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

And we do believe that there will be some correction but nothing like the big correction that we saw at the beginning of this calendar year. We believe that PCs will take a little longer overall to get back to a fuller recovery but we’re already in a much better state than what it was just a quarter — or especially 2 quarters ago. So going forward, PCs will go through seasonality but we believe that it’s getting ahead — heading back towards a little more of a normal seasonal pattern.

Craig Ellis: And it sounds like you’re starting to see some encouraging signs of life in the Android smartphone market within communications. And obviously, great to see your lead customer from the U.S. performing well. But can you talk about the potential for next year to see better growth if you get more of a recovery out of the Android market? And when would we see that and how big could it be?

Stephen Chang: Sure. And the great thing about our smartphone business is that we are in multiple — and all the big end customers here in the U.S., in Korea and in most of the China customer base as well, too. And right now, it’s launch season on the U.S. side. On the Korea side, they’re preparing for a launch for February. And even in China, there’s still been quite a bit of decent demand for the high-end phones which we are participating in. So it’s — I think it’s good to see the diversification at play. Overall, smartphones are still — system shipments are still in the recovery mode. But overall, we do play fairly well in all of these high-end phones. So that helps to give us some, I guess, momentum at least going into the March quarter. Again, it’s just like PCs, there will be some seasonality at play but at the same time, right now, we do see a strong demand or decent demand, I would say, coming from the China base.

Craig Ellis: For my last question before hopping back in the queue, I’ll just direct it to Yifan. Yifan, oftentimes in the first quarter, we see either Lunar New Year or I think annual maintenance impacts to fab utilization, therefore, gross margin. As we look ahead to calendar 1Q, would those historic dynamics be in play? Or for some reason, would things potentially play out differently early next year?

Yifan Liang: Sure, great. I would expect that, yes and I mean the March quarter is a typical lunar New Year season and then — and also we also arrange some maintenance around it, so that I would expect utilization will be a little bit lower than the September, even lower than the December quarter.

Craig Ellis: That’s helpful. And then maybe I could sneak in one more that relates to gross margin. TI seemed to indicate that pricing was normalizing, so picking up a little bit but not getting aggressive. How would you characterize the pricing environment that’s out there right now guys?

Yifan Liang: Yes. This calendar year, I would say, yes, the pricing environment returned to historical normal trends, I would say, after last couple of years, favorable environment. I would characterize it as traditional pricing environment.

Operator: We have a follow-up question from Jeremy Kwan with Stifel.

Jeremy Kwan: Maybe a quick follow-up to that pricing question. Just wondering a couple of things. First, I guess, a couple of quarters ago, I think maybe even a year ago now, you mentioned increased local competition from Chinese suppliers on your load of mid end of your portfolio. I was wondering if you could give us an update on that and kind of how that — has that — how much of that has impacted pricing? And secondly, how often do you and your customers renegotiate pricing? Is this something that is set at the beginning of the year? Or is it kind of an ongoing basis? Any insight you can offer would be helpful.