Semtech Corporation (NASDAQ:SMTC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quinn Bolton: Hey guys. Mohan, let me also say congratulations on your leadership. And it’s been a pleasure working with you. I guess for both of you, I wanted to come back to your comment about the Sierra Wireless transaction becoming accretive. I think you said in the second half of the year as revenue recovers. And I guess I’m just trying to do some quick math. It looks to me that the Sierra Wireless is probably start to hit that accretive level at somewhere in the $160 million to $170 million range. And I’m using sort of the low to mid-30% gross margin, high $30 million to $40 million of quarterly OpEx and probably about $18 million of interest expense on the business with the $1.3 billion of debt. I just wanted to see if those numbers all sort of feel like the right ballpark for you when you look at that accretion estimate for Sierra Wireless?

Emeka Chukwu: Yes, Quinn. So there are usually a lot of moving parts to this, the synergies, the size of it, the cost reductions, all that stuff. But I’ll probably think that about $150 million of quarterly revenue run rate, this year, should start being accretive.

Quinn Bolton: Got it. Thank you, Emeka. And then can you — go ahead.

Emeka Chukwu: So you are definitely in the ballpark.

Quinn Bolton: Okay. Thank you. And then for Mohan, congratulations on the Tri-Edge win in North America. I’m wondering if you might be able to spend a little time discussing the application. Is this sort of a NIC to top of rec switch application? Is it more an AI cluster? Is it short reach AOC replacement or longer reach optical module replacements? I’m not sure how much color you can give, but it sounds like it’s an important and long lasting win for the company. And obviously, the first win in North America seems to be pretty important.

Mohan Maheswaran: Yes, Quinn, I know all the details because I was with the team when they awarded us, and we discussed and negotiated and we got the win, but I can’t give you any details just because they don’t want us to give out any details. I can tell you it’s short reach.

Quinn Bolton: Okay. And then maybe last one, if I could just sneak it in. Amazon announced yesterday sort of opening up the Sidewalk network to third-party developers. How long do you think it will take start to see deployment of those third-party end nodes on Sidewalk? Is that something investors should think is sort of six to 12 months? Could it take longer, might it ramp faster?

Mohan Maheswaran: Yes. That’s a good question, Quinn. And the reason we have some products already. They’ve already been working with some kind of alpha, beta kind of customers and partners who already have sensing devices out there on the Sidewalk. I think we mentioned a few in our press release, some of them tied to insurance, some of them tied to leak detection, some tied to just general broad connectivity and networks. But it is incredibly exciting, of course, 90% coverage in the U.S. It’s just a question of, okay, now can the Amazon machine work and the ecosystem work to build a plethora of devices and use cases actually around Amazon Sidewalk. And if that happens, then yes, that’s kind of the dream. That’s what we’ve been waiting for.

It’s starting to play out now. We’ll see how quickly and rapidly. I don’t think the development time is that along. It’s more proving out the use cases. There are many use cases. Obviously, there’s going to be the obvious ones, and they will be fairly straightforward. But they’ll — I think there will be many use cases that are tied to tags and tracking and many other types of use cases that will emerge. And that’s the question is how quickly the sensors can be developed and the end nodes can be developed, but also then the use case can be kind of proof of concept, how long it will take and then all the software required for it. But the good news is that Amazon is not only the Sidewalk activity, but also the AWS Cloud activity is connected to this.

So we have a pretty powerful partner behind it.

Quinn Bolton: Thank you. Thank you, Mohan.

Operator: Our next question is from Tristan Gerra with Baird. Please proceed.