Cohu, Inc. (NASDAQ:COHU) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So if you look at all of that put together our handler business is pretty solid with solid growth ahead. The interface business similarly, particularly because of the market, the automotive and industrial market. We’re working pretty hard to broaden the penetration of our interface business to high performance digital tasks basically more computing. At the same time, we’re working really hard to broaden the penetration of our ATE business into analog power semiconductor tasks. Again, more leverage towards automotive industrial applications. These are the – these are sort of the customers that I mentioned earlier on an earlier call. We have some line of sight business wins for the second half of the year and then sort of enjoy the – that customer’s demand is going to be in 2024 and beyond.

So I’m fairly confident on that revenue growth aspect. Obviously, we’re really confident on the gross margin aspect because we’re basically there or better than model at the moment. So the way I see it is we’re passing through that trough of the industry cycle delivering $0.48 of EPS in the second quarter and looking ahead for growing with the market and headwinds on the tester side and the interface side, which is what we’re focusing on.

Craig Ellis: Thanks guys.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Krish Sankar with TD Cowen.

Krish Sankar: Yes. Hi. Thanks for getting my question. I have two of them. First one, Jeff you mentioned that the September quarter weakness is tied to auto industrial, some of your test equipment peers, I said auto is still pretty strong. I’m just curious, is this specific to your customer exposure for your auto handlers or is there, can you give an update on what’s happening on the auto handler market share for you and then I had a follow-up?

Jeff Jones: So maybe let me step in on that, Krish. It’s hard for you to pick an auto customer or industrial customer that we’re not selling handlers to. So that’s – that can’t be specific. But one interesting observation, I don’t know if you picked it up on an answer that I gave a minute ago. We have about a 100 handlers that are waiting on tester deliveries to get installed. So I think that’s one element of the speed bump here. We got to get these testers, which are not from Cohu in this case actually it’s from some of our tester competitors to hit the production floor. So we can put these handlers into production. Frankly, I think that has been one of the elements that caused the order pause because these customers can’t take more handlers until they can get delivery of these testers.

Krish Sankar: Got it. Got it, Luis. That’s very helpful. So the auto handler market share is still pretty robust, right?

Luis Muller: Yes, it’s absolutely robust. It’s very solid.

Krish Sankar: Got it. And then just like, just another question. Is the orders are growing in September. Is it fair to assume your December revenue should be sequentially better than September? And along the same path, if you look into next year, are the main puts and takes on gross margins still the fact that if you have more mobility test equipment that’s better for gross margins than auto handlers? Is it as simple as that or the other variance at work here?

Jeff Jones: That does have an influence, Krish? The more ATE business we have, yes, the mix improves a bit. So definitely that is a benefit. As we’ve talked before, our handler business gross margins have expanded quite nicely over the last four to six quarters. But yes, definitely with a growth in the tester business, yes, the overall mix improves and the margin would expand as well.

Krish Sankar: And then just a clarification on December revenues. Is it too early to say, or was the order book growing in September gives you comfort on December revenue?