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

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So think about it this way, increasing capacity in an existing fab that already does power is way cheaper and way less risk than Brownfield and a power fab and silicon carbide. That has always given us the confidence in our ramp, has always given us the confidence in the slope of the ramp, which really exceeds everyone else out there and we’re on track to achieving it, all of these give us one the cost, two the risk mitigation and three the confidence in our outlook.

Matt Ramsay: Thanks, Hassane. As my follow-up, I wanted to ask, I think both of you guys mentioned in your script this morning, some little pockets where you’re — I think the words were cautiously monitoring inventory. Maybe you could obviously, the growth of the company and the results speak for themselves and you’re overcoming some of those things. But if you could just give us a little bit of color on where you are seeing those pockets of inventory? Are they clearing up? Are they getting worse? Just any color there would be helpful. Thanks guys.

Hassane El-Khoury: Yes, look, when I say pockets again, I’ll go back to my comment from prior about the technology. We remain constrained in technologies across all markets and there are areas primarily. You can think about it mostly on the consumer and compute where we’ve been — one is cautiously monitoring specifically the disit inventory and that’s why you’ve seen us even this quarter be very aggressive in draining the dollars in the channel. So although the weeks were 0.3 weeks down in the channel, but dollars are almost $80 million down. And that’s a pretty steep decrease that we have been managing. And look, we’ve been managing it throughout the whole even the — when supply was constrained across the board. So inventory for us is a big focal point not just internally, but externally.

And until we get higher and higher confidence in what the second-half is going to bring, we’re going to be cautiously optimistic and really holding back on what we ship out of the company unless we are seeing high confidence in its POS-ing. We’re not going to have inventory just sitting around whether it’s our distribution shelf or the customer shelf. And that really sets us up for a very nice recovery whenever that starts turning out to be.

Matt Ramsay: Thanks, Hassane.

Operator: Our next question comes from Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna. Your line is open.

Christopher Rolland: Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. I’m going to talk about image sensors. You did talk about supply constraints across several auto tech. I just wanted to check the update of that. And then it seems like some of the drivers there or the move to 8 megapixel was wondering, kind of, what your competitive position is there, what percent of revenue might be at 8% versus 1% or 2% overall? Thanks so much.

Hassane El-Khoury: Yes, look, obviously our competitive advantage across the board and image sensor is really on technology. We’ve talked about specific technology, I mentioned a few of them where it’s the near infrared that helps with different lighting conditions, that of course applies in automotive and the examples I’ve given in my prepared remarks or start industrial, but it also applies in automotive where the high dynamic range whether it’s very bright/light with sun or very dark at night. Those are all competitive advantage on the inherent in our technology that customers value and that we provide these solutions for. On the 8 megapixel, that’s a new generation that we have launched across both auto and industrial. You’re going to — you can expect that to be forward-looking a mix shift as we ramp that.

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