Earnings call transcript: MACOM's Q4 2025 results exceed expectations, stock rises

MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:MTSI) reported its fourth-quarter earnings for fiscal year 2025, showcasing stronger-than-expected results. The company reported an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.94, surpassing the forecast of $0.929. Revenue reached $261.2 million, slightly above the anticipated $260.17 million. Following the announcement, MACOM's stock experienced a pre-market rise, with shares increasing by 2.07% to $152.78.

Key Takeaways

• MACOM's Q4 EPS of $0.94 exceeded expectations, marking a 1.18% surprise.
• Revenue for Q4 stood at $261.2 million, slightly above forecasts.
• Stock price increased by 2.07% in pre-market trading following the earnings release.
• The company launched over 200 new products in FY2025, driving innovation.
• Strong growth observed in data center and satellite communications sectors.

Company Performance

MACOM demonstrated robust performance in Q4 2025, with a 30.1% year-over-year increase in revenue. The company's strategic focus on innovation and expansion into high-growth markets such as data centers and satellite communications contributed to these results. The acquisition of a license for HRL's 40nm GaN on silicon carbide process and the development of advanced connectivity ICs underscore MACOM's commitment to technological leadership.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $261.2 million, up 30.1% YoY
• Full Year Revenue: $967 million, up 32% YoY
• Adjusted EPS: $0.94 in Q4, $3.47 for the full year, up 35% YoY
• Free Cash Flow: $193 million
• Cash and Short-term Investments: $786 million

Earnings vs. Forecast

MACOM's Q4 EPS of $0.94 surpassed the forecasted $0.929, resulting in a 1.18% positive surprise. Revenue also exceeded expectations by $1 million, reflecting a 0.38% surprise. This performance aligns with MACOM's trend of exceeding market expectations, driven by its strategic initiatives and market expansion.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, MACOM's stock saw a 2.07% increase in pre-market trading, reaching $152.78. This upward movement indicates positive investor sentiment, likely fueled by the earnings beat and the company's strong growth outlook. The stock's performance is notable, given its proximity to the 52-week high of $162.26.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead to Q1 FY2026, MACOM projects revenue between $265 million and $273 million, anticipating double-digit growth driven by the data center market. The company expects improved operating leverage and earnings growth, supported by its innovative product pipeline and strategic market positioning.

Executive Commentary

Steve Daly, CEO of MACOM, emphasized the company's strategic goals: "Our goal is to build a diversified semiconductor portfolio that enables MACOM to capture a larger share of the markets we serve." He also highlighted the significance of MACOM's proprietary technology: "We believe we have had a breakthrough where our cloud customers and their supply chain recognize the strategic value of MACOM's proprietary indium phosphide technology."

Risks and Challenges

• Supply Chain Disruptions: Potential delays in product delivery could impact growth.
• Market Saturation: Increased competition in the semiconductor industry poses a risk.
• Economic Uncertainty: Macroeconomic factors could affect demand in key markets.
• Technological Advancements: Keeping pace with rapid technological changes is crucial.
• Regulatory Changes: Compliance with evolving regulations remains a challenge.

Q&A

During the Q&A session, analysts inquired about MACOM's strong October bookings and the positive momentum in its 1.6T and 800G platforms. The expansion of the LEO satellite business was also discussed, highlighting MACOM's focus on high-speed data center connectivity and its potential growth opportunities in emerging markets.

Full transcript - MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings Inc (MTSI) Q4 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Welcome to MACOM's fourth fiscal quarter 2025 conference call. This call is being recorded today, Thursday, November 6, 2025. At this time, all participants are on the listen-only mode. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Ferranti, MACOM's Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Mr. Ferranti, please go ahead.

Steve Ferranti, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, MACOM: Thank you, Livia. Good morning and welcome to our call today to discuss MACOM's fourth quarter and year-end financial results for fiscal year 2025. I would like to remind everyone that our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, as defined in the Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed today. For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could result in those differences, we refer you to MACOM's filings with the SEC. Management statements during this call will also include discussion of certain adjusted non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of GAAP to adjusted non-GAAP results is provided in the company's press release and related Form 8-K, which was filed with the SEC today.

With that, I'll turn over the call to Steve Daly, President and CEO of MACOM.

Steve Daly, President and CEO, MACOM: Thank you and good morning. I will begin today's call with a general company update. After that, Jack Kober, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our Q4 and full-year results for fiscal 2025. When Jack is finished, I will provide revenue and earnings guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2026. We will be happy to take some questions. Revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 was $261.2 million. Adjusted EPS was $0.94 per diluted share. For the full year, FY25 revenue was $967 million, more than a 32% increase year over year, and EPS was $3.47, more than a 35% increase year over year. We generated $193 million in free cash flow, and we finished the year with approximately $786 million in cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet.

Q4 book-to-bill ratio was just over 1.0-1, and our turns business, or orders booked and shipped within the quarter, was 14.5% of total revenue. For the full fiscal year 2025, our book-to-bill was 1.1-1, and our current backlog remains at a record level. Turning to our recent booking trends and end markets. Q4 revenue performance by end market was as expected, with industrial and defense at $115.6 million, telecom at $66 million, and data center at $79.6 million. For the quarter, IND was up approximately 7% sequentially, data center was up approximately 5% sequentially, and telecom was slightly down sequentially. Both IND and data center revenues were annual and quarterly records.

A few years ago, we set a goal to achieve $1 billion in annual revenues, and I'm pleased to report that with our Q1 2026 guidance, we expect to achieve this goal based on trailing 12-month performance. Congratulations to all our employees as we near this milestone and, more importantly, for building upon our strong foundation to enable continued growth and improved profitability. New products are the lifeblood of future growth. In fiscal year 2025, we launched over 200 new products, which was a record. In addition, we executed numerous custom-design projects across our three core markets. Our ability to provide competitive new products in a timely manner ultimately drives our financial performance. Metrics show our new product introductions, or products less than three years old, as a group have outpaced MACOM's overall revenue growth and are accretive to MACOM's gross margins.

We continue to focus on technology and product differentiation across our portfolio, which often leads us to the development of IC products that operate at the highest frequency, highest power, or highest data rates. The secular growth trends across our end markets, coupled with our expertise in IC design and manufacturing, are driving an increased number of revenue opportunities. To capitalize on this, we have been increasing R&D spending, hiring more engineers, and acquiring companies that have specialized complementary design capabilities. In keeping with this trend, over the next couple of months, we plan to open two additional IC design centers, one in Southern California and the other in Central Europe, where we were able to secure specialized talent and teams. Hiring best-in-class engineers with complementary skills will help enable us to increase our SAM and execute on the growth opportunities ahead.

I'll note that we prioritize recruiting designers with advanced silicon design expertise and experience. On Tuesday, we announced an agreement with HRL, or Hughes Research Laboratories, to transfer their 40-nanometer GaN on silicon carbide process, known as T3L, to MACOM. As part of this agreement, MACOM will be an exclusive licensee with rights to manufacture the T3L process. T3L is an industry-leading high-frequency GaN on silicon carbide process, and it was developed with DARPA, DOD, and HRL funding. T3L was engineered to achieve exceptional high-power performance at very high frequencies. HRL recently completed long-term reliability studies and qualified the process, and it is now ready to transition to production. The T3L 40-nanometer process perfectly complements our existing GaN portfolio because it allows us to address applications at higher frequencies than our 140-nanometer GaN process.

We anticipate that licensing this technology will also accelerate our ability to launch other sub-100-nanometer GaN processes, including 90-nanometer. We believe this transaction is a win-win because HRL, primarily a research organization, will be able to commercialize the process technology they spent years developing, and MACOM can industrialize and ramp the process into production. Many of our mutual customers in the defense and space markets want to see the T3L process in production in a production wafer fab in order to address their volume needs. This strategic transaction supports one of our core tenets, which is to produce the industry's highest-frequency semiconductors. We believe this part of the GaN MMIC market is growing, and we are seeing new requirements at Q, V, E, and W band driven by both commercial and defense applications. We believe the T3L process will help us capture significant market share over time.

Finally, related to GaN on silicon carbide, over the past few quarters, we were awarded several new and add-on development programs for advanced GaN on silicon carbide process technologies. Across the DOD agencies, MACOM is recognized as a leader in developing advanced compound semiconductors, and our pipeline of funded technology development contracts is growing. I'll note in the defense, radar, and electronic warfare markets, our GaN-based components and products experienced over 50% year-over-year revenue growth. This growth leverages our high-power GaN portfolio, where we maintain a competitive position in low and mid-band applications. Our goal is to expand into the higher-frequency airborne radar market, where we believe share gain opportunities exist. To support this strategy, we recently upgraded the RTP Fab's G28V5 150-nanometer GaN on silicon carbide process to include atomic layer deposition passivation, or ALD.

ALD is a hermetic coating process that enables MMIC products to pass moisture and HASS tests. This process is one of the most reliable and rugged processes in the market, and it is ideal for ground-based radar systems and SATCOM links and is now ready for airborne radars. Across the defense market, the trend for new systems is toward higher frequencies, higher power levels, wider bandwidths, and higher levels of integration, factors that all play to MACOM's strengths. We collaborate with most major U.S. defense contractors across a wide range of applications. For example, we have been collaborating with a customer that produces a drone defense system, and we look forward to their expected production ramp-up in 2026, utilizing our high-power GaN technology. We also continue to build new relationships with major European defense contractors who are increasingly focused on securing a European supply of critical semiconductors for their systems.

We believe our manufacturing facility in France can play an important role in enabling MACOM to win market share with these customers. Generally speaking, the industrial markets are stable and beginning to improve, although we do not expect significant growth in the near term compared to the data center, defense, 5G, and SATCOM sectors. Within the telecom end market, satellite-based broadband access and direct-to-cell opportunities remain robust, with numerous LEO networks in the planning or development stages. These networks typically use microwave or millimeter wave frequencies and free space optics, or FSO, communications for satellite-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground communication links. In some cases, the satellite transmitters require analog microwave linearization to boost the transmitted signal and improve link margin. I'll note the number of LEO constellations continues to grow, and more companies compete to provide commercial data, voice and video communications by satellite, or defense intelligence and functionality.

Almost a dozen different companies are now planning to launch LEO constellations supporting direct-to-cell or direct-to-device communications. Again, these LEO constellations have many areas where MACOM can contribute, including direct-to-device links operating at UHF or S-band, backhaul links operating at KA, Q, V, and E-band, high-speed optical links transferring data within the satellite, and free space optics for satellite-to-satellite communications and gateway linearization for high-power transmitters. Depending on the customer preferences and capabilities, we position ourselves to support them at any level in the supply chain, from foundry services, custom IC design, standard products, and even full module and subsystem design and manufacturing. Demand from our cable TV infrastructure market is also improving. Cable networks are in the early days of a transition from DOCSIS 3.1 to DOCSIS 4.0. We've spent the last two years releasing new products and working with customers on design wins to support this upgrade.

We are beginning to see new orders on our DOCSIS 4.0 products. Our portfolio today includes amplifiers, baluns, couplers, and filters for line amplifiers and nodes in these new deployments. We expect the cable TV market to be one of the contributors to our telecom revenue growth in fiscal year 2026. We continue to see strong demand from our data center portfolio, particularly within 800G and 1.6T applications. We expect the ramp of 1.6T optical solutions to continue to support both scale-up and scale-out interconnects, and we believe demand is growing rapidly. Within these solutions, MACOM provides drivers and TIAs that support EML and silicon photonic architectures. In addition, over the course of fiscal year 2026, we expect year-on-year demand for our photonic semiconductor products to significantly increase.

As an example, we are pleased with the growing traction of our 200 gig per lane photodetector products that support advanced 800 and 1.6T optical connectivity. MACOM's 200 gig PD has industry-leading sensitivity and dark current performance, enabling our customers to achieve better manufacturing margin and optical receiver sensitivity performance. We believe we have had a breakthrough where our cloud customers and their supply chain recognize the strategic value of MACOM's proprietary indium phosphide technology and high-volume manufacturing capabilities to produce photonic products. We are pleased to have PD design wins at all major module manufacturers supporting 800G and/or 1.6T applications. A few quarters ago, we initiated a transfer of the 200 gig PD process from our smaller Michigan fab to our larger Massachusetts fab to ensure we could support the forecasted demand.

Today, our Ann Arbor fab is approaching maximum capacity, and our Massachusetts fab is qualified and ramping volume production. In addition to our focus on ramping PDs, we have intensified our CW laser development efforts as customers and the industry look for strategic suppliers that have CW laser technology and high-volume manufacturing capabilities. We also see a steady adoption of single-mode LPO 100 gig per lane solutions. Today, we have multiple customers in production, and we expect to transition more customers into production in fiscal 2026. Additionally, we continue to support new architectures, including near-packaged optics, or NPO, utilizing non-retimed LPO solutions. As data centers continue to disaggregate memory and compute, we believe the adoption of PCIe 6 solutions will create an opportunity for MACOM.

At this year's ECOC trade show in September, we demonstrated our latest linear optical PCIe chipset consisting of a Vixel driver and TIA that support sideband data streams over fiber. We also continue to expand our portfolio in the area of electrical high-speed connectivity. As data speeds move to 200 gig per lane and beyond, copper-based solutions such as direct-attached cables begin to reach their functional limit. MACOM provides a family of linear equalizer products that can help extend the reach of copper interconnects at 1.6T. Over the course of FY2026, as 1.6T deployments expand, we believe these solutions will be of interest to some of the major cloud vendors who are deploying next-generation solutions. Additionally, we are seeing opportunities for these products in backplane applications to enhance onboard signal integrity.

As we turn our attention to FY2026, our priorities include, first, taking full advantage of the data center growth opportunity and servicing our customers with differentiated solutions. This includes expanding our portfolio into new product areas such as PDs and lasers, where we can add value. In the near term, we will seek to increase market share in 800G and 1.6T high-speed analog solutions, expand our customer base for linear equalizers and PCIe solutions, ramp photonic products, and support customer LPO launches. We will also continue the design work to establish a leadership position in 300 and 400 gig per lane connectivity ICs for future 1.6T and 3.2T systems. Second, we will seek to expand our market share in 5G applications by leveraging our new and improved GaN 4 process.

Our next-generation base station products will be updated with insourced IPD and matching circuits to, one, improve performance and, two, lower our manufacturing costs. Third, extending our leadership in A&D and winning market share in microwave and optical RF over fiber applications across all major accounts in the U.S. and working to expand our business across Europe and support new defense and space programs like IRIS2. Fourth, continue to develop advanced semiconductor technologies for high-frequency mimics, high-power diodes, and high-speed optical semiconductors. Our goal in FY2026 is to make meaningful progress on HUT VIA, FLIP chip, BUMP technologies like Copper Pillar to enable MACOM to lead the industry in advanced chip-scale package solutions. Fifth, carefully managing our capital expenses and prioritizing investments that, one, expand our existing manufacturing capabilities and, two, support new technology developments.

As an example, we intend to purchase and install a modern MOCVD EPI reactor in our European Semiconductor Center, or MESC. This reactor will support our six-inch production transition and the growing volumes of GaN on silicon and other GaN processes. In summary, our strategy is to build a diversified semiconductor portfolio that enables MACOM to capture a larger share of the markets we serve. Our strong organizational foundation, along with our speed and agility, help us win opportunities and ultimately beat our competitors that are often larger and have more resources. Jack will now provide a more detailed review of our financial results. Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Before getting into our fourth quarter results, I would like to summarize a few items regarding our full fiscal year, which ended on October 3, 2025.

We achieved record revenue of $967 million, which grew more than 32% over fiscal 2024. Our annual adjusted operating margin grew by 140 basis points to 25.4%. Adjusted earnings per share grew by more than 35% to $3.47. Cash flow from operations continued to strengthen and increased by 45% to $235.4 million. We refinanced and extended the maturity of the majority of our convertible note debt at favorable rates. Our workforce, which now totals approximately 2,000 employees, grew by 17% over the past year as we have expanded our research and development and production employees to support our growing business. Now, on to fourth quarter results, as well as some additional commentary on the full fiscal year 2025 and outlook on fiscal year 2026. Q4 revenue again reached record levels with strong financial performance across all three end markets and record revenue across data center and industrial and defense.

This sustains a trend of consistent revenue growth, improving operating income and ongoing cash generation. Fiscal Q4 revenue was a new quarterly record of $261.2 million, up 3.6% sequentially and up 30.1% year over year, driven by growth across all three of our end markets. Our overall book-to-bill for Q4 was one to one. On a geographic basis, revenue from U.S. domestic customers represented approximately 43% of our fiscal Q4 results. Our full fiscal year 2025 U.S.-based revenue was approximately 44%. Adjusted gross profit for fiscal Q4 was $149.1 million, or 57.1% of revenue. Through the hard work and our dedicated operations team, we have continued to increase capacity and improve yields, and we expect to see ongoing incremental progress across all four of our fab operations.

I'll note we are seeing an improvement in product demand across our internal fabs, which is driving higher production volumes and associated utilization. As a result, we expect sequential quarterly gross margin improvements of between 25 to 50 basis points as we move through fiscal 2026. These gross margin improvements include any offsets to cost increases such as gold and other precious metals, depreciation, and labor costs. Total adjusted operating expense for our fourth quarter was $82.1 million, consisting of research and development expense of $55.6 million and selling general and administrative expenses of $26.6 million. The sequential increase in adjusted operating expenses compared to Q3 was primarily driven by ongoing R&D investments and employee-related costs. As we continue to grow our revenue, we will remain very focused on managing our OPEX. Depreciation expense for fiscal Q4 2025 was $8.7 million compared to $6.9 million in Q3 2025.

The increase was primarily due to taking control of the RTP fab during the quarter. As a reminder, since we have taken control of the RTP fab, we have shifted from purchasing wafers from a third party to manufacturing wafers, resulting in MACOM now incurring all of the associated manufacturing costs, including labor, facilities, and depreciation, to mention a few. Adjusted operating income in fiscal Q4 was $67 million, up 5.5% sequentially from $63.5 million in fiscal Q3 2025 and up 32.1% year over year. For fiscal Q4, we had adjusted net interest income of $6.6 million, a net decrease of $200,000 sequentially from $6.8 million in Q3, primarily driven by lower interest rates and interest expense associated with new leases. Our adjusted income tax rate in fiscal Q4 was 3% and resulted in an expense of approximately $2.2 million.

As of October 3rd, 2025, our deferred tax asset balances, which includes R&D tax credits, were $208 million as compared to $212 million at the end of fiscal 2024. We anticipate further utilizing our deferred tax asset balances through fiscal 2026 and beyond, helping to keep our cash tax payments relatively low over these periods. We expect our adjusted income tax rate to remain at 3% as we enter fiscal 2026. Depending on the jurisdictional mix of our income, we expect the U.S. government's recent tax legislation to support a low to mid-single-digit adjusted tax rate for the next few fiscal years. Fiscal Q4 adjusted net income increased approximately 4.7% to $71.4 million compared to $68.2 million in fiscal Q3 2025. Adjusted earnings per fully diluted share was $0.94, utilizing a share count of 76.2 million shares compared to $0.90 of adjusted earnings per share in fiscal Q3 2025.

Our team continues to optimize the business's performance, which has resulted in sequential increases in our adjusted operating income and EPS over the past nine quarters. Before moving on to balance sheet items, I would like to note that during the fourth fiscal quarter, in connection with the RTP fab transfer, we recorded a $10.1 million gain on acquired assets, which is recorded below operating income on our income statement. This gain, which has been excluded from our adjusted operating results, primarily represents the difference between the fair value of inventory we received from the prior fab owner on July 25, 2025, as compared to the estimated value we established in December 2023 at the time of the RF business acquisition. Now, on to operational balance sheet and cash flow items. Our Q4 accounts receivable balance was $148.6 million, up from $129.5 million in fiscal Q3 2025.

The increase in our accounts receivable balance was driven by revenue growth as well as the timing of customer shipments and payments. Our day sales outstanding averaged 52 days as compared to our previous quarter at 47 days. Inventories were $237.8 million at quarter end, up sequentially from $215.4 million, largely driven by additional work-in-process inventory at the RTP fab, as well as higher balances to support anticipated future demand across the business. Inventory turns decreased to 1.9 times from 2.0 times in the preceding quarter. Our fiscal Q4 cash flow from operations was approximately $69.6 million, up $9.2 million sequentially, and an increase of more than $7.3 million over fiscal Q4 2024. The sequential increase was primarily due to increased net income combined with fluctuations in working capital. Capital expenditures totaled $20.2 million for fiscal Q4, up $11.5 million sequentially.

The major driver of this increase was the anticipated purchase of $12 million of surplus equipment at the RTP fab from the previous owner. We anticipate that the installation of this and other equipment will allow us to expand our RTP fab capacity and capabilities by up to 30% over the next 12-18 months. Our fiscal year 2025 CapEx was $42.6 million, and we estimate fiscal year 2026 CapEx to be $50-$55 million as we upgrade and enhance our production equipment, facilities, and expand capacity where needed. Next, moving on to other balance sheet items. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments for the fourth fiscal quarter were $786 million, up $50.7 million from Q3. We are in a net cash position of more than $285 million as of October 3, 2025, when comparing our cash and short-term investments to the book value of our convertible notes.

Over the next couple of quarters, we anticipate paying off the $161 million of principal value of our remaining March 2026 notes as they become due under the terms of the original agreement from 2021. Finally, I'd like to recognize that the results we have achieved during fiscal year 2025 would not have been possible without the contributions from the entire MACOM team. We remain committed to investing in our employees through annual merit increases, promotions, bonuses, and stock awards, as well as offering competitive healthcare, retirement, and other benefits. I will now turn the conversation back over to Steve. Thank you, Jack. MACOM expects revenue in fiscal Q1 ending January 2, 2026, to be in the range of $265-$273 million. Adjusted gross margin is expected to be in the range of $56.5-$58.5 million.

Adjusted earnings per share is expected to be between $0.98 and $1.02, based on 76.6 million fully diluted shares. We expect sequential revenue growth in all our end markets. Data center will lead with approximately 5% sequential growth, followed by telecom and industrial and defense with low single-digit sequential growth. As Jack mentioned, we expect to see increased operating leverage over the course of fiscal 2026 through a combination of top-line growth and improving gross margins due to increased fab utilization and launching more profitable products. We will maintain operating discipline even as we continue to invest in the growth of the business. Given our talented and experienced team, our core technologies, and the secular growth trends in our market, we are confident we will achieve our goals. I would now like to ask the operator to take any questions. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your names to be announced. As a reminder, in the consideration of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question coming from the line of Tom O'Malley with Barclays. Your line is now open. Hey, guys. This is Kyle Blues sitting on for Tom O'Malley. Thank you for taking our questions. I just wanted to start off with the telecom business. I think through earnings, we've seen a couple of companies point to traditional telecom being better. I just wanted to kind of get your sense of how you think about that business through the fiscal year and kind of the biggest pull factors you're seeing there. Thank you for the question.

The two main pull factors for MACOM this year will be 5G, continuing to grow, and that's a core business for MACOM. Second would be the satellite communications and LEO business. If you're referring to the RF-related telecom part of the market, if you're talking about the metro long-haul piece, we are seeing continued growth in that business, and we expect that trend to continue during the year. Thank you. For my follow-up, last quarter, I think you talked about a broadening of some of the ACC engagements. Can we kind of get an update on how that's been progressing over the past 90 days? Have you seen any of those engagements through to the customers and just how we should kind of think about that business through the next fiscal year? Yeah.

We continue to be engaged across the industry with all different product lines, including the chipset we put inside the ACC product line. I would say, generally speaking, we have great engagements with the major hyperscalers, and we are certainly excited about some of the potential within that product set. We will see how that plays out as we move into the course of the year. We do not generally comment on, let's say, pre-revenue topics. We would always talk about our successes retrospectively, and that would be our approach here as well. Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of David Williams with The Benchmark Company. Yolanis, now open. Good morning and congrats on the billion-dollar run rate. Let me first just kind of the transition and the demand pool between the 100G and 200G as well as that next-gen kind of solution. How are you seeing that?

Maybe are the demand trends developing as you would have expected or maybe accelerated a bit? Thank you for the question. Our core 100G business last year was very stable and actually grew quite nicely. As we look out into our fiscal 2026, we would expect the 100G growth trend to continue. However, the massive growth is really at the higher data rates. That would be 200 gig per lane servicing primarily 1.6T. We are very early in the cycle of the rollout of those interconnects, and that is one of the fastest-growing parts of our data center business. It was last year, and we believe it will be as well again in fiscal 2026. Great. Thanks for the color there.

Just maybe on some of the new capabilities you talked about, the acquisition in the quarter, any color there around the magnitude of that and really the capabilities you think that brings. You talked about some of it, but the additional color I think would be helpful. Thank you. Yes. You were referring to the HRL IP license agreement. Is that right? Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. That's correct. Yeah. Thank you for the question. Very interesting technology. As I highlighted in the script, it very much complements what we're doing with what we call our GSIC 140 process, which we launched a couple of years ago, and we're continuing to improve that process even today. The HRL technology was a combination of U.S. government and HRL.

Funding to really develop a technology that would be able to operate at higher power levels at the highest frequencies. This is a technology that really begins to shine above 40 gigahertz. Why we felt this transaction would be important is it allows us to service the higher-frequency SATCOM bands, which are becoming more and more critical for the LEO constellations. There will be a transition from what I would consider PHEMT GaAs technology at these frequencies to GaN technology. We will be leading that transition. The reason why you would want to make that transition is a GaN amplifier on this process will have a higher power density, almost 2X what PHEMT can do. You will also get 10 points of higher efficiency on that particular amplifier.

There are compelling reasons why we believe the LEO constellations and our customers will want to adopt this technology as soon as it is ready in our fab. Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Yolanis, now open. Yeah. Hey, guys. Thank you for letting me ask a question. Congratulations on some great results. Steve, if I look at your guidance, I think there is a little bit of a step-up in growth. Just at a broad level, I mean, you talked about multiple drivers, but if I had to specifically ask you about what is driving the step-up in growth, how would you characterize that? I have a follow-up. Are you referring to Q1 specifically or just in general? Yeah. Yeah. This number for it.

I think it's first and foremost driven by the continued rollout of 1.6T and 800 gig platforms across various customers with various products. That is absolutely driving the growth. I would say the other factor is we're seeing a little bit of a bounce back in telecom, as you know, going Q3 to Q4. It was sequentially down a little bit, really due to the timing of orders. Also, just continued strength in our defense business. The other thing I'll add, as we really are at the beginning of our fiscal 2026, our October bookings were one of the best months we've had in years. We're really excited to start the year with a strong backlog and a lot of momentum. Fair enough. Steve, you talked a lot about satellite on this call, something you haven't done.

You mentioned satellite, but not to this extent. You talked a lot about LEO satellites. I guess, could you help us understand the timing of some of these new products, the scale? Where is the business at today, and how big could it be? I was wondering, part two. The standard question, LPO, you started shipping, seems like. Could you help us size that market for 2026? Yes. Thanks, Harsh. I would say that the current LEO business is included in the telecom numbers that we're currently reporting. We do not particularly want to break out that particular sub-market within telecom. I would say the timing is now, and we're ramping. The LEO business that we have is expected to grow over the next 12-18 months. How big could it be? It can be hundreds of millions of dollars in size.

This is not a small market. It is a large market. As I mentioned, we support this business at the chip level, the module level, and even the subsystem level. When we talk about LEO constellations, I also have to highlight it includes not only the payload on the satellite, but it also includes the ground gateways and the terminals, which also have very high value-added products. In terms of the LPO question you asked, we talked about having one customer in production on our last conference call. I can tell you that number's tripled. Now we have three and growing, and we would expect that number to continue to increase as the industry adopts LPO. We do not necessarily want to size the market. It really depends on what the customers do in terms of their deployments, and that is a very difficult number to put out there.

We have our own internal models, but we would rather. We're sure that there's error associated with those estimates. I will say that our competitive advantage with LPO shines very well because there's no DSP. The landscape and the competitive dynamics change quite dramatically when you remove the DSP. The other thing I'll just highlight, the LPO solutions today are running at 100 gig per lane. Thank you. Our next question coming from the lineup, Carl Ackerman with BNP Paribas. Yolanis, now open. Thank you. Steve, you spoke of record backlog, but does that include record backlog for data comm products such as TIAs, drivers, and PDs? As you address that, can you quantify the level of order visibility with your customers, perhaps in terms of quarters, as you seek to add capacity to fulfill this customer demand? Yes. Thank you.

We don't really break the backlog out by product line or market per se. But you can imagine that coming off of a year where we had 50% year-over-year growth in the data center, and there's a lot of momentum, that the data center backlog is growing nicely. Some of our other end markets, like defense, they typically have longer lead times and manufacturing cycle times. We typically would build backlog with our defense customers at the beginning of the year. Overall, healthy backlog, and we really can't break it out any further than that. Got it. That's fair. Jack, perhaps one for you, if I may. Just in the RF business, any updated thoughts on the timing of yield enhancements and operational performance? Would you anticipate this business can be margin-neutral once these yield enhancements are complete, perhaps before you add the planned 30% of wafer capacity?

Thank you. Yeah. I think what you're referring to, Carl, is some of the gross margin improvements. And we talked about it in our prepared remarks, the sequential improvements that we expect to see on a quarterly basis of anywhere from 25 to 50 basis points. As we've also discussed, we've completed the RTP fab conveyance. So that's part of the MACOM portfolio. And through a combination of enhancements to our gross profits and cost reductions and yield improvements across all of MACOM, including facilities like Lowell and our other two fab manufacturing locations, are going to be helping to contribute to some of those gross margin improvements that we had talked about earlier. It is more of a global effort that we have as opposed to being focused on any one area of the business. Thank you. Our next question coming from the lineup, Torrey Sandler with Stifel.

Yolanis, now open. Yes. Thank you. Let me add my congrats on the record results. Steve, I know you typically do not guide more than a quarter out, but just so many irons in the fire here across all three segments. Directionally, how should we think about growth in the three segments next year, especially also in light of the more than 40% growth in both data center and telecom this year? Thank you for the question, Torrey. As you know, we do not typically give full-year guidance. I would be happy to make some general comments on our expectations for 2026. Maybe before I do so, I think there are some important trends to highlight, and I think you mentioned a few. Number one, we had very strong growth year-over-year, 32% growth on the top line. That really represented the fourth.

Four out of six years in a row we've had double-digit growth. We're excited about that. Our CAGR over the last six years has been in the mid-teens. We're pleased with that type of performance. As we think about 2026, we have various scenarios. We have our base case scenarios and our improved or best case scenarios. If I just focus on the base case for a minute, we would certainly expect double-digit growth with no less than mid-teens on the top line. We believe the growth will be driven by the data center business. It'll be our strongest market, followed by industrial and defense and telecom. It'll be a year where you begin to see leverage on our business model and improved operating income and earnings growth. We're very excited about that as well. Great. Thank you for that, Steven.

That is my follow-up. It sounds like you turned about 14-15% of the revenue this quarter. I am just curious, given the strong momentum, the order rates, are you starting to see some tightness, whether that is with your own fabs or lead times starting to stretch? Because obviously, the growth momentum seems to be accelerating. I just want to make sure that everything is on track as far as capacity is concerned. Yes. Growing as quickly as we are, there are always stress points throughout our operations and supply chain. We have an outstanding team that can manage those tactical and strategic issues quite well. We are very pleased with the team's performance, and we are able to get the things we need and have the capacity available. I highlighted as an example with our 200 gig per lane photodetector.

We recognized last year that we were going to have some very strong growth in the next 24 months. We took actions to move that product to our large Lowell facility here, where we have really unlimited manufacturing capability to produce PDs to support the industry. We are taking those steps. A lot of those things you see behind the scenes where we are making sure we have front-end, back-end test capacity in place. There are always areas where we need to do more and pinch points, and the team is managing those very well. Yes, it is always a challenge in a high-growth environment, but I think we have it under control. Thank you. Our next question coming from the lineup, Glenn Curtis with Jefferies. Yolanis, now open. Hey, morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

I want to ask you, obviously, very strong comments about growth in fiscal 2026. The book deal just over one, I guess. I think you said maybe there's some function with the defense business. I'm just kind of curious. Is that the case across all three segments? Is there something that's down, or is that just timing-wise and that should improve? Yeah. We track the book-to-bill for each of our markets and sub-markets and customers on a very granular level. Every quarter, it's a different setup. Over the long term is really what matters. Over fiscal year 2025, our book-to-bill ratio was 1.1, to be clear. That's a very strong number. We started fiscal 2026 in October with one of our best Octobers in as long as I can remember. You have to read through the noise.

I would not get too fixated on any particular quarter's book-to-bill. If you remember a few years ago, we had a quarter where we had a 0.5 book-to-bill, and we survived that quite nicely. That is the nature of the business. Some of our markets are a little volatile. Some of them have different timing of orders, and customers have different schedules. We just try to blend it all together and report the results. Thanks. I wanted to ask on the gross margin, the 25 to 50 basis points improvement. Obviously, you took over the Lowell Speed Fab, and there was some lifting to do there. Maybe you could just talk about the contribution from those improvements versus just what it looks like overall volumes are going up as well. Yeah. Thanks for that. I will just highlight.

On a go-forward basis, we do not really want to talk about the gross margins by fab. I think our business is too complicated than that. I know. Before the closing of the fab and during the transition, we were very transparent about the puts and the takes on the RTP site specifically. Now that it is in the MACOM tent and we are changing so many things, including the mix, the customer base, the focus, as I highlighted as an example, we took one of the RTP 150-nanometer GaN on silicon carbide processes, and we upgraded it by adding an ALD covering. Now that is going to open up a new market segment, and that will lead to great things. There is just a lot of moving parts at each one of the fabs. To get fixated on any particular fab's near-term performance could be limiting.

I think we take a broader approach, and we're not really going to be discussing gross margins by fab because that could be a tell on the profitability of those associated products, which we don't want to disclose. The other thing I'll highlight is a big part of our business uses external fabs. We are working with the leading fabs across the U.S., Europe, and Asia to support a lot of our high-speed business, primarily data center-centric, as well as various high-performance test chips or products for broadcast video or other high-speed trading type chips that are very high-speed matrices that are used in high-speed trading. We have a lot of high-end chips that we externally source from four to five different fabs, depending on the technology. Those product lines also contribute quite nicely to our business and can also.

Affect the overall corporate gross margins. Jack, I do not know whether you want to add to that. I think just maybe just providing a little bit more color in terms of RTP, right? When we had talked about it last quarter, we had only had it for two weeks. It came in line with our expectations. It allowed us to also de-risk the business in terms of being able to take control of that business. The team's done a fantastic job with everything that is going on there. Thank you. Now, our next question coming from the lineup, Sean O'Blackman with TD Cowen. Yolanis, now open. Hey, guys. Thanks for letting me hop on and ask a question. Like my peers, I will congratulate you on the excellent results. I wanted to ask. Two of your, I guess I will call them sort of competitors, announced a merger last week.

A question that we've gotten from investors is whether you anticipate much changing on the competitive landscape following that merger. Obviously, you don't compete in the handset market, but maybe as you think about those companies' respective broad markets, businesses coming together, does that change much, or is it too early to say with any certainty? Yeah. Thank you for the question. And congratulations to both companies. And you're right. We're not in the handset business, so it shouldn't affect us. Neither company is a customer or supplier to us, so there's no sort of impact there. We don't really see a direct impact. We have noticed that each of those companies is closing down their fabs. I imagine over the course of time, there'll be some restructuring. It's possible that that could create an opportunity for us.

To maybe win some more sockets or hire some great talent. We'll see how it goes. Again, congratulate both companies on that deal. Great. Thanks. As a follow-up, I wanted to ask an AI question that is actually not about the data center market, if you can believe that. In telecom, one of the themes that our colleagues on the COM infrastructure side of the house have been exploring is the potential impact of some of these deployments and the data center builds on access and long-haul networks as bandwidth increases, either due to distributed training or more two-way inference traffic. I guess, put simply, are you seeing that at all, or do you anticipate that in the future? Maybe how should we be thinking about the puts and takes of those trends as it relates to MACOM?

We have very good relations with the major RAN manufacturers that are deploying 5G and working on 6G. We also have a very strong understanding of the front-haul network itself because that's a big part of our business. We are very, very strong with RF over fiber. In some future generations, there may be more RF over fiber directly to the radio. All of these things would contribute to moving high-speed data or large blocks of data faster. We are definitely working with customers and trying to keep up with their investigations of different architectures like the ones you mentioned. We do have, again, I think the key point here is that trend would most likely be a long-term trend. We think we have the right technology given the highest speed, highest data rate, highest frequency. A lot of these.

Applications might also deploy very high frequencies. We think we're in a good spot to take advantage of that. Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of William Steinwitz, Joe Securities. Yolanis, now open. Great. Thanks for taking my question. Also, congratulations on the strong results and outlook, and perhaps especially on the fiscal 2026 commentary, which sounds good. Steve, I was hoping that you might reflect on the, on the one hand, relatively light comments about the industrial and market performance, while, on the other hand, gross margins sound like they're going to be tracking better consistently over the coming year. I've historically sort of associated these two things together, that a lull in the industrial and market has been sort of a weight on gross margins. Is that still the case? Is that part of the.

Thinking behind expanding gross margins next year or recovery in that market? If any other details you could provide around that thinking would be helpful. Thank you. Yes. I think you're thinking about it the right way. Historically, we've had a lot of our industrial revenue was internal fab-centric. That is because it would be servicing markets like test and measurement or the medical markets where they use non-magnetic high-voltage diodes, which we have a very strong position in the market on, as well as factory automation and other wireless platforms. As that market improves, that benefits the loading and can have a benefit on the gross margins. Generally speaking, as we look into 2026, we think there will be some positive trends in industrial, but more importantly, stronger trends in defense.

That will also be a tailwind on our gross margins. That's helpful. Thank you. Maybe as a follow-up, can you maybe help us understand the diversification in the data center end market and maybe explore a little bit where the design wins come from? Are they more from module makers, from semiconductor suppliers, from the cloud service providers? Maybe give us an idea of the diversification and the types of customers that you're actually getting design wins from and transacting with. Thank you. Thank you for the question. We address, to the back half of your question, all three of those customer categories. That would be the module manufacturers or cable manufacturers, semiconductor companies, and the cloud or the hyperscalers directly. We engage in all of those categories. When you take that and.

Add that all up, you'll see that there's a lot of mix of what those different companies would want in terms of product from MACOM. As we look at the market, we break it up into really three segments. It would be the multimode market itself, which is generally short reach, single mode, which is medium, long reach, and then metro long-haul and coherent. As we look down and service these different companies in those different categories you mentioned, depending on what they're focused on, we'll try to be a merchant supplier and sell them chips. It might be a driver. It might be a laser. It might be a photodetector. Or a TIA. That is, there's about half a dozen primary product lines, let's say, that we service the data center with. That's how we go to market. Thank you.

Our next question coming from the line of Peter Peng with JP Morgan. Yolanis, now open. Peter, please check your mute button. All right. I will go on to the next person in queue. Next person in queue coming from the line of Tim Sabichow with Northland Capital Markets. Yolanis, now open. Okay. Just made it. Good morning and congrats on the results. Indeed, we've seen some pretty positive results across this AI optical landscape thus far this week, even with a lot of references to step function accelerations and demands, I think both inside and outside the data center. I think maybe that marries up well with your very strong October bookings commentary, I think. I guess the question is, in that environment, so you're guiding data center to high 20s growth, maybe 28% growth in Q1.

I guess given this environment that we're seeing and what seems to be a bit of a tidal wave of demand, is that type of growth rate sustainable for the year in fiscal 2026, or can it even increase? Thanks. Yes, I think it can increase. We have a base case, and then we have our sort of best case. We're setting guidance on, I would say, our base case or more conservative, which even provides strong sequential growth coming off of a very strong Q4. We would expect that to continue. There are scenarios as we model our fiscal 2026 where our data center can actually really outperform and have very strong performance similar to last year. We're not forecasting that now. We know a lot of things have to happen, including various ramps have to occur and things of that nature.

We're not forecasting that sort of super strong growth. We're going to start the year and look at our backlog and plan accordingly. You're correct, and those trends are there. It's primarily around 1.6T. That's where the volume is. That's where the demand is. That's where the shortage of supply in some key technologies is. Quite frankly, that's where MACOM can be a strategic partner. Great. Thanks very much and congrats once again. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham and Company. Your line is now open. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I guess maybe, Steve, just coming out of the ECOC Optical show a few weeks back, there was some chatter about market share shifts in the TIA and the driver side at 800 gig and 1.6T modules. I just wondered if you could address.

How do you feel about your relative share position across TIAs drivers? Have you seen any shifts? Do you feel like you're still pretty well holding share or maybe even taking share? Any commentary just how you're doing in the PMDs for optical modules at 800 and 1.6T? Thank you for the question. I think we're doing well. I think we have differentiated product, and it's a very competitive landscape. You have to earn every socket based on performance, timing, price. I think we're bringing our best game to the market. Holding share? I'm not going to comment on particular product lines, whether we're gaining or losing market share. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Steve Daly for any closing remarks. Thank you.

In closing, Jack and I would like to thank the entire MACOM team for their continued dedication, which made our FY25 results possible. We will continue to work as a team to meet our customers' needs and execute our strategic plan as we start fiscal year 2026. Thank you very much and have a nice day. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

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