Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:LSCC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

James Anderson: Yes. Thanks, Tristan. So on the kind of back half of your question, we really see the growth that we drove through the first 3 quarters of this year. And remember, that follows multiple years of double-digit growth, really as content gains. We’ve had significant design win growth over the past, really, 3 to 4 years, and that’s led to multiple years of double-digit growth. And yes, if you look at, if you can sort of take the midpoint of our guide for Q4, we would still expect Industrial and Automotive segment to be up on a year-over-year basis for Q4. And for full year this year, we would expect Industrial and Automotive to have, again, significant growth for the full year, for 2023. And so as we said, we really do that, as driven by content gains and those content gains we believe are multiyear revenue streams, right?

A lot of those design wins that we win are — which begun production, those stay in production for — in the Industrial and Automotive segment for sometimes 3, 5, 7 years or longer. So those are really long lifetime revenue streams. And so when we talk to our customers, though, about the kind of near-term headwinds, what our customers are seeing is that is near-term demand softening based on their customers. So their customers placing lower number of orders on them. And that what they’ve shared with us is they believe that, that’s really driven by lower CapEx spending by their customers due to higher interest rates, higher cost of capital et cetera, so. But if we step back, really quite pleased with the growth that we’ve driven in this segment over the past year, certainly this year as well.

And we continue to see Industrial and Automotive as a long-term growth opportunity for the company. We believe that industrial automation, robotics, automotive electronics that these applications are in multiyear secular growth trends that will last for many years over the long term and that Lattice and Lattice Devices are really well positioned to take advantage of those secular growth trends. And well positioned to gain more content with our customers, especially with not just the continued expansion of our Nexus product line, but the beginning ramp of our Avant product line and the build-out of our Avant product line as well.

Tristan Gerra: That’s very useful. And then for my follow-up, you’ve mentioned in the past that you have very little in terms of LTSA. So what’s your expectation for pricing next year? I know you’re not providing a guidance, but given the weakness, do you think that we get back to maybe a low single-digit decline in pricing? That’s what a couple of analog companies have reported so far this earnings season. And where are your lead times currently relative to a quarter ago?

James Anderson: Yes. Thanks, Tristan. On pricing, we see our pricing as generally stable and durable. We’re in our — as Sherri said in her prepared remarks, we’re in our fifth year of our gross margin improvement strategy, which included better pricing optimization. And I would say over those 5 years, which there have been many different sort of market conditions over those 5 years. Over those 5 years, we found that our pricing was very durable, very stable. And we don’t have any reason to think that, that would change, right? So we believe that our pricing will remain durable. On lead times, the second part of your question, I would say that lead times are, for us are really back to normal, which normal we would say is kind of pre-COVID time.

There can always be a particular silicon package combination that might be in tight supply. But overall, I would say our lead times are generally back to normal. And then just more broadly, I would say just we view the semiconductor supply chain overall is really kind of back to normal in terms of supply availability.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Blake Friedman with Bank of America Securities.

Blake Friedman: I just wanted to go back to Avant, and just relative to 90 days ago, have there been any changes related to your thoughts on how Avant is expected to ramp next year? And have any of the recent macro developments impacted the timing of any customer ramps.

James Anderson: Thanks, Blake. I would say no. In terms of changes in, Avant, the only changes we’ve seen over the last 90 days would be continued growth in the design win pipeline, which we would have expected, right, as we continue to engage with customers as new device, Avant devices get closer to launch, et cetera. We expect that overall pipeline to continue to grow, so. But that’s certainly one change is pipeline continuing to grow. And then the only other change is just our continued execution and progress on getting Avant-G and X ready for launch at the developers conference. So — and then the second part of your question, doesn’t — no changes relative to our thinking on how Avant would ramp next year over the following years.

That’s really driven less by any macro changes, more by just the level of customer engagement and design win progress and then the natural timing of our customers on when they selected a device to just their natural time line to when they would enter production with those devices.

Blake Friedman: Got it, helpful. And then just as a quick follow-up on OpEx. If I look over the past few years, OpEx has kind of grown in this mid-teen range on an annual basis. Just kind of given the potential macro weakness over the next few quarters, just curious how we should think about kind of the trajectory of OpEx moving forward.