NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Berry: So this quarter, on the low cost NAND it’s not a big number, Steve, in this quarter. We do expect that that will be a significant contributor going into fiscal ’24. I would just say, take a step back on the margin side. There are two significant drivers to our optimism as we look at product margins in ’24. One is the premiums. We’ve talked about that. It’s about $50 million a quarter. It is a material improvement going into next year. NAND, as we all know, has come down materially every quarter since in the last three quarters. We’re finally going to be able to realize in our P&L as we got — as we move through the high-cost inventory. And then you talked about the mix, that will also benefit product margins going into next year. And then goodness, hopefully, FX also helped. So, I would add all four of those together when you look at product margins in fiscal ’24.

Operator: The next question will come from Wamsi Mohan with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Wamsi Mohan: It sounds like you were impacted by both share and weaker demand in all-flash. Is that correct? And is the share loss because of product gap that you are now filling with AFFC? It just seems like a large decline coming just from the low end of the AFF market? So any color there would be helpful. And I have a follow-up.

George Kurian: I think that our exposure to the large tech and service provider segments and our large market share in markets like Germany exposed us when those segments and countries slowed down in their purchasing behavior. I think that having a smaller number of QLC products also precluded us from participating in some purchasing activities, some RFPs in the past couple of quarters. And I think we are excited about the return to having the best lineup of flash, both performance and capacity flash. And we’ve got to see progress in terms of — continued progress in our enterprise and commercial customers over the next few quarters to wait for the large enterprise purchasing to come back.

Wamsi Mohan: And you’re exiting this year with somewhat worsening momentum given the macro from down 2% constant currency in Q3 to guiding down 6% in Q4, despite sort of this new introduction of new products. Any early thoughts into fiscal ’24? I know you commented on your — the margin improvement and the confidence there, but anything on the revenue side that you can help us with would be super helpful. Thank you.

George Kurian: Yes. I think, first of all, you have seen us be disciplined stewards of the business in good times and bad. You should expect us to continue to maintain operating expenses tightly managed until we see growth. Product margins, as Mike said, should have significant upside as we roll into fiscal year ’24 as both mix shifts towards all-flash and component costs in all-flash come down as well as premiums go away. In terms of returning to growth, listen, I think that we will — we are aligning our resources to be much more focused on our respective businesses. In the flash market, you should expect us to continue to track the progress of our flash market share. I think that, as I said, both enterprise and commercial segments should see growth while the large enterprise takes some more time to come back.

And then, I think in terms of cloud, listen, I think consumption will continue to be a headwind for a period of time as our cloud provider partners have also said. That does not mean that we are going to not continue to accelerate new customer acquisition. And a more aligned go-to-market model for flash and for public cloud services, respectively, will help us do that, execute better against each of those opportunities. We’ll tell you more when we guide fiscal year ’24.

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