Everspin Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRAM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

These licensing deals are obviously very lumpy and they are opportunistic. I would not say that this is the last licensing deal that we’ll come across. We hope to get even more going forward. I’m not giving any guidance but we are hopeful that our technology keeps getting recognized and we keep getting picked up for other projects. And just as a reminder I think a year ago we had talked about a deal with Honeywell where we’re actually building a 64-megabit array. And there obviously it’s more of a persistent memory type solution for Radiation Hard environments. As far as our 64-megabit and the 16 megabit parts that we taped out and brought production this year. They are on schedule. People are looking at our parts and qualifying them. So, we are on schedule to getting them hopefully qualified and into early production towards the end of 2024.

If I miss anything please remind me Nick.

Nick Doyle: No, got it all. Thank you. For the — we have seen weakness with FPGA guys that were reported AMD and total lead times [ph] and maybe we’re seeing that in your products, slightly declining next quarter. Would you say, that’s an accurate — that I noticed that correctly?

Sanjeev Aggarwal: So, I don’t know, if it is specifically the FPGA or not but like Anuj mentioned, we are cognizant of the macroeconomic conditions in Asia Pacific. As we said — as Anuj said, we are — we have been strong for the first three quarters, but we are starting to see some movement in Q4 and also in early 2024. But that is also convoluted by the data, that now that the supply chain constraints are removed, our lead times have actually dropped. So our customers’ behavior has also changed with their ordering within the lead times. So, it’s not quite clear, if it’s because of the macroeconomic conditions, or just because our lead times have changed, but the two combined together has changed the behavior in the backlog over the last couple of quarters.

Nick Doyle: So just kind of confirming that your lead times, have gotten even lower compared to last quarter and that’s kind of impacting the outlook. Just related to — and the reason I asked is kind of last quarter we were saying, that the backlog is really strong and it gives us visibility into the near-term quarters. But now, because lead times are coming down, that isn’t as accurate today?

Anuj Aggarwal: I guess — This is Anuj. I guess the way, I would describe it, so what’s happened is the lead times were 52 weeks. They came down to about 30-something weeks, and then we reduce them further to about 27, 26 weeks. So we saw lead times, come down. And then in addition to that, one of the things you’ll see industry-wide that you might have noticed, is that the supply constraints loosened up as well, right? And so what that did was that created, what we’re observing to be a customer behavioral change. And so, they’re — they’re mostly booking within the lead time and then they’re booking some outside the lead time as well. So, that’s really nice. But it’s not as much as they were doing historically. And so now it’s kind of come back, so let’s call it the backlog pre-pandemic levels.

And so even though it looks relatively normal from that perspective, it has declined from the really rich backlog from a year ago where there was a 52-week lead time, not enough capacity and people were getting worried about getting capacity, right? So they were just booking well in advance. So, that’s the observation that we’ve seen.

Nick Doyle: That makes sense. Thanks and wait to ask [indiscernible]

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Nick, you have additional question go ahead.

Nick Doyle: Yes. I’ll ask one more. Just on that back — staying on the backlog typically takes 12 to 18 months to convert. Can you give any detail, on how much of your backlog is expected to convert near term versus long term? I know that we are talking some strong growth or — some growth in the second half 2024, based on the backlog last quarter.