FormFactor, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORM) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

On the other hand, the other side of the ledger, I do anticipate that customers are going to be able to continue to drive yields up. And as they do that, they’re going to drive test times down. Now they’re not going to sample. We’re still going to have a 100% test screen out these die, but I’d imagine they’d be able to eliminate some of those test vectors once they get the preponderance of those specific defect modes down.

Craig Ellis: Got it. That’s really helpful. Thank you. And then the question on Foundry & Logic would be, it seems like when you framed up 2Q dynamics and I know that lead times are short, I’m not asking what lead times you’re doing and telling, but it seems like there’s a very seasonal factor on the APU side. But it seems like the other factors that were at play, the move to 2.5D [indiscernible] et cetera on more product platforms and frankly a good pace on those movements. It seems those are more structural. So, is that fair and how do you feel about the business’s ability to see more sustained, steady, Foundry & Logic revenue gains from here with these inflections now starting to become more material? Thank you.

Mike Slessor: Yes. If you go back to, even when we presented our long-term target model, we expected the growth to come from Foundry & Logic because of some of the dynamics you talked about. Advanced packaging, a very, very strong driver of that business, long-term. Now some of our caution and conservatism is, as I mentioned in the response to a previous question, we have seen quarter-to-quarter digestion periods. The long-term secular trend associated with advanced packaging adoption in microprocessors and more broadly in Foundry & Logic whether it’s GPUs or apps processors is quite clear. What I would caution against is drawing a straight line that goes up into the right quarter after quarter after quarter. There are going to be some lumpy spots in this as customers ramp, as customers digest. But the secular long-term trend associated with Foundry & Logic growth, we’re very confident in.

Craig Ellis: That’s great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Vedvati Shrotre from Evercore. Your question, please.

Vedvati Shrotre: Hi. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations. So, maybe starting with the HPM side of things, can you help me to understand what the competitive positioning looks like on the HBM specifically versus the traditional DRAM? Is that a good way to think about it?

Mike Slessor: Yes. I think that is a good way to think about it. Part of it’s because we have a very strong historical relationship with the DRAM manufacturer as a customer who’s leading in HBM market share. So you end up, as in all of these situations, your native share to customer, if they’re successful in some of these submarkets can drive share gains, where to be quite candid, you’re getting fortunate with the situation that the company is in. I do think when we look at our differentiation and why we’re leading in HBM, it goes back to two points I made in the prepared remarks. One is HBM and I think this is fairly obvious to most people, involves higher test speeds as customers screen out those die. We’ve got a very differentiated DRAM offering for high speed and so that drives share.

The other piece to it and different customers have different approaches to how they handle this. The thermal scaling behavior, of an HBM stacked wafer is much, much different than a monolithic silicon DRAM wafer. And it turns out that our technology is able to deal with that variability, as the customer tests at high temperature, low temperature, room temperature, we’re able to deal with that variability in a pretty elegant and efficient way. So that’s another element of the differentiation, that’s driving the market share leadership.

Vedvati Shrotre: Are you — is it fair to say you’re seeing market share gains at the other two HBM manufacturers?

Mike Slessor: I’m not sure, we have enough exposure there yet, given the relative volume of their HBM volume to see any kind of movement of the needle on share at those other customers. But as we engage, that’s certainly an aspiration and a goal we have as they get more engaged in the HBM market.

Vedvati Shrotre: Got it. Thank you. Maybe on the Foundry & Logic side, could you provide us an update on where you are at the qualification process when it comes to the MPU fabless customer or the leading GPU customer — revenue?

Mike Slessor: Yes. So, let’s deal with them differently because they’re slightly different situations. And remind everybody that it is our strategy to be a leading supplier at all leading customers. So, we want to make sure, we’re qualified in a key part of the supply chain for both of these customers. Of course, they want multiple, probably two qualified suppliers and there’s really only two companies that supply high-end foundry and logic probe cards at this performance level. So, the first one, we continue to make progress with the fabulous MPU manufacturer. As we told you, I believe, on the last earnings call, we changed out our customer-facing team and have been engaging and seeing some progress there. We don’t have qualification or material revenue to announce, but it really is a key initiative for the company and we are making some progress.

On the fabless GPU manufacturer, there’s some interesting dynamics there. We’re working with them, with their foundry as they adopt some of the advanced packaging technologies to put GPUs together with HBM on new probe technologies. We’re in a qualification stage associated with that. But one of the interesting things we’ve seen from that customer is some nice contribution in the first half of 2024 associated with their switch business. That’s a business that they acquired a while ago, rounds out their data center offerings and that’s been a strong area of growth for us as we go through the first half here.

Vedvati Shrotre: I see. All right. I think that’s fair. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab from Craig-Hallum. Your question, please.

Christian Schwab: Yes. Mike, I’m just wondering when you are going to feel comfortable, given the next phase of growth and our previous target of $850 million and $2 in earnings power. I don’t think probably took into consideration the significant revenue and high bandwidth memory. When do you think, you’ll be ready to maybe readdress that with investors?