Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Qualcomm Third Quarter Fiscal 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, August 2, 2023. The playback number for today's call is (877) 660-6853. International callers, please dial (201) 612-7415. The playback reservation number is 13739729. I would now like to turn the call over to Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Lopez-Hodoyan please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Today's call will include prepared remarks by Cristiano Amon and Akash Palkhiwala. In addition, Alex Rogers will join the question-and-answer session. You can access our earnings release and a slide presentation that accompany this call on our Investor Relations website. In addition, this call is being webcast on qualcomm.com, and a replay will be available on our website later today. During the call today, we will use non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G, and you can find the related reconciliations to GAAP on our website. We will also make forward-looking statements, including projections and estimates of future events, business or industry trends or business or financial results. Actual events or results could differ materially from those projected in our forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K which contain important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. And now to comments from Qualcomm's President and Chief Executive Officer, Cristiano Amon.

Thank you, Mauricio, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. In our fiscal Q3, we delivered results consistent with our guidance with non-GAAP earnings of $1.87 per share, above the midpoint of our guidance. We recorded fiscal Q3 non-GAAP revenues of $8.4 billion, including $7.2 billion from our chipset business and $1.2 billion from our licensing business. This quarter also marked our 11th straight quarter of year-over-year double-digit percentage growth in QCT Automotive revenues. We are pleased with our technology, product and design win execution, positioning us well for continued leadership enhancements and future growth and diversification in automotive and IoT. I will now share some highlights from across the business. Our Snapdragon Series mobile platforms continue to set the benchmark for premium tier mobile experiences. Smartphones powered by our Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 represent the top devices according to Antutu benchmarks in Android Authority. We are also pleased that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy will again power Samsung's newest flagship device lineup globally. The Galaxy Z Flip, Galaxy Z Fold 5 and the Galaxy Tab S9 series. Our fastest Snapdragon ever for Samsung defines a new standard in smartphone computing capabilities AI experiences, desk top-level gaming features, professional-grade photography, enhanced mobile productivity and more. This launch underscores Qualcomm and Samsung's mutual commitment to delivering premium consumer experiences for flagship Galaxy devices. We are extremely proud of our successful partnership with Samsung Mobile. We are also pleased to extend Snapdragon experiences to mass market 5G smartphones. The redesigned Snapdragon for Gen 2 mobile platform will bring premium experiences at reduced prices to help drive 4G to 5G migration, especially in new 5G deployments worldwide. We're looking forward to device announcements in the second half of 2023. In automotive, we hosted our first Automotive Summit in Suzhou,…

Thank you, Cristiano, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start with our third fiscal quarter results. We delivered non-GAAP revenues of $8.4 billion and EPS of $1.87, which was above the midpoint of our guidance. QTL recorded revenues of $1.2 billion and EBT margin of 66% and reflecting slightly lower-than-expected global devices. QCT revenues of $7.2 billion and EBIT margin of 24% were consistent with the midpoint of our guidance. Handset revenues of $5.3 billion reflected the industry landscape we have previously outlined. IoT revenues increased 7% sequentially to $1.5 billion, driven by consumer and industrial IoT customers. We saw continued momentum in automotive for our Snapdragon digital chassis products with revenues of $434 million, a growth of 13% year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating expenses were flat sequentially at $2.2 billion. We have successfully executed on our fiscal '23 cost actions and are on track to exceed our commitment of a 5% reduction relative to fiscal '22 exit rate. During the quarter, the sale of Veoneer's active safety business to Magna was completed for net cash proceeds of $1.5 billion. Before turning to the fourth fiscal quarter guidance, I'll update you on global 3G, 4G, 5G handset units and channel inventory. We continue to estimate that calendar 23 handset units will be down at least a high single-digit percentage relative to calendar '22, reflecting the macro environment and a slower recovery in China. This forecast contemplates growth in handset units going into the holiday season. In IoT, channel inventory remains elevated due to weaker demand driven by the broader macroeconomic conditions. Since it remains difficult to predict the timing of a sustained recovery and customers remain cautious with purchases, we continue to operate under the assumption that inventory drawdown dynamics will be a factor through the end of the calendar year. Turning to…

Thank you, Akash. Operator, we are now ready for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Matt Ramsay with TD Cowen.

Akash, I guess for my first question, you were kind enough to give us a little bit of color in your prepared script just now on December and went through a few things there pretty quickly. So I wanted to double-click on a few. Maybe you could recap for us, just the trends you expect in handsets versus IoT and auto that you gave. And in particular, you talked about some seasonality being better in the fourth calendar quarter in the handset market, but that inventory burn was still going to be part of the dynamic. So if you could talk through that in a little bit more detail, what kind of magnitude are you expecting for the industry in the fourth quarter? What's built into your estimates? And is the inventory burn just an Android dynamic? Or do you think that the prepurchases from Cupertino are still an effect in the December quarter?

Sure, Matt. So there was a lot in there. I'll try to unpack it. Let me divide it into parts. So first, starting with the market. Our forecast does assume sequential growth into the December quarter as we go into the holiday season. From a financial perspective, consistent with historical years, we typically have 2 significant drivers of growth going into December from September. First is QTL, and we expect to see that growth as the market grows as well. And then second is handset launched by a modem-only customer. Off of the base we have in September, we expect to see that growth as well. So those would be the 2 significant growth drivers into the quarter. From an IoT and automotive perspective, if you look at the last couple of years, we've seen a trend of a slight decline in both areas quarter-over-quarter from September to December. So we just think the same seasonality will play out, not something that goes beyond that. It's just a normal timing that we've seen in the market in the past. Maybe the last comment I'll say is our forecast for September and December quarter does assume no material revenues from Huawei. As you are aware, we have a 4G license for shipping into Huawei. We do not have a 5G license, and we are not assuming any material revenue going forward. So hopefully, that covers all the different parts.

The next question is from Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan.

I have a couple, but maybe Akash, if we can start with the calendar fourth quarter comment that you just had. If I look back at some of the seasonality that you had in prior years there. We see a wide range. I mean somewhere between sort of 10% plus to somewhat of a higher number as well in the double digits. Maybe if you can give us a bit more color in terms of -- as you think about, you said in your smartphone outlook as well a recovery in the December quarter in terms of volumes. How are you thinking about it relative to typical seasonality in the prior years?

Yes. So Samik, maybe no additional comments to what I just said. I think if you look at our history, with the growth in the smartphone market, we see QTL grow with it. And so we expect a similar gain this year. And then I'd probably say similar to on the modem customer side as well, we'd see something similar to what we've seen in the past. So I think using historical trend as a way to model it going forward is a reasonable way of doing it for those 2 factors.

Okay. Okay. And for my follow-up, I mean, obviously, the inventory on the balance sheet did come down a bit, but how are you thinking about the opportunity here to sort of discount to clear some inventory of the balance sheet or even sort of from an investor's perspective or how should we think about the risk about inventory write-down if the recovery is sluggish for a period of time? How should we think about those drivers given that the inventory drawdown has continued for a longer-than-expected duration?

Yes. So Samik, obviously, our analysis is reflected in our results. We think you will understand the drivers that got us to the industry, the inventory balance. It's the overall industry being weaker. And with 6 months lead time, you're planning for a different market. And what we're comfortable with is that we have the inventory on the right parts. There is long lifetime on it, and there's demand for it. So our latest analysis on the topic is reflected in our results.

The next question is from Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity.

Great. Cristiano, I just want to talk about the Snapdragon for Gen 2 that you talked about. How is the initial uptick in terms of Android demand from your customers looking at that? And do you think, given the supply-demand imbalance that you'll be able to now make gain share in 2024 as you move downstream on Android?

Mike, thanks for the question. So let me just start with the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2. What we like about it is it insource, the market needs to drive now the next wave of 4G to 5G migration. Just as an example, Xiaomi just recently launched the Redmi 12 5G smartphone yesterday in India at an ASP at USD 135. So we're very encouraged with now the ability to create this 4G to 5G migration. I think there are a number of markets now that are deploying 5G and developing economies. And as you pointed out, now we don't have supply constraint anymore at the last year. And our new product road map, we're encouraged about the ability to drive that 4G to 5G migration at those price points.

Just a quick follow-up, just on the IoT business. Can you give us just an update on the 3 segments or any of the segments doing better than others in terms of the inventory believe or the outlook that you provided?

Sure, Mike. So this is Akash. I'll start and maybe Cristiano can add on top of it. So in the short term, the IT business is seeing some of the same dynamics as you're seeing come through with our peers from a demand side and what the impact it has on the inventory -- channel inventory. When we saw the initial weakness, it started with consumer, but we did see it go across to other parts of IoT as well, especially within China. But we're pretty happy with the results we had in the June quarter. We are up approximately 7% on revenue. And it was really growth across industrial and consumer that drove that benefit. Difficult to kind of predict the timing of recovery and the inventory drawdown. We did say that it would be a factor through the end of the calendar year. But that's the framework for the very short term on IoT side.

Maybe the only thing I was going to add, Mike, as we indicated multiple times, there's a lot of things in our IoT segment. And there are some of those things that they have yet to materialize. I think we talk about our PC space, which we're excited about the new product we have been developing with our custom CPUs. We're still in the beginning of virtual reality. We're encouraged by now other players entering the market, which will ignite develop our ecosystem. And I think lastly, on networking. We like the WiFi 7 design win pipeline that could materialize in a new cycle into the future. So as we outlined, there's a number of different things within that segment.

The next question is from the line of Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research.

Hello. Sorry about that. I wanted to ask about tip gross margins. They seemed reasonably strong in the quarter even with revenues down. They seemed like maybe they were implied up a bit sequentially the guide seems pretty stable into September. Can you give us any feeling for drivers of the margin pricing mix? You talked about some additional cost dynamics. I don't know if there's anything in there on the cost of goods side. some of the dynamics there? And how should we expect that to evolve? Is it just mix that drives it going forward? Are there other things that we should think about?

Sure, Stacy. It's Akash. Yes, we did come in a little bit better than forecasted for the September quarter, and it was really primarily driven by a mix of products. we're guiding approximately flat margins going into September from June. And that's a reasonable way of forecasting our margins going forward as well. So we expect to be in the range as we go forward.

If I could ask one more briefly. Cristiano, you're talking a lot about AI and how that's going to contribute. How does AI actually contribute to the model going forward? Like are you anticipating that venture drives an upgrade cycle? Or is it more content? Or is it ASPs for the chips fall less than they would otherwise? Like how do we think about how that actually drives the model as adoption happens?

Very good. Thanks for the question, Stacy. Look, I think I will unpack the answer to the question. And first of all, we're very confident of what we see happening at the edge. On device, I think there's a number of reasons AI is developing on devices, a little bit different in the cloud. Everything that is real-time AI, always-on AI, context latency, reliability, personalization. And I think that can apply to products across all of our end markets. When it will happen, we are going to announce a new set of products at the Septran Taxi that are all going to be GnAI-capable products that were on phones, on computing products on all of the other segments in auto and IoT. And we think the monetization will happen 2 ways, right? The easiest way to think about it is if our customers in our partners that are working with us. We mentioned a few in the prepared remarks, come up with the new use cases and you have now an AI-capable smartphone, that changes the size of the phone market. It could create an upgrade cycle in between 5G and 6G, and changes the size of the market, also improve the mix towards our product lines and ASP increases. For you to do device, Gen AI on device, you need a different computing platform. And that's what we have been doing with our NPU. I think it's probably the unmatched by any of our peers and ability to do high-performance AI pervasively and continuously a low power. And we look, those things could create an inflection point as hard to predict the timing, but we can see how it changes the mix and improve the ASP in our products.

Our next question comes from Ross Seymore with Deutsche Bank.

I just have one question, one follow-up. On the December quarter soft guide that you gave, Akash, you talked about your modem-only customer having its typical seasonality in the fourth quarter, calendar fourth quarter. What is typical seasonality and/or your expectations for the Android side of things in that quarter?

Yes. So from an Android perspective, we expect the quarterly trend to be consistent with history. If you look at what typically happens for us in Android as we launch our new chips in the in the March quarter, and that's when the new premium tier chip comes out, and that's typically the stronger quarter for us. So it's really driven by timing of product launches. But fundamentally, when you look at our position within Android, even within '23, we've actually grown share of sell-through from '22 to '23. So we continue to be in a very strong position, and it's just the market dynamics that's kind of driving the cyclicality in the business.

And I guess as my follow-up, sticking with you, Akash, on the OpEx side of things, you talked about macro still being uncertain, and so you were going to take actions in the first half of year fiscal '24 on the cost side of the equation. Could you give us any more color on that? I assume it's largely on the OpEx side. You guys have been successful in hitting your 5% reduction, if not beating it exiting this year versus last. Any sort of quantification you can provide on what your expectations are for OpEx in that new cost-cutting plan?

Sure. So let me give you the framework of how we're thinking about it, and I don't have quantification at this point. But we've -- in '23, we exceeded the target we set. And as we've said before, we'll continue to look at additional reductions as the environment evolves. So given that what we're planning to do is proactively implement additional actions in first half of '24. And the framework for it is we're going to preserve our strategic priorities. We're going to reduce in certain areas, but then also have the capability to invest in new technology, especially AI and continue to invest in our diversification plan. So it's really an effort to get our investment portfolio right as consistent with the priorities going forward for the company.

Our next question is from the line of Chris Caso with Wolfe Research.

Yes. As a first question, if perhaps you could talk a bit about mix, where is your mix sitting as compared to where it was last year? And obviously, the mix has skewed higher during times of supply constraints and now there's greater availability. So how is that affecting margins and revenue? And as things go forward, how do you expect that to change as well? I guess there's some concern that mix shifts down to perhaps some lower end of the portfolio as the 5G cycle matures and emerging markets tend to become a bigger part of the 5G mix.

Yes, Chris. It's Akash. If you look at the mix change, it's really happened through the year where we expanded our position in the lower tiers a bit, and it's already reflected in the comments I made earlier to Stacy's question on gross margin. So really no incremental comments to what I said earlier. As we look forward, one of the key opportunities for us is really how do we expand the ASP as just we're continuing to see incremental demand across all tiers for more capability in the chipset. And to Cristiano's earlier point with generative AI becoming so critical in edge devices going forward. it's going to drive an inflection point in terms of our presence there and our ability to expand content.

That’s helpful. Just a follow-up question about geographic revenue in particular to the handset business. And we’ve been hearing about perhaps greater macro concerns in China as compared to elsewhere. In terms of normalizing the business and getting the global handset market back to where it once was. Is this mainly a situation where we need to see China come back and normalize? Or is more of a global trend. What needs to improve in other words, to get back to what used to be normal? A –Akash Palkhiwala : Yes, I’d say a couple of parts. So we’ve seen weakness across China and other emerging markets. Those are definitely the 2 areas. In developed markets, it is largely held. There is some smaller impact but not as much. I think the opportunity is really across the board. I think 1 is just from an overall replacement rate perspective, you could see that increase going forward, driven by new technology cycles, but also within the emerging markets in China, you could see some normalization of return and demand as things stabilize. So those would be the opportunities. Just to be clear, in the guidance that we’re giving at this point, we are not including those, and that would be upside to our plan.

Our next question is from the line of Brett Simpson with Arete Research.

Akash, I had a near-term question on smartphones. I mean some of your smartphone peers are reporting better fundamentals near term. I think MediaTek's -- in the June quarter, they were up 6% in smartphones, and they're talking about mid-teens growth sequentially in September quarter. And I think Qorvo has also talked about quite a significant uplift in September. And I know you said there's weakness elsewhere in QCT, but can you just maybe home in on the smartphone business? And can you reconcile with some of the peers and what they're guiding and what you're guiding? Is it just really Apple and Huawei is going through a volatile patch for orders? Or is there something more structural you think it work? And maybe a second question for Cristiano. You talked earlier this year I think at Mobile World Congress actually that you were assuming no Apple business in 2024 because you didn't have orders and new orders there. Has anything changed with regards to Apple? And how should we think about this relationship beyond calendar '23?

Yes, Brett. So I'll start with your first question. If you -- let me break it down into Android and Apple in 2 parts. Within Android, two comments to keep in mind. First is we don't think there has been any significant shift in share between the players over the last few months. However, what has happened is when you look at our total share of sell-through for '23 relative to '22, as I mentioned earlier, we've actually gained share within Android. So we continue to have a very strong position and the kind of the seasonality across the quarters for Android is really a reflection of when devices are launched and which tiers we play in, which is the premium and high tier, which they center around the holiday season versus midway through the year. So that's how I would think about the Android market. On Apple, as I've said before, we expected muted seasonality in the fourth quarter due to the timing of chipset purchases. We did see them buy additional chipsets earlier in the year. And so what we are forecasting now is expected demand, expected shipments into the next quarter. So it's -- that really just speaks to timing again rather than some fundamental trend. As you know, we expect to be a majority of the share in the new upcoming launch, and so it's not really a share question.

Brett, to your second question, for the iPhone that is launching this year, we are going to support the modem. We're not making any updates to our prior plans for 2024.

Our next question is from line of Tal Liani, Bank of America.

Yes. Auto market, we spoke a lot about the handsets. I have two questions related. Auto market was also weak. Can you give an update on why it grew 13% versus 16% Street expectations? But this 13% is also lower than what we have seen before. So can you talk about the trends there? IoT was in line with expectations, but it's still declining 24% a year. So what is the trend over there? And on the handset side, I'm just wondering if there was deterioration throughout the quarter or it was improvement throughout the quarter? Kind of what was the intra-quarter trend?

I understand. I understand. On the handset side, really largely in line with what we had expected. So no trend one way or the other. Auto, in our actuals, came in slightly below our expectations. However, if you see what we guided for the upcoming quarter, quarter-over-quarter growth, we're guiding low double-digit growth. So it's just timing between the quarters that's impacting it. Within IoT, I'd say very consistent with comments earlier in the call, it's really the overall environment and how it impacts demand and impact on inventory is what's reflected in our numbers, very consistent with what some of our peers have seen as well.

And Akash, just a clarification on something you said. You said that December should be in line with normal seasonality. I tried to look back at seasonality, and it's inconsistent. It's very hard to speak about normal. What -- how do you define normal seasonality for the sector?

If you break it down into parts. I think you look at QTL growth, we've consistently seen QTL grow as a result of mix of devices and total market size. So that would be part one. The second is we've seen the handset market grow primarily due to the launch of a flagship device by a modem-only customer. And so we would see that as well. So those are the 2 factors that would drive a majority of our growth into the December quarter.

Our last question is from the line of Timothy Arcuri with UBS.

I had 2. So Akash, I'm wondering if you can provide more color just on these channel headwinds. You gave a $2 billion number, I think, for December and then that came down to $1 billion or it was supposed to come down to $1 billion in March. And it was supposed have been gone by June. Obviously, it's not gone. Can you kind of quantify what the headwind is? And maybe also talk, is that component inventory at your customer is still coming down? Or is that handset sell-in still being above the handset sell-through? And then I had a second question as well.

Yes. So when we talk about channel inventory, we talk about total inventory across beyond us. So it's customers and channel both combined. I mean, clearly, as we've gone through the year, the headwinds have been meaningfully higher than we'd expected going into the fiscal year. So that is reflected in the updates that we're giving. No fundamental change to our view of our share position and overall market we've talked about as well. So it's just those factors running through our numbers. We don't have an updated estimate of how much the total impact would be. But it's the same factors that we've been talking about through the year. We've not changed the total market size since the last call.

Got it. And then just last thing. So do you have any data on the refurbished market? It seems that it has gotten pretty large and maybe it's affecting the new Android market. Sort of what portion of the handset TAM this year do you think is used or refurb? Could it be -- I mean, we've seen numbers in the $350 million unit range, something like that. So the market is flat to down, but the market for new phones is really actually down quite a bit. Can you actually talk to that?

Yes. So we have the same data as you do on the refurbished phones. It has grown over the last couple of years. when we give the market, the global handset unit information, we're not talking about the refurbished phones. We are talking about new phones. And so it's already factored into the guidance we gave.

This concludes today's question-and-answer session. Mr. Amon, do you have anything further to add before adjourning the call?

Thank you. We'd just like to thank all of our employees, our customers, our suppliers and partners. I think the key messages were -- we like our strategy, continue to execute on our strategy. We're executing to plan. I think we have 1 of the best product road maps in our history. We like the design traction. And in the current uncertain environment, we're just focused on taking action on things we can control and make sure we're prepared when the market rebounds. Last comment is we see a new inflection point, as I mentioned before, on the edge from Gen AI. And what we like about it, that to happen on device, fundamentally, you need a new computing engine. We have CPU, GPU, but you need something different, which is the NPU. I think we have been investing this for over a decade. We're very happy how it performs, and I would like everybody to follow what we're going to show and announce at the upcoming Tech Summit in October. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.