Stryker shares tumble despite strong Q2 results and raised guidance
Alpha and Omega (NASDAQ:AOSL) Semiconductor (AOS), currently valued at $1.24 billion, reported its Q2 fiscal 2025 earnings, missing Wall Street expectations significantly. The company posted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.09, falling short of the forecasted $0.21. Revenue reached $173.2 million, slightly below the anticipated $175.67 million. Following the earnings release, the company’s stock fell by 14.17% in after-hours trading, closing at $37.19. According to InvestingPro data, the stock has shown significant volatility with a beta of 2.47, making it more than twice as reactive to market movements as the average stock.
Key Takeaways
- EPS missed expectations by $0.12, leading to a significant stock price drop.
- Revenue declined sequentially but increased year-over-year.
- Guidance for Q3 suggests continued revenue challenges.
- Strategic focus on AI and power management remains strong.
Company Performance
Alpha and Omega Semiconductor experienced a mixed quarter, with a 4.8% year-over-year revenue increase but a 4.8% sequential decline. The company’s focus on transitioning from a component supplier to a total solutions provider is aimed at tapping into growing markets such as AI and advanced computing. InvestingPro analysis indicates the company maintains strong financial health with a current ratio of 2.65, suggesting ample liquidity to meet short-term obligations. For deeper insights into AOSL’s financial health and growth potential, including 13 additional ProTips and comprehensive valuation metrics, subscribers can access the full Pro Research Report.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $173.2 million, up 4.8% year-over-year, down 4.8% sequentially.
- EPS: $0.09, down from $0.21 in the previous quarter.
- Non-GAAP Gross Margin: 24.2%, down from 25.5% last quarter.
- Cash Balance: $182.6 million, up from $176 million.
- Operating Cash Flow: $14.1 million.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Alpha and Omega Semiconductor’s EPS of $0.09 fell short of the forecasted $0.21, marking a significant miss. The revenue of $173.2 million was also below the expected $175.67 million. This performance contrasts with previous quarters where the company either met or exceeded expectations.
Market Reaction
The stock of Alpha and Omega Semiconductor reacted negatively to the earnings miss, dropping 14.17% in after-hours trading. This sharp decline reflects investor disappointment and concerns about the company’s ability to meet future targets.
Outlook & Guidance
For Q3, the company projects revenue of $158 million, with a non-GAAP gross margin of 22.5%. The management anticipates margin recovery by June and has set a mid-term target of $1 billion in revenue with a 30% gross margin, focusing on AI, smartphones, and e-mobility as growth drivers. InvestingPro data reveals that analysts have revised their earnings expectations downward for the upcoming period, though the company is still expected to return to profitability this year. Based on InvestingPro’s Fair Value analysis, the stock appears to be trading above its calculated Fair Value, suggesting investors should carefully consider entry points.
Executive Commentary
CEO Stephen Cheng emphasized the importance of power management in major industry trends, stating, "Power management remains at the core of major industry trends, including AI, digitalization, connectivity, and electrification." CFO Yifan Liang highlighted the mid-term financial goals, saying, "Our midterm target model is revenue reaching $1,000,000,000 with non-GAAP gross margin around 30%."
Risks and Challenges
- Continued EPS and revenue misses could erode investor confidence.
- Margin pressures due to competitive pricing and cost increases.
- Tariff uncertainties affecting demand in the PC market.
- Dependence on AI and advanced computing markets for growth.
- Potential supply chain disruptions impacting production.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts were keen on understanding the potential of the AI market, with management indicating it could be "multiples larger than the graphics segment." Concerns were also raised about ASP erosion and the impact of tariff uncertainties on demand.
Full transcript - Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Ltd (AOSL) Q2 2025:
Jayla, Moderator: Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today’s Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Fiscal Q2 twenty twenty five Earnings Call. My name is Jayla, and I’ll be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I’d now like to turn the conference over to our host, Steven Pelayo.
Steven, you may proceed.
Steven Pelayo, Investor Relations Representative, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Alphan Omega Semiconductor’s conference call to discuss fiscal twenty twenty five second quarter financial results. I’m Stephen Pulejo, Investor Relations Representative for AOS. With me today are Stephen Cheng, our CEO and Yifan Liang, our CFO. This call is being recorded and broadcast live over the web. A replay will be available for seven days following the call via the link in the Investor Relations section of our website.
Our call will proceed as follows today. Stephen will begin business updates, including strategic highlights and a detailed segment report. After that, Yvonne will review the financial results and provide guidance for the March. Finally, we will have a Q and A session. The earnings release was distributed over the wire today, 02/05/2025, after the market closed.
The release is also posted on the company’s website. Our earnings release and this presentation include non GAAP financial measures. We use non GAAP measures because we believe they provide useful information about our operating performance that should be considered by investors in conjunction with the GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these non GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in the earnings release. We remind you that during this conference call, we will make certain forward looking statements, including discussions of the business outlook and financial projections.
These forward looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. For more detailed descriptions of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our recent and subsequent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update the information provided in today’s call. Now, I’ll turn the call over to our CEO, Steven Chang. Steven?
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Thank you, Stephen. Welcome to Alta and Omega’s fiscal Q2 earnings call. I will begin with a high level overview of our results and then jump into segment details. We delivered fiscal Q2 revenue and EPS results in line with our guidance. Revenue was $173,200,000 Non GAAP gross margin was 24.2% Non GAAP EPS was $0.09 While we saw seasonal sequential declines in fiscal Q2 from each of our major segments, the Communications and Industrial segments outperformed our initial forecast and we saw sequential growth in graphics cards, quick chargers, PC, desktops and power tools.
These increases were offset by seasonal declines in gaming, notebooks, tablets and wearables. With the December now complete, we can reflect on our performance in calendar ’20 ’20 ’4, where AOS revenue increased 4.1% year over year. While this modest overall growth might not seem overwhelming, the recovery in our segment suggests the inventory correction is clearly behind us. Further, a closer examination by segment validates AOS’s strategic shift from a component supplier to a total solutions provider. This transition is enabling us to tap into new opportunities, gain market share and increase BOM content.
Most notably, our Computing and Communications segments each grew more than 25% in calendar twenty twenty four, driven by market share gains and BOM content growth in motherboards, AI, graphics cards and tablets. In smartphones, our battery PCM product line contributed the largest incremental dollar growth to the company in calendar year twenty twenty four. We now believe AOS is the industry leader in smartphone battery PCM. We also saw strong growth in wearables and e mobility in calendar twenty twenty four, further proving our ability to build on existing customer relationships, while broadening into new and adjacent markets. The primary headwinds to calendar twenty twenty four growth were mostly concentrated in gaming and quick chargers, yet both markets have now digested excess inventories and returned to growth in the past few quarters.
As we look ahead, we are delivering on our commitments and advancing our transformation from a component supplier to a total solutions provider. Our strategic focus is to go deeper by leveraging strengths in high performance silicon packaging and intelligent ICs. Our goal is to leverage premier customer relationships to expand market share and increase BOM content with a broader portfolio. With that, let me now cover our segment results and provide some guidance by segment for the next quarter. Starting with computing.
December revenue was up 6% year over year, but down slightly negative 0.5% sequentially and represented 43.9 of total revenue. These results were better than typical seasonality, but slightly worse than our original expectation for slight sequential growth. We saw relative strength from PC desktops and graphics cards offset by the seasonal decline in notebooks and tablets. Servers and AI accelerator cards were also softer as the industry prepares for the next platform transition. We continue to see a good opportunity in advanced computing and we are encouraged by the progress we had made thus far.
Within AI for large data centers, we are a contender in the middle stages of the design in phase and we see potential for these products to contribute to revenue in the middle of the calendar year. On graphic cards, the next generation platform is ramping to up to mass production. With this new platform, we expect BOM content to increase as more power stage ICs paired with our controller are being used to power the GPU. Looking forward into the March, the computing segment will likely decline due to seasonality. However, the PC market is expected to be flat as tariff uncertainty is leading to demand pull ins with PC makers.
Turning to the consumer segment. December revenue was down 3.9% year over year and down 28.8% sequentially and represented 13% of total revenue. The results were in line with our forecast driven by seasonality in gaming and home appliances as well as a pullback in wearables following a record level achieved in the third calendar quarter. As a reminder, we don’t expect gaming to return to meaningful growth until the customer transitions to the next platform. For the March, we forecast a low single digit sequential decline in the consumer segment driven by continued seasonality in gaming, TVs and softness in home appliances.
Next (LON:NXT), let’s discuss the Communications segment. Revenue in the December was up 14.5% year over year, but down 6.4% sequentially and represented 19.2% of total revenue. These results were above our initial expectations for a double digit sequential decline as broad based demand from our Tier one U. S. Smartphone customer and China OEMs moderated only slightly, while Korea saw an increase in preparation for product launches in the first calendar quarter.
We believe the better than expected results are due to a combination of market share gains, a mix shift to higher end phones in China and generally higher charging currents driving increased BOM content. Looking ahead, we anticipate a low teens sequential decline in the March for the Communications segment mostly due to seasonality. Now let’s talk about our last segment, Power Supply and Industrial, which accounted for 20.2% of total revenue and was flat year over year and up 9.6% sequentially. The results were ahead of our forecast for low single digit sequential growth driven by seasonal strength in quick chargers as well as an increase in power tools. Demand also held relatively steady quarter over quarter in ACDC power supplies and e mobility.
As we stated before, we see additional opportunities in 2025 for quick chargers due to increased BOM content driven by higher charging currents. Further, we are leveraging relationships in Taiwan to partner on DC fans for server racks. For the March, we expect a low teens sequential decline for the Power Supply and Industrial segment, primarily driven by seasonal decline in Quickchargers. This decline will be partially offset by some sequential growth in e mobility and ACDC power supplies. In closing, December revenue was slightly ahead of our expectations, while gross margin was a bit softer.
The continued year over year revenue growth confirms the inventory corrections we experienced over the past year are complete. Seasonality has returned and new markets like AI and advanced computing are emerging. As we look ahead to 2025, visibility remains limited and the first quarter is typically affected by seasonal softness. The subdued market environment will likely pressure pricing and wind down our licensing and engineering revenue will further impact gross margin. We expect both revenue and margin to recover beyond the March with incremental growth likely from smartphones, graphics cards and AI.
AOS is well positioned for growth, supported by our advanced technology, a broad product range and a premier customer base across various industries. Strategic initiatives over the past few years are yielding results with successful design and integration of controllers and power stages into PCs, graphics cards and AI applications. We are poised to accelerate this expansion, capturing new opportunities and increasing our bond content. Power management remains at the core of major industry trends, including AI, digitalization, connectivity and electrification, critical to achieving a low carbon sustainable future. We anticipate continued growth driven by advanced computing and data centers, AI integration in PCs and smartphones and higher charging currents in smartphones.
Beyond computing and communications, we see many opportunities in solar, motors and e mobility, gaming, home appliances and power tools. With that, I will now turn the call over to Yifan for a discussion of our fiscal second quarter financial results and our outlook for the next quarter. Yifan?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Thank you, Stephen. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Revenue for the quarter was $173,200,000 down 4.8% sequentially and up 4.8% year over year. In terms of product mix, Demos revenue was $113,000,000 down 7.8% sequentially and up 3.8% over last year. RIC revenue was $53,700,000 up 1.5% from the prior quarter and 6.8% from a year ago.
Assembly service and other revenue was $1,100,000 as compared to $900,000 last quarter and $700,000 for the same quarter last year. License and engineering service revenue was $5,400,000 for the quarter versus $5,600,000 in the prior quarter and $5,500,000 for the same quarter a year ago. The license and engineering service revenue will end in the mid February after the twenty four month contract expires. Non GAAP gross margin was 24.2% compared to 25.5% last quarter and 28% a year ago. The quarter over quarter decrease was mainly impacted by ASP erosion and mix changes.
Non GAAP operating expenses were $39,000,000 compared to $38,500,000 from the prior quarter and $37,900,000 last year. The slight quarter over quarter increase was primarily due to higher R and D expenses. Non GAAP quarterly EPS was $0.09 compared to $0.21 per share last quarter and $0.24 per share a year ago. Moving on to cash flow. Operating cash flow was $14,100,000 including $5,000,000 of repayment of customer deposits.
By comparison, operating cash flow was $11,000,000 in the prior quarter and negative $23,500,000 last year. We expect to refund $11,100,000 customer deposits in the March. EBITDAS for the quarter was $16,800,000 compared to $20,600,000 for last quarter and $20,700,000 for the same quarter a year ago. Now let me turn to balance sheet. We completed December with a cash balance of $182,600,000 compared to $176,000,000 at the end of last quarter.
Net trade receivables decreased by $4,700,000 sequentially. Day sales outstanding were twelve days for the quarter compared to fifteen days for the prior quarter. Net inventory decreased by 1,200,000 quarter over quarter. Average days in inventory remained at one hundred and twenty five days for the quarter. CapEx for the quarter was $7,400,000 compared to $6,700,000 for the prior quarter and we expect CapEx for the March to range from $7,000,000 to $9,000,000 Now I would like to discuss March guidance.
We expect revenue to be approximately $158,000,000 plus or minus $10,000,000 GAAP gross margin to be 21.5% plus or minus one percent. We anticipate non GAAP gross margin to be 22.5% plus or minus 1%. The expected quarter over quarter decline is largely due to the decrease in license and engineering service revenue and to a lesser extent the anticipated increased manufacturing costs during the Lunar New Year period. GAAP operating expenses to be $46,500,000 plus or minus $1,000,000 Non GAAP operating expenses are expected to be $39,500,000 plus or minus $1,000,000 Interest expense to be approximately equal to interest income and income tax expense to be in the range of $1,100,000 to $1,300,000 With that, we will now open the call for questions. Operator, please start the Q and A session.
Jayla, Moderator: Our first question comes from Craig Ellis with the company B. Riley Securities. Craig, your line is now
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: open. Yes. Thanks for taking the question guys and congratulations on the areas of year on your growth in calendar twenty twenty four. I wanted to go back to the prepared comments on performance versus expectations in fiscal 2Q in the AI Accelerator market. You commented that revenues were a little bit below what you had expected.
Can you provide more detail? Was the issue either an AOSL product issue or share into a platform? Or was it just the pace at which the platform is ramping up?
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: No. It’s simply that transition from our customers’ old program moving into the new program. We’re continuing to be working with them in their ramp up, but this is their transition phase. So just remember that we have been shipping into especially the accelerator cards throughout this throughout the past 2024 calendar 2024. And now that they’ve launched, the projects are transitioning to the new platform.
So we expect a bit of and that’s going to continue to grow throughout this current calendar year.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: And then a follow-up to that, Stephen, and thanks for that color. There had been reports in the mid December time frame around some thermal issues associated with AOS sales products. Can you speak to whether that was the case and to the extent that it was whether, those issues as reported accurately or potentially inaccurately have been resolved?
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Yes. So we’re actually not going to comment. We never offered any comments regarding the article that was put out about us. Our general practice isn’t to go into details about our designs at our customers, out of respect for our customers. But we did say in our prepared remarks and what’s actually going on is that we continue to be one of the main contenders in this upcoming design for data centers.
So we’re pretty excited about that. We are giving guidance that we expect this program to well, their program to launch in the middle of the year. And this is something that we are excited and looking forward to.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: And then if I could, and it’s along the same thing because that’s where all the investor questions are. I think there are generally speaking multiple opportunities for the company. One would be more card centric and somewhat similar to a long shipment history you’ve had with the customer. One would be more on server system board. Can you talk about the extent to which each of those and the magnitude would contribute to growth?
And how should we think about the growth potential from this platform? How material can it be as we think about revenues ramping into here? Thank you, Steven.
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Sure. Thanks, Craig. Certainly, our opportunity in AI falls into two categories. The first is continuing what we’ve been doing already, which is getting our products shipping our products into both graphics cards as well as accelerator cards. And this with our target end customer, it’s pretty much a similar solution that’s being used there for both graphics as well as AI acceleration in these daughter cards.
This portion, as I mentioned, is undergoing the transition. They are our customer is ramping up. We are ramping with them. And we do expect to see content increase also because I believe these cars are more powerful. They can do a lot more and they also but they also require more power, which is a good fit for our solutions.
We are shipping one big change from last generation to this generation is that we’re also now shipping the multi phase controller in addition to our power stage. And so that’s helping us to provide the total solution to the customer for this application. So that’s the first category of business. And we’re as I mentioned, we are continuing to ramp with them as they bring up production fully, then going throughout this quarter and then throughout the next few quarters. The second category of projects that we are targeting is the AI data center portion.
And this is where our solutions are being used on board to power GPUs and these go into their server solutions. And this is something that we are very excited to take part in to be able to design into. We are right now still in the middle of that design in phase. We’re closely working with that customer in bringing up boards and working with them. And I’m not going to go into details about the design, but we did already indicate that this is something targeting mid year for the launch.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: That’s very helpful. Thank you, Steven.
Jayla, Moderator: Thanks. We’ll go to David Williams with the company Benchmark Company. David, your line is now open.
David Williams, Analyst, Benchmark Company: Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. It’s good to talk with you. And thanks for letting me ask a question here. Yes, David. Steven, first, hey, not to beat the proverbial dead horse here, but as we kind of think about the AI opportunity for you and you’ve talked about being in the middle of the design phase here, how do you think obviously mid kind of year launch, but when do you think you’ll have a better indication on your content that you have and if you’ve won that slot and what you’ve won, when do you think you would kind of get that indication?
And then when should we begin to really think about those revenues coming in? And given that it’s that’s kind of a new area for you, it seems like that should be a fairly sizable step up in the revenue. Is that fair to think of it that way?
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Yes. We just certainly think the potential for our business in data center to be much bigger than that of the graphics portion simply because the usage goes up much more, as you can imagine, in these data centers. The power levels are significantly bigger. So it simply requires more power stages to power each of these GPUs. I don’t want to quantify that at the moment.
But basically, it is something that is multiples bigger, you can say, in terms of the total TAM that we can go after. We know that we’re not the only one players going after this. So the share is still to be determined. The final design, everything is still to be finalized as well too. So we’re working closely with the customer.
Again, at this point, we can say that we’re targeting for a midyear launch.
David Williams, Analyst, Benchmark Company: Fantastic. Well, congratulations on the progress there. North and Mary, you’ve been really working to get into. So it’s fantastic. And then maybe Yifan, if you kind of think about the gross margin profile, we knew it would come down here a bit.
I think actually performed a little bit better than we anticipated. But how do you think about the margin profile as we get into next year? And as you kind of get this ramp coming back in, it seems like some higher margin products potentially in the volumes. Should we begin to see that utilization snap back? And where do
Steven Pelayo, Investor Relations Representative, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: you think margins
David Williams, Analyst, Benchmark Company: can genuinely go over the next twelve to eighteen months?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Sure. I mean, generally, I mean, yes, for the next twelve and eighteen months, I would expect that, yes, the product mix probably will improve from this March low point margin. I would expect that probably in the June, we can expect gross margin on the non GAAP basis get back to the December level. So March was mainly some product mix and also the decrease in revenue license and engineering service revenues and along with the Lunar New Year period, which is not going to help on the margin side. So then I mean, I would expect that, yes, we can bounce back and recover from there.
David Williams, Analyst, Benchmark Company: Okay, great. And then maybe just last one for me. I guess, Stephen, as you look across the landscape and you see the inventory digestion complete, but we’ve got the tariff issues that are kind of settling in and you pointed to some of that being pulled in this quarter. Is there a way for you to for us maybe to think about the magnitude of pull ins you saw? And then what maybe are you hearing thus far from your customers just given your base in China?
How are you hearing from them? Or what are you hearing And how are you positioned for the tariffs as we move forward? Thank you.
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: I think it’s not a huge amount, but I think it makes it that right now, we’re guiding computing just to be slightly down, whereas in like a normal year, it will have more of a pronounced effect there. And I think there’s still a lot of uncertainty about how that’s going to play out in terms of the what the new administration is doing and what the impacts will be on trade, you can say. But right now, I think this because of the anticipation of tariffs there, we saw some we saw a little bit of pull ins coming because of that.
David Williams, Analyst, Benchmark Company: Great. Thanks so much.
Jayla, Moderator: Our next question comes from Jeremy Kwan with the company Stifel. Jeremy, your line is now open.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Yes. Thank you. Just wanted to circle back on the gross margin question. You mentioned, I think it being impacted by ASP erosion and mix changes. Can you quantify that?
I do recall, I think you talked about pricing declines in the high single digits kind of being above maybe typical. Can you
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: kind
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: of level set us where things are now and how you see it shaping up over the next twelve months?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Okay, sure. Yes, I mean for the whole year, ASP erosion was in the range of mid to high single digit range and then on the same product basis. So going forward for this calendar year 2025, we continue to expect the mid to single digit mid single digit type of ASP erosion. What we do here is we will accelerate our new product rollout to counter the ASP erosion. So with some good opportunities designed in opportunities here, yes, we expect beyond March that our gross margin can bounce back and recover.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Great. And can you remind us again what your current utilization levels are both internally and also maybe potentially at your foundry partners including the JV? And how do you kind of expect that to look as we look ahead throughout the rest of the year?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Okay. Sure. For our internal utilization right now is around 80% also. So for Foundry and JV, they are on their own. So yes, they can provide and meet our expectations on the purchase.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Got it. And maybe one last question on the gross margin side. With margins expected to bottom at the 22.5% level, you talked about bouncing back to just under quarter levels in June. How do you see your long term targets? And what kind of revenue level do you need to get to kind of maybe get back to that 30% gross margin that you experienced in the past?
Thanks.
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Yes. Our midterm target model is revenue reaches $1,000,000,000 and then at that time, we expect non GAAP gross margin to be around 30 about 30% range. So that’s our midterm target.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: And that contemplates price erosion in the mid single digits?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Yes, yes.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Got it. I guess turning to the end markets, Stephen, you mentioned on the consumer side that there’s a transition going on in terms of the gaming. Can you kind of walk us through the dynamics of that? When do you see that the transition, reflecting so that the next gen is contributing more meaningfully? And how long is that expected to be a headwind before it turns into more of a tailwind?
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Sure. So the gaming platform cycles tend to last somewhere around six to seven to eight years. It really depends on how our customers’ cadence. Right now, we’re around year five of the launch. So it is expected that their production volumes is starting to tail off.
So for now, we aren’t expecting this to be a huge part of the consumer portion. Our sites are set on getting ready for the next platform, which is still kind of early stages for. So in the meantime, we’re putting our attention in the other areas that are growing, especially AI. Smartphones is also something that we continue to grow in as well too. So we’ll shift to addressing the other markets.
And of course, we’re going to be preparing ourselves for the next major gaming platform launch.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Got it. And then I guess maybe kind of going off that, those comments, as you look ahead to the rest of this year, which end markets are you most excited about in terms of growth contributors? And if we could get a little bit more insight within computing, can you give us the split rough split between graphics cards, PCs and AI accelerator cards? Thank you.
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Sure. Yes, we’re certainly excited about AI, and that’s certainly going to help to strengthen our overall computing segment. In the past, we thought that this segment will start to reduce in terms of proportion of revenue. But because of our efforts into AI, data center and graphics, this is something I think this is actually going to continue to grow. This is actually a natural evolution of us focusing on PCs first and then moving to graphics and now moving to AI.
And that’s that pairs well with our solutions that we’ve been offering from discretes to ICs for the power stages and now selling the total solutions for that. Right now, AI is really just starting. So it’s a small portion of our computing business. Our core PC business is still mainstream and we still expect that to be steady and we’re still waiting for that recovery, ultimate recovery to happen for the PC market. But over time, actually, we do see we expect to see acceleration in growth for our AI and graphics business.
I don’t want to size it at this point, but this is definitely going to be the probably the biggest growth area for us in this calendar year.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Great. Thank you. I’ll hand it back open.
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Sure. And I want to go ahead. The other area that just to finish your question, it was only on AI. We also see that smartphone will be an area that will continue to be strong for us. We are continuing to be a market share leader in all the three core markets that we’re in when it comes to battery protection.
And for these customers, especially the leading brand, we are extending continuing to expand our footprint into the other products too. So that will also be continue to be a growth area and focus for us. And we still see other subsegments also emerging that can help us to grow as well. We’re still excited about e mobility. That’s a newer area when it comes to eBugs, e scooters.
And we’ll continue to invest in other motor applications as well.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Great. Thank you very much.
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Thanks, Jeremy.
Jayla, Moderator: Our next question comes from Craig Ellis with the company B. Riley Securities. Craig, your line is now open.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Yes. Thanks for taking the follow-up questions. And in fact, my first question is right where I think Jeremy and even you ended the conversation there. And it was really framing up the things you’re most confident in, in deriving calendar twenty five year undergrowth, setting aside anything that’s unit growth related whether smartphones, PCs, whatever, but either accruing from content gain, share gain or just Sam expansion into a new application. Stephen, I think what I heard you say is that AI would be the biggest.
After that, you still got a lot of headroom with smartphone content, and then there are other areas like e mobility. Is that the right prioritization? And is there anything else that would go on that list?
Stephen Cheng, CEO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Yes. I would put those that’s about right. For sure, the AI, the top one, we talked quite a bit about the potential there. Smartphones is exciting again because we are seeing charging currents increase. There is generally a demand for fast charging, and we see phone makers advertising that.
And this is something that’s directly tied to the usage of our products in those battery packs. So with the new charging currents going up, the performance requirements for our solutions also go up and thereby the BOM content is expected to increase in each forthcoming generation. And this is something that I think will continue to be rolled in going forward across various models at our customers.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Thank you. That’s very helpful. And then the follow-up is a little bit further on intermediate to longer term gross margin. So clearly, there’s been a lot of competitor pricing pressure in the market at volume levels that are this low and it’s had a negative impact on gross margins and here we are back down in the low 20s. As the company looks at things it can do to move back to that mid-20s range, and then to the 30% range, are there things other than the new product release cadence and higher value, higher ASP products like we’ve seen UPR multiple times in the last couple of months that could get you back there?
How do we think about things that you’re doing differently amidst recent pricing pressure to reaccelerate margins? Thank you.
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Sure. I mean, yes. And then new products and higher margin products and the roll off, yes, definitely is a major factor to improve gross margin. On top of that, yes, and then I mean, as we continue to grow our business and we would expect our utilization to go up. So, I mean, internally, we also focus on the cost reduction.
So all those aspects, we expect to grow our gross margin.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Got it. And Yifan, would you expect a fairly steady climb back? I know that’s in part trying to put a prediction on end demand, but maybe the different way to ask it is, are there any discontinuities coming either in new products and pricing and gross margin or cost reduction that would give us a particular step up as we look out over 2025 and 2026?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: I mean, for that long, it’s hard to say. I mean, there are a lot of factors that would intertwine there. But what I expect is in the June, we can expect our non GAAP margin get back to the December non GAAP margin level.
Craig Ellis, Analyst, B. Riley Securities: Got it. Okay. Well, that will be a nice step forward. Okay. Thanks very much, team.
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Jayla, Moderator: Our next question comes from Jeremy Kwan with the company Stifel. Jeremy, your line is now open.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Thank you. Just a quick clarification follow-up on the customer deposits. I think in the past you’ve broken out short term versus long term. And your total deposits, I believe it’s $42,300,000 last quarter, with the $5,000,000 down of $37,000,000 but can you break that out between short term and long term deposits and how you see that shaping up? And one follow-up to that would be, the, are there any license payments that you might need to make in terms of the silicon carbide agreement or is that pretty much locked in at this point?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Okay, sure.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Or not licensing, I’m sorry, just deposit.
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Okay. In terms of customer deposits, yes, there are 30 some million dollars balance right now on our balance sheet. In calendar year 2025, we expect to return about $25,000,000 ish. So most of that $30,000,000 some already classified to short term within the next twelve months. So after that and then I mean in calendar year 2026, there will be a few million dollars left over there.
So now we’re down by 2026. So what else on
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: the There was, I think in the past we had a silicon carbide supply agreement. Is there any kind of payment that’s anticipated for that?
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: No, that’s it. Yes.
Jeremy Kwan, Analyst, Stifel: Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Yifan Liang, CFO, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: All right. Thank you.
Jayla, Moderator: At this time, there are no more questions registered in queue. Again, if you would like to ask a question, it will start followed by one. And no more questions registered in the queue. I’d like to pass the conference back over to our hosting team for closing remarks.
Steven Pelayo, Investor Relations Representative, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor: Okay. Great. This is Steven Palayo and this concludes our earnings call today. Thank you for your interest in AOS. We look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
Take care.
Jayla, Moderator: That will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, and enjoy the rest of your day.
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