Silicon Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ:SLAB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

So that gives us an additional lift in addition to revenue approaching consumption. The end-market piece, end demand is more difficult to call. There’s just a lot of uncertainty out there in the marketplace. There’s conflicting signals and not – for sure not trying to call that. But, if and when that does improve, that’s an additional tailwind. But obviously, you can’t bake on that or assume that at least right now.

Quinn Bolton: Understood. Thanks, Matt.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Srini Pajjuri from Raymond James. Your question please.

Srini Pajjuri: Thank you. Good morning guys. Matt, on the year bookings front, I think you said the weekly bookings are getting better. So, I was just hoping you could give us some additional color as to whether the bookings improvement you are seeing is fairly broad-based? Or if it’s – if one particular end-market is doing better than the others and also from a geography standpoint, if you’re seeing any noticeable differences in terms of the bookings improvement?

Matt Johnson : Yes. Understood. Quick answer is, bookings have – are improving in a pretty broad and consistent pace. And so what I mean by that is, this isn’t one or two or three good weeks. This is many weeks and months of consistent improvement, which is what you’d want to see. As I mentioned, it’s not at the levels we want to see to say we’re fully on the other side of this. But the trend is undeniable and encouraging. To your other point, definitely brought by technology, geo application space, which is what you want to see. As I said, I think, Home & Life is a little bit further through than Industrial & Commercial. But we’re seeing improvement and strength in both. And the last thing is it just a caveat to all of that, maybe the exception is China, where to be clear, where APAC we’re seeing improvement.

But in China we’re seeing encouraging signs in terms of the design win activity, signaling that there’s improving strength. PMI is improving all of that. But we’re not seeing that manifest in terms of revenue yet. So that that would be the one place and we’re not – we haven’t baked it in, we’re not assuming it improves. So there’s some encouraging signs. But no, it’s not coming out in results yet. So hopefully that’s helpful.

Srini Pajjuri: Yeah, yeah, great. Thanks for the color. And then, you also kind of talked about ASPs kind of returning to the pre-pandemic levels or at least the trends in terms of annual ASP declines. I just want to kind of given your new product pipeline, of course the market does what it does. But can you talk about in terms of as we go from Series 2 to Series 3 and there’s a lot of talk about Edge, et cetera, of your own ASPs on a mix-adjusted basis. I guess, what I’m trying to get at is, that as we look out to the next 12 to 24 months, should we kind of bank on unit growth to model your revenue growth or do you see kind of content increasing for you as well? And if content is increasing, what are the end-markets and what are some of the applications that will drive that content? Thank you.

Matt Johnson : Sure. So a big, big, big picture if you step back. Series 2 is obviously helpful for us from a gross margin perspective and pricing perspective in that – these are new products with new features, new capabilities that are in demand. And easy way to say as we mentioned AI/ML. So artificial intelligence machine-learning, so having products that are in production that have the ability to very efficiently provide machine learning inference at the Edge on a battery-powered device is a pretty powerful capability and feature. And obviously helps us in terms of being differentiated in driving value with our customers. So Series 2, as it continues to come out with the features, capabilities that are best-in-class that is obviously helpful against that dynamic.

And to be clear, not fair, that it’s not a new trend or dynamic. That’s always how we’ve operated and traded, but it’s Series 2 is still introducing new products even put in the last few days and in the last few months. So that helped. And then the second piece is Series 3 obviously will as we’ve shared, brings new industry capabilities features and performance, which will again allow us to work on that dynamic. But I do want to set expectations according or appropriately that won’t be an ASP lift for the next couple of years. I mean, that’s Series 3 will ramp over years. And I wouldn’t look there for an ASP lift. I’ve looked more to a Series 2 and how is that doing and then Series 3 is more of a mid to long-term play. But both help on differentiation, performance features, which helped on ASPs and gross margins.

Srini Pajjuri: Got it. Thanks, Matt.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of from Cody Acree from The Benchmark Company. Your question, please.

Cody Acree : Yeah. Thanks guys for taking my questions. Just quick thoughts on operating expenses as you’re heading off the bottom here?

Matt Johnson : Yeah, sure. So I mean, a reminder for everyone. As we were going through this cycle as revenue is decreasing, we decreased our OpEx every quarter along with that. And then, as we’ve shared, as revenue starts going up, we will increase our OpEx although not at the same level moving forward. And some of those changes last year were structural, right, with reductions that we’ve shared in prior calls. That being said, the increase from Q1 to Q2 would be faster than that. And part of that is, just one-time dynamics. For example, as we’ve added annual merit cycle back for our employees that drives increases from Q1 to Q2. And then some of the temporary things from last year that has to come back such as bonus accruals or travel that’s driving an unusually high increase as well.

But to be clear, as revenue is going down, we reduced OpEx every quarter. As it goes up, we will increase it at a lower rate Q1 to Q2, a little bit higher than normal because of those one-time effects.

Cody Acree : Thanks for that. And maybe just continuing on there. What were the processes that you went through as you’re going through the OpEx reductions during this cuts to make sure that you weren’t impairing revenue growth?