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

David Ridley-Lane: Sure. And as a follow-up, another tailwind here is autos, right? I think last quarter, you mentioned that it’s basically doubled over the last two years. This quarter, you mentioned $500 million in orders. So it’s nearing close to 10% of your orders in this fiscal year. Do you feel like the trend there is kind of I don’t want to say, not cyclical — not subject to sort of macroeconomic condition, but certainly has a strong secular element to it.

Mark Wallace: David, this is Mark. I’ll answer that. The growth we’re seeing is coming from next generation mobility. There’s some continuing R&D on the electronics side that’s more conventional, but the growth in new mobility is sustaining. It is secular. And it doesn’t just stop at the vehicle. It goes out into the charging infrastructure, into the underlying battery technologies. And we’ve seen what’s happened here in the last year with different countries and different regulations pushing this further toward adoption. The adoption in Europe is very strong and growing fast, in other regions as well. And our position in the market is very strong, helping our customers design and deploy this next-generation technology from the batteries to the charging infrastructure and then add, on top of that, all the connectivity and communications and protocols, as we talked about in the prepared statement.

So, this is really a great intersection of multiple strengths for us, and it has long-term secular growth drivers behind them.

Operator: Our next line of question comes from the line of Rob Mason with Baird. Your line is now open.

Rob Mason: Neil, I wanted to just clarify, you mentioned that R&D I thought would be roughly 16% of revenue this year. I just want to make sure that’s correct because that’s about one point more than it was this past year in ’22. And just I’m curious how that steps up. And what does an exit rate look like if that’s the case?

Neil Dougherty: Yes. So you’re right. Obviously, our 16% or 16% plus has been our long-term target. We under spent that here in FY ’22. I think a big function of that was the revenue outperformance within the year. If you remember, this time last year, we guided you to 6% revenue growth on the year, and we actually grew 12% on a core basis. And so, our R&D plans for the year were much more aligned with that lower level of revenue growth. So, I think as we go — we certainly continue to see a large amount of opportunity for us to continue to invest in the future growth of our business, a lot of pull from our customers to do R&D work. And so, our intent is to revamp back towards 16% of revenue. Obviously, the salary administration here in the first quarter is going to help to move us in that direction.

We may not get to 16% here in the first quarter, but looking at an exit rate that’s at 16% or even potentially a little bit above by the time you get out to the fourth quarter is not out of the question.

Rob Mason: Okay. Okay. That’s helpful. And then to the extent the supply chain does still remain somewhat tight through the year, how are you thinking about working capital? And any ability or — to pull that down as you go through the year, what are you thinking about working capital contribution for the year?