Earnings Labs

QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM)

Q1 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Jan 23, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Qualcomm first quarter fiscal 2008 conference call. (Operator Instructions) The play-back number for today’s call is 800-642-1687. International callers please dial 706-645-9291. The playback reservation number is 28814084. I would now like to turn the call over to John Gilbert, Vice President of Investor and Industry Analyst Relations. John, please go ahead.

John Gilbert

Management

Thank you and good afternoon. Today’s call will include prepared remarks by Dr. Paul Jacobs, Steve Altman, Dr. Sanjay Jha, and Bill Keitel. Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Jha are together at the World Economic Forum in Davos and will be dialing in to today’s call. In addition, Don Rosnenberg will join in the question-and-answer session. An Internet presentation and audio broadcast accompany this call and you can access it by visiting www.qualcomm.com. During this conference call, if we use any non-GAAP financial measures as defined by the SEC and Regulation G, you can find the required reconciliations to GAAP on our website. I would also direct you to our 10-Q and earnings release which were filed and furnished respectively with the SEC today and are available on our website. We may make forward-looking statements relating to our expectations and other future events that may differ materially from Qualcomm's actual results. Please review our SEC filings for a detailed presentation of each of our businesses and associated risks and other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements. In addition, Qualcomm has filed an application with the FCC to participate in the 700 megahertz auction. Due to the FCC’s rules, we cannot make any additional comments about this matter. And now it’s my pleasure to introduce Qualcomm's CEO, Dr. Paul Jacobs.

Dr. Paul E. Jacobs

Management

Thank you, John and good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin by commenting on the leadership and organizational changes we announced last week. With the continued growth of 3G worldwide, we’ve added regional leaders Jing Wang and Andrew Gilbert to the executive committee to better reflect that global diversification. We’ve also moved the Qualcomm Internet services business under Andrew and he will lead QIS from the U.K. This new structure also consolidates all of the services business under Len Lauer. Innovative services such as media flow and mobile commerce represent significant growth potential for Qualcomm and our partners and this change will increase our focus on these emerging opportunities. I would like to acknowledge all of the leaders involved in these changes and their significant contributions to our business, as well as for the positive impact they will have going forward. Turning to our financial results, we delivered another strong quarter. Record revenues were driven by another record quarter of CDMA based MSM chip shipments. Both revenues and pro forma earnings per share up 21% from the year-ago quarter, and remember that this year’s results do not include Nokia royalties. It’s the continued focus and execution by our employees that allows us to deliver such excellent results at the same time we are defending our business model. I am also pleased to reaffirm our fiscal 2008 pro forma earnings per share guidance. We have continued to be active in repurchasing our shares, returning $1.6 billion of capital to our stockholders through our stock repurchase program since October 1st. We have now returned approximately $8.4 billion of capital to our stockholders through our cash dividend and stock repurchase program since fiscal 2003. We have now utilized nearly all of the current $3 billion stock repurchase authorization announced last May and we would…

Steven R. Altman

Management

Thank you, Paul and good afternoon, everyone. Through our innovation and continued execution, we along with our many partners have continued to lead the industry with compelling solutions that benefit the diverse needs of the global wireless community. There are now a vast number of 3G enabled products, services, and applications ranging from very low priced handsets to fully featured, high end user terminals that are capable of meeting the needs of consumers around the world. Many of these consumers now recognize the power and speed that 3G puts into the palm of their hands and are increasingly demanding it when purchasing new devices. Unfortunately, as the market and our success in it continues to expand, we remain faced with a number of legal and regulatory challenges brought by a small number of companies intending to disrupt our business and further their own business interest. I would now like to update you on some recent developments in our various legal actions. In our continuing litigation with Broadcom, the Federal Court in Santa Ana issued an injunction on December 31st. The judge partially granted Broadcom’s request for an injunction in the United States against certain Qualcomm products that were found to infringe three Broadcom patents: the 010 patent, asserted against Q-Chat; the 686 patent, asserted against certain MSMs having certain video encoding capabilities; and the 317 patent, asserted against certain MSMs that support multiple CDMA air interface technologies, specifically CDMA 2000 1X and 1xEVDO. We have filed a motion in the district court to stay the permanent injunction pending appeal and the hearing date is January 28, 2008. The injunction ruling provides a sunset provision that stays the injunction order until January 31, 2009 for Q-Chat and 1xEVDO products that were found to infringe any of the three patents in suit…

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

Thank you, Steve. QCT had an excellent start to fiscal 2008 and I would like to review the highlights. We shipped approximately 79 million MSM chipsets, which represents our 10th consecutive record quarter. This is approximately 16% more than the previous quarter and represents a growth of 34% from the same quarter last year. This increase in our shipments is driven by the continued growth in demand for our UMTS products as well as our [entry tier] products for emerging markets. Our UMTS chipset shipments increased by 41% compared to the prior quarter and by nearly three-fold against the year-ago quarter. Similarly for QCT’s [inaudible] products we experienced growth of 23% compared to the previous quarter. QCT generated revenue of $1.57 billion this past quarter. This was our seventh consecutive quarter of record revenue. Compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2007, this represents a growth of 28%. Our operating profit remains strong. In the first quarter of 2008, we delivered earnings before tax of $470 million, an increase of 49% compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2007. Earnings before tax as a percentage of revenue remained consistent from the previous quarter at 30%. Last quarter we began experiencing supply constraints on certain analog products as a result of accelerated demand for our products across multiple tiers. We have substantially resolves the supply issue a quarter earlier than predicted because of excellent support we received from our vendor partners. Our customers have also been working with us to transition to new technologies that are far less affected by the supply constraints. While we are still experiencing some supply issues with our low end chipsets, given our current view of demand looking forward, we can meet our customer requirements in full after the first quarter of calendar 2008. We are…

William E. Keitel

Management

Thank you, Sanjay and good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased to report another quarter of strong financial results as 3G CDMA adoption continues to accelerate around the world and our businesses execute well. I’ll begin with highlighting a number of key items in our first quarter results. Revenues increased 21% year over year to $2.44 billion. Pro forma earnings per share increased 21% to $0.52 per share. As a result of the Santa Ana ruling, we recorded in the first quarter approximately $0.01 per share greater expense than we had previously expected. This is for the period May 29, 2007 to December 30, 2007. QCT achieved new records with revenues increased year over year of 28% to $1.57 billion and MSM shipments increased 34% to 79 million units. QCT’s operating margin was 30%, unchanged from the prior quarter. QWI reported revenues of $650 million this quarter, with an operating margin of 83%. We estimate that approximately 95 million new devices were shipped in the September quarter, a 28% increase compared to the year-ago quarter. We estimate the average selling price of CDMA wireless devices was approximately $211 per unit, compared to $208 for the same quarter last year. QWI segment revenues and operating profit increased 12% and 20% year over year respectively, driven by an expanding BREW customer base and Q-Chat. The tax rate for total Qualcomm was 18% for the quarter and our pro forma tax rate was 22%. We estimate our pro forma tax rate for fiscal 2008 to be approximately 21%, consistent with our prior guidance. Operating cash flow continued strong at $880 million for the first fiscal quarter, up 12% year over year. Pro forma free cash flow was $908 million, 37% of revenue. We’ve been actively repurchasing shares, including $900 million during the first…

John Gilbert

Management

Thank you, Bill. Before we go into our question-and-answer session, I would like to remind our participants that our goal is to address as many questions as possible before we run out of time on the call. Operator, we are ready for questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Mark Mckechnie from AMTEC Research, please go ahead with your question.

Mark Mckechnie - American Technology Research

Management

I wanted to get a sense for the impact from Broadcom’s injunction on your EVDO activities. It sounds like you suggested you are working pretty hard to comply with that and you’ve got some good work-arounds, but I wanted to know if you are seeing any kind of an interruption at any of your larger customers road maps. Thanks.

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

We have -- because of the sunset provision, in the short term, we’ve been able to avoid any interruption to our carriers on the EVDO side and as I indicated to you, we are working on multiple different solutions on the 317 and 010 patents and we are confident that we will find and deliver a solution which avoids the accused functionality and we have not provided you a timeline for that. But in providing you guidance for the next quarter, we have included some sunset royalty payment estimates within the QCT segment.

Mark Mckechnie - American Technology Research

Management

Great, thank you. Any impact later on in the year -- Q3, Q4 that you are seeing in design activities at all, or --

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

We are working very hard to avoid those impacts.

Mark Mckechnie - American Technology Research

Management

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Michael Ounjian from Credit Suisse, please go ahead.

Michael Ounjian - Credit Suisse

Management

Steve, I appreciate the update on some of the ongoing issues with Nokia. I guess with an arbitration hearing schedule for July, would you be able to walk us through what the process would look like going from there in terms of when we might hear any responses to that. And I guess similarly to the extent the Delaware case, that you were to consolidate the cases in Delaware, what might the timeline potentially look like if there were a hearing in late spring, early summer?

Steven R. Altman

Management

I’m going to let Don take that question.

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

With respect to the arbitration, as Steve indicated in his remarks, there is a schedule that would bring us to July, assuming that this current discussion in Judge Strine’s court doesn’t take us into Delaware. The arbitration, as you know, is a private proceeding but we’ve indicated that there is probably -- there will be a phased approach to the arbitration and in July, there would be some preliminary issues that would be addressed but not all of the issues. And the next phase I don’t recall but I don’t think anything has been decided precisely as to when that phase would begin. So until A, we’ve figured out whether we will be in the arbitration or in Delaware and then until we get to July, there’s really not much more to say at this point.

Michael Ounjian - Credit Suisse

Management

That’s great, thank you. And just to clarify in Santa Ana, with the work-around solutions then, so it sounds like those are ahead of schedule. Now, does that mean you are -- are you currently shipping the previous solutions of MSM chipsets or have you stopped shipping the ones that infringe on the 686 patent and waiting to ramp up with the new MSM chipsets?

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

We’re abiding by the injunction and so with respect to shipments relating to WCDMA, we have stopped shipments. As I think Sanjay mentioned, there is a sunset provision that applies to some of the injunction and we’re abiding by that. We’ve also sought some clarification from the judge with respect to several items within the injunction itself and we are scheduled for a hearing this coming Monday.

Operator

Operator

Brian Modoff from Deutsche Bank.

Brian Modoff - Deutsche Bank

Management

Sanjay, a question for you; on the guidance for 80 million to 85 million units in Q2, it seems like in order to get that number, we’re assuming some share gain in the quarter as well as perhaps some catch-up. Can you comment about that? And then, can you give us kind of a run-down of how you see the competitive environment in WCDMA chipsets at this time? Thank you.

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

Brian, we are seeing strength in both the low end of CDMA 2000 and a little bit in UMTS quarter over quarter, and I think that really is how we get to 80 to 85. And part of the reason the range there is a little larger this quarter is because of both supply uncertainty as well as uncertainty around how quickly we can get our customers to switch over to new work-around solutions. In terms of the competitive environment in UMTS, I think with our 6000 series, the 6246 and 6290 chips, we feel like we have industry leading products there and with the announcement of our expansion of the relationship with Motorola, we think that we have an opportunity in the long-term, medium to long-term to gain some market share.

Brian Modoff - Deutsche Bank

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

James Faucette from Pacific Crest.

James Faucette - Pacific Crest

Management

Thank you. I’ve got a question for Sanjay as it relates to product portfolio; can you -- [inaudible] introduced recently the Gobi and I’ve talked in the past about Snapdragon. Can you talk about design activity or give an update as to how those products are being received and when we might start to see those commercially available in the market?

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

The Gobi product we expect in the second calendar quarter, first devices to launch with Gobi in the second calendar quarter. And Snapdragon we expect first devices to launch either in the fourth calendar quarter or first calendar quarter ’09. In terms of design traction, we think that lots of laptop OEMs find the dual mode nature of our Gobi solution quite attractive. It allows them to ship one SKU as opposed to have a laptop that’s both designated for Verizon or AT&T or Sprint. This ability to use one SKU is very attractive. I also think that Verizon Vodafone find the ability to roam across the networks very attractive. Sprint also can offer a roaming solution and above all, I think by increasing the scale of solution because of it being dual mode, we can drive the price of Gobi solutions down and increase the attach rate in laptops, which of course is strategically important as broadband mobile data becomes available from other sources also. So I think we are getting good traction from Gobi, and Snapdragon, I think there are multiple devices being designed based on Snapdragon by our traditional OEMs as well as some new customers that we have been able to win.

James Faucette - Pacific Crest

Management

Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Mike Walkley from Piper Jaffray.

Mike Walkley - Piper Jaffray

Management

Just a clarification question for Bill; in our modeling purposes when you talk about the Santa Ana impact and the royalty payments to them, is that an increased gross margin charge or is that a contra revenue that -- how it flows through the models?

William E. Keitel

Management

That’s a cost of sales, so it impacts the gross margin.

Mike Walkley - Piper Jaffray

Management

Okay, great. Thank you. And then just for Sanjay again, great momentum on your chip business. In terms of the ASP declines, how much of that is mix going to the low end versus your normal step down in pricing at the beginning of the year? Any way to help quantify that for us?

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

We’ve not broken that out before, Mike, but I would say that both of them are fairly significant factors and the current factor the Bill mentioned also is that we are actually being pretty aggressive in driving the low end of the UMTS marketplace, so those three factors do play into the price decline that you see in this quarter.

Operator

Operator

Ehud Gelblum from J.P. Morgan.

Ehud Gelblum - J.P. Morgan

Management

Also a clarification and a question; Bill, just to understand the $0.03 impact, there’s no change to full year EPS so the $0.03 impact, we should be, in terms of trying to normalize what EPS would be if we didn’t have all these impacts going around, should we assume this $0.03 impact adds to the previous $0.04 impact that you had previously given us on the last conference call, plus the $200 million in extra legal expense, which sort of turns into around $0.15 on my calculation of sort of foregone EPS right now. That’s my first question on the clarification. And then just a question on the update on the new WCDMA unit number for 2007. You lowered it I believe to 177 million from 182. I would imagine because the numbers that you have shown in this quarter you just reported were in line, I would imagine that that 5 million change in WCDMA came from something you saw in calendar Q4, and if you can elaborate as to was the WCDMA market a little weaker in calendar Q4 and why does that not worry you at all about your WCDMA estimate for 2008? Thank you.

William E. Keitel

Operator

On your first question, the $0.03 that we’ve added this year for cost of sales for the Broadcom impact, that would be in addition to the explanation I gave last quarter on the total business model defense, and as we explained that it was a $0.04 increase over what we experienced in fiscal 2007 and we’d explained that in fiscal 2007, the total of those expenses were well in excess of $200 million. So the $0.03 is an increment to that, that’s correct.

Ehud Gelblum - J.P. Morgan

Management

So it’s $0.03 plus $0.04 plus $200 million, which I get is about an $0.08 impact, or a total of $0.15 possibly, if that math is roughly right?

William E. Keitel

Operator

Well, yeah, I mean, that’s -- it’s in the ballpark but as I said, more than $200 million last year, well in excess of more than $200 million and year over year a $0.04 increase, plus now we’ve added this extra $0.03.

Ehud Gelblum - J.P. Morgan

Management

Okay.

William E. Keitel

Operator

And then on the WCDMA numbers, you are correct that we think that’s a calendar Q4 of 2007. We’ve seen that fairly dispersed across a number of markets for our best estimate, so -- but given particularly the points that Paul spoke to about the data demand and the kind of ARPU experiences that operators are experiencing, we remain quite optimistic on the WCDMA market, as well as CDMA 2000 for ’08. And I would add to that, I think as Sanjay mentioned, I think we are optimistic on driving a greater UMTS market, simply by our efforts are focused on the low end, so we are quite optimistic on that front.

Ehud Gelblum - J.P. Morgan

Management

Thanks, Bill.

Operator

Operator

Tim Long from Banc of America.

Tim Long - Banc of America

Analyst

Thank you. Two, if I could here; first on the -- if you could help us reconcile a pretty steep chipset ASP declines this quarter coming up, but we’ve raised the overall handset ASPs and we haven’t changed the CDMA/WCDMA mix. Could you help us understand how, despite the chipset mix getting worse, the overall handset ASP is getting better? And maybe talk a little bit about visibility into those numbers into the back half of the year. And then, could you also just update us on the status of Sony Ericsson as far as payments and catch-ups and ongoing royalty payments there in the December and March quarters and for the fiscal year? Thank you.

William E. Keitel

Operator

I’ll just speak to the change as to try and summarize the changes we are seeing in our new outlook as opposed to what we have previously seen. We do see ASPs just a nod better. Previously we thought $199 would be the average. We are now seeing $203. We are seeing with our decrease in the calendar 2008 WCDMA market, obviously we’re now in holding -- excuse me, decrease in calendar 2007 and holding 2008, that obviously amounts to a bit stronger year-over-year growth that we are seeing in WCDMA. That would be number one. Number two, on the chipset ASPs, I mean, there were three factors we mentioned there driving the WCDMA at low end, just the overall mix of chipsets in the quarter, and then thirdly, just was the price resets. In total, we do expect to be shipping more MSMs in this current outlook for fiscal 2008 than what we previously expected and so Sanjay’s business is looking to be a bit better on that front. The licensing business is looking to be a bit better because of the higher ASPs and Len Lauer’s services business, we’re expecting a bit higher profitability there than what we had previously expected. So in sum, those all managed to offset the increment of $0.03 for the Santa Ana ruling and an increment of about $0.005 for two nice little acquisitions that we recently concluded.

Tim Long - Banc of America

Analyst

Okay, but Bill, I understand that WCDMA was weaker last year but the absolute ASP dollar amount goes higher as chipsets are going lower with no change in mix, so does that mean just the per phone CDMA and WCDMA ASPs have come in a little higher than you thought, despite your own mix getting a little bit worse on the chipset side?

William E. Keitel

Operator

No, I think it’s -- I think our share of that business as a whole is continuing to do well. We do expect to improve it on a year-over-year basis but we are targeting, as we said, it’s an annual time of year when we typically reduce our prices and the combination of mix changes and those price resets, we expect to be in the mid 20 percentile operating margin, which is still a very, very respectable margin. And then we do expect to see some improvements coming out of the year on that operating margin as well. On the Sony Ericsson, we have included in our guidance for the year an expectation that we do resolve that matter with Sony Ericsson and Don, do you want to offer some comments on where we stand now?

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

Just briefly, we are -- after the arbitration ruling, we have had some issues of clarification there as well. We have sought some clarification. We are also talking to Ericsson. There’s some auditing going on but we expect and hope that it will be resolved this quarter actually.

Operator

Operator

Maynard Um from UBS.

Maynard Um - UBS

Analyst

Thanks. A question and a clarification, if I could; Sanjay, can you just give us a ballpark estimate of what your chipset market share in 3G in terms of percentage is today and what you think that could grow to given Motorola? And then for Bill, sorry if I missed this, but was there any customer transition costs in the December quarter or embedded into the guidance this quarter, or was that included in the $0.03? Thanks.

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

I have actually not provided our market share guidance up to this point and I think we will hold on providing that guidance, if you don’t mind.

William E. Keitel

Operator

On the customer transition costs, as we said, we did provide in our guidance for fiscal 2008 the presumption that we would be stepping up to help our customers and partners through this process. That has begun. We did record some contra revenue in the first fiscal quarter and I expect we’ll record some more in the second fiscal quarter.

Maynard Um - UBS

Analyst

Do you anticipate that goes beyond the second fiscal quarter or would that -- is that the end and it goes away after --

William E. Keitel

Operator

At this time, I’m -- my forecast has a provision for the full fiscal year.

Maynard Um - UBS

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Tim Luke from Lehman Brothers.

Tim Luke - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Just a couple of quick clarifications; Bill, on the chipset ASP, I think you said down 9% sequentially. Do you have a sense of where we should look for that to be for the full year? And separately, in the $0.03 Broadcom Santa Ana impact for the year, is that something that is front-loaded into the next two calendar quarters, as in March and June, or is that something that is fairly evenly spread in terms of the impact over the year? And lastly, just with respect to the payment of royalties to Broadcom and payments to a carrier relating to previous rulings, where would that show up in terms of the income statement and any expenses associated with that? Thank you.

William E. Keitel

Operator

Okay, on the chipset ASP, we previously said that we expect a modest decline for the average ASP of chipsets in fiscal ’08 as compared to fiscal ’07. And the year is unfolding I would say pretty -- at this point unfolding pretty close to our expectations that we guided to a quarter ago, with the exception we are looking for a bit higher volume and a bit more profitability from that volume. But other than that, we’re still in that range of a modest decline in the average ASPs of our MSMs. On the Broadcom, yes for the timing of that -- you know, given the state we are at at this point, still looking for clarifications and I would just say that there are a number of open items there. I think it’s best that we refrain from commenting at this time on any timing aspects. On the question about payments to partners to help them through this process, I expect that most if not all of those would be contra revenue and as I said, in the first quarter we did record some contra revenue and I am expecting to record some contra revenue in the second fiscal quarter.

Tim Luke - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

If I could just follow-up, for Sanjay on the Motorola news from today that you confirmed, when might one begin to see shipments to that partner in the UMTS arena?

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

Tim, I don’t have good vision on that but to the extent that we want to launch devices this year for presumably it will -- if Motorola, as they indicated in their press release, want to launch this year then it needs to be an early fourth calendar for sure. It may be a little earlier than that but it would have to be fourth calendar quarter that we will see some shipment. Therefore, I doubt that we will see significant impact of that shipment in this fiscal year.

Operator

Operator

John Lau from Jefferies and Company. John Lau - Jefferies & Company: Thank you. On a more macro view, there has been a lot of handset concerns with regard to inventory. I was wondering if you could give us your commentary of what you see in the channel for inventory levels and the progression and pattern of demand pull for your MSM chipsets as we traverse into the new year. Thank you.

William E. Keitel

Operator

I’ll take a stab at that. Maybe Sanjay or anybody else would want to add to it, but on the channel inventory, first of all I would say that for over a year now, we’ve seen our estimates of that total channel at substantially higher than what we’ve seen in the past. In the past for several years now, we’ve seen it fluctuate within a 15 to 20 week band and in the last year or so, we’ve seen it hang in at the higher end of that band, somewhat as a surprise to us. We’re even beginning to wonder if we ought to adjust that band, given the several quarters now that we’ve seen that but we’re not prepared to do that as of yet. We think the inventory level in equivalent weeks is at the upper end of that band at the end of December, very typical to what we’ve seen in prior years coming off the Christmas selling season. At this time, we’re forecasting that -- we’re anticipating that that inventory channel will bleed down pretty progressively between now and the end of September. But we’ll have to see how that goes. Again, it’s hung in at a little higher level than what I am projecting at this point for this fiscal year but I think that’s probably the prudent basis to plan our business on. The demand obviously on the MSM side is quite strong, looking for 80 million to 85 million units shipment this quarter. That’s a bit unlike what we’ve seen in some prior years going from the December quarter to the March quarter, but we think we’ve got that pretty well dialed in but we’ll see how that progresses here. John Lau - Jefferies & Company: The inventory levels toward the higher end of the range but staying at that level consistently for the year and a consistent pull from your chipset business, is this indicative of a more steady state condition that’s going to last this way, given the strong pull in chipsets?

William E. Keitel

Operator

That’s exactly the question we’re pondering. We think it’s too early to presume that that channel will hang in at the higher level of what we’ve seen over the last several quarters. I think it’s better at this point, more prudent to be prepared assume that it will decrease but if the demand ends up higher, obviously we want to be prepared to supply it. But at this point, I think it’s the prudent way to go.

Operator

Operator

David Wong from Wachovia.

David Wong - Wachovia

Analyst

A couple of clarifications on the legal stuff -- the arbitration, when you were talking about wanting to consolidate in Delaware, what is the impediment to this? Does Nokia have to agree to it or does the Delaware court have to take it on? How is the decision made? And secondly on the Santa Ana hit, you said $0.03 to this year. Is this something that fades by the end of this year because of work-arounds or does it continue in next fiscal year?

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

With respect to the first question, what has occurred is we had a hearing in Delaware in the court there and it was Judge Strine who first offered the possibility of combining the issues in the arbitration and the issues in the Delaware court. We understood that Nokia was at least initially agreeable to that concept. We proposed for the court and for Nokia a process by which we would in fact move all of the arbitration issues into the Delaware court for Judge Strine to decide, along with the issues that are already before him. There has now been some discussion in a subsequent hearing with Judge Strine and with Nokia, and we and Nokia are in further discussion now and we will have to get back to Judge Strine by the 25th. So ultimately it will be the judge who decides but we are trying to work with Nokia to see if they will agree to the process that we proposed. I’m not sure I followed the second question.

David Wong - Wachovia

Analyst

You were talking about the $0.03 hit to your EPS from the Santa Ana ruling. That is for this current fiscal year. Is that correct?

William E. Keitel

Operator

That is for fiscal -- we recorded the expense, we’re anticipating to record that expense in fiscal 2008. I said approximately $0.01 was recorded in the fiscal first quarter but that $0.01 was an increment over what we previously had been estimating and it cover the period of May 29, 2007, through December 30, 2007.

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

Just to clarify something I said, I may have slightly misspoken; the judge will decide assuming that both parties are agreeable to moving the arbitration issues to the Delaware court. I suspect that if -- I don’t suspect -- if both parties are not agreeable to that, then the judge will have to determine whether he will proceed with the issues in his court and we will have to continue with the arbitration, which in either case we are certainly happy to do it either way. We just want to try to get to as quick a resolution as possible.

Dr. Sanjay K. Jha

Management

If I could also add one point; I think the other point of your question was if these royalties could continue into the next fiscal year. January ’09 is when the sunset finishes, so in the absolute worst case, it could continue for four more months. Obviously as I indicated to you earlier, we are working extremely hard to avoid that scenario but the worst case that these royalties could extend to is four months after the end of the fiscal year this year.

David Wong - Wachovia

Analyst

That was my question. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Avi Silver with Bear Stearns.

Avi Silver - Bear Stearns

Analyst

Thank you. First of all, congratulations on the Motorola deal. I feel like I said that once but 18 months ago, but just a couple of questions; first of all, on QCT spin-off, there’s been a lot of noise recently in the market. I’m just wondering where you stand on this, whether there is any event out there that’s occurred in the last couple of months or so that have made you reconsider this in one way or another. Second of all, I just want to clarify, on QCT margins, did the mid-20s guidance reflect basically your longer term perspective or it’s more the combination of the price reduction, Broadcom payment, maybe some work-around in helping customers and whatever short-term issues? And then one last one just on Delaware; if you decide to move forward there on Friday, and I hope you will, would there be any material EPS benefit if you decide to stay and dismiss all or most of your other proceedings with Nokia?

Dr. Paul E. Jacobs

Management

Let me start with the spin-off. So I have said I think many times that it is a potential. We have it as a path on the decision tree. I hope also that you’ve seen through all the litigation and the various back and forths and work-arounds and design-outs and all these things, that when we set our minds on making sure that we have a path, we are very serious about it. And so we continue to look seriously at the implications of a spin-off and as I’ve said before, there is some probability that we would make that decision. But there is no decision made right now.

William E. Keitel

Operator

To be perfectly clear, that mid-20 percentile operating margin guidance was specific to our fiscal second quarter. I just added some color that 30% operating margin we’ve seen for two quarters I think is exceptional when you look across any number of semiconductor companies, and I think 25% even looking across a family of companies is very respectable. Those were the context of my comments on that.

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

With respect to the Delaware case, as I said, we are perfectly willing to -- we have already decided we are perfectly willing to move the arbitration issues before Judge Strine in Delaware. We are negotiating what that would look like with Nokia. And we expect resolution one way or the other of that issue by the 25th. With respect to what it will portend, at this point I can’t say.

Avi Silver - Bear Stearns

Analyst

I know you are spending a lot of your incremental legal expense on Nokia and obviously there are like 12 cases out there, so I’m not asking to update guidance but just directionally, is it unreasonable to assume that there would be some sort of benefit, given the amount that you are spending in all the other cases, if this were to happen?

Donald J. Rosenberg

Management

Needless to say, if a certain number of proceedings were stayed, you can assume that there would be some degree of lowering of some costs, but how to quantify that and whether to compare it to everything else going on I think we can’t say at this point.

Operator

Operator

Dr. Jacobs, that was our final question. Do you have anything further you’d like to add today?

Dr. Paul E. Jacobs

Management

I wanted to say thanks to everybody because I have to say I was very happy to hear so many questions focused on our business as opposed to solely on the legal issues, and I hope that’s because you see that we are continuing to really focus and execute extremely well, despite some of those impacts that we discussed earlier in terms impact to EPS. I think we’re doing a pretty good job of delivering some nice growth. I think also I’m very happy about the way that the whole team has worked to mitigate any impacts of the litigation on our partners and customers, so that’s I think been a very positive for us. The other thing that I am really happy about is that for the 10th year in a row, we were put on the Fortune Best Company to Work For list and in fact, we are in the top 10 at number eight this year, so I’m happy to see that Qualcomm is the best company to work for. It’s also our goal to be the best company to partner with and the best company to invest in. I just wanted to thank you for your support.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the Qualcomm first quarter fiscal 2008 conference call. You may now disconnect.