Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Limited (NASDAQ:AOSL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Chang: Generally, yes, we’re starting to see — as Intel is rolling out their platforms, we are seeing more opportunity for sure for more dollar content. And as you mentioned before, we are in the process of deploying our new controller solutions into the marketplace and that it will take some time to — for our customer base to adopt those. But once adopted, yes, we believe the dollar content, what used to be $2 or $3 is coming up to $3 to $4 and even on some certain BOMs going above $5 of content. And PCs themselves, they are — we are pleased to see the bump up in the September quarter. There will be seasonality at play as the ecosystem goes through another just seasonal pattern. But in general, we are excited about the additional BOM content that comes with these new platforms.

David Williams: Great. And then last one here for Yifan, if you could help me just a little bit on the gross margin side. And during the peak part of the cycle, margins had a nice lift from the optimization efforts that you had there. And is mix still the biggest driver of the margin? If we’re kind of looking back at last quarter, it seems like the discretes were lower in the power IC and were really the largest percentage of revenues we’ve seen in some time. But we saw a slight improvement this quarter and I guess we’ve had a kind of reversion where your power IC business is lower but your discretes came up. I’m just trying to understand and maybe square how the power discrete business compares to the power ICs in terms of margin and how we’re getting that lift kind of given the balance sequentially?

Yifan Liang: Sure. In general, the power IC products carry a higher margin for us. But given that, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have higher margins in products in the discrete segment. So in the September quarter, the product mix improved slightly in that I mean still basis points up. And then even though power IC revenue got hurt by the gaming drop. So — but on the other hand, we shipped more to Vcore in those areas in January which provided some higher margins for us. So I mean, overall that — I mean mix is a big portion of our gross margin improvement.

David Williams: Okay, great. Was utilization better this quarter? Was that a tailwind?

Yifan Liang: It’s in the similar range as last quarter because — for our internal productions, generally our Oregon fab is at a pretty good utilization level. Our back end is a little lower. So on the mix, overall, the utilization is at roughly same as last quarter.

Operator: Our next question is from Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.

Craig Ellis: Stephen, I wanted to go back to a comment in the prepared remarks regarding demand. It sounds like you retained a pretty — a cautious stance overall and I understand it’s a really challenging macro. But what I was hoping you could do is talk a little bit about the environment that you see. As you look into the first quarter calendar, fiscal third quarter, qualitatively, where are things looking more encouraging, were more challenging? And can you talk about where you’re more confident that inventories are now back to normal levels versus being in excess outside of maybe gaming which is going through a pretty visible correction?

Stephen Chang: Sure. Seasonality, I think, in terms of affecting the segments more — impacts the PCs and smartphones a little more. The PC market, as we mentioned, this September quarter was a strong quarter and we saw a resumption of orders for products, including ICs and other higher performance sockets that we didn’t see in the first half of the year. And so that’s kind of clear signs that the inventory correction is starting to die down. I can’t say that we’re out of the woods yet. But it’s great and very encouraging to see the fresh orders for some of our good products. And going into the — looking 2 quarters out, as you’re suggesting, into the March quarter, yes, we do expect to see some seasonality at play. Typically, that March quarter is the lowest season for PCs in any kind of year.