ON Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Hassane El-Khoury : Yes. Look, I think even last quarter, when we talked about the third quarter even, we talked about how some of the industrial markets that are closer to the consumer, like power tools and so on, those remain soft. We’ve seen softness in the broader market. Again, we believe this is more consumer and macro-driven, where we have been investing in industrial and alternative energy, that has actually been up, as I said, 75%, even ahead of our 60% growth target that we had. So that exceeded our expectation. That gives you the strength of the market that will continue through ’23. And then pockets in the medical business that we focus on have seen a lot of growth, and we see that continuing in ’23, obviously, offset by softness in other broader pockets of industrial. So no real change in the performance of that business or the outlook as we get into ’23.

Christopher Caso : Just a follow-up on pricing. And I think you’ve been clear on a number of aspects of pricing. It sounds, like principally in auto, this is covered by the LTSAs in some of the noncore segments where pricing is declining, that’s where you’re exiting. But what about industrial, which I imagine probably more NCNR orders? Are you seeing any changes as the NCNRs tail off and you’re signing new orders for these customers? Or is that pricing remaining resilient as well?

Hassane El-Khoury : No, the pricing is holding up because — just to clarify one thing. Our industrial business, where I highlighted the growth and where we have been focusing and where we want to keep investing, those are — those remain under LTSA. So the LTSAs are not only for automotive, but they are for growth areas where we have been putting investments and we want that return on the investments to be solid. So that carved out a big portion of the growth in industrial and puts it on high confidence. Obviously, the NCNR, we are getting the renewed backlog in these, and the backlog comes in at the same rate as far as pricing is concerned. So we don’t see any softness there as far as pricing, even on the NCNR.

Operator: Our next question will come from Matt Ramsey from Cowen.

Matthew Ramsay : For my first question, I wanted to follow up on the last topic there that Chris brought up that you guys now have $16.5 billion something like that in LTSAs, only maybe 1/4 of that is from the silicon carbide business that gets a lot of attention. I wonder guys if you might spend a little bit more time on the rest of the business, LTSAs, where they’re concentrated? I took note of the increase of $2.5 billion that you just announced from where the number was that you reported previously. So just where are you? Maybe a little bit more detail on the last answer of where you’re seeing the strength in the market in order for a customer to be willing to sign up for those long-term agreements and other segments outside of silicon carbide?

Hassane El-Khoury : Sure. This is Hassane. So look, the LTSAs are broad in nature. I highlighted some examples where we have hundreds of parts for LTSA, and that goes back to the strength of our portfolio and the breadth of our portfolio as we target applications like electric vehicle electrification or autonomous driving or even parts of the industrial where we provide, for example, the sensing part of it as well as the motor control in the areas of factory automation, as an example. So all of these is really the strength of our portfolio. If I look at it, majority is automotive just because, obviously, it ties to the total market. Total market in automotive is larger. Therefore, our LTSAs are larger. And like you said, 1/4 of it is silicon carbide.