Ichor Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:ICHR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Krish Sankar: Yeah hi, thanks for taking the question. First one, Jeff, I just wanted to ask you a question. I understand demand weakness it’s kind of well understood. So, that’s kind of a negative thing. If you look at your customers, all the semi-cap OEM customers are shipping a lot to China and, obviously, they can charge a higher ASP even though it’s mature notes.Do you get any benefits from that, or is it neutral, or is it even negative for Ichor? Because if mature notes, so the gas boxes are smaller, if it’s lower ASP product you’re selling. I’m just trying to get your thoughts on how China impacts you because it’s clearly a huge benefit for your customers, but doesn’t seem like it’s impacting you as much?

Jeff Andreson: Well, I think if it’s a new tool that ships into China, the 300 mm, we benefit just like any other tool that goes into China. What we don’t benefit is we don’t sell anything directly to any China OEMs, process tool manufacturers like Anora or anything like that. We don’t participate in that level. I would say our participation at the 200 mm level is a little bit lower then it is at 300 mm. Some of that is still done in house and so I don’t know that it’s a huge headwind for us, but it’s obviously not a, we benefit as though our customers do. Anything that they ship into China at 300 mm will get a piece of if that’s market share that we’re, a part of.

Krish Sankar: Got it. And then I have 2 other quick questions. Number 1, you kind of mentioned your revenues hanging around these levels in the first half of next year. Do you really need to see an NAND inflection for these revenues to grow or are you banking on anything?

Jeff Andreson: Well, that’s that is a great question, Krish. A NAND inflection would be fantastic. I mean, obviously, I think, as you know, our customer base well, NAND for us is a reflection of what our customers are seeing and NAND is down as much as 75%. So any inflection there is tremendously helpful and would drive kind of the memory spend. I would say, this year, we’re going to be 75% FoundryLogic. So obviously, it would definitely help. I would say, we don’t see that inflection in the next two quarters in the first half of 2024. We don’t see any indication of that yet.

Krish Sankar: Got it. And then the final, just a clarification. On the silicon carbide side, do you still have only one customer or you have more than one?

Jeff Andreson: We have one customer in that space. We haven’t set who it is, but, they we’re on multiple platforms there now and as they continue to iterate, we were the call it the tool or record there. We talked about the market being $60 million and I would say that this this one customer has got a reasonably good share of that market, but there’s still 3 or 4 other players that can address this market over time. We see this market as kind of doubling in the next 4 or 5 years. So it’s an area of focus for us and this is, what I would say is, these are deposition tools.

Krish Sankar: So Thanks a lot, Jeff.

Operator: Our next question comes from Brian Chin, Stifel.

Brian Chin: Hi there, good afternoon. Thanks for letting us ask a few questions. Maybe, Jeff, first question. With EUV, litho delivery sort of flattening out plus or minus next year, have you already seen an adjustment from your customer? And are there are there any inventory headwinds to consider moving forward?

Jeff Andreson: I don’t think there’s any inventory headwinds, with our EUV customer. I think that, what I’ve said in the past, they’re very transparent. We don’t really see a deviation from what there’s telling, the external world. The only thing I would remind you of is we deliver about 5 months before they can deliver a tool. So anything in the first half of the year, we’ve already addressed in our back half of the year shipment for them. So and they’re remaining relatively flat. I think as you know, that customer is expected to press 10% of our revenue this year.