Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Harlan Sur: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Hock, as your cloud customers are now aggressively focused on generative AI development and deployment across their data center footprint, right? This is driving strong AI-focused Ethernet switch port demand and demand for our compute offload as like TPU for this year, as you mentioned. But from a new product ramp and design win funnel perspective, is this also causing your cloud customers to want to pull forward some of your future programs like Tomahawk 5 or Jericho 3 next-gen switching and routing products and/or pulling the design and tape out of their next-generation compute offload AI ASIC programs?

Hock Tan: Yes. We are seeing all of the foregoing by the way and that happened over the last 90 days. We have seen a lot of that urgency, a lot of that, you might call it excitement, but you hit it right on.

Harlan Sur: Okay.

Hock Tan: Yes. Which is accounting for the color in my commentary about both net — generative AI-based network and pushing us to develop a new generation altogether of Ethernet switching that can support this kind of very compute and data intensive workloads. So that’s one side of it. And the other side of it, you are right, we have typically not want to talk much about compute offload, which is another way of saying, yeah, these are very related to some of the engines that certain — that are fairly customized dedicated to certain hyperscalers.

Harlan Sur: Thank you, Hock.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Vivek Arya: Thank you for taking my question. Hock, I am just curious to understand just the views about the second half. If I look at the last few years, Broadcom has managed to grow semiconductor sales, right, anywhere between 5% to kind of double-digit second half half-over-half, just the broader business environment. So it’s kind of more of a broader business environment question, not guidance per se, what could change that trend for Broadcom in a positive or negative way this year?

Hock Tan: In a sort of broadly conceptual, not a guidance, as you say, but trend this way. We are kind of getting rather hopeful that it would be a soft lending. That will be moderation as we are indicating this future — in this Q2 quarter moderating growth, but we see nonetheless, as probably leading to a soft landing of still a year-on-year improvement in the second half.

Vivek Arya: Understood. Thank you, Hock.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein. Your line is open.

Stacy Rasgon: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to verify, Hock, did you say that you started hearing urgency from your hyperscale customers around the AI in the last 90 days, and just given that, how do I think about that in the context of lead times that are still 50 weeks. You have got like, sounds like, $1.6 billion in incremental net working growth in year-over-year in 2023 from AI across both Ethernet and the ASICs. I guess given the lead times, is that more of a second half kind of thing when that contributes to the model or does it contribute more linearly for the year or I guess just how do I think about the timing levels in the wake of the strong demand right now just given the broader lead times?

Hock Tan: Stacy, thank you for your question. Very perceptive. And as I say, we are not — we are trying not to — we are not guiding you guys what happens beyond the second quarter, not the second half of this year and…