Earnings Labs

Micron Technology, Inc. (MU)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 1, 2015

$506.01

-3.52%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.47%

1 Week

+2.54%

1 Month

+5.68%

vs S&P

+2.94%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Saied and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Micron Technology's Second Quarter 2015 Financial Release Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Kipp Bedard. Sir, you may begin your conference.

Kipp Bedard

Analyst

Thank you very much and welcome to Micron Technology's second quarter 2015 financial release conference call. On the call today is Mark Durcan, CEO and Director; Mark Adams, President and Interim Chief Financial Officer and Mark Heil, Corporate Controller and Interim Principal Financial & Accounting Officer. This conference call, including audio and slides is also available on our Web site at micron.com. In addition, our Web site has a file containing the quarterly operational and financial information and guidance, non-GAAP information with reconciliation, slides used during the conference call and a convertible debt and capped call dilution table. If you have not had an opportunity to review the second quarter 2015 financial press release, again it is available on our Web site at micron.com. Our call will be approximately 60 minutes in length. There will be an audio replay of the call accessed by dialling 404-537-3406 with a confirmation code of 6063446. This replay will run through Thursday, April 9th, at 11:30 PM Mountain Time. A webcast replay will be available on the Company's Web site until April 2016. We encourage you to monitor our Web site at micron.com throughout the quarter for the most current information on the Company, including information on the various financial conferences that we will be attending. You can also follow us on Twitter @microntech. Please note the following Safe Harbor statement. During the course of this meeting, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the Company and the industry. We wish to caution you that such statements are predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We refer you to the documents the Company files on a consolidated basis from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the Company's most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. These documents contain and identify important factors that could cause the actual results for the Company on a consolidated basis to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements. These certain factors can be found in the Investor Relations section of Micron's Web site. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. We are under no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of the presentation to conform these statements to actual results. And now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Durcan. Mark?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Thanks, Kipp. I am pleased with our team’s performance this quarter. Our diverse product portfolio and balanced customer base produced solid financial results. Revenue was within our guidance at $4.2 billion and GAAP net income was $934 million or $0.78 per share. Gross margins in DRAM and trade NAND were in line or better than guidance. Importantly, we are starting to see the early benefits of our NAND product and technology repositioning. Free cash flow was approximately 400 million in the second fiscal quarter based on operating cash flow of 1.25 billion, plus CapEx of 853 million. We finished the quarter with $6.35 billion of cash and short-term investments after successful execution of $1 billion straight debt offering. We remain very positive on the long-term prospects for our business despite short-term headwinds in certain segments. We expect to continue generating strong operating cash flow as we optimize technology, operations, product and segment mix. Micron’s fiscal Q3 guidance is $3.8 billion to $4.05 billion. The midpoint of the range is about 6% lower than revenue in Q2. This guidance indicates the willingness to hold inventory if needed. Let me talk a little bit more about technology. Today the significant majority of our mobile DRAM and non-Inotera production is on 25 nanometers. Our advanced DRAM technology deployment is going very smoothly. The 20 nanometer yield ramp is exceeding both our plan and results achieved on previous process node introductions. We continue to expect commercial volume in the second half of 2015 with the majority of our DRAM bits on 20 nanometer in the first half of calendar year 2016, 1X nanometer DRAM development is also proceeding well and we recently started the early silicon in Hiroshima. We’re currently in pilot production of our gen 1 32 layers 3D NAND with early sampling…

Mark Heil

Analyst

Thanks Mark. The second quarter of fiscal 2015 ended on March 5th. When comparing the Q2 results to the first quarter recall that the first quarter was a 14 week period rather than our normal 13 week period. The results for the second quarter include net income of $934 million or $0.78 per share on net sales of 4.166 billion; gross margins came in at 34%. Our reported income from equity method investments for the second quarter was $208 million substantially all of which was attributable to Inotera. Our share of Inotera’s results includes a benefit of 65 million from their release of a valuation allowance on their deferred tax assets that was reflected in their December 31, 2014 year-end results. Aside from recurring items the benefit from Inotera’s tax adjustment is the only other noteworthy non-GAAP adjustment this quarter. So non-GAAP income for the second quarter was $941 million or $0.81 per share. Relating to our non-GAAP guidance for the third quarter please refer to the dilution table that’s posted along with the other materials for this call on our Web site. The dilution table reflects the anti-dilutive effects of our capped calls at various assumed stock prices. Looking at the results and other guidance for the third quarter by product line let’s start first with DRAM. DRAM revenue decreased 13% compared to the first quarter reflecting a 9% decrease in bit sales volume and a 6% decrease in average selling prices. Lower bit sales were largely attributable to the extra week in fiscal Q1. DRAM gross margin was better than anticipated being stable comparing Q1 to Q2 as bit cost decreases nearly offset decreases in selling prices. DRAM gross margins for the third quarter using quarter-to-date ASPM projected mix for the quarter should be down compared to Q2…

Mark Adams

Analyst

Thanks Mark. Good afternoon and thanks for joining our call. I am going to change my format a little today and begin by providing some thoughts around both our DRAM and NAND business and the respective markets followed by a deeper dive into our business units. Fiscal Q2 showed some seasonal weakness which is not uncommon coming out of the holidays considering the timing of Chinese New Year is within our quarter I was pleased with our operating performance. The strength of our diverse product portfolio contributed to relatively stable gross margins quarter-on-quarter. We saw some pricing pressure in the PC segment, but generally all other market demand remained healthy. DRAM represented 65% of our total revenue in Q2. As a percent of that DRAM revenue mobile represented mid-20% similar to Q1, the PC segment represented low-30% down from mid-30% from prior quarter and server business was about low-20% up a few percentage points, while networking, AIMM and graphics were each below 10% similar to the Q1 mix. We are allocating less production to the PC segment and continuing to shift more bit stores towards the other faster growing segments. We also continue to move production from DDR-3 to DDR-4 as our customer demand grows. Although these manufacturing move generally weigh on production bit output guidance, our DRAM process transitions will more than make up for the bit and wafer effect as a result we are guiding to high single-digit sequential output growth for each of the next couple of quarters. Our DRAM team is executing through key technology transitions over our second half. We’re driving expanded 25 nanometer production and preparing for second half calendar year ’15 conversion to 20 nanometer across our fab network. DRAM technology enablement remains a key focus for our teams. We are pleased with…

Kipp Bedard

Analyst

Thanks Mark. We now like to take questions from callers. [Operator Instructions] And with that please open up the lines.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions] And first question comes from Harlan Sur from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Harlan Sur

Analyst

Good to see your DRAM bit supply in upper trajectory, I know that there was some concern that 25 nanometer and 20 nanometer transitions and some of the initial prep work may have inhibited some of the supply growth here in May but it’s good to see that back on a growth trajectory. Can you just help us understand what are the drivers for the bit supply decline in NAND in the May quarter and do you guys expect the resumption of supply growth starting in the August quarter?

Mark Adams

Analyst

Well, there is a couple of things, one, the primary issue is the mix issue as we shift our products directed more towards mobile and end product SSDs. The second factor is we are getting our factories ready for both transition to new process technology, 16 nanometer TLC, as well as prepping for - in Singapore starting the process for 3D manufacturing.

Harlan Sur

Analyst

And then I think on the last call you talked about relatively high levels of inventories of SSDs coming out fiscal Q1. What’s your assessment of SSD inventory levels exiting Q2 and then if you can just give us an update on your 16 nanometer SSD products. I think you might have mentioned it, sorry if I have missed this but I think you were talking about last time sort of ramping 16 nanometer SSD kind of second half of this year?

Mark Adams

Analyst

That’s right. Our assessment is that the industry inventory position on SSDs is improving. We actually think the pricing in the NAND business is stabilized quarter-to-date, and relative to Micron’s performance we've got a number of products that are going out [in qual] [ph] to OEMs that are based on our 16 nanometer MLC, interestingly enough for us we’re seeing a lot of people or some of our customers revert back to an MLC-based SSD drive based on some of the issues that have come up with competitive offerings on performance and endurance and reliability.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Fox, Cross Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Steven Fox

Analyst

I was wondering if you could dig in a little bit to the storage business unit. The business swung to losses, I think you partially explained that but maybe we could talk about that a little bit. And then you’ve given some reasons why those losses should reverse back to profits. But I was wondering if you could talk through maybe a roadmap to get into acceptable margins and where you see maybe margins exiting calendar year, et cetera? Thanks.

Mark Adams

Analyst

So this is Mark I will take the question we try to avoid speculating on future pricing and in projecting margins out in the future but I will comment that we continue to feel very good about the execution of the team in delivering against closing the gap competitively and for all the reasons we’ve talked about in the past those signs are happening; I have talked about in my earlier comments how our mobile NAND business is growing quarter-over-quarter - had a very successful growth trajectory. I think that the 16 nanometer MLC SSD that I communicated just a second ago are pretty good. Our alliance with Seagate and the SaaS development in getting access to these SaaS market earlier than we otherwise would have is pretty good and as we commented into the market last week in our announcement with Intel on the 3D NAND technology we still continue to feel that we’re in a very competitive and market leading position in 3D NAND. So, with all those things in place we are pretty bullish about NAND and we continue to think we’re going to close the gap.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mark Delaney

Analyst

I was hoping you could elaborate a little bit more on your outlook for the DRAM industry for the second half of the year and if you could just talk I know you don’t want to give specific pricing guidance. But if you could at least just talk to the trajectory and linearity of DRAM ASPs over the course of the second quarter and what sort of confidence that may or may not give you as you look into second half overall DRAM’s bottom-end trends?

Mark Adams

Analyst

Mark, this is Mark Adams. I think that we remain bullish in general on DRAM going forward for the following reasons. First of all, we think that the second half of the calendar year is going to be pretty strong in mobile and all signs are indicating to that. We do think that the PC capacity needs to be shifted over that to address that opportunity and that will balance out some of the current market conditions around PC. I am not sure how to call the PC market other than to say that we think it could improve from here because it is not doing so well and we think the back half of the year with Microsoft new OS and holidays and so on so forth we think it’s just got to be better and hopefully than that it is today. Beyond that when you look at our business we think as we have talked about in the past that it’s a more rational industry and with that is coming better behaviour and as Mark talked about earlier we’re going to do the right things to run our business and if that means not selling inventory below acceptable prices we’ll do it. So if I look at all of that I think about other end market growth I think we’re still in a pretty bullish perspective about DRAM will play out in the second half here.

Mark Delaney

Analyst

That’s helpful, and it actually kind of gets to my follow-up question, which is around your comments you’re making about holding inventory. Could you elaborate about how long you think you could hold inventory and then can you just talked about how would have to happen if you’re sitting on inventory and market pricing continued to decline just how quickly you have to true up your inventory with pricing in the market?

Mark Adams

Analyst

Interesting, let me comment on one thing around inventory that you didn’t really asked for but I will get to your answer. General inventory has increased a little bit since the first quarter. Now my interpretation of that is pretty positive. The people who accumulate this inventory on channel that’s how they make money, they make money by taking inventory and waiting to sell in a better market and the accumulation of this is just not dramatic but it’s probably now four or six weeks in DRAM and NAND and as you think about that they’re buying memory at current market pricing and they’re betting on a rebound and these are some people who have been in the business for quite some time I happen to believe that’s a pretty positive sign. Now relating back to the question on how we can do that, well I am not going to give you a number or weeks on-hand or what have you but we do believe that given the diversity of our end markets it is more a matter how we shift our capacity and now that we sit on a bunch of old aged inventory we would just move our capacity to better end markets.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Monika Garg from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Monika Garg

Analyst

Just two for clarification, you are guiding high single-digit for production of DRAM bits but for more - for shipment and revenue purposes it’s flattish?

Mark Adams

Analyst

That’s right.

Monika Garg

Analyst

So the second question I have is if you look quarter to-date ASP guidance of DRAM you’re guiding minus 9%, it was about minus 6% last quarter. When do you think we see some stabilization in PC DRAM pricing and also if you could talk about pricing the other segments of DRAM like mobile DRAM and server DRAM going forward?

Mark Adams

Analyst

Sure, Monika this is Mark Adams, relative to pricing it’s hard for us to get on that and try to make projections out in the future. What I would say is the comparison between the 9% and 6% Q2 and Q3 remember the 6% was off a much higher base coming into Q1 and so the 9% and 6% are not really apples-to-apples. We do believe that for the reason I say it is earlier that the overall DRAM business will remain in pretty good shape we don’t see massive price pressure in any of the other segments - are down 6% actually and Q2 was PC down a lot more than 6% and the other segments flat to even some better. So what I would say there is that we don’t see a lot of pressure in the other segments at this point. Now remember each of the businesses this is what is great about diversification, each of these businesses act differently, meaning for example the commodity component DRAM business is what it is and we have noted to be it is a lot smaller portion of our business, but when you look at things like mobile, mobile is a different business. It's a design in business, more concentrated customers in the number of 10 to 15 major customers that we sell to and we negotiate with them and we negotiate more long-term and so that’s a different business. So the pricing dynamics are much different. The fact that pricing stays good it is a great sign for us in mobile and our costs can get better and as we grow our market share we are going to continue to expand our business and that’s true if we look at each of the segments whether it’s the embedded, mobile, networking and automotive that’s all true in terms of how we look at the business, we take each of them as individual segments that run differently.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mehdi Hosseini from Susquehanna. Line is open. Go ahead.

Mehdi Hosseini

Analyst

Just a question here first, given your ASP cost and bit production and shipment trend, how should we think about trends in DRAM margin profile by different segments particularly for PC, mobile and server DRAM from the coverage quarter to the current quarter and I have just another one?

Kipp Bedard

Analyst

We’re not going to dive into gross margin by segment, but we’ll give you another chance to ask a different question if you like.

Mehdi Hosseini

Analyst

How should we think about the impact of use of the inventory since you think demand is going to high, how should we think about the impact of the inventory of that on margin profile in the current quarter?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Yes, I think the answer maybe it is Mark Durcan I think the answer is the same that we’re not going to try and predict margins, but the fact that we’re talking about this and by the way it's nothing new. But the fact that we’re talking about our willingness to hold some inventory here. Is really reflective of the fact that we’ve got a lot of confidence, as we move into the back half of the year we’re seeing a lot of signals, Mark talked about a bunch of them I’ll say even with the compute business we get signals from some customers that maybe they want to look at longer term ordering patterns et cetera. So, we got a lot of confidence that this is going to be pretty solid in the back half of the year and that’s probably about all we can say about it.

Mehdi Hosseini

Analyst

And looking into the NAND and alliance with Seagate and the recent optimism about 3D NAND especially looking into this 48th layer and the fact that Intel also has some collaboration Western Digital, how do all these dynamics play out into 2016 but maybe 48 million 3D NAND would become cost effective to commercialized, do you have direct alliance with Seagate and you have indirect supply into Western Digital through Intel, and any thoughts or any qualitative assessment that you can offer us looking into next year given this kind of a dynamic?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Yes let me just say this Mehdi, we compete with Intel in the marketplace, we have for a long time and we expect that Intel product whether it is hit by Intel or by Western Digital will be competitive or will be competing with my comp solutions in the market in 2016. Now the good news is, we think we’ve got a great 3D NAND solution and we also have a lot of capacity at Micron and so we think that overtime, we’re well positioned to do well in that business.

Mehdi Hosseini

Analyst

But if 3D NAND is going to be the disruptive technology it is going to be the canvas, how you're going to be able to manage the conflict of interest when you're effectively supplying these three different entities?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Well it's -- remember Mehdi it is -- the partnership we have with Intel is the co-development, the core technology that’s a big piece of the solution, other areas are the SaaS controller, the firmware, the software and the go-to-market capabilities that each of the other people are interested in it is the Seagate and Western Digital references that comes into the equation of going to market with a full-fledged enterprise SaaS SSD. So as we look at that it's our core technology we have dealt with our partner and there is really two avenues one with Intel taking it through their channel, and one with us taking through our channel.

Kipp Bedard

Analyst

And by the way if they do well, we’ll be happy to sell them some NAND flash.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from CJ Muse from Evercore. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

CJ Muse

Analyst

I guess first question regarding your pricing guide for DRAM down high single-digits, can you talk about what like-for-like pricing looks like versus mix shift?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

So when you think about the pricing like-for-like, the overall price I think we have guided down was 9% for the quarter. So high single-digits and as I made the comment earlier that, that was really driven by where we have exited Q2 going into Q3 as some of the mix changes that to think about our business mobile server and the other markets have pretty stable pricing. So a lot of the fluctuation in the guidance we are giving you is coming out of a quarter that started higher, ended lowered and then we’re starting kind of in the lower base.

CJ Muse

Analyst

And then as my follow-up, can you walk through the progression that you see in terms of the 20 nanometer ramp at Inotera when you start to see bit production and then when you expect that will have shipment in revenues. And then I guess overtime what are the milestones in terms of percentage of your overall DRAM mix and whatever timeframe you want to discuss?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

So let me characterize it generally for Micron and then I think relative to Inotera you can get some more specifics from them. But for 20 nanometer we've said the second half of calendar 2016 will be -- sorry the second half of this calendar year will be ramping, and by the time we get into the first half of 2016 it will be the majority of our debt mix.

CJ Muse

Analyst

And will you say ramping that is production or that is shipment?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

That is production.

CJ Muse

Analyst

And how should we think about the…?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Let me say it this way then, there will be significant shipments in Q4 of the calendar year for Micron.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Rajvindra Gill from Needham & Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Rajvindra Gill

Analyst

Wondering if you could discuss a little bit about the competitive pricing environment in DRAM and NAND, you gave some highlights in terms of what the actual numbers are, but wondering kind of qualitatively what’s happening in the market, and a lot of this positive pieces on the DRAM industry where some rationalization that’s occurring in the industry a rational behaviour. So I’m just wondering if you are seeing that continue if you could describe a little bit about that it will helpful.

Mark Durcan

Analyst

As I have highlighted today in our script and some of our comments that the real catalyst for some of the disruption here in not just the PC segment was really the demand side. And I think if you talk to other people in that business in the PC business the hard drive guys, the CPUs, the unit declined in the PC notebook segment kind of drove some of this and an interesting thing for us is that none of the other segments kind of showed that, and when you think about where our business is today where it might have come from years ago is, yes our pricing in one of the segments had some pressure in the first quarter, I am sorry in the second quarter. We felt pretty good about the rest of our business and it kind of showed up in our performance. So as I think about driving for us, we clearly in Micron if you look at industry pricing and you look at kind of pricing for gigabit and DRAM for example Micron is clearly the leader in pricing in ASP terms. And so at least historically we've been and we feel like we’re today, and we’re going to continue to try to drive it up and with that, that might mean holding inventory like we said it might mean moving to other segments, server, networking, mobile so on so forth. And so that’s kind of the picture today, I think that my comment earlier about what the timing of channel inventory and even our customer reaction we've had customers try to who initially wanted to get off the quarterly pricing come back to us in this past quarter and want to go back to quarterly pricing. So we’re generally bullish on the dynamics of pricing in the market. And yes there was an industry catalyst in the form of demand for PC, notebooks that drove a little bit of disruption in the business we don’t think it’s major, yes it’s if so you can measure it but the rest of our business is pretty good.

Rajvindra Gill

Analyst

And on the NAND side, you talked about NAND pricing stabilizing a bit, just wondering what’s driving that stabilization. And can you comment in terms of what percentage of your NAND business will be TLC exiting this year and should we start to see NAND gross margins increases as we exit this year?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Well as we think about our business, we think about the end-markets where they are going where the products will be generating the highest return and as we achieved our strategic objectives in NAND. And on a competitive basis okay we believe we will be closing the gap between our competitors in the second half of our fiscal year and throughout 2015 calendar, we believe that will happen. TLC today is less than 10% it’s not a large number today, and as we ramp our staffs it won’t be materially much larger. You will see some growth in the back half of the year but it won’t be materially much larger because we've got other parts of our business whether it be mobile or I talked about the success of our MLC 16 nanometer product as Tier 1 OEM. So we will seek TLC growth at Micron but we’re not going to do it just to do it, we need that mixture nature that we are getting the right value for it and that’s important to us and our business.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tristan Gerra from Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Tristan Gerra

Analyst

Given the strength of the U.S. dollar there has been some concern about potential dispatching of the year one content that have been PCs. Is that a trend that you are currently seeing or I expect in the second half?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

I think for us the question around FX is really more a question around what is worldwide GDP growth going to be. We’re a global company. We’ve got global customers some will do better in some FX situation some will do slightly worse. But unless something dramatic happens to worldwide GDP growth we think we’re pretty well positioned with manufacturing all around the world and with customers all around the world some of which will do better in certain circumstances and some of which won’t. So we’re not overly worried about it. Obviously we have manufacturing in Japan and there is a certain cost reduction associated with the weakening yen. Obviously we got some manufacturing in Singapore and certain costs associated with the strengthening Sing But net, net for Micron these aren’t huge effects.

Tristan Gerra

Analyst

And then what does the ramp of 3D NAND means from an equipment reuse and the point is this going to be a significant percentage of your existing equipment and could this impact the DRAM production next year if some of the equipment gets shifted to other product lines?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Absolutely we plan a lot of equipment reuse as we transition planar NAND to 3D NAND I assume that was the question is 3D transition…?

Tristan Gerra

Analyst

Yes.

Mark Durcan

Analyst

So there is incremental equipment required the incremental floor space there is some amount of tooling all of which can be reused in other parts of our or the vast majority of which can be reused in other parts of our business. But generally speaking we will be trading out planar NAND wafers for incremental for 3D NAND wafers. And we think that’s the most capital efficient way to run the business.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kevin Cassidy with Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Kevin Cassidy

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

May be along those lines also with 3D NAND, is that a drag on gross margins as it first ramps into production and when do you think would be the crossover where it could be a tailwind to gross margin?

Mark Durcan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Sure, it’s almost always a short-term drag on GM when you make the transition like this you’ve got new tools coming in and it takes a while to qualify and get them loaded, et cetera, et cetera. And there are existing efficiencies associated with yields ramps et cetera. So we’re pretty comfortable by the time we get to late in the year, late in this calendar year. We’ll be looking pretty good.

Kevin Cassidy

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

And you also mentioned that if the DRAM pricing isn’t what you’d expect you’re willing to hold inventory is there any willingness to cut CapEx or is that fixed for this year?

Mark Durcan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

We would be willing to do that if we thought the market situation were such that that would make sense to us. I can’t actually foresee that sitting here today. Clearly as we think about our plans for 2016 and things a little bit further out we’ll take into account where the market goes over the next number of months and quarters. But as we sit here today we just told you we think things are looking pretty good so we’re not anticipating making any major changes as we sit at the table today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Amir from Ladenburg. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Pardon me your line is open. Please go ahead, if you have your phone on mute un-mute your phone please.

Daniel Amir

Analyst

So in terms of the DRAM side you have expressed that PC DRAM you’re thinking that’s going to decline here in the next couple of quarters. What is the ideal mix that you kind of see your mix of DRAM a year from now? Is it PC DRAM kind of in the 20% level or do you expect it to decline and then come back maybe to 30%?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

I think directionally where you are going initially was right we think over time it will decline as a percentage of the mix and a lot of it does depend on the business but I think directionally we think you’re spot on.

Daniel Amir

Analyst

And then the second question is related to it sounds like the eMCP business is something that one of your growth drivers here. Do you feel that this is kind of the leading factor here to drive your mobile business? I mean it’s up 70% Q-over-Q in the eMMC space you probably didn’t have as a bigger competitive advantage is now that you have in the eMMC space given that you have a very good integrated product then with the DRAM side?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Yes I think it absolutely I mean in full transparency we’re coming off a somewhat lower base but I think we have stated in prior calls we have stated we think eMCP is for the mobile business coming out of our fiscal year will be somewhere around 25% little bit lower than 25%. But somewhere up from zero in the last 12 months so we as you identified it’s a strategic play for us leveraging our portfolio and quite honestly given our make up in the mobile business we think we’ve got advantage over just about anybody in the space.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from David Wong from Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

David Wong

Analyst

Could you give us some idea about the ownership of the IP associated with 3D NAND technology between Micron, Intel or joint venture entity? And so there was some concern about someone encroaching on your IP or the prosperity of licensing the IP who does the negotiations will drive the legal action?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

We’re not going to talk about intellectual property strategy, David but I can tell you that we do that, we fund the development together, we do it jointly and we both own different pieces of the intellectual property but beyond that it is not a lot I want to talk about.

David Wong

Analyst

Well then could you give us some idea of the proportion of your DRAM production in the May quarter between PC DRAM for memory, how you're allocating what you're actually making?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Well I think David, I’ll kind of get back and give you some of the comments I gave earlier. We think PC DRAM in the quarter will be down from mid-30s in Q2 to low to 30% kind of range and we think that that will signal increases in other areas such as mobile in the mid-20% server in the low 20% of our business. And so we see kind of a blend it is not just one category picking up with the PC business, mobile is the more capacity will allocate the server some PC business to server and we’ll look at networking on those as well, so that’s kind of a full suite of things we evaluate.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Newman from Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mark Newman

Analyst

You talked about the inventory on the DRAM side and you're saying your production is going to be up high single-digits, what are the assumptions you're using for the mix shipments for Q3?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Mark, I think in the business we can’t, we said basically flat on shipments that we know we don’t say a whole lot more in terms of future guidance. But I think it is just that in other comments around what we’re going to do what is right for the business to drive returning margins and it is not going to be fire sale advantage for us.

Mark Newman

Analyst

And then a follow-up question on NAND flash, I thought I heard you say components 50% of NAND, could you clarify that, perhaps I misheard? And then I wanted to get some of this kind of ideas from you about how is that going to be fixed over the long-term because clearly as you increase the percentage of your solutions and decrease the percentage of were NAND components that obviously very good for your margins basically moving up the value stack to create to catch more of the value but in addition to that it actually helps to consolidate the NAND market by essentially taking out the competitors because a lot of those were NAND customers are actually in the end of the day there also competitors certainly flash cards and SSD. So could you give us some better roadmap for how we can expect that percentage of components to decrease going forward?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

So the data I spoke to in my opening comments was that in Q2 component shipments includes cards and components and now it is somewhere around the area of 50% of our overall shipments in the quarter Q2. In Q3 alone that number will be cut by 30% as we start the transition of what you just highlighted away from component card sales to mobile and SSDs. Part of that dynamic by the way in discussing how this plays out is we now will be shipping in the quarters 16 nanometer MLC followed by drives that were in process and didn’t have that volume in Q2. So the move from components and cards to mobile and then client SSD based on 16 nanometer certainly is a positive move for us as you say we move up the stack and we continue to drive things like in enterprise drive both PCIe and SaaS as we explained earlier. That’s how you should think about our target and I mentioned also I think we gave guidance that NAND did grow will be flat to down in the Q3 timeframe as we think about the evolution for 3D manufacturing stuff as well as switch to some of our capacity to those 16 nanometer TLC. We think that all kind of resonates to a better optimize mix of products for NAND portfolio.

Mark Newman

Analyst

If I could ask just one quick follow-up on for LP DDR4, my understanding is Apple was moving to LP DDR4 for the next iPhone and also I understand 2 gigabytes. Do you have an update on your readiness or your roadmap for LP DDR4 when do you think that will be ready?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

So I think that Mark it is safe to say that we feel pretty good about our position there both existing 25 nanometer LP DDR4, as well as our 20 nanometer LP DDR4 offering. This is lesser about Micron readiness and more about customer demand lining up for the back half of the year and beyond.

Mark Newman

Analyst

Got it, thanks very much.

Mark Durcan

Analyst

And it looks like we have time for about one more caller.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from John Pitzer from Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

John Pitzer

Analyst

I guess I want to back to some of this idea of building inventory in the May quarter, I am kind of curious why is that now and not sort of accelerating the transition to 20 nanometer more quickly because clearly I would argue if you had 20 nanometer at a larger percent of wafer outs your cost structure would be better, and just can’t remember a time of building inventory either internally or in channel has been a good thing. So I am just kind of curious why the inventory decision is not a faster ramp in 20?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

John this is Mark. So we talked this quarter about how we were doing exactly what you just mentioned, which was in fiscal Q2, we made some adjustments in our manufacturing line to start positioning equipment for the 20 nanometer ramp. These things always in our balance and certainly the market today is not the market of last year or the year before, we have pretty broad diversification in the segment customers and products where we feel pretty good about our ability to move some stuff overtime, if the market demand is out there this quarter. We don’t know exactly what the market demand looks like this quarter maybe we end up not only anything else, we've left ourselves some room to manoeuvre there. But we’re trying to strike a balance between what you are suggesting as well as just building products and then seeing what the market looks like.

John Pitzer

Analyst

And maybe on my follow-up just on the OpEx line and specifically the R&D line continuous to kind of creep higher especially R&D kind of independent of revenue levels I am just kind of curious to what extent is this just kind of a new structural norm we should expect in R&D where you go after a lot of different market segments with a lot of different products or would you kind of characterize the current spend is kind of accelerating or elevated because of the where we are in the 3D transition or something else or just the long-term guidance on R&D and OpEx would be helpful?

Mark Durcan

Analyst

Yes so just on the R&D piece, there are a lot of different dynamics implying here, obviously we've got a lot of new 20 nanometer products that were going to want to qualify and ramp. And so we’re always wanting to make sure that we don’t let the R&D dollar spend getting away with qualifying products on a timely basis and getting to the market, and you just said that we should be doing. So there is that dynamic there is also I think there is an overlying dynamic as we start thinking about some of the storage class memories that we talked about making investments in and as we start continue to add resources to position the company deliver system level products that there is a different nature to the R&D spend than there have been historically as well. Now overtime we may spend less on some of the other things we spend R&D dollars on. But what we are talking about right now in terms of over the next number of quarters being up a little bit. I think it’s more related to some of the short-term dynamic around technology ramps and new product introductions.

Mark Durcan

Analyst

And with that, we would like to thank everyone for participating on the call today. If you will please bear with me I need to repeat the Safe Harbor protection language. During the course of this call we may have made forward-looking statements regarding the Company and the industry. These particular forward-looking statements and all other statements that may have been made on the call that are not historical facts are subject to a number risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. For information on the important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially please to refer to our filings with the SEC including the Company’s most recent 10-Q and 10-K. Thank you.