Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:KEYS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Satish Dhanasekaran: Yes. Chris, I think you’re right. I think as the supply chain continues to ease and the delivery duration that it takes for us to fulfill an order continues to pull in, you would expect some level of normalization as well. And we — the reason we also put out the demand environment is moderating is we’re starting to also see some of our customers who earnings — whose earnings has fallen also put additional scrutiny on spend, right? And so that takes a little bit more time to close the deal as they go through their process. So those are some factors. Neil, I don’t know if you want to — I know you’ve commented on the normalization before.

Neil Dougherty: Yes. I guess the only other point that we make around that level is, if you look at our last three years, we’ve averaged a book-to-bill over the last three years of 1.09 driven first by COVID, obviously, then by the supply chain disruption that’s happened over the last, say, 18 months. And so we’ve known for some time that, that book-to-bill had to normalize. And as our lead times come in, we would expect that normalization to occur. And so, as I think about it — and again, we’re not guiding orders, but a move of our book-to-bill back to a more normal level, something approaching one is not something that’s going to impact our ability to continue to grow revenue.

Operator: Our next line of questions comes from the line of Mehdi Hosseini of SIG. Your line is now open.

Mehdi Hosseini: Two follow-ups. I want to go back to CapEx to 250. Should I assume that capital intensity will remain around 3% in fiscal year ’23?

Neil Dougherty: Yes. So I mean one of the things that’s happening with our CapEx is our capital purchases in this fiscal year were definitely impacted by the broader supply chain environment. And so we guided at the beginning of the year — I’m talking about fiscal ’22 now — to CapEx that was close to $250 million, and we significantly underspent that from a cash flow perspective. But what you can’t see is that our commits were very much in line with our original expectations. It just took longer for things to be delivered. And so, what we’re seeing as we go into next year is a pretty dramatic scaling back of new capital purchases, but with a little bit of a cash flow overhang as we go into next year. And so that’s what’s going to carry our capital purchases up to that $250 million level in fiscal ’23.

Mehdi Hosseini: So, I shouldn’t use your CapEx guide to come up with some revenue guide or revenue growth expectation for fiscal ’23? There is some cash flow as per the CapEx, right?

Neil Dougherty: That’s right.

Mehdi Hosseini: Okay. And then, I want to go back to China. The APAC region as a percentage of revenue has remained in the low 40% over the past several years, including the headwind from Huawei. Should I assume that you’re growing outside of China so much should extend that you’re able to offset increased restriction on shipment to China? Is it just a mix within the APAC region that makes China kind of neutralized?

Satish Dhanasekaran: Yes. I think maybe as we have spoken before, we have a broad-based business in China. And despite the ongoing geopolitical situation, we have a demonstrated ability to pivot and address customers in that region. And given the focus there on technology development, I think we’re seeing good demand in the region, but we’re also seeing multinational companies that are creating — that are moving out of China in some ways and into rest of Asia Pac and other parts of the world, including onshoring moves into North America, and we’re successfully capturing some of that spend as well.