Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:KEYS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mehdi Hosseini: Okay. So the fact that the supply chain is moving out sort of China, that’s positive. Now if I may, just a quick follow-up. So you do have more than 50% exposure to your customers’ R&D budget. On top of that, there is a structural changes happening with the supply chain that is also positive. And those two factors on aggregate could offset some of the cyclicality nature or production-related sensibility or volatility. Is that the right way to think about this?

Satish Dhanasekaran: I think that’s what’s playing out right now for us, yes.

Operator: Our next line of questions comes from the line of Matthew Niknam with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Matthew Niknam: Two, if I could. First on backlog. So you mentioned you ended the year at about $2.55 billion. I think our math would suggest something about $100 million higher, just relative to the 2.5 you mentioned last quarter. I’m just wondering if there’s any order cancellations to be aware of or if there’s an FX component affecting this? And then secondly, on the China trade restrictions, I think you’d called out a two to three percentage point headwind from those restrictions. I’m just wondering, is that incremental in fiscal 1Q? And is this primarily an EISG? Or could it show up elsewhere?

Neil Dougherty: Yes. So this is Neil. I’ll take the backlog question and then let Mark address the China question. But yes, so you’re — I mean, obviously, our orders within the quarter outpaced revenue by a little bit more than $100 million. So we do continue to add to the backlog as we’ve gone throughout the year.

Mark Wallace: Yes. And Matt, the specific China trade situation that went into effect on October 7. So there wasn’t much effect in our Q4. We will see some effect in our first quarter, but the 1% to 2% is projecting out over a run rate of the business for the entire year based on other situations. The other thing just to note is that we have not seen any changes in our cancellations. It’s been running at a historically low level for the last four quarters, and that was the case again in Q4.

Operator: Our next line of questions comes from the line of Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Aaron Rakers: Congrats on good execution in the quarter. I just want to at a high level go back to kind of the defensibility of the model, if I can. Can you remind us where the mix of the business stands today between R&D exposed versus, let’s say, manufacturing exposed? And I guess on that same kind of thought process is that, where do you stand as far as the monetization effect of the software strategy? Where do we think that progresses to over the next year, whatever time frame you want to think about?

Satish Dhanasekaran: Yes. Thank you for the question. I think at the highest level, we’re at approximately 60% R&D today, 30% manufacturing and 10% deployments. So that’s the sort of mix of the business. Clearly, we believe R&D secular, you look at some of the areas in R&D that we’re focused on, that involve next-generation innovations such as with 5G and then 6G and automotive and digital health, so on and so forth. And it really gives us this diversity of applications that is — gives us a resilience in this environment for sure. With regard to the software strategy, it, again, goes congruent with our with our go-to-market approach because we’re here to enable innovations to happen faster. And the way we do that is by offering more software-centric solutions.