Applied Optoelectronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAOI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Timothy Savageaux: Hey good afternoon. And congrats on the results and the positive EBITDA in particular. I have a question about the kind of pull in that we’re seeing from Microsoft in terms of 400-gig AOC type demands. And I guess one would be, to what extent is that a factor in your guidance for Q4. And I assume, given you’re ramping up production this month and through December, that looks like to set you up for a full quarter of production, perhaps in Q1. And I’d love if you can give us a sense of what that looks like for you guys from a revenue standpoint? Or what might that look like? Thanks.

Stefan Murry: Sure. So your question about Q4, I think, is — the answer to that is that we’re just beginning the production in Q4. So we don’t expect it to meaningfully contribute to revenue in Q4. The reason for the commentary that we’ve been giving is just to illustrate the fact that the demand is still very strong for Microsoft. And in fact, I believe from other datacenter operators as well as we talked about. However, our ability to increase the production capacity is — we’re doing the best that we can, but it’s going to take us a little bit of time to get there, right? So we’re not going to be fully ramped right at the beginning of Q1 either. There’ll be some continued ramp during Q1. And in fact, based on the production targets that they’ve asked us to meet, there will be some increasing production capacity pretty much throughout next year.

It’s not going to be done in a month or even a quarter. So there’ll be some improvement throughout the year in terms of our capacity there. The encouraging thing for us really is, again, that Microsoft is really looking for us to make these products in greater quantities faster and that’s an exciting thing for us. With respect to exactly how much will be in Q1, we haven’t given guidance for Q1 yet. A lot will depend on the progress that we make over the next month or 2. But certainly, we believe this is incrementally positive in terms of timing and our overall production rate into Q1, and we’re excited about that.

Timothy Savageaux: Great. Wanted to follow up on the 800 gig front where you noticed some progress in terms of customer samples and realizing you’re probably in pretty early stages, but are you at a point — or when do you think pending customer evaluation of these products? Is this something that could start to ship in calendar 2024?

Stefan Murry: Yes.

Timothy Savageaux: Okay. That was pretty clear. And then I’ll try again then, which is — or further, which is any sense of timing on that within calendar 2024.

Stefan Murry: Yes, that, I think it’s a little too early to say right now. As you pointed out, I mean, we’re in early stages on it. I would say the demand picture for 800G looks pretty strong, and we’re certainly having very constructive discussions with the customers. But how long it will take and the qualification process and that is a little too early to say, but I do expect it to be in 2024.

Thompson Lin: Yes, so maybe sometime in Q2 or Q3 next year. The year of qualification, it will take easily, four to six months or longer. But the other thing that I want to emphasize is we are working very close with several big customers, about 1.6T with 200G per Lambda. And they all believe we are the technology leader. And I think the demand will be very strong too. Maybe it’s from Q3, Q4 next year. So it’s only 800G. There’s a lot of things going on for the data center, especially the high-speed transceiver technology, because the AI, the AI demand is really, really strong. So we are jumping right now, not only from the 100G to 400G in volume, and we stay at 800, we get into volume sometime next year, Q2, Q3, but even 1.6T, we would be without a decent volume in Q4 next year.