Silicom Ltd. (NASDAQ:SILC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Liron Eizenman: How to give a number, but I would say it’s not very big, but it’s also not negligible. I mean we’ve seen those as trends not necessarily decisions that already been made completely, because those — in some cases those are debates that are happening in certain companies, and in some cases it maybe decisions that have been made, but were not implemented yet. And as we know, sometime decisions not been taking and eventually not fully implemented, but we see it as some kind of phenomena that we see with several customers because of what happened during the COVID and the shortages in the company. So I hope that answers the question.

Alex Henderson: Well, actually it doesn’t give me a lot of information. I was hoping you could give a little more granularity. Is it 10%, 15%, 25% of your customers are contemplating that kind of transition or is it zero to 5%, because it really is an important point. If it’s a large percentage of your customers, i.e., 15%, 20%, 25%, that could cause some delay in the timeline for their ramping of their projects. So we can’t analyze this externally. You need to give us some sort of detail around it?

Liron Eizenman: You’re right. I would say that I would estimate it at about $5 million annually.

Alex Henderson: Okay. So it’s not a large factor. It’s a more modest factor.

Liron Eizenman: Yes, and still I would say this is at risk. I mean, it’s not that we’re losing those $5 million.

Alex Henderson: Yes, I don’t really understand it, but for $5 million is moving the needle when you’re having a $10 million, $15 million, $20 million swing in the fourth quarter. So that parameterizes it. And on the GM side of it, can you give us a little bit of more detail on what you think the reason for that 31% number was and is that a function of manufacturing variance? Is it a function of change in pricing? What caused that and how much at risk is our model, which is sitting at $32,900 gross margins in ‘24, should we be thinking of $31 million, $32 million or is that still $32,900, still an okay kind of calculus? And I know you don’t want to give specific guidance, but you need to give us some guide where else there?

Liron Eizenman: So number one is, and that Eran spoke to that is the mix of products. As we see that more edge products are being sold compared to the overall revenue that we have in the company, and those products usually have lower GP than we see the impact more and more. We also feel price pressure from customers due to the economic situation and the situation that has changed now that components are readily available, but it’s very easy. So, I mean, we do feel the price pressure from companies. So those are the main two factors that I would say for that. It’s not that something change dramatically in the way that we manufacture. I mean, it’s pretty much the same, but the overall two factors of price pressure and the mix of products is causing that.

Alex Henderson: So in the interim between now and when you can give us more consistent, complete guidance on what you think that guideline should look like for gross margin from the prior guide, I think was with $32 million to $36 million. Is it reasonable to think that the modeling that we’re currently carrying of $32,900 is a viable number or should we be thinking of a range of $31 million to $33 million kind of thing, which in case we need to make some adjustments?

Liron Eizenman: So we’re looking to that. I mean, that’s what Eran in his part talk about is that we’re looking into that. We’re investigating. We’re trying to analyze that as best as we can and we would provide an update once we feel that we know what is the range we can get.