Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWKS) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Ruben Roy: Yes, thank you. Liam, I want to switch over to broad markets and just talk about sort of how you’re seeing things. Great to see the bottom in December and the modest growth in March and the outlook for June, but relative to 90 days ago, how would you kind of characterize the recovery? Are you still sort of thinking incremental growth quarterly or has anything changed with inventory levels in some of the markets? The data points around auto and industrial have been mixed. So maybe just if you could talk us through the big buckets, IoT, auto, industrial and common infrastructure, that would be helpful?

Liam Griffin: Yes, absolutely. So there’s a lot of opportunity and growth that we’re seeing in the broad markets. We’ve been doing a great job with the automotive segments, a lot of technology there, a lot of opportunity. We’re growing that business. We continue to look at other players in the space doing quite well. Industrial markets are coming up for us right now. Solar markets are coming up. We’re seeing some good action in PlayStation as well. So we’ve got kind of a consumer play there, but a lot of volume and a lot of content. So the portfolio is growing, it’s diversifying and there’s a lot more opportunity out there. We’ve been kind of focused more on some of the bigger names, but now we start to see a longer roster of opportunities that we can capture. And also just some of the technologies that we brought in from our MSSX lab deal is giving us more green shoots and opportunities as we look long.

Ruben Roy: Thanks for that, Liam. I guess just a quick follow-up just on the inventory levels around those buckets. Have they improved to kind of where you thought they would or have any of the big buckets been a little bit slower or not?

Kris Sennesael: Yes, it depends on which part of the broad markets you are looking at. If you look more at the consumer IoT, the edge IoT connectivity products, that has been improving for many quarters now. I think that market is getting stronger. We obviously have some strong technology transfer that is going on as we upgrade to Wi-Fi 6E, and 7 and bookings has been improving with a book-to-bill above one in that part of the market. When you look at infrastructure networking data center, that market has been, as you probably have heard from peers and competitors, a little bit soft. There is some inventory that needs to be cleared out. So we are under-shipping natural demand right now. It’s going to take a couple of quarters for that business to really bounce back and in the meantime we have to clear out the inventory.

And then automotive and industrial there again you’ve heard from peers and competitors, there is definitely in certain spots, some excess inventory that needs to be flushed out. Again for Skyworks, we’re doing real reasonably well in that market, given just the product cycle, the ramp of connectivity in the car, the ramp with our power isolation for EV, we’re doing well with our radio processor in the car. And so we are bucking the trend there a little bit in a tough environment.

Ruben Roy: I appreciate the detail, Kris.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Timothy Arcuri with UBS. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, this is Amaan here jumping in for Tim. I just want to ask, what was the China mobile revenue, China as a percentage of total mobile revenue and what is your expectation for that business going forward? As you know, sell through at certain China OEMs appears to be bouncing back. So how should we think about the trajectory of that going forward? Thank you.

Kris Sennesael: Yes. Our China mobile revenue is still de minimis. It has been improving quarter after quarter, but still on a relatively low level. I mean, we have great relationship with Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, the three main players there. Design win momentum is picking up a little bit, but the overall end customer demand environment is still somewhat soft. I think that’s the best way to characterize that. But again, I think over time, especially when I’m looking forward to fiscal 2025, we do expect to see some meaningful year-over-year growth in that business.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Peter Peng with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Peter Peng: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. On the Android point, you talked about it approaching $100 million. I believe your previous peak was kind of closer to $200 million per quarter. As you kind of look out into 2025 and 2026, is there anything that precludes you to getting back to those kind of levels?

Kris Sennesael: I think it’s going to be difficult to get back to the highest peaks that we have seen in the past because that was overdrive. Remember, that was in the COVID years where all customers were screaming to get more parts and then they ended up with a lot of excess inventory that took more than a year to burn off. But directionally, yes. I mean, it’s at $100 million. I mean, we want to get back to $125 million or $150 million, $200 million. And we are focused on that. We do have the technology. We are adding more resources in terms of product development to go after those opportunities. And as end customer demand improves and the design wins roll in, we will see some really good revenue growth in those segments.

Liam Griffin: And I’ll just jump in on that. If you think about where we are with Android, we’ve got really strong engagement with Google and Samsung, high end players, a lot of volume. So it’s not so much the Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi for us, but it’s more around the Samsung and Google players that right now are ramping very well.

Peter Peng: Got it. And I have a problem on the broad market. So you have one out of the three segments that’s actually bottoming and recovering and your still — the implicit growth rate is 4%. So as we kind of look into the back half of the year, as things kind of — inventory adjustment abate in the other two segments, should we kind of be expecting more of an accelerating sequential growth as we move through the year?

Kris Sennesael: Absolutely, absolutely. So currently it’s only modest. Like in March it was 1% sequentially. In June we expect 2%, 3% sequentially, but then as we look out in the next couple of quarters, we do and expect an acceleration of that sequential growth getting back to initially modest year-over-year growth, but then translating into strong double digit year-over-year growth in our broad markets business.

Peter Peng: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Cody Acree with The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Cody Acree: Yes, thanks, guys, for taking my question. You didn’t mention Huawei in your specific comments around China. I guess like any comments on that OEM, given their success in that market?

Liam Griffin: Yes, we’re still not engaged with Huawei. But again, we will work the Android markets with some of the other players that we talked about. So but Huawei for now, I think, has really been kind of on the bench.

Cody Acree: Is there any specific reason for that?

Liam Griffin: Well, there are still just a couple things. I mean the product quality there that we look at is just not really up to, that’s not for us, and still just very difficult environment in that marketplace.

Cody Acree: Okay. And then I guess just lastly, any further comment on your AI comments in prepared remarks about content and dollar content opportunities in both, in addition to just unit volume replacement cycles, any framework of how you expect those dollar content increases to layer in as we’re just now starting to get any kind of real Gen AI unit volumes across the channel?

Liam Griffin: Yes. Great question. So, if you actually think about it right now, we’ve been really long in the tooth here with upgrades across the board in mobile, across the whole market. So without AI, the market is, we believe is going to inflect with resurgence of growth in terms of units. That’s one part. But when you get into the AI side, we talked about it a little bit earlier, we’re going to need to do some tremendous things in the smartphone world to actually catalyze what AI needs to do. There’s going to be upgrades in servers, there’s going to be upgrades on the device, and it’s going to drive tremendous power. And power is really, really important. When you think about data center, you hear all these things from Nvidia.

They’re powered. They’re powered to a server. Mobile is mobile or untethered. So the burden on technology in the smartphone world is really going to go up and it’s going to narrow the playing field. And I love our chances. We’ve got a great business. We’ve got in-house technologies, great engineering, a long, long live set of solutions and know how that we built over the years. So we’re really looking forward to it. I think we talked about it already. The smartphone market today already is kind of slowed down. It’s turned for an upgrade right now. So the intersection between AI and smartphone growth could be really special. So we’re looking forward to it. We have a lot of the key building blocks and our engineering teams know exactly what to do to turn this on.