Mary Jane Raymond
Analyst · Craig-Hallum.
Right. So, a couple of things. One, the operating margins in the segment tend to be, for compound semi, I'd say there -- as we've said before, their gross margin tends to be above the corporate average and in Photonics, it tends to be slightly below. Comp semi's game really is almost one or lost on the gross margin because we make every growing material except 1 in that segment. All the laser diodes are made in that segment. It is the classic situation where the volume and the efficiency of the growth process is really, really important. So, having said that, Giovanni has been very, very diligent in the OpEx as we look at, for example, where do we make sense? And our company has never had a situation where we make the same thing in a lot of places. But he does continue to work very hard of, really what is the footprint we have, and then that also affects his OpEx footprint. In photonics, photonics, it tends to have quite a bit more people in it, right, and a little bit more assembly, so the supply chain has a huge effect there. As Chuck's already said, they're already doing a wonderful job. And in their case, just efficiency of line flow tends to have the biggest effect. So, any way you cut it inside the segment, the gross margin is a big deal. And the second part of your question was, do I think compound semi could go up. So, if you all would have asked me before what I saw the rest in margin for comp semi was, I probably would have said between 18% and 21%. So then, as usual, Giovanni just flows that out of the water. And so, I do think that they are at a pretty nice level at this point. But at the end of the day, they do have the highest-margin products in the company. And I think we really need to see how the demand develops over time, how we see various design shifts going. But I'm sure that Giovanni's [Inaudible] segment has not given up on whatever progress they can make in the segment. But generally, I'd say that I was very proud of them for what they achieved in this quarter, and that was not easy.