Russell Ellwanger
Analyst · Benchmark. Please go ahead
Thank you, Noit. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. It was a quarter in which we delivered strong financial performance and in which we received substantial increases in customer forecasts short-to-midterm, affirming the value of our strategic focus. Revenue for the second quarter reached $351 million with a net profit of approximately $53 million resulting in a net margin of about 15%. At the beginning of 2024, we publicly stated a target of sequential quarterly revenue growth throughout the year for which we remain committed. This was achieved in the second quarter of ‘24 with a $24 million increase in revenue compared to the first quarter, and we are on-track for this target in the third quarter with a revenue guidance of $370 million plus or minus 5%. Moving into the second half of the year, we remain focused on driving innovation, further enhancing our market leadership and delivering sustainable growth. I will now present a brief overview of our primary growth drivers. For the second quarter, RF Infrastructure revenue increased 50% year-over-year and represented 14% of the total quarterly revenue. We anticipate continued infrastructure revenue growth in the foreseeable future as customer forecasts for the next 18 months have increased dramatically. Silicon Photonics is experiencing an even stronger ramp than prior expectations, and we are seeing extremely robust and climbing demand for our SiGe based technologies. SiGe demand and growth is predominantly from TIA and drivers for optical transceivers, where I believe we hold the number one market position. The expected expansion of AI applications is strongly linked to the robust growth of Silicon Germanium Technology. As AI applications in various sectors demand higher performance and efficiency, SiGe Technology stands out due to its ability to operate at higher frequencies and lower power, making it ideal for AI hardware. In addition to the TIA and drivers, new products are ramping aggressively. For example, active copper cables, please see Slide 5, are experiencing an increased adoption for shorter-reach data center [techniques] (ph) driven by the need for lower signal loss at the high speeds required by AI. We also expect continued high increase in Silicon Photonics revenue. This business is targeted to grow from $30 million revenue in 2023 to above $80 million in the present year. And from that point, most recent customer forecast would result in more than doubling this revenue in 2025. This is driven by the very high demand for 400G and 800G transceivers due to exponential increase in data traffic from AI, cloud computing, streaming services and IoT, alongside the expansion of data centers 5G deployment, driving greater need for high performance computing. These SiPho based transceivers offer higher efficiency, lower cost and leverage advancements, making them essential for network infrastructure upgrades and the growing computational demands of AI applications. Looking forward, prototyping of 1.6 terabit products continues with several customers having demonstrated 200 gigabit per second per lane transceivers. We are already very active in 3.2 terabit R&D program in tight collaboration with specific market leading customers targeting 400G per lane solutions. During the second quarter, we delivered initial samples to our market leading customer showing breakthrough performance with an advanced architecture and incorporating new materials. Beyond AI and datacom, we continue to make good progress on SiPho engagements with automotive leaders in frequency modulated continuous wave based LiDAR. Please see Slide 6. And, with existing and emerging leaders in quantum computing, optical switching and other sensing applications, there is a growing ecosystem of Silicon Photonics based differentiated products, where I believe we occupy the number one foundry market position. Based on the strong demand we are seeing from our SiPho customers, we are additionally qualifying our SiPho platform at our San Antonio 200 millimeter facility. And, we have made significant strides in bringing to the market a 300 millimeter version of our SiPho flow with process design kits available and are happy to report that high performance successful silicon was delivered to lead customers, including some very novel and breakthrough solutions for certain advanced applications. The 300 millimeter added SiPho capacity, in addition to providing capabilities for these novel applications, combined with the San Antonio SiPho capacity, should ensure that we can meet short and long-term customer demand for this market, in which we are very bullish. For Q2, RF mobile revenue predominantly RF-SOI increased approximately 60% year-over-year and represented 31% of the total revenue during the quarter. We are currently fully utilizing our 300 millimeter RF-SOI capacity in Uozu, Japan and continue to transition 300 millimeter RF-SOI customers to Agrate, Italy per plan to support this increased demand. During the second quarter, we shipped prototypes in Agrate for our most advanced RF-SOI technology, [PPS-65-RSC] (ph), which not only exhibits industry leading Ron Coff for high efficiency and power handling, but also enables strong scaling for optimum flow factors. For Q2, our Power IC business revenue increased 60% from Q1, representing 14% of total revenue during the quarter. We anticipate continued growth through the remainder of the year. Within this market, we are seeing strong demand for a 300 millimeter technology. To meet this demand, we continue to qualify new capacity in the New Mexico fab and are happy to report good progress at initial customer prototypes already taped out with expected qualification and subsequent ramp in 2025. Our fab utilization rates for the second quarter, Fab 1, as previously announced, will be operation consolidated into Fab 2 was about 75%. Fab 2, 8-inch was about 67%. Fab 3 8-inch at about [55%] (ph) and expected to show substantial higher utilization in Q3 due to the great demand we are supplying from that factory for Silicon Germanium and Silicon Photonics. Fab 5 8-inch was at about 45% continuing to ramp with recovery within power. Fab 7 12-inch was at about 85% fully loaded. Fab 9 8-inch was about 60%. Today, we released our updated Corporate Sustainability, Environmental, Social and Governance ESG report. This report highlights our commitment to environmental stewardship, ethical practices and social responsibility, doing our part towards a sustainable society and world. We report our achievements with a focus on short, mid and long-term measurable milestones and targets to magnify our role as world citizens. We invite you to explore this report and we welcome any comments as you join us on our journey towards a more sustainable and equitable future. With that, I’ll turn our time to our CFO, Mr. Oren Shirazi. Oren, please.