Wolfspeed, Inc. (NYSE:WOLF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: Thank you. The next question go to Edward Snyder of Charter Equity Research. Edward, please go ahead, your line is open.

Edward Snyder: Thanks a lot. Maybe first a housekeeping just to check, Neill. The quarter, if you back out — obviously, you’ve gotten pro forma out the RF business and giving you unutilization charges. I’m getting around 30% gross margin if you get all that out of it. And then it looks like the RF business last quarter, give you — I’m sorry, last year because your pro forma that was running around 24% gross margin. Just want to check on that. And then I had a question about the materials.

Gregg Lowe: Yeah. And so in [4Q’24] (ph), we recorded 29% gross margin. The RF business was about a 200 basis point drag. So you can think about the ex-RF number remaining about 31%. So it’s about 200 basis points pickup there. If you exclude the underutilization, we saw about 200 basis points pickup for 4Q like a 1Q. So we reported 15.6% with that 17.4% of underutilization in the quarter. As you move into Q3 and beyond, we’ll see a little bit of an uptick in the underutilization that’s related to some of that capacity that will come.

Edward Snyder: Great. And then in kind of the detailed survey we did of all the new competitors in China and talking to folks on the ground there. It seemed — and the feedback we got from the conference in Italy. The feedback seems to be pretty consistent that on a dye basis, Wolfspeed is still the preferred vendor even some of your competitors thought that too. And module, you — there’s work that needs to be done because you’re kind of early in the modules to begin with. But the vast majority of everything you’re going to be shipping by the way Mohawk Valley is going to be dye anywhere, right? So as that ramps up, some of these deals, Gregg, this one is for you, some of these deals where some of your vendors are cutting deals to get any kind of dye they can get now because the demand is far exceeds supply, could revert back to higher demand once they see that Mohawk is up and has the capacity to supply. Isn’t that a fair assessment?

Gregg Lowe: I think the ramp of Mohawk Valley will largely be a dye story for the near term. We’ve won some good module business as well. But many of our customers are basically building their own inverters and their own modules. So that certainly is going to be a ramp mostly on the dye side of things, I would say, for the near term.

Edward Snyder: Great. Thanks.

Gregg Lowe: Thank you, Ed.

Operator: Thank you. That’s all the questions that we have time for today. I’ll now hand back the call — hand the call back over to Gregg Lowe, CEO for any closing comments.

Gregg Lowe: Just few thoughts before we end the call. One, demand remains very strong for silicon carbide. And two, I am personally laser-focused on the Mohawk Valley ramp to 20% utilization in the June quarter. Thanks a lot for joining us today and look forward to updating you in our next quarter’s results.

Operator: Thank you. This now concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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