Teradyne, Inc. (NASDAQ:TER) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Teradyne, Inc. (NASDAQ:TER) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript January 31, 2024

Teradyne, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Greetings. Welcome to Teradyne’s Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. At this time, I’ll now turn the conference over to Andy Blanchard, Vice President, Corporate Communications. Mr. Blanchard, you may begin.

Andy Blanchard: Good morning, everyone and welcome to our discussion of Teradyne’s most recent financial results. I am joined this morning by our CEO, Greg Smith; and our CFO, Sanjay Mehta. Following our opening remarks, we will provide details of our performance for 2023’s fourth quarter and full year, along with our outlook for the first quarter of 2024. The press release containing our fourth quarter results was issued last evening. We are providing slides on the Investor page of the website that maybe helpful to you in following the discussion. Replays of this call will be available via the same page after the call ends. The matters that we discuss today will include forward-looking statements that involve risk factors that could cause Teradyne’s results to differ materially from management’s current expectations.

We encourage you to review the Safe Harbor statement contained in the earnings release as well as our most recent SEC filings. And additionally, those forward-looking statements are made as of today and we take no obligation to update them as a result of developments occurring after this call. During today’s call, we will make reference to non-GAAP financial measures. We have posted additional information concerning these non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, where available on the Investor page of our website. Looking ahead between now and our next earnings call, Teradyne expects to participate in technology or industrial-focused investor conferences hosted by Wolfe Research, Citi, Susquehanna and Morgan Stanley.

Now, let’s get on with the rest of the agenda. First, Greg will comment on our recent results and the market conditions as we enter the new year. Sanjay will then offer more details on our quarterly results, along with our guidance for the first quarter. We’ll then answer your questions and this call is scheduled for 1 hour. Greg?

Greg Smith: Hello, everyone and thanks for joining us this morning. Today, I will summarize our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results, comment on our early view of 2024 and describe the market assumptions underpinning our updated midterm earnings model. Sanjay will then provide financial details on all of these topics. We delivered Q4 financial results in line with our guidance. The clear highlights for the quarter were the – were Memory Test, where DRAM tester revenue more than doubled from Q4 2022 on HBM demand and our Robotics team’s execution in growing sales, 17% from Q4 2022 and 50% sequentially, as we ramp shipments to address the record backlog of our new UR20 Cobot at Universal Robots. Balancing these strengths in Memory and Robotics was continued softness in our other test markets.

Shifting now to the full year, 2023 was the second consecutive year that the size of the semiconductor test market declined, as the industry digested record shipments in 2020 and 2021, driven by COVID-related demand. The SOC test market has declined 21% from 2021 and the mobility portion has contracted 55% over the same period. Most of that decline occurred in 2023, with SOC demand down 17% year-on-year. Mobility has historically been the largest sub-segment of the SOC market and an area of strength for us in semiconductor test and in wireless test. Despite the weakness in demand, the trend towards vertically integrated producers is continuing. This new class of customer provides an opportunity for Teradyne to gain share in high-performance computing, a segment where we have historically had low share.

These customers will take time to ramp. And so we are focusing on capturing sockets. On that front, 2023 was a great year for us, capturing the majority of key VIP sockets, where we targeted at customers in the United States and in China. Although automotive was strong for most of 2023, at the end of the year, elevated inventories for our automotive customers began to slow down the rate at which they add test capacity. Our latest estimate of the Semi Test market for 2023 is about $4.8 billion, with $3.9 billion in SOC and $900 million in Memory Test. Our 2023 financial results reflected the test market weakness and when combined with a tepid robotics market, company sales were $2.676 billion, down about 15% and non-GAAP earnings of $2.93 were down 31% from 2022.

As we enter 2024, let me describe how we are looking at the current market. Visibility is limited, but we are cautiously optimistic. In SOC test, chip inventories remain high and subcon tester utilization remains in the 70s. These combined to create a headwind to tester demand in the first half of 2024. The inventory overhang now extends to parts of the legacy automotive market, which began to soften late in Q4. With this softening of demand, lead times for our SOC testers are now back to pre-COVID levels, generally less than 16 weeks. This enables customers to wait to place new orders until their demand is certain, limiting our visibility. Our current view is that these headwinds will abate midyear and we are planning for a second – a stronger second half in SOC test.

Several leading indicators point to a second half improvement. For example, we have seen no slowdown in chip development activity at our customers, so the product pipeline remains healthy. While still below normal seasonality, utilization levels are beginning to inch upwards, especially in the OSATs, which points towards improving mobility and compute demand. Mobile phones are expected to adopt AI capabilities in the premium tier in 2024 and more broadly in 2025, which should accelerate complexity and be a positive for test demand. Despite the slowdown we are seeing now in automotive demand, the key driver for this market is the increased electronics content per vehicle, not end vehicle sales. Automotive semi devices are forecast to grow an 11% CAGR through the mid-term and device – this and the vast complexity is increasing.

Therefore, we expect this law will be short-lived. In Memory Test, the story for 2023 is that despite high end market inventories, demand for new testers was driven by the retooling required to test higher speed flash and DRAM devices especially HBM DRAM. This drove our memory share to a record 43% in 2023. In 2024, we expect continued Memory revenue growth driven by the volume production ramps of the technology introductions we saw in 2023 and continued R&D investments for even faster devices. As business conditions improve for Memory makers, this may drive increased demand to support capacity expansion. Shifting now to other test markets. Wireless test demand is expected to remain at current levels in 2024 due to weakness in the networking equipment demand and excess capacity in smartphone test.

In System Test, we expect continued strength in Defense and Aerospace markets and expect modest growth in demand and production board test. We expect storage test will remain weak in 2024, due to excess test capacity in the HDD and SLT test markets. Having said that, in 2023, we added important new SLT customers in mobility and high-performance computing that are setting us up for mid-term growth. Shifting to Robotics. We had a very strong Q4 as our UR20 ramp continued and we launched the new UR30 late in the quarter. Looking at Robotics for the full year 2023. In addition to the good progress on the new product front, our channel transformation work continued nicely with our OEM sales growing nearly 10%, as we added more than 50 new OEM partners.

We have also expanded the number of large accounts we manage directly from approximately 100 to over 250. We expect Q1 of 2024 to be down more than the normal seasonal dip, as the extraordinary Q4 shipments are digested. Thereafter, we expect quarterly year-on-year growth through the rest of 2024. Combining all these points and with the provisor that our view into the second half is limited, we are modeling 2024 company revenue to be roughly flat year-on-year with 44% in the first half and 56% in the second half. Within that, we expect lower test revenue in 2024, which reflects the sale of our DIS business, reducing our full year semiconductor test revenue by approximately $100 million. Excluding the effects of that sale, expected test revenue would have been about flat in a roughly flat market.

In Semi Test, our early estimate of the SOC market size for 2024 is $3.6 billion to $4.2 billion. And our estimate for Memory is $1 billion to $1.1 billion, for a combined Semiconductor Test market at the midpoint of $4.95 billion. We expect Robotics will grow in the 10% to 20% range in 2024. Turning now to our mid-term models. Despite the longer-than-expected downturn in the Mobile Test market and the softness in Robotics and demand, we remain optimistic about the long-term potential of our test and robotics businesses. This is shown in the update to our mid-term earnings model. At the midpoint in 2026, we expect to deliver earnings per share at over 2x the 2023 level and a revenue growth of nearly 60%. As we have noted in past calls, the key drivers of that growth include process node advances to 3-nanometer, 2-nanometer, gate all around and backside power delivery.

These are all on track or even accelerating and they enable higher transistor counts, higher complexity and that drives longer test times. Good progress in the emerging VIP space with key wins at design-in targets and high share at two of the three leading ASIC design houses, all of which drive future revenue. Advanced packaging, including chiplet technology, which requires higher test intensity at the wafer level, driving longer test times. Compelling applications of Edge AI for ADAS and smartphone co-pilots that are driving demand for more processing power, more memory and wider bandwidth communications. All of these factors accelerate test demand. There is an aggressive roadmap for increases in memory interface speeds in DRAM HBM, and Flash that will continue to drive technology-driven retooling in the Memory market.

And finally, in Robotics, we are still at less than 5% market penetration. And we are confident that our channel strategy will unlock the long-term growth potential of this market. In addition, the application of AI is expanding the range of tasks that our robots can serve, while our new products will expand our served market and decrease the effort required for customers to automate. At the company level, compared to last year, our growth outlook has shifted to the right, but the slope of expected growth is largely unchanged. The duration of the downturn in mobile demand has been longer than we expected and the softness in the industrial automation market that we and our peers have seen has really impacted our expectations of growth in Robotics for 2023.

Sanjay will provide more financial details of the model. As we look at our results for 2023 and the outlook for 2024, we are focused on improving gross margins and maintaining tight financial discipline, while making the necessary R&D and customer-facing investments required to capture the long-term growth potential in both the test and robotics markets. To maintain that financial discipline, we will be looking to see signs of top line growth before allowing OpEx to materially increase. We operate our business with mid-term plans that track long-term historical trends and the future demand drivers in each of our businesses rather than trying to predict short-term cycles. In any given year, results will land above or below that trend, but that trend line has provided a reliable baseline for planning.

As expected, 2023 was below trend line, but the underlying demand drivers remain in place and we are executing our plans to capture that future demand. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and we have deep confidence in our team’s ability to capture those opportunities. With that, I will turn things over to Sanjay. Sanjay?

Sanjay Mehta: Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everyone. Today, I’ll cover the financial summary of Q4, the full year 2023, provide our Q1 outlook, some planning guidance for full year 2024, review our updated earnings model and outline our capital allocation plan. Now to Q4. Fourth quarter sales were $671 million, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.79, both in line with our guidance. Semi Test revenue of $431 million at SOC revenue of $327 million, with high memory shipments of $104 million, as Greg noted in his highlights. System Test group had revenue of $86 million, down 14% from Q4 ‘22. Growth in Defense and Aerospace was offset by weakness in storage test and production board test. LifePoint revenue of $25 million was weaker year-over-year due to continued weakness in cellular, PC markets.

Robotics revenue of $129 million was up 17% from the fourth quarter of last year and up 50% sequentially on seasonally high demand and the impact of UR20 and UR30 new product shipments. Non-GAAP gross margin was 56.6% in the middle of our guidance range and non-GAAP operating expenses were $245 million in Q4, up $2 million from Q3 ‘23. Non-GAAP operating profit rate was 20.1%. Some other financial facts. We had one 10% customer in the quarter. Tax rate, excluding discrete items for the quarter was 12.6% on a non-GAAP basis and lower than planned because of geographic mix. GAAP tax rate was 14% in Q4, excluding discrete items. We repurchased $51 million of shares in the quarter. Turning to the full year results. We had revenue of $2.676 billion.

Texas Instruments was the only customer greater 10% of our revenue for the year. Gross margin for the year was 57.4%. OpEx was $990 million and operating profit was 20.4%. Non-GAAP EPS was $2.93. We generated $426 million in free cash flow in 2023. We returned $468 million or 110% of free cash flow to our shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. We ended the year with $937 million of cash and marketable securities. Our tax rate for the full year, excluding discrete items, was 15.5% on a non-GAAP basis and 15.25% on a GAAP basis. Semi Test revenue for the year was approximately $1.8 billion, with SOC revenue contributing $1.43 billion and Memory $386 million. Our SOC sales contracted 16% in 2023, in line with the continued mobility market weakness, partially offset by strength in auto and industrial.

In Memory, our sales grew about 4%, driven by new technologies like UFS4 and Flash and LPDDR5 and HBM and DRAM. System Test group had revenue of $338 million in 2023. Combined Defense and Aerospace and production board test sales were both flat, while HDD and system-level test in our storage business were down in total nearly 50% from 2022. In Wireless Test, revenue of $144 million in 2023 was lower year-on-year, given the decline in handset units and continued weakness in the networking and PC markets. Now to Robotics. Robotics revenue in 2023 was $375 million, with UR contributing $304 million and MiR $71 million. The group had mid-teens profitability in Q4 ‘23, but for the full year, had an 8% non-GAAP operating loss. While UR was profitable in 2023, we continue to lean into R&D and channel enhancement investments in MiR.

Now to our outlook for Q1. Since our October call, SOC test demand has softened, which impacts our Q1 outlook. Q1 sales are expected to be between $540 million and $590 million, with non-GAAP EPS in a range of $0.22 to $0.38 on 162 million diluted shares. The first quarter guidance excludes the amortization of acquired intangibles. First quarter gross margins are expected to be the low point for the year and are estimated at 53.5% to 54.5%, due to lower volume and unfavorable product mix. OpEx is expected to be roughly flat with Q4 ‘23 and run at 42% to 46% of first quarter sales. Non-GAAP operating profit rate at the midpoint of our first quarter guidance is 10%. A few points to assist you in modeling 2024. First, the gross margin profile.

In 2024, we expect gross margins to increase through the year. Gross margins are forecasted to improve to 58% to 59% for the full year driven by improved product mix, including the sale of the Device Interface Solutions or DIS business, lower business resiliency spending and operational improvements. Moving to the strategic partnership we announced with Technoprobe in November 2023. The agreement has several key components as follows: first, Technoprobe will purchase Teradyne’s DIS business. This business provides advanced interfaces that connect our testers to customers’ chips for test. Second, Teradyne will make an equity investment in Technoprobe, acquiring 10% of their outstanding shares. Third, Teradyne and Technoprobe will work together on a series of projects to expand the performance of semiconductor device interfaces, to enable customers to realize the full performance of our test systems.

We expect the transactions to close in the second quarter. DIS had 2023 revenue of $103 million and the sales will reduce Teradyne’s expected 2024 revenue by approximately $100 million, assuming the Q2 close date. It will not have a material impact on earnings. We plan to account for our investment in Technoprobe, using the equity accounting method. Regarding OpEx for the full year, we expect full year 2024 OpEx to increase 5% to 7%, driven by strategic projects to grow share in our Test businesses. The growth will be back half loaded. Robotics is expected to grow revenue 10% to 20% in 2024, enabling Robotics to be profitable. The group will have a similar revenue profile as a company with second half expected at 56% of full year revenue.

Our GAAP and non-GAAP tax rate is forecasted to be 16% in 2024, excluding discrete items. Turning to capital allocation. Our strategy remains consistent, as we take a balanced approach to maintain a minimum cash level of $800 million, which enables us to run the business, have cash reserves set aside in the event of a significant downturn and have dry powder for M&A. For reference, from 2015 to 2023, we’ve returned over $4.3 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, which is 97% of our free cash flow. Earlier this month, we also announced a 9% increase in our dividend to $0.12 per quarter. We expect to close our investment in Technoprobe and our divestiture of DIS in Q2, which will consume an estimated $440 million of net cash.

We will limit our share buybacks in 2024 to an amount necessary to offset dilution from equity compensation and our employee share purchase program in order to build cash back up to a minimum goal of $800 million. Therefore, we do not expect to materially reduce the share count in 2024. Moving to our mid-term earnings model. As we do each January, we’ve updated our model. We share this with investors to provide insight into how we look at the markets we serve, our competitive positioning and ultimately, the growth and earnings power of the company. A few points for context. First, we’ve kept 2026 as at year-end so you can make an easy comparison with last year’s update. Second, financial ranges are down to reflect our revised view of the markets in which we participate.

Greg outlined the key drivers for the Test portfolio, including device technology trends, complexity and unit growth, which we anticipate will drive ATE growth over the 3-year horizon. Our Test revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 12% to 18% from 2023’s muted level to 2026, driven primarily by a recovery in Mobility Test demand. For Robotics, we’re looking at a strong market opportunity. The drivers over the mid [Technical Difficulty] include labor shortages, new products and applications, including a growing range of AI-driven products and our channel transformation work. Our Robotics revenues are expected to grow at 20% to 30% CAGR from 2023 to 2026. The updated earnings model will drive 2026 revenue to approximately $4.3 billion and non-GAAP EPS to $6.50 at the midpoint of the model range.

Our model at the midpoint, as a revenue CAGR from 2023 to 2026 of 17% and on EPS at 30%, highlighting the operating leverage of both Robotics and Test portfolios. Gross margin is estimated at 59% to 60%. OpEx as a percentage of sales will be 28% to 31%, yielding a non-GAAP operating margin of 28% to 32%. Summing up, we had a challenging year in 2023 and still delivered 20% operating profit on a non-GAAP basis. Generated $426 million in free cash flow and returned 110% of that cash to shareholders. We did this while we strengthened our competitive position in Test and Robotics with new products, invested in channel transformation and Robotics and announced a strategic partnership and Test Interfaces to drive Semi Test share growth. Looking ahead, we expect a return to growth later this year and beyond, driven by favorable trends in both Test and Robotics and the financial impact of that growth is reflected in our updated mid-term earnings model.

With that, I’ll turn the call back to Andy. Andy?

Andy Blanchard: Thanks, Sanjay. We’d now like to take some questions. And as a reminder, please limit yourself to one question and a follow-up.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will be coming from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Please proceed with your questions.

Mehdi Hosseini: Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one has to do with the midterm guide. It seems like there is about a 13% decline in your SOC TAM for 2026. What I want to better understand is how do you think about the mobile app processor and especially the transistor density versus a slow start in Industrial? How should we think about those two end markets impacting that 13% reduction to your 2026 TAM for SOC and I have a follow-up.

Greg Smith: Hi, Mehdi, this is Greg. So the composition of the TAM in the mid-term model, if you compare this year to last year, I think the biggest change is that we think that the that the compute part of the market is going to be at a higher level, than we did last year. And we think that the mobile portion of the market is going to be up from where it is now but will not be at the level that we were modeling last year. So we believe that the pace of transistor density is proceeding basically at the same rate that we thought it was proceeding last year. The real difference is that the end market sort of end unit market predictions going out through the mid-term are a bit softer in this model than they were last time. And certainly, the impact of cloud and Edge AI in the market is a relatively new factor and is strengthening the compute part of it.

Mehdi Hosseini: Okay. Great. And the follow-up has to do with your prepared remarks. I believe you said you have a new compute customer. And if that’s true, if I heard you correctly, how does the ramp of that new customer would look like? Is it more like a ‘25, ‘26 impact? And if you could just provide any additional color would be great.

Greg Smith: So there are sort of two comments in my prepared remarks. One talked about socket wins for VIPs. And those socket wins are in both cloud compute and in EDGE devices. And the right way to model that is perhaps a little bit starting towards the end of 2024, but definitely hitting much more seriously in 2025. The other reference that I made was for an SLT win for a compute customer, and that’s definitely something that’s going to take until 2025 to build to material volume.

Mehdi Hosseini: Okay. Great. Perhaps I will follow-up with Andy, what VIP is?

Greg Smith: That’s – sorry. We – because most of the – there are a number of players that are designing their own silicon. And typically, a big portion of those are the hyperscalers, but there are – there are players in that space that don’t fit the traditional hyperscaler model. So like a large integrated automaker or people that are doing custom silicon development for their own handsets or customer devices. So we prefer the term vertically integrated producer, but you can read that as hyperscale.

Mehdi Hosseini: Okay, thank you for the color. Appreciate it.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Timothy Arcuri with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Timothy Arcuri: Thanks a lot. I’m wondering if you can go through the TAM numbers, how the different segments came in, in ‘23? I know the breakout before was compute $1.3 billion, Mobility was $900 million, Auto is where I think a little more than $600 million. If you can just – did the market come in about as you thought it would for ‘23 and then can you shape ‘24 for those segments? I know it’s flat at a high level, but I would imagine Autos are probably down a couple of hundred million. And maybe Computes up a couple of hundred million. That’s the delta. Can you just run through that?

Sanjay Mehta: Sure. Hi, Tim, it’s Sanjay. So we estimate the SOC TAM in 2023, you were going down the correct numbers that haven’t really changed. But just for specifics. We view the Compute market at $1.3 billion, Mobility at $900 million, Auto at $600 million, Industrial at $400 million and Service at $700 million. That’s how you get to the $3.9 billion. And then the midpoint of 2024, Compute is $1.4 billion, Mobility at $0.9 billion. Auto and MCU at $0.5 billion, Industrial of $0.4 billion and Service – SSC service at $0.7 billion to get to the $3.9 billion at our midpoint.

Timothy Arcuri: Got it. Okay. So it is Compute. It’s just a little bit of mix shift. Okay. And then can you talk about your largest customer? Your big customer on the mobility side, which was actually not your largest customer in 2023. I know you have a range of outcomes this year. I’m not asking for numbers on that range, but can you talk about sort of what you think at the midpoint, how big they could be as – is there a case where they are back percent of your revenue range in 2024? Or is that just off the table?

Greg Smith: So, hi, this is Greg. Our historically largest customer, we’ve said that like in 2023, they are going to come in at under 10%. Looking forward into 2024, our base case, again, has them at less than 10% of total revenue. Right now, our visibility into their second half demand is quite limited. And we usually have a better picture of that in the April time frame. So if we get any better information about it, we will share it at that time. But the thing that you should think about is that there isn’t there isn’t much downside to our base case around anything that happens with our historically largest customer.

Timothy Arcuri: Got it. Okay, thank you, Greg.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of C.J. Muse with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

C.J. Muse: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. In your prepared remarks, you talked about confidence in the second half recovery for SSC test. So I was hoping you could walk through, what’s giving you the confidence and how you see that recovery emerging? And perhaps you could speak to OSAT versus end customers, content, edge AI, whatever you think is really going to move the needle for you guys and drive that second half recovery over the first half?

Greg Smith: Sure. So the leading indicator that we tend to look at most is really around utilization rates. And right now, those utilization rates are low, but we did start to see OSAT utilization start to tick up. So they are still below normal seasonality, but they are definitely improving. And we believe that they could reach sort of the point – the levels that would trigger buying by the third quarter of this year, if the trend that we’re seeing continues. The key end market trends that we’re looking for is unit growth in smartphones and PCs. PCs have been in a real pit. And so just from a refresh cycle, we’re expecting to see that recovering a bit and that would be a tailwind for us. The thing that we also saw in the fourth quarter was that utilization came down a bit in IDMs. And so they are primarily the – that’s where most of our business is concentrated for Industrial and Automotive.