QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Faith: Yes, so let me sort of build up from the oldest to the newest. On the mature side, we’re modeling mature to be lower this than the 2022, just simply because of the macroeconomic trends in those types of markets. What I’ll call is new products that are not really a focus for us, meaning the connectivity, the display, we’re modeling those as I would say modestly down this year from last year. SensiML, we’re modeling probably double of last year. Sensor processing, we’re modeling down because our largest customer being a smartphone guy, we’re just not sure about when their digestion’s going to take place. So we’re taking a rather conservative view of that recovery. Leaving us with eFPGA, which our model is probably 70% of our revenue this year and probably doubling.

Again, what we did last year, and not all of that is government contracts. A healthy portion of it is, but there are a lot of other things in the funnel that we’re talking about in that funnel that we do think we’re going to win and generate revenue from this year. And actually, when we’re going through this modeling internally, people go, wow, that’s doubling revenue one year to the next on eFPGA. But then if you look back actually from the end of 2022 to €“ sorry, 2020 to 2022, so that two year period, I think total revenues up almost 90%, new product revenue is up like 4x in that time period. 75% reduction in operating loss or thereabouts and that’s really with OpEx largely where it was or a little bit less than what it was, and not just in terms of how we account for it between cost of goods or OpEx, but like total spending, right?

And so I think that just speaks to the tremendous leverage we now have in automation with SensiML and with our eFPGA products and how we develop it. So that as we close more of these eFPGA wins that are going to be, hopefully, even more than 2x last year, we’re going to be able to handle it with largely the same team. We’ll have little adds here or there for certain key hires, but for the most part, OpEx is going to be right in the range that Elias is talking about, and that’s real operating leverage.

Richard Shannon: Okay. Excellent. That sounds great here. Maybe kind of going down the income statement here quickly to gross margins. Obviously, it was coming down throughout last year, but I think we have a decent understanding of the reasons why. It was some professional services and other cost of tooling, et cetera. How do we think about it this year if it plays out as you expect? Is this something you expect in kind of this lower 50s range? Or to what degree can we see it ramp up towards your longer-term goal? I think you see it in the 60s or even 70%.

Elias Nader: Yes. I think for €“ hi Richard, it’s Elias. I think for 2023, I would say it’s going to range between that 50%, 55% range or so average wise, right, probably to 60%. I don’t think we’ll go above 60% until 2024. That’s my guess. From really what I see, even with a 30% growth and the way that we’re kind of reclassifying items, between COGS and OpEx, the likelihood is it’s going to average between 55% to 60%, Richard.

Richard Shannon: Okay. Perfect. That’s helpful. Thanks a lot for that Elias. Maybe one or two last questions. I will jump out of line here. Let’s see. Jumping over to chiplets very quickly. I know Suji asked a quick question on that, Brian. And maybe just kind of thinking bigger picture longer term here. How do we think about the initiatives that you’re taking here relative to kind of the new industry standard, UCIE, how you’re fitting into that complementary versus kind of set apart? And how do we think about this beyond this year? How big of a business can this be relative to other things you have going on like rad-hard as an example?