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

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Operator: The next question will come from Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Please go ahead.

Mehdi Hosseini: It seems like April being the fourth quarter fiscal year helps with a little sequential bump in revenue, but should I expect a rather seasonal trend into Q1 fiscal year ’24? And I have a follow-up.

George Kurian: Listen, at this point, we are being appropriately conservative in our guidance. I think that we see the impact of a tough macro environment on customer spending. And both Mike and I are being appropriately prudent in our Q4 guide. We’re not guiding Q1 at this point. We’ll guide fiscal year ’24 and Q1 when we do that. But at this point, I want to be prudent about what we see in the market.

Mehdi Hosseini: Got it. And then for Mike, should I assume that the full impact of the headcount reduction is dialed into the April quarter, or would you be able to reduce the OpEx into July quarter?

Mike Berry: Yes. Thanks, Mehdi, for the question. So, we’ll get a portion of the restructuring, call it, 70% to 80% because of notifications and other things. So that is baked into our Q4 implied OpEx of about 675, which is down from our previous number of about 715. Most of that is restructuring and some incentive comp. And then, hey, the other thing — again, we will guide Q1 when we get there. I just want to add two other things to George’s great summary going into next year. We talked about product margins. We talked about OpEx. Keep in mind, too, that FX has been a material headwind for us this year, and we expect — hope that that is at least flat. The other thing is, keep in mind, from a tax rate perspective, we’ve grown EPS even with a significantly higher tax rate. So, hey, lots of good things going into fiscal ’24 that give us confidence in being able to drive the bottom line.

Operator: The next question will come from Tim Long with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Tim Long: Two questions, if I could. First, just curious on the flash C product. Could you talk a little bit about — it sounds like you’re expecting that’ll cannibalize or replace some of the disk and hybrid-based systems. Any risk there that there is some impact on the higher performance flash? And what would that mean to margin structure or revenues? And then, I have a follow-up on the cloud after that.

George Kurian: I think the capacity flash arrays that we recently announced have a workload profile and a performance profile that’s distinct from the performance flash array. Performance flash are typically sub-millisecond kind of latency. In capacity flash, it’s about 2 to 3 milliseconds. So, they are distinct use cases. Capacity flash will be an upsell on the hybrid flash array and will over time impact the percentage of our business mix that’s hybrid flash.

Tim Long: Okay. Thanks. That’s helpful. And then on the cloud part and the recovery, two-parter. One, have you noticed any level of engagement? I mean, we’ve got the pushouts that’s going around. But any different level of engagement by the big cloud players? And then, related to that, how have you guys progressed with transitioning ONTAP on-premise customers to also start taking some of your cloud-based services in their hybrid cloud deployments? Thank you.

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