ON Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Hassane El-Khoury: Yes, look, I mean, we all see the EV market in China. But the difference for us is China for us is a ramping market. And that’s really going to be contributing to our ramp throughout the year. So even if the demand call it on the top demand is a little choppy, out of China. For us, it’s incrementally favorable and we’re going to continue to ramp there, so we don’t see it. We’re kind of disconnected from it given that for us, it’s a ramp. It’s not a mature market yet, and that puts us in a very good position.

Harsh Kumar: Thanks, Hassane. And then maybe one for Thad. What is — you talked about the timing for the silicon carbide headwind and the Fishkill scale headwind. Could you quantify what you’re seeing in terms of headwind? Would you be able to give us a number? And then the second part of that question is I think Hassane, you mentioned in your comments that or maybe Thad did that by the third quarter timeframe, your silicon carbide business would be a corporate margin. So are we thinking 40s, high-40s or we thinking 50s ultimately as a stable gross margin to the silicon carbide business?

Thad Trent: Yes. So harsh, what we said is at scale, at once we fully ramped so it can carbide, those margins would be at or above the corporate average. As I said, we’ve got headwinds that we think peak in Q3. We think by the time we get to ‘24, that headwind is behind us. In terms of the magnitude of the headwind, we’ve said historically that the silicon carbide is 100 basis points to 200 basis points of a headwind. We’re performing better than we expected. So you can think about that as not at the high end of that range, it’s somewhere in between there. But we’re very confident in our outlook here based on our performance that, that we can continue to execute there and we feel very good. On EFK, as I said, we had the full impact in Q1.

You can see we absorbed it and offset it with gross margin expansion in other areas. Historically, we’ve said that’s 40 basis points to 70 basis points, I’ve said it’s significantly higher. You can think about it as being greater than 2 times, what our expectations were. Again, we think we can absorb that throughout the year. Our margin trajectory doesn’t change and we’re very comfortable with Street consensus on gross margin for the year. So I think it gives you — our confidence in managing through this.

Harsh Kumar: Thanks, fellas.

Hassane El-Khoury: Yes.

Operator: Next question comes from Raji Gill with Needham. Your line is open.

Raji Gill: Yes, thank you and congratulations as well on great results in a tough environment. Just a quick question on the automotive market, you mentioned Hassane, a modest inventory digestion in the end market and then you’re also kind of reducing distribution inventory. Can you talk a little bit about the overall demand picture for automotive. I know it’s hard to kind of separate the significant ramp that you’re seeing in electric vehicles and in turn silicon carbide. But just curious if there’s a softness in the demand market, if there’s a shift away from high-end to mid-range, any kind of color on the automotive market will be appreciated?

Hassane El-Khoury: Yes, look. We don’t see a big disconnect into demand. It was like I said, it was a momentary thing where we use this opportunity to kind of reposition the inventory that we have externally and we’ll get back to growth in the second quarter and through the year giving us an increase in our automotive revenue year-over-year. So that really doesn’t change the outlook. But what we take a look at, if you think about it, it’s a stable environment we’re going to be growing in automotive. If I really don’t see any areas that causes us pause or a change in our outlook. So we remain confident with that.

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