yes, Thanks, Ruben. Thanks for the question. Yes, we did take it down a little bit from our last report. Two things happened. One, CY ’23 was much bigger than what we had originally anticipated. And then over the long-term, we’ve taken down the sub 800G numbers a little bit. So we are still projecting 21% over five years, and I made the comment earlier about 800G and beyond. That is still growing at the same kind of clip that we had previously anticipated. We keep – the market is young and fluid. We keep getting data points from our customers and end customers. So we are constantly revising our view of the market. Hopefully, that answers the question.

Ruben Roy: Yes, it did. Thank you, Sanjai. And then for a follow-up, I had a gross margin question as well, given that datacom transceivers are a meaningful part of the kind of the way the gross margins move around. I guess, can you give us a little more detail on some of the corrective actions around the transceiver yields? And as you look out into fiscal ’25 or some of those corrective actions do you think applicable to the 1.6T ramp?

Chuck Mattera: Ruben, yes, sure. Lee?

Lee Xu: Hi, Ruben. Thanks for the question. This is one of our key target for our operations, the datacom transceivers. First of all, we did just – we are transparent in terms of – we had a slightly unexpected yield issue impacting our 800G ramp-up in Q3. And that problem has been resolved and we’ll see on the datacom a significant margin improvement. And we are going forward in FY ’25 because more and more products is going to move to 800G and higher data rate, we think that will further improve our datacom transceiver margins. So going forward, because of our vertical integration, because of our kind of being a leader on high end part of the market, we are quite confident of our gross margin and also the net margin. So does that answer your question?

Ruben Roy: Yes. Thank you.

Chuck Mattera: Yes. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Thomas O’Malley from Barclays. Your line is open.

Thomas O’Malley: Hi, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I want to ask on the timing of 1.6T. You guys are saying fiscal Q1, your competitor last night was kind of talking about the end of the calendar year, maybe beginning of the next calendar year. There’s really only two major customers who are doing 200G per lane at 1.6T. Could you talk about is that sampling in the September quarter, which is fiscal Q1, when do you expect volume production? And is that across multiple customers or just concentrated amongst one or two? Thank you.

Chuck Mattera: Okay. Thanks, Tom. Good morning, Tom. Lee, please.

Lee Xu: Okay. Yes, thanks for being so clear of what we have published. Yes, we are ready to sample 1.6T or 200G per lane based transceivers starting on our physical Q1. And we do expect our volume shipment to start at the beginning of calendar ’25 of our Q3 fiscal year. And so far everything’s going as expected and we’re excited about this new opportunity.

Thomas O’Malley: Helpful. And then the second question was around silicon carbide. You guys described just an issue during the quarter. Historically, you’ve had a customer in electronics that’s made it a little bit easier to kind of solve for the revenue in the silicon carbide business. Could you just maybe give us a little more color just because that customer has gotten so small, where that revenue has gone from a silicon carbide perspective? And then you talked about some strong growth in the out quarter. Any additional details on where that went in the quarter and where you’re expecting over the next couple?

Chuck Mattera: Yes. So Tom, as I understand it, you’re trying to plumb our data in the electronics market for sensing versus silicon carbide and you’d like to have a clear view for silicon carbide. Sohail will give you the color that you need, I think.

Sohail Khan: Hi, Tom, this is Sohail Khan. The – in Q3, we – our silicon carbide had some operational issues about – we mentioned about the power failure and that power impacted – power failure impacted the factory which limited our ability to deliver to the plan. All those actions have been put in place. We were able to get everything back within 30 days. And I am looking at a very good strong Q4 and we expect that we will grow more than 50% from Q3 to Q4.

Chuck Mattera: I hope that’s helpful, Tom. Hi Tom?

Operator: All right. Thank you.

Thomas O’Malley: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question will come from the line of Meta Marshall from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Meta Marshall: Great. Thanks. Congrats on the quarter. A couple of questions from me. Maybe just first on, you noted that your expectations for kind of growth in sub-800 gig declined and that was what led to the kind of industry or change in the industry growth rate. But just what are you seeing in terms of just anything – any commentary on sub-800 gig demand? And then the second question, not to harp on the gross margins piece, but kind of understanding the overhang to fiscal Q3 and the yield issues that you’ve resolved both in silicon carbide and datacom. But with most of that seemingly resolved given the answers you’ve given today, just what is the reason for kind of a slower Q-on-Q pickup than you had been forecasting kind of last quarter? Thanks.

Chuck Mattera: Just Meta, good morning. Just repeat the last part of the question.