Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Dave Pahl: Yes. Joe, the answer will be amazingly consistent with how you’ve asked it before. But we haven’t changed our strategy on pricing. You know that pricing doesn’t move quickly in our industry, and it — isn’t the primary reason why customers choose our products overall. So we regularly monitor pricing for all of our products. That includes all end markets and all product categories and all regions. And we price to be competitive, and we can do that because we’ve got a great product portfolio and we’ve got great access to the markets through our channels. And we’ve got competitive products because we build it on 300 millimeter. So hopefully, that’s amazingly consistent. Do you have a follow-on?

Joe Moore: Yeah. Thank you for that. Yes, in terms of the embedded business, I know you’ve had a number of kind of vertical markets that you de-emphasized and things like that with kind of a focus on more of a core kind of catalog strategy in that business. Where are you in that? Do you expect that you would — that your embedded business would sort of track the broader microcontroller business? Or just how do you think about the transitions that are happening there?

Dave Pahl: Yes. I think that we continue to make progress overall in our embedded business. The goal there is to have that business growing and contributing to our free cash flow over a long time. We think it’s a great business and continue to invest. So we are very happy with that strategic progress. So I think, in the near-term, of course, we’re not going to be immune to cycle-related corrections. It is a little bit later because of the constraints that we have due to embedded relying on foundry supply. And as you know, we are investing to put capacity in place. And we’ll have control of that in the future and really are in a good position to gain share there. So thank you for that Joe, we will go to the next caller please.

Operator: Our next question is from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Tore Svanberg: Yes, thank you. Dave, I had a question about the Q4 — I mean the Q2 outlook. So I know, obviously, you can’t guide by market and things like that. But from a bookings perspective, are we starting to see sort of a broad-based recovery in bookings? Or would you still say it’s quite selective in all the different applications that you are targeting?

Dave Pahl: Yes. So let me speak to bookings at the top level. We saw bookings increase each month of the quarter. That is very typical that we would see in a first quarter. I don’t have bookings by end market. If there’s something very unusual going on, of course, that would jump out at us. So that’s just not something I have here in front of me. But I would describe it as behaving as we would expect it to. And of course those bookings and other demand signals that we get from our customers are obviously [imbued] (ph) into our guidance. Do you have a follow-on, Tore?

Tore Svanberg: Yes. That’s very helpful. As my follow-up, you mentioned there’s a few segments within the industrial category that are starting to grow or perhaps have found the bottom from an inventory correction perspective. Can you talk about which segments those are?

Dave Pahl: Yes. Again, as we talked about over the last several quarters now that there was markets that were behaving — or sectors that were behaving asynchronously. So there are shorter cycle investment sectors that began to roll earlier, longer-term investment cycles that were rolling later, really just the last couple of quarters into it. So it is really — if you had to kind of divide them out, that’s what they would look like. Thank for you that Tore, we will go to the next caller please. And this will be our last caller.

Operator: Our last question is from Chris Caso with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Caso: Yes. Thanks. Good evening. First question is related to the buybacks, and I think you addressed this in a prior question. But I guess the question is, what would be the trigger for being able to resume some degree of buybacks? We realize that the intention is to return 100% of excess free cash flow. But at what point does the cash in the balance sheet and kind of industry conditions allow you to kind of come back to what you’ve been doing previously?

Rafael Lizardi: Yes. Well a couple of things. For example, the data point I will give you is our free cash flow for the trailing 12 months was $940 million. And we returned in — also in trailing 12 months, $4.8 billion. So one catalyst for a change there would be once we’re past this investment phase that is consuming a good chunk of that free cash flow. Another catalyst is obviously revenue and how that behaves over a number of years. But — so these are just some of the puts and takes that we think about when we are allocating capital.

Dave Pahl: Do you have a follow-on, Chris?

Chris Caso: I do. Thanks. And I guess the question is about where TI is allocating the R&D investment going forward and how that may be changing. Over last year, it looks like auto industrial is about 70% of your revenue, and I know that’s by design. But you’ve got some segments such as comm equipment that have been down a lot more. As we look out over the next two years or so, do you think that percentage of revenue on the segments kind of stays about where it is right now? Or based on the R&D investments you are making, do you think that changes substantially?