Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MPWR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Hsing: Well, thanks for reminding me the motion. I forgot about that. Okay, yes, we do have a lot of design win in the motion side, too. And we look at it. And the beauty is, I can’t call it specifically, really across the board. And that means we have our biggest customers, like 4%, 5%, maybe slightly higher out of these years. And all the other customers, there are a few thousand customers and a few thousand products around, I don’t know how many market segments. And they are very healthy in terms of design win activities. And so all of them will turn into revenues. And I can give you some bigger segments, and not many people talking about it. And is not, what is it, a USB-C, USB-PD. And I believe that this will be a huge revenue and growth. And MPS has a lot more content versus a USB-PD versus the USB —

Bernie Blegen: Earlier versions.

Michael Hsing: Yes, earlier versions like type B, okay, now it’s Type C. And some of them in auto will be cannibalized for USB type B product. And but C is a much higher content, and that’s in auto. And in the consumer side, it’s totally new. And USB B type is a very low — is like a consumer side. And now they’re converting to USB-C, and that will be a lot broader applications. And it’s based on — because all unified approach, and especially European countries and drive that standards and I think to migrate to everywhere. They have a clear mandate went to switch it. And I believe even Apple on, for the next version of a phone will be USB-C. And we see MPS has a lot of opportunities, a lot of growth. So other than that, battery management and that will ramp in 2014. And again in a lot of different applications from —

Bernie Blegen: 2024.

Michael Hsing: 2024. And these are from power tool to garden tools and from all kind of other things. I mean those are already designed in products, okay, we’re ramping in the next 12 to 24 months or less than 6 to 24 months, I guess, yes.

Bernie Blegen: And in addition, just to repeat sort of the opportunities that we talked about in both green energy, clean energy and as well as in DDR5. So there’s a large number of products that are expected to ramp here very quickly for us.

William Stein: Great. If I can ask one follow-up. The inventory decline sequentially surprised us a bit. Perhaps this was always your plan. But if it wasn’t, can you describe what happened here? Perhaps customer came in with more demand for something or maybe you decided mid-quarter to reduce production. What — maybe just set me straight on this issue.

Michael Hsing: We reduced the overall inventories that came in starting at the beginning of the year. That’s probably reflects that. And yes, and it doesn’t mean we will keep that low. We will boost that up more.

Bernie Blegen: Yes. What we’ve done is, we’ve said that we have a range of inventory that we want to operate within between 180 to 200 days. And what you’ve seen is that we did reduce wafer starts about 9 months or 3 quarters ago, and that’s now being reflected in our balance sheet today. But as we anticipate the demand for all of the opportunities that we see possible for 2024, we are beginning to ramp inventory. And as Michael said, we have the capacity available to take advantage of that.

William Stein: Thanks, guys.

Genevieve Cunningham: Our next question is from Matt Ramsay of Cowen. Matt, your line is open.

Matt Ramsay: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, guys. Michael, I wanted to dig into the automotive market a bit and understand the drivers of the business over the next several quarters. I think you guys have some very exciting new content with one of the leading EV OEMs in the States and obviously some really good content with a number of folks in Asia. So if you could try to help us break down what your expectations are for the drivers of your automotive business over the next, I don’t know, 6, 9 months relative to some, I’d say, fluctuations in unit expectations from some key customers, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.

Michael Hsing: Yes. These type of products is not like a consumers. Like a 0.5 year and you can design you out. And it took us a year — it took us years and it took us at least 12 months to work with our customers, the major suppliers, and to put in the system and make a production worthy and working. And that’s a long effort. And frankly, I don’t really care, okay? As long as you win those socket or you win those projects. I mean the revenue will come. And so when is the next 3 months or next 9 months? I don’t really know. I mean we thought from the last year, again, we saw the last year, middle of this year, we’ll start to ramp up. It didn’t. But I think it’s next year, sometimes that we’ll see more and more ADAS and also the new type of tracking inverters. And so that’s pretty much just as everybody else expected. All these products are ramping up, okay, we’ll go with it.

Bernie Blegen: And if I can just add to that, that a lot of the customers that are picking up on design wins are skewed more heavily to EVs that are inviting new technology platforms. And that market has slowed in unit volumes observed. But the exciting part of this story is that we see that new platform launches for those customers are in position to ramp in the first half of next year. And we’re seeing a proliferation of a broadening of those technologies going into more traditional internal combustion, or IC brands. So I think that the automotive market, while it’s difficult to time that our positioning is very secure.

Michael Hsing: Yes. Okay. That’s a good point. That ADAS, they start to ramp. We were told at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year and now we were told next years. But all of these are new for us. And in the digital cockpit and also ADAS. So now they tell us early next year. And I don’t know I can believe or not. I mean —

Bernie Blegen: We’ll see, we’ll see.