SMART Global Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGH) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ken Rizvi: Yes. So Raji, I think we mentioned it. If we look back at the transcript, now a year ago, we had about $33 million of services, and in this quarter, it’s closer to $75 million. And within that, there are, what I would say, longer-term contracts. Those can be up to a year, sometimes even longer than that, where we’re providing a variety of services for our customers, some of which Mark has mentioned just before. And that’s the number I provided to Kevin just a few minutes ago. That’s probably — those longer-term services are probably in that $45 million to $50 million range a quarter, and then there are more kind of onetime or point-in-time type of services that can occur in every quarter. And so, that’s a rough split of services component, but it just shows or hopefully showcases the value that we continue to provide our customers. It’s beyond the hardware, and those services really provide some stickiness with our customer base.

Raji Gill: Yes. I appreciate that. And for my follow-up, on the gross margins, the gross margins I believe have kind of hit close to a record, given the strong mix of services at nearly 28%, and you’re guiding at 27%. I know that the IPS segment is lumpy, and therefore, the margins associated with that revenue stream are also lumpy. But when we go into the May and the August quarter and the November quarter, are there potential offsets to that IPS lumpiness? You talked about obviously more longer-term services revenue, or should we be kind of modeling more seasonality in the margins in the second half, given the kind of a drop-off in IPS? Just kind of curious how you think of short term and long term. Thank you.

Ken Rizvi: Sure. So Raji, I think as you look at the transition from Q1 to Q2, part of that is the mix that I mentioned around services overall, and we’d expect the overall services component to come down a bit Q1 to Q2. And the other piece that we I think highlighted on the transcript was that the LED business is expected to be down a bit. And therefore, given some of the fixed costs we have on the back end side, even though we have no front-end manufacturing, we have some fixed costs in the back end side, so we would expect margins for that business to come down as revenues come down into Q2. And that is what is driving the margin profile down a bit Q1 to Q2. But still, if you look back even a couple of years ago, this business was doing 19%, 20% gross margins.

And in Q2, we’re guiding to 27% on a non-GAAP basis at the mid. So, very healthy margins, much different business today than it has been in the past. As we look out in time, there will still be some lumpiness as it relates to IPS. I think we’ve talked about that on a number of our calls based on how much hardware we have, how much services we have, which can be point in time for that business as well. But I feel like we are hopefully at a much healthier state in terms of the margin profile just based on what we’re guiding to for Q2, which is, as I mentioned, 27%, plus or minus a point.

Raji Gill: Got it. And just if I could just squeeze one more and then I’ll step back in the queue. The challenges in the Brazil business, it looks like — I know you don’t break out the Brazil business anymore with respect to specialty. But it looks like Brazil is coming down 40%, 50%, something in that range, and more pressure in the PC consumer. I’m curious, you did then also talk about some trends in 5G and other areas. So, I’m curious, how you’re thinking about the Brazil market, consumer? Are we — do you think we’re approaching a bottom? Is the inventory kind of cleared out there and then we’re going to have a little bit of a rebuild and more of a secular push to 5G as Brazil catches up to the rest of the world? I’m curious how you’re thinking about the Brazil business. Thanks again.

Mark Adams: Yes. I think the way we look at it is the consumer memory business is most aligned with the challenges in the broader memory supply and demand dynamics, just given the end markets and the amount of memory those markets consume in terms of the overall industry supply. And so, we think that as we sit here today, as the supply and demand balance hopefully normalizes, that business will recover, in addition to, we think we’re pretty well positioned down there. And yes, you looked at the memory competitors or the suppliers of memory semiconductors and their revenue is down significantly, and you see that in our consumer business. But the dynamics of us with 5G with SSDs coming out of them in house and starting to be able to build that business up as PCs and servers get back into a positive demand, it’s kind of hard for us to say that this next quarter is the bottom.

But coming through the holidays and to your point about inventory, I would just say we’re hoping that we’ll bounce around the bottom here and hoping it’s where we start to see an uptick. It’s — but the visibility for us is as tough as it is for the pure memory guys.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Sidney Ho with Deutsche Bank.

Sidney Ho: Great. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe start off with the clarification one. How much does Stratus contribute to revenue in fiscal Q1 versus your expectation of $35 million to $40 million? It looks like the organic business performed better than you expected. And I’ll ask a few more questions about that.

Ken Rizvi: Sure. That revenue came in closer to that $45 million number for Q1. It did very well and the margins were…

Mark Adams: And I would just also comment, Sidney, that we’ve got two parts of the business that we’ve talked about in the past. One is the data center, which is primarily service-driven, and there are some upgrades along the way. And then there’s an edge business. And the growth Ken just highlighted there in his response, the growth really came from upside in their edge business, which is something more broadly, we’re really encouraged about as a long-term play in the fault tolerant high-availability edge products.

Sidney Ho: Great. Maybe just double click on the entire IPS revenue, revenue of $211 million for Q1. Can you give us a rough breakdown by end market between federal spending versus hyperscale customers versus commercial? And are you seeing different trends between these end markets in terms of the ordering patterns?