Intel Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 25, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Mr. John Pitzer, Corporate Vice President of Investor Relations.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Jonathan. By now you should have received a copy of the Q1 earnings release and earnings presentation, both of which are available on our Investor Relations website intc.com. For those joining us online today, the earnings presentation is also available in our webcast window. I'm joined today by our CEO, Pat Gelsinger and our CFO, David Zinsner. In a moment, we will hear brief comments from both followed by a Q and A session.

Speaker 1

Before we begin, please note that today's discussion does contain forward looking statements based on the environment as we currently see it and as such are subject to various risks and uncertainties. It also contains reference to non GAAP financial measures that we believe provide useful information to our investors. Our earnings release, most recent quarterly report on Form 10 Q and other filings with the SEC provide more information on specific risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. They also provide additional information on our non GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations where appropriate to corresponding GAAP financial measures. With that, let me turn things over to Pat.

Speaker 2

Thanks, John, and welcome, everyone. We reported solid Q1 results, delivering revenue in line and EPS above our guidance as we continue to focus on operating leverage and expense management. Our results reflect our disciplined approach on reducing costs as well as the steady progress we are making against our long term priorities. While first half trends are modestly weaker than we originally anticipated, they are consistent with what others have said and also reflect some of our own near term supply constraints. We continue to see Q1 as the bottom and we expect sequential revenue growth to strengthen throughout the year and into 2025 underpinned by: 1, the beginnings of an enterprise refresh cycle and growing momentum for AI PCs 2, a data center recovery with the return to more normal CPU buying patterns and ramping of our accelerator offerings and 3, cyclical recoveries in NEX, Mobileye and Ultera.

Speaker 2

We had an extremely productive Q1 and achieved several important milestones along our journey to reposition the company for improved execution, competitiveness, and perhaps most importantly, financial results. We hosted our first ever Intel Foundry Direct Connect, which drew nearly 300 partners, customers and potential customers to hear about the momentum we are building with our foundry offerings. We were pleased to announce Microsoft as our 5th Intel AT and A customer. We also updated our lifetime deal value to greater than $15,000,000,000 and extended our roadmap with Intel 14A, the first process node in the industry to use high NA EUV technology. Shortly following Direct Connect, we were thrilled to join with President Biden and Commerce Secretary Raimondo to announce our position as the National Semiconductor Champion along with the single largest award from the CHIPS and Science Act of more than $45,000,000,000 of proposed grants, tax incentives and loans.

Speaker 2

During the 2nd week of April, we brought together more than 1,000 of our top customers and partners at Intel Vision 2024, where we introduced our next generation Gaudi3 Accelerator. We were joined by Naver, Dell, Bosch, Supermicro and Roche among many others who share how they are benefiting from Intel solutions. Vision went straight into Open Source Summit where we led the launch of the open market for AI applications starting with retrieval augmented generation or RAG. Our Xeon plus Gauti use cases along with our established enterprise ecosystem have a big role to play here. Lastly, we hosted the industry's 1st Sustainability Summit, underscoring our deep commitment to building a more geographically diverse, resilient, trusted and of course, sustainable supply chain for semiconductors.

Speaker 2

We are proud of our leadership position in chemical conservation, renewable energy and water reclamation. Our accomplishments year to date build on all the work we have done to execute on the strategy I laid out when I rejoined the company 3 years ago. Job number 1 was to accelerate our efforts to close the technology gap that was created by over a decade of underinvestment. The heart of Phase 1 was 5 nodes in the 4 years. The rallying cry was torrid.

Speaker 2

It combined accelerating our node transitions with improving our product execution and cadence to regain customer trust. We have rebuilt our Grovian culture and execution engine and are on track to completing our 5 nodes 4 year goal, which many of our stakeholders thought impossible at inception. In so doing, we are in a unique position with at scale EUV technology, Western base capacity, and at the very least, a level playing field with the market leader. Intel 20A, which helps pave the way for Intel 18A, begins production ramp in the second half of this year with Arrow Lake. We expect to release the 1.0 PDK for Intel 18A this quarter.

Speaker 2

Furthermore, our lead products Clearwater Forest and Panther Lake are already in fab and we expect to begin production ramp of the Intel 18A in these products in the first half of twenty twenty five for product release in the middle of next year. Given this progress, now is the time to turn our focus to matching technology leadership with a competitive cost structure. Establishing a foundry relationship between our products group and our manufacturing group was a critical step to achieve better structural cost. This quarter, we officially transitioned to our new operating model and introduced Intel Products and Intel Foundry. Today, for the first time, we are reporting our results to reflect the new way in which we are running the company.

Speaker 2

Separating the internal financial reporting between Intel Foundry and Intel Products was a critical step needed to provide transparency, accountability and the proper incentives to allow both groups to make better decisions to optimize their own cost structures. This change also provided the added benefit of giving more transparency to our outside owners. We knew that the day 1 P and L for Intel Foundry was going to spark debate, but we also knew it was important to establish a baseline and provide a target model based on reasonable to conservative revenue and cost assumptions that we have a high degree of confidence we will achieve. I'm going to reiterate that point so it is heard and understood. Our target model is reasonable, conservative and reflects a high degree of confidence in our ability to deliver.

Speaker 2

And you can rest assured that we will be working hard to beat these targets. If we can move faster and do better, we will, and our new operating model is already catalyzing change and driving efficiencies across the organization. Let me highlight 3 important aspects of our business and our strategy that is underscored by the new model. First, with Intel products, we have exposed a solid, fabulous franchise with established powerful and hard to displace install base and ecosystem across enterprise, consumer and edge that provide meaningful benefits to our customers and partners. Intel Products is a solidly profitable business today, despite just recently emerging from a semiconductor downturn and still competing with legacy process technology.

Speaker 2

That is changing rapidly as we ramp Intel 3 in 2024 and Intel 18A in 2025. Within client, we are defining and leading the AI PC category. IDC indicates the overall PC market is now expanding. And as stated earlier, of new AI embedded capabilities, we see demand signals improving, especially in second half of the year, helped by a likely corporate refresh. Our core ultra ramp led by MediaLink continues to accelerate beyond our original expectation with units expected to double sequentially in Q2 limited only by our supply of wafer level assembly.

Speaker 2

Improving second half Meteor Lake supply and the addition of Lunar Lake and Aero Lake later this year will allow us to ship in excess of our original 40,000,000 AI PC CPU target in 2024. Next year with Panther Lake, we will extend our lead with Intel 18A and further product enhancements. Our share position is strong and continues to strengthen as we execute on our product roadmap. Within DCAI, as committed, we have achieved product release on our first Intel 3 server product, the 1st generation E Core Xeon 6 code named Sierra Forest. The next generation P Core Xeon 6 product Granite Rapids will be released in Q3.

Speaker 2

At Vision, we demonstrated a 70,000,000,000 parameter model running natively on Xeon 6 with good performance. We continue to expect share trends to stabilize this year before improving in 2025. While budgets are still being prioritized to generative AI build out, where we have a strong position in the head node, customer conversations continue to show improving signs for traditional CPU refresh starting in late Q2 and into the second half. Our first Intel 18A product, Clearwater Forest, is slated to launch next year and will allow us to accelerate share gains. Our GADI 3 launch gave us a strong offering to improve our position in accelerated computing for the data center and cloud.

Speaker 2

We now expect over $500,000,000 in accelerated revenue in second half of twenty twenty four with increasing momentum into 2025 based on Gaudi3's vastly superior TCO as well as our own expanding supply. In addition, we are finding good traction with the Intel Developer Cloud with customers onboarding with this platform, including Dell and Seeker, our largest IDC win to date. We are encouraged by our progress, but far from satisfied. Lastly, within NEX, the business has stabilized and beat our Q1 targets with channel inventories approaching normal levels and business acceleration expected through the year as a result. We also recently announced our plans for scale up and scale out Ethernet based AI networking delivered as a discrete NIC and chiplets for AI foundry customers with numerous key providers in the industry and market standardization through the Ultra Ethernet Consortium.

Speaker 2

So that is Intel products, good momentum and a lot for us to build on. Let me turn to Intel Foundry. We are executing on our strategy to drive meaningful improvement and profitability over time. We are obviously not there yet given the large upfront investment needed to build out this business, but we always said this was going to be a multiyear plan and we are right on track with where we expected to be right now. As we discussed during our webinar at the beginning of the month, the transition from pre EUV wafers to post EUV wafers is a powerful tailwind for us.

Speaker 2

We expect our blended average wafer pricing to grow 3x faster than cost over the decade, driving significant margin expansion. In addition, more competitive wafers will allow us to bring home many of the tiles that today are being manufactured at external foundries. Both dynamics are in our control and not dependent on revenue growth and are key elements to drive the business to breakeven, more than doubling our current earnings power at the Intel consolidated level. Of course, more competitive wafers combined with our position as the only company manufacturing with leading edge wafers outside of Asia is drawing strong interest from potential external customers. It is important to note that our leadership in advanced packaging creates more value in our wafer technologies and wafer level assembly and base dye opportunities further fill our factories and extend the useful life of our tools for increased financial returns.

Speaker 2

I am pleased to announce that this quarter we signed another meaningful customer on Intel AT and A bringing our total to 6. A leader in the aerospace and defense industry, this customer chose Intel Foundry based not only on the process technology benefits of Intel 18A, but also because of their desire to have a secure U. S. Only supply base. Just this week, we were very pleased to announce that the DoD awarded Intel Foundry Phase 3 of the RAMP C program, which we are confident will lead to additional federal aerospace and defense customers.

Speaker 2

More broadly, we are seeing growing interest in Intel AT and A and we continue to have a strong pipeline of nearly 50 test chips. The near term interest in Intel Foundry continues to be strongest with advanced packaging, which now includes engagements with nearly every foundry customer in the industry, including 5 design awards. While we are highly focused on improving the near term profitability of Intel foundry, it is also important that we keep sight of the long term opportunity here. The foundry market is expected to grow from $110,000,000,000 today to $240,000,000,000 by 2,030, with almost 90% of the growth coming from EUV nodes and advanced packaging. Given this backdrop, we have clear line of sight to becoming the largest system foundry for the AI era and the 2nd largest overall by 2,030, building on our EUV high NA process technology, leadership and advanced packaging, manufacturing capacity, our systems expertise and the surge in AI demand.

Speaker 2

Put another way, our $15,000,000,000 of external revenue embedded in our Intel foundry target model would represent less than 15% of the leading edge foundry market. It is not a question of if, but when Intel foundry achieves escape velocity and every day we are proving to the market that Intel Foundry is a resilient, sustainable and trusted alternative to serve a semi market on the path to top $1,000,000,000,000 by the end of the decade. Let me wrap up by speaking to our all other category, where our number one priority is to unlock shareholder value. This quarter, we formally rebranded our programmable solutions group, Alterra, an Intel company. We look forward to bringing in a private equity partner this year to help prepare the company for an IPO in the coming years.

Speaker 2

This puts Alterra on a similar path as Mobileye. We are excited about the future of both companies. By providing them with separation and autonomy, we believe we enhance their ability to capitalize on their growth opportunities in their respective market and accelerate their path to create value. Combined with IMS, our mass writing equipment business, we believe these three assets represent more than a quarter of our overall market value today. Along with a solid Intel products franchise and an Intel foundry business rapidly approaching $100,000,000,000 in net tangible assets, we see the opportunity to unlock significant value for our shareholders as we meet our financial commitments, stand up Intel Foundry and drive it to profitability and further leverage our opportunity in AI.

Speaker 2

So overall, I'll say that there's a lot for us to build on coming out of Q1. We are systematically executing to our strategy and we are making steady progress. We are maniacally focused on executional excellence and fiscal discipline and we are relentless in our drive to regain process leadership and bring next generation solutions to solve our customers' hardest problems. All of this gives me confidence in where we are headed. Yes, we have a lot of hard work in front of us, but we know what we need to do and the payoff will be significant in the end.

Speaker 2

Semiconductors are the currency that will drive the global economy for decades to come. We are 1 of 2, maybe 3 companies in the world that can continue to enable next generation chip technologies and the only one that has Western capacity and R and D and we will participate in the entire AI market. Quarter by quarter, we are positioning ourselves well to capitalize on the immense opportunities ahead. With that, let me turn things over to Dave.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Pat, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered solid results in the quarter with revenue finishing in line and gross margin and EPS again beating guidance. Forward looking demand signals in our core markets improved at a measured pace through the Q1 and we expect to deliver full year revenue and EPS growth in 2024 with the pace of revenue growth accelerating in the second half. First quarter revenue was $12,700,000,000 up 9% year over year and just above the midpoint of our guidance with product segments performing in line with expectations. Intel Products delivered 17% year over year growth, offset by inventory headwinds impacting Mobileye, Alterra and our 5 gs customers, as well as the sunsetting of several non core lines of business, including the traditional packaging business within Intel Foundry.

Speaker 3

These non core revenue headwinds drove a sequential decline of just over $1,000,000,000 in line with our Q1 guidance. Gross margin was 45.1%, 60 basis points above guidance. And EPS of $0.18 beat guidance by $0.05 on operating spending discipline and strong sell through of previously reserved inventory. Q1 operating cash flow was negative $1,200,000,000 Net CapEx was $5,000,000,000 resulting in an adjusted free cash flow of negative $6,200,000,000 and we paid dividends of $500,000,000 in the quarter. We expect Q1 to be the low point for adjusted free cash flow driven by seasonal factors, including timing of annual bonus payments, along with upsides from larger capital offsets expected in the second half.

Speaker 3

As Pat mentioned, this is our Q1 reporting in the new operating segments. The revised structure creates a foundry relationship between manufacturing and our products groups with Intel products purchasing wafers and services from Intel Foundry at fair market prices. This quarter represents another important step in our transformation with increased transparency and accountability across all layers of the organization, which is already having a positive impact on decision making, efficiencies and financial discipline. As I talk about our results, I'll categorize them between Intel Products, Intel Foundry, and All Other with the All Other category including the results of Mobileye and Alterra. Additional detail can be found in our earnings release and SEC filings.

Speaker 3

Intel Products revenue was $11,900,000,000 up 17% year over year. The client business grew by more than 30% year over year with a strong product portfolio and share position and significantly improved customer inventory levels. The data center and AI business contributed 5% year over year growth, driven by higher Xeon ASPs and improved enterprise demand. NEX revenue declined 8% year over year. As discussed last quarter, we saw significant declines in the 5 gs market, partially offset by approximately 10% year over year growth in our network and edge markets, which we expect to continue to recover through the year.

Speaker 3

Intel Products operating profit expanded by more than $2,100,000,000 year over year, driven by higher revenue, better sell through of reserved inventory and operating spending discipline, resulting in an operating margin of approximately 28% in the quarter. Intel Foundry revenue was $4,400,000,000 down 10% year over year on lower back end services and sample revenue along with lower IMS tool sales. In addition, wafer volume was modestly higher in the quarter with ASPs modestly down driven by pricing for mature nodes. Operating profit declined by approximately $100,000,000 year over year with lower revenue being partially offset by improved factory utilization. Op margin declined significantly quarter over quarter driven by higher start up costs and the conclusion of the traditional packaging business impacting revenue.

Speaker 3

The foundry P and L will remain challenged through the year and we expect operating margins to trough in 2024 as start up costs associated with 5 nodes in 4 years peak and the P and L absorbs an expected increase of roughly $2,000,000,000 in depreciation. Beyond 2024, as volume begins to shift toward leadership manufacturing nodes with a competitive cost structure, scale improves, including the return of compute tiles to internal process nodes and our efficiency actions begin to flow through the P and L, we expect to see rapid profitability improvement. Mobileye revenue of $239,000,000 and an operating loss of $68,000,000 were both down meaningfully year over year due to a well publicized drawdown of IQ customer inventory. Mobileye reiterated full year guidance on their earnings call this morning. With the inventory digestion process on track, financial results are expected to recover quickly.

Speaker 3

Alterra revenue was $342,000,000 down significantly year over year with results impacted by the industry wide inventory digestion following supply constraints in 2022 and 2023. Alterra's $39,000,000 operating loss is a result of lower revenue and spending associated with standing up Alterra as a standalone company. We continue to expect Alterra to exit 2024 at a $2,000,000,000 revenue run rate as inventory positions normalize. I want to acknowledge the hard work and focused execution across the company to transition our systems and processes to our new reporting structure. We're already seeing the results of the increased transparency catalyzing change and driving efficiencies across the company.

Speaker 3

Now turning to our Q2 guidance. We expect revenue of $12,500,000,000 to $13,500,000,000 in the 2nd quarter with the midpoint aligned to typical seasonal growth. At the midpoint of $13,000,000,000 we expect gross margin of approximately 43.5 percent with a tax rate of 13% and EPS of $0.10 all on a non GAAP basis. We see the client and data center business roughly flat to Q1 results at the low end of seasonal. Q2 client revenue is constrained by wafer level assembly supply, which is impacting our ability to meet demand for our core ultra based AI PCs.

Speaker 3

We do expect sequential growth from Mobileye, NEX and Foundry Services. As we look beyond Q2 guidance, we expect growth across all segments in the second half of the year led by improved demand for general purpose servers from both cloud and enterprise customers and increased core ultra assembly capacity to support a growing PC TAM driven by enterprise refresh and the AI PC. We should also see accelerating growth from our network and edge businesses, a return to growth for Alterra and a meaningful Gauzy ramp in the second half. Despite 2024 representing the peak for 5 node and 4 year driven factory startup costs, we expect roughly 200 basis points of FY 2024 gross margin improvement compared to FY 2023. Our net capital intensity forecast of mid-30s as a percent of revenue across 20232024 in aggregate remains unchanged.

Speaker 3

With significant capital offsets expected to land in the second half of the year, we continue to expect approximately neutral 2024 adjusted free cash flow. While first half demand signals have been a bit weaker, Q1 played out largely in line with our expectations. We achieved several important milestones towards our IDM 2.0 vision and we're participating in a large and growing TAM with encouraging market signals for the second half of the year and into 2025. By capturing margin at both the foundry level and the fabless product level, we have margin stacking advantage unique in the industry. We are 3 years into our transformation and 2024 represents the steepest part of the climb with 5 node and 4 year startup costs peaking and the majority of our volume on pre EUV process nodes with uncompetitive economics.

Speaker 3

However, as we crest the hill and look toward the next few years, we have strong wins at our back and a clear path to achieving the mid and long term financial targets we laid out earlier this month. With that, let me turn the call back over to John.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Dave. We will now transition to the Q and A portion of our call. As a reminder, we request that each of you ask one question and a brief follow-up where applicable, so that we can get to as many of your questions as possible. With that, Jonathan, can we take the first question?

Operator

Certainly. And our first question comes from the line of Ross Seymore from Deutsche Bank. Your question please.

Speaker 4

Hi guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. I guess for my first question, I wanted to dive into the demand side of the equation. What was weaker in the near term than you had expected? And much more importantly, it seems like the back half, you're going to have double digit sequential growth in largely both quarters, so that's significantly above seasonal.

Speaker 4

I know you went through some of the reasons at a high level, but can you dive a little bit deeper into what gives you that level of confidence in the second half ramp?

Speaker 2

Yes. Starting out, Ross, thanks for the question. I'll just say the market was weaker and you've seen that in a number of others that have commented as well. So I'll say somewhat across the board a bit. We've seen that cloud customers, enterprise across geos.

Speaker 2

So I'll just say a bit weaker demand, and we'll just say at the low end of seasonality Q1 to Q2 that we saw. And as we go into the second half of the year, we're engaging deeply with our customers today, our OEM partners, and we just see strength across the board, right? Part of that is driven by our unique product position, some of it driven by the market characteristics and client. AIPC in the second half, Windows upgrade cycle, we believe, underway and Core Ultra is hot. And as we said, even in Q2, we're racing, we're meeting all of our commitments, but not all of the upside requests that we're seeing from customers.

Speaker 2

So we see a very strong AIPC outlook. In the data center, as we bring in our new products, we're seeing ASPs increase very healthy on our data center products and with products like Sierra Forest that we just went to production with this week on Intel 3. We're seeing improved product position as well for competitiveness. We have the $500,000,000 of Gauti, right, and most of that's second half loaded. And the all other businesses coming out of inventory positions in Alterra and Mobileye and NEX, all of those improve first half to second half as well.

Speaker 2

And then incremental, I'll just say Intel Foundry, it's like every quarter from here till the decade ends, we're seeing improvement in the Intel foundry. And 1 by 1, we're seeing all of those business improvements, both on revenue and margin improvements over time. So we feel very comfortable that the second half outlook is quite strong for the business. Our first half, a bit weaker, but we think it's very understandable, very explainable and a second half outlook that will be very comfortable for every business across Intel growing and a lot of momentum as we go into 2025.

Speaker 1

Ross, do you have a quick follow-up?

Speaker 4

I do. Maybe for Dave on the gross margin side, nice upside in the Q1, but the drop in the second quarter is a little bit puzzling with revenues going up. So could you just talk a little bit about that second quarter drop and then the confidence in the rebound in the second half? Is that just revenue driven in the second half? Or what's the key metrics there, please?

Speaker 3

Yes, good. Thanks Ross. Maybe start with Q1 because it somewhat explains Q2. We had better sell through of product. Pat even mentioned Meteor Lake strength.

Speaker 3

That better sell through was on previously reserved material and so we just saw some upside in gross margins because of that. We had a little bit more of a flattish plan between Q1 and Q2 in terms of how that would flow through. And so it kind of pulled some of the benefit of gross margin improvement we would have seen in Q2 and kind of pulled it into Q1. So that was part of it. The second part is, as we talked about, this year was going to be a heavy year for start up costs for us.

Speaker 3

And it really shows up more meaningfully in the Q2 versus the Q1. And so that puts a little added pressure on gross margins. As you point out, the upside in the revenue, we will have good fall through in Q3 and Q4 that will help lift the gross margins from where they are today. And then on top of that, we'll see some areas which have high gross margins helping us like, for example, Mobileye, we get good gross margin for Mobileye and the strength that we'll see through the year there and products like that will also help drive better gross margins in the back half of the year. As we look into 'twenty five, I think we'll have better gross margins in 'twenty five than we had in 'twenty four.

Speaker 3

So this should be an ongoing story for us on the gross margin front. And as you know, we're driving to get to kind of mid-50s gross margins by the midpoint between now and 2,030 and ultimately getting to 60%. Of course, revenue will be part of that, but a lot of that is within our control. It's things like 18A wafer pricing, growing at 3x the cost of 18A that will help drive margins. The pull in of tiles, as Pat mentioned, internally is going to drive better gross margins for us over time.

Speaker 3

All of what we're doing in terms of resegmenting the new business is to drive better decision making. That better decision making will translate into significant cost improvements for us, which should also be a meaningful driver for gross margins over time as well. And of course, as Pat mentioned, we were happy to get the chips announcement out and of course that coupled with what we expect from the EU and the investment tax credit will also be major tailwinds on gross margins over a long term

Speaker 1

basis. Thank you, Ross. Jonathan, can we have the next question please?

Operator

Certainly. And our next question comes from the line of Ben Rysus from Melius. Your question please.

Speaker 5

Hey guys, thanks a lot. Appreciate the chance to ask a question here. Hey, Pat, can you talk a little bit more about servers in the data center? There was talk of a bottom there in previous discussion. How do you see that kind of going throughout the year in light of your 2Q guidance?

Speaker 5

And what's the catalyst for the pickup there? Thanks a lot.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you, Ben. And obviously, as we look at our position in the data center, I'll just say we're stabilizing. And with that, we're improving our competitiveness. We also see, as I mentioned in the comments, that the ASPs are going up comfortably as well.

Speaker 2

So socket, fairly stable through the year, but the ASP per socket with increased core count improves our position. And then new products like Sierra Forest or Xeon Gen 6 product definitely gives us power performance capabilities. So overall, we're seeing a very healthy growth rate, mid-20s as we go through the year. We're also seeing increasing interest in the AI capabilities of Xeon. And we're winning head node positions, and we're seeing pretty extraordinary performance.

Speaker 2

At Vision, we talked about the ability to now run 70,000,000,000 parameter models directly on Xeon. And these type of capabilities, say, for a lot of enterprise use cases, Xeon is a very strong product. And as we laid out at Vision, the ability for Xeon plus Gaudi to start positioning this open platform for enterprise AI is a very strong position for us. So overall, we feel like we're on a solid trajectory into a market that even though it's been dominated by the Gen AI theme, as enterprises, our OEMs and ODMs are communicating, there's growth here in the servers and we now have a much better product position, improving ASPs and a better overall positioning in AI for a lot of these use cases where it's Xeon CPU plus GPU and accelerator.

Speaker 1

Ben, do you have a quick follow-up?

Speaker 5

Yes, thanks. Can we just double click also on Gaudi, dollars 500,000,000 in the back half of the year? I think you previously talked about a couple of $1,000,000,000 in the pipeline. What does that say about your yield to revenue on an annualized basis with AI? And is there an update on the pipeline and your confidence there heading into 2025 on the accelerator front?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Ben. And obviously, pipeline converting into revenue, revenue much more meaningful, as you said, greater than $500,000,000 for the year, and that's obviously quarter on quarter accelerating rapidly, which also gives a great indication for the business in 2025 as well. At our Vision event, we had over 20 customers publicly describing their embrace of Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3. And I was super pleased to see the breadth of those customers.

Speaker 2

It was CSPs like Naver and Ola and IBM Cloud. It was ISVs like Seeker, right, coming on board. But maybe most importantly, enterprise customers and ultimately, Gen AI, training, okay, creating models, but enterprises are going to use models. And that's where our TCO benefits the ability for us to action customers' data in their enterprise environment is so powerful. And customers like Bosch were coming forward and Roche to be able to demonstrate the true benefits of Gaudi and Xeon plus Gaudi.

Speaker 2

The roadmap is in good shape, the Gaudi 3, Falcon Shores in 25. We're also seeing that the industry wants open alternatives. And we announced our AI networking initiative, Ultra Ethernet Consortium standardizing on scale up and scale out to Ethernet, increasing work for abstract levels of AI development with PyTorch and the embrace of the open platform for enterprise AI that we rolled out. All of those taken together, the industry is looking for open enterprise alternatives for generative AI deployment and Intel is quite well positioned and we're starting to really see that uptake in our accelerator and Xeon pipeline now.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ben. Jonathan, can we have the next question, please?

Operator

Certainly. And our next question comes from the line of Joe Moore from Morgan Stanley. Your question please.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk to the server road map. It sounds like you're confirming the timeframe for both Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids. Can you talk about is there demand for the Sierra Forest product as well?

Speaker 6

Do you expect that to be bifurcated where you see demand for both? And then how quickly we might see those products come to volume?

Speaker 2

Yes. So Sierra Forest, our first Xeon 6 product on Intel 3 and super proud, right? Now we have leadership process technology back on American soil for the first time in a decade. This is really exciting. NCR Forest, high core count, 144, 288 core product, very focused on power performance efficiency.

Speaker 2

And we do see a good pipeline of customers and a good pipeline of, I'll say, socket win backs, because the area of power performance has been an area that we've been carrying a deficit being on an older node. And now that we're on leadership nodes, we definitely see share gains for that. Of course, Granite Rapids, which will come in Q3, the Xeon 6 P Core part is much more the bread and butter of the Xeon family. So we do see that being a stronger element to the portfolio this year as we haven't been participating in the power performance sockets as aggressively lately, and Sierra Forest gives us that tool. So it really is a 1, 2 punch, as we've described.

Speaker 2

And with Granite coming in Q3 and a volume ramp on Intel 3 with that, we feel we have a very good product line. Next year is Clearwater Forest, the 2nd generation of the e core part, the leadership position on 18A in the server market, a very strong product for us, unquestioned leadership and power performance. So I believe that's a great opportunity for us to gain share again in the data center. So the roadmap is healthy, the execution is strong and we're rebuilding customer trust. They're looking at us now and saying, oh, Intel is back, and we're quite excited by that.

Speaker 2

And then beyond that, building the volume, building the confidence and the momentum for traditional use cases as well as the AI use cases, as I just referred on Ben's question as well.

Speaker 1

Joe, do you have a quick follow-up?

Speaker 6

Yes, I do. Thank you. On the Foundry webinar, you had sort of talked about Intel 3 volume being kind of more of an inflection next year. Does that mean it was in server that these Intel 3 products are sort of get to volume crossover kind of some point next year or could we see obviously it's the leadership you just talked about is important What's kind of keeping you from getting those products ramping in the second half?

Speaker 2

Yes, Joe. Thank you. And servers always just take a while to ramp. Customers bring them in, they qualify them, they test them, because they're generally putting these things at scale. So there's just an adoption cycle for server products.

Speaker 2

And the numbers that I'm holding my team accountable for are some of the most aggressive volume ramps that we've ever achieved on server products. So we're driving them very hard. That said, in terms of the total wafer volume this year, right, it's dominated by Intel 7 and the Intel 4 and 3 wafer volumes become much more prominent next year and that's what I was communicating on the webinar. But as we go through the year, you're going to start to see the wafer ASPs pick up as a result of Intel 4.3 ramping at much better ASP points, better margins associated with those and they'll become much more prominent in the foundry P and L next year. But those these are production ramps that are already underway on Intel 3.

Speaker 2

The Intel 4 ramp already underway. We began that second half of last year. So these wafer ramps are underway with volume productions, volume products that we're bringing to the marketplace, very confident in our ability. And then, of course, 18A, as we deliver the PDK for that in Q2, the 1.0 PDK, and we'll begin the volume ramps on Clearwater, Fars and Panther Lake in the first half of next year for those products coming out. So we feel very comfortable with that overall picture that we've laid out.

Speaker 2

So thank you, Joe.

Speaker 1

Jonathan, can we have the next question, please?

Operator

Certainly. And our next question comes from the line of Vijay Rakesh from Mizuho Securities. Your question please.

Speaker 7

Yes. Hey, Pat. Just a quick question on the Grand Rapids. Any thoughts on the timing? And do you expect to regain some computing share, server share there with those ramps?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Vijay. And building a little bit on the question, Granite Rapids will come in Q3 of this year, when we'll have the production release of that product. Same as it just takes some time for customers to get comfortable, qualify and bring those products to marketplace. But Sierra Forest, Granite Rapids, these are much more competitive power performance products on Intel 3.

Speaker 2

So we see them stabilizing and then giving us opportunity to regain share. And as we go into next year, we expect that we're regaining share as we end this year and go into next year. These are great products and we're going to be ramping them very aggressively with our customers.

Speaker 1

P. J, do you have a follow-up?

Speaker 7

Yes, thanks. Just on the GPU side, on the AI side, any thoughts on Falcon Shores? Any preliminary takes on that? How do you see that building out into 2025? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. And Gaudi 3 announcement this quarter extremely well received. And as I mentioned already, 20 plus customers for Gaudi 2, 3. So we're seeing that build. Obviously, Falcon Shores will build on that momentum.

Speaker 2

We'll be bringing that late next year when Falcon Shores, when we combine the great systolic performance of Gauti 3 with a fully programmable architecture and all of that comes together with Falcon Shores. Then we have a rich, a very aggressive cadence of FalconShores products following that. We also added the Gaudi 3 PCIe card to it this use case of Xeon plus an accelerator or Gaudi accelerators getting very good response from customers as well. So we'll be bringing that out later this year. But the real story is delivering the TCO value, delivering the enterprise use cases.

Speaker 2

On Falcon Shores, we'll just build on the momentum that we're establishing with Gaudi 2 and 3. We also described customers coming on the Intel Developer Cloud, where we're getting these products very early in their life available for developers and enterprise customers, and customers like Seeker. Now our biggest Intel developer cloud win to date is seeing the benefits. But the bigger story is how do we unleash the data assets of our enterprise customers, and that's things like the open platform for enterprise AI that we launched at Open Summit. So overall, a lot of good things happening to unleash the Gen AI cycle for Intel.

Speaker 2

And of course, right, as we're doing this, AI is a hot market. We're participating across all of our segments, whether that's client, edge, enterprise or our foundry opportunities as well, delivering AI everywhere.

Speaker 1

Thanks Vijay. Jonathan, can we have the next caller, please?

Operator

Certainly. And our next question comes from the line of Timothy Arcuri from UBS Securities. Your question please.

Speaker 2

Thanks a lot. Dave, I also wanted

Speaker 8

to ask about gross margin. You did say it's going to be better next year, but it is really whipping around a lot and it looks like you sort of have to exit this year at 48 or maybe a little higher, which is already well above the 45.5% that you'll be at this year because you're guiding it up 200 basis points. So I know you don't want to guide next year, but if you can even qualitatively help us, can you sustain those margins at that level? And I ask because last year you sort of exited that 49% and then things crashed here during the first half of the year. So can you help us just think about what some of the puts and takes will be next year off of that high base that you're going to exit this year at?

Speaker 3

Yes. Good question, Tim. So there'll be additional startup costs next year. We do think it on a percent of revenue basis, it will be lower. So that should help lift the margins.

Speaker 3

Of course, the expectation would be we'd see growth in revenue. That also should help. On top of that, we already are seeing good decision making and changing decision making around how we operate now under this new different business structure that we have at this point. A lot of that stuff doesn't actually show up in the P and L. All these decisions get made this year, but a lot of the decisions made sorry, a lot of the benefits to those decisions don't show up until next year and the year after.

Speaker 3

So we should see some benefit from that as well. The other thing that kind of has whipped this our margins around a bit over the last few years has been this notion where we reserve material all the way up the PRQ. Pat just mentioned that Sierra Forest just PRQ. So ordinarily we take a whole bunch of reserves on Sierra Forest and then we would release them as we started shipping beyond the PRQ date. We won't be doing that going forward.

Speaker 3

So that should help adjust the volatility of the gross margin. So it will be more a function of revenue growth, spending profile in the fabs, startup costs that we'd have and the mix.

Speaker 1

Tim, do you have a follow-up question?

Speaker 8

I do, I do, yes. So I wanted to ask about server CPU share. March, I think the assumption for March was that server share was going to be pretty flat. So the question is, was that the case? And it sounds you sound maybe a little bit less optimistic if I'm sort of reading between the lines on share into the back half of the year, just given how long it takes these things to sort of impact your share.

Speaker 8

So your bullish outlook in the second half of the year, it sounds like it's more market driven versus share driven. Can you just clarify that?

Speaker 2

Thanks. Well, overall, I'd like to say, it's hard to predict, right, exactly how these will play out in light of the overall Gen AI surge that we've seen. That said, products are good, right? We came into the year improving our market share position in the Q1 of the year. It does take time to ramp these new products, but better products, rebuilding trust with our customers that we're delivering on these and now hitting the what we would call the early end of the cycles on these new products is giving us lot of interest with the market and the customer.

Speaker 2

New use cases also demonstrated 70,000,000,000 parameter model running natively on Granite Rapids at our Vision event. All of these just make us more and more confident in our business execution. We're also seeing that we don't need socket count to increase, the ASPs are going up, but the core counts on our new leadership products as well. So all of those in a fairly optimistic view that we're getting from our OEMs and our channel partners for their view of upgrade cycles, building momentum from customers across the industry. We feel very comfortable that we're stabilizing our position.

Speaker 2

We have an improving roadmap and we do expect to see share gains as we end the year and go into 25.

Speaker 1

Jonathan, can we have the next caller please?

Operator

Certainly. Our next question comes from the line of Srini Pajjuri from Raymond James. Your question please.

Speaker 9

Thank you. My question is on the client side. I think Pat you mentioned something about supply constraints impacting your 2Q outlook. If you could provide some color as to what's causing those supply constraints and when do you expect those to ease as we, I guess, go into the second half? And then in terms of your AI PCs, I think you've been talking about $40,000,000 or so potentially shipping this year.

Speaker 9

Could you maybe put that into some context as to how it actually helps Intel? Is it just higher ASP? Is it higher margin? I would think that these products also come with higher costs. So I just want to understand how we should think about the benefit to Intel as this AI pieces ramp?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you. And overall, we as we've seen, this is a hot product, the AIPC category, and we declared this as we finished last year, and we've just been incrementing up our AI PC or the core Ultra product volumes throughout. We're meeting our customer commitments that we've had, but they've come back and asked for upside on multiple occasions across different markets. And we are racing to catch up to those upside requests.

Speaker 2

And the constraint has been on the back end, wafer level assembly, one of the new capabilities that are part of Meteor Lake and our subsequent client products. So with that, we're working to catch up and build more wafer level assembly capacity to meet those. How does it help us? Hey, it's a new category and that new category products will generally be at higher ASPs as your question suggests, but we also think it's new use cases and new use cases over time create a larger TAM. It creates an upgrade cycle that we're seeing.

Speaker 2

It creates new applications and we're seeing essentially every ISV AI ifying their app, whether it's the communications capabilities of Zoom and Teams for translation and contextualization, whether it's new security capabilities with CrowdStrike and others finding new ways to do security on the client, or its creators and gamers taking advantage of this. So we see that every PC is going to become an AI PC over time. When you have that kind of cycle underway, Srini, everybody starts to say, Oh, how do I upgrade my platforms? And we even demonstrated how we're using AI PC in the Intel factories now to improve yields and performance inside of our own factories. And as I've described, it was like a Centrino moment, right, where Centrino ushered in Wi Fi at scale.

Speaker 2

We see the AIPC ushering in these new use cases at scale, and that's going to be great for the industry. But as the unquestioned market leader, right, the leader in the category creation, we think we're going to differentially benefit from the emergence of the AIPC.

Speaker 1

Srini, do you have a follow-up?

Speaker 9

Yes, John. Thank you. And I guess my other question is on the other bucket. I think Dave, you kind of talked about Ultera potentially exiting the year at $2,000,000,000 run rate. From current levels, that's a pretty steep ramp.

Speaker 9

And also, I think you said NEX growth will accelerate over the next couple of quarters. So given the telecom weakness out there that we're seeing, I'm just curious as to what's giving you that visibility or confidence. I mean, is this driven by some new products or is it just the market recovering? Any color would be helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. On Alterra, and this is not unprecedented, when you see a massive work down of inventory, of course, that significantly impacts the revenue. But as that normalizes, then you start shipping to end consumption. So it's actually a pretty easy lift to get to the $2,000,000,000 mark once we're through digestion period. So I think we have high confidence on that.

Speaker 2

And others have commented on their inventory cycles as well in the FPGA category. We have good products in the second half of the year with Agilex starting to ramp as well.

Speaker 3

And then on NEX, of course, that business also has gone through its own inventory adjustments. So we have good confidence around that reversing, which will help drive strength. And then some of the products that are were tailored to the AI space, of course, we'll see like ethnics, for example, we'll see strength through the year. And so that should drive good revenue growth through the year as well.

Speaker 2

Yes. And also with NEX, the AI networking products are strong or IPU products we're seeing a strength in that area. So it's inventory as well as products. Even though as your question suggests, the communication sector and the service providers that is weaker through the year, but pretty much every aspect of their business and Edge AI, as Dave said, is seeing strength as we go into the second half of the year and into 'twenty five.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Srini. Jonathan, can we have the next caller, please?

Operator

Certainly. Our next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya from Bank of America Securities. Your question, please.

Speaker 10

Thanks for taking my question. Pat, just a conceptual question. In a Gen AI server with accelerators, how important is the role of a specific CPU or is it easily interchangeable between yours or AMDs or ARM's? I guess the question is that if most of the workload is being done on the accelerator, does it really matter which CPU are used? And can that move towards an AI server essentially shrink the TAM for X86 server CPUs?

Speaker 10

Because number of your cloud customers have announced ARM based server alternatives. So I'm just curious, how do you think about that conversion over to GenAI and what that means for x86 server CPU TAM going forward?

Speaker 2

Yeah, thanks Vivek. And we spoke at our vision event about use cases like RAG, Retrieval Augmented Generation, where the LLMs might run on an accelerator, but all of the real time data, all of the databases, all of the embeddings is running on the CPU. So you're seeing all of these data environments, which are already running on Xeon and X86 being augmented with AI capabilities to feed an LLM. And I believe this whole area of RAG becomes one of the primary use cases for enterprise AI. And if you think about it, an LLM might be trade with 1, 2 year old data, right?

Speaker 2

But many of the business processes and environment are real time, right? You're not going to be retraining constantly. And that's where this area of the front end database becomes very prominent. All of those databases run on X86 today. All of them are being enhanced for use cases like RAG.

Speaker 2

And that's why we see this unlock occurring because the data sits on prem, the data sits in the X86 database environments that are all being enhanced against these use cases. And as we've shown, we don't need accelerators in some cases. We can run a 70,000,000,000 parameter model natively on Xeon with extraordinary TCO value for customers. And furthermore, all of the IT environments that enterprises run today, they have the security, they have the networking, they have the management technologies in place, they don't need to upgrade or change those from any of those use cases. So we see a lot of opportunity here to build on the enterprise asset that we have with the Xeon franchise, but we're also going to be aggressively augmenting that.

Speaker 2

And we're commonly the head node, even when it's other accelerators being used or other GPUs being used. And as we've described, Xeon plus Gauzy, we think it's going to be a very powerful opportunity for enterprises. So in many of those cases, we see this as a market lift, new applications, new use cases, new energy coming to the enterprise AI. Here we are in year 23 of the cloud and while 60% of the workload has moved to the cloud, over 80% of the data remains on prem under the control of the enterprise, much of that underutilized in businesses today. That's what GenAI is going to unlock and a lot of that is going to happen through the X86 CPU and we see a powerful cycle emerging.

Speaker 2

And I would just point you back to what we described that vision. This was a great event and many customers are seeing that value today.

Speaker 1

Vivek, do you have a quick follow-up?

Speaker 10

Yes. Thank you. Maybe one for Dave on the potential operating loss, kind of how do we model that for the foundry business? So let's say if I exclude the $2,000,000,000 in depreciation headwind, which I'm assuming is almost all going to your foundry business, what is the right way, Dave, to think about foundry operating income or loss this year and how much of external foundry revenue are you expecting this year? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes, good question. The operating losses will pick up. We roughly were at like 2.4 ish in the Q1. It will pick up in the Q2 given the startup costs are increasing. And I would say be roughly in that range for the remainder of the year.

Speaker 3

And then what I said before is we see that improving then going into 2025. And Pat's given me the order, he wants to see every quarter some improvement in the operating loss ultimately to get to breakeven midway through the point between now and 2,000 and And I think that is very achievable. I'm sorry, Vic, what was the second question? Did he lose? We

Speaker 1

might have. Vic, are you still on?

Operator

No, we've moved on. Okay.

Speaker 1

Why don't we go to the next caller, Jonathan?

Operator

Certainly. Our next question, one moment, comes from the line of Matt Ramsay from Cowen. Your question please.

Speaker 11

Yes. Thank you very much guys. Pat, one question I've been getting from some folks and I totally understand the lead times of starting some of these programs to put increased tile volume at external foundry. But you guys have made the progress on the 5 nodes in 4 years as you highlighted multiple times. Is there any flex at all to bring back some of that external volume earlier?

Speaker 11

And I think it matters to some folks because it's a demonstration of you guys being able to ramp your own product to volume and to yield and to economics on 18A, which might give some indication to some external customers that are looking at your foundry business. So just any flex at all to pull that timeline in of sort of reshoring some of the external tiles? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Matt. And largely those decisions are made when the product decisions are made. So there's limited flexibility to move them around. And if you pick a process node for a certain tile, generally that's the process node that it's on.

Speaker 2

So there's limited flexibility there. And many of those decisions, as we've highlighted before, Matt, were literally made years ago, right? And those choices were made. That said, we see the peak of our external tiles being this year and next year. And then the road map and the movement of those coming back begins to quite accelerate even starting late next year or so.

Speaker 2

The plan is clearly laid out. As we said, we see a couple of fabs worth of capacity coming back into the Intel factory network as we move into 'twenty six and beyond. So this becomes a significant driver. We've also driven significant roadmap decisions against that improving profile of our products. And I'll say that begins in a very powerful way next year with Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest.

Speaker 2

Unquestioned, the best products in clients, the best products in server are now being built on Intel AT and A. And as the question suggests, we see customers seeing that. Every foundry customer that we speak to, right, understanding where we are in our product and process cycle and the ability for them to essentially benefit from Intel as customer 0 in the foundry network. So overall, this is feeling very good. We're on track to go accomplish that.

Speaker 2

And the business model that we've laid out and Dave and I presented as we go through the decade shows a very healthy improvement in wafer ASP, wafer volume, foundry, and these decisions are made, right? We're on track to both have the way for foundry capabilities, have the process technology and the products to fill those factories. And that's why Dave and I have such confidence in the business model that we've laid out and the improvements that it will deliver as we go over the next several years together.

Speaker 1

Matt, do you have a quick follow-up?

Speaker 11

Yes, John. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question about the AI Accelerator roadmap. So you guys have Gauzy 3 that you talked about and FalconShore is coming next year and the hardware looks quite good. I wanted to ask a question about the software that goes on top of that for both well, really for inference, but also for training.

Speaker 11

How do you feel about the software roadmap that you guys have in the AI space going forward? And how much compatibility or uniqueness rather is there to the software that runs on Gaudi 3 versus what will come on FalconShores and the forward roadmap? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, maybe 3 different points there. The first one is for inferencing, you need a whole lot less software compatibility, right? And as the market is more focused on inferencing going forward, if you can run the models, right, in the context of the databases and the others, So that portends and is why we're seeing the strength that we're seeing right now, Mats and these use cases. And clearly, some of the software compatibility issues of a GPU have led to the training environments that have been challenging for us. But now as customers get much more focused on enterprise use cases, inferencing, TCO, we're finding a lot of strength in the offerings that we have.

Speaker 2

And as we've matured a number of customers now, we've worked through many of those use cases and getting quite a lot of acceptance of the software stack that we have with Gaudi 2 and 3. We will have a very smooth and seamless upgrade from Gaudi 3 into Falcon Shores, But the powerful thing that will come with Falcon Shores is the full programmability that you'll see with the complete instruction set capabilities of Falcon Shores. And at that point, we will have no deficits for any of the use cases and much greater compatibility for the full range of AI capabilities. The other thing that I emphasized is Xeon is a powerful capability with incredible programmable capabilities, and we're finding these use cases, like I described with the open platform for enterprise AI, RAG use cases is clearly beneficial there for us. So overall, we're feeling like the software story is coming together very nicely and the entire industry is moving to higher level software abstractions such as Python and Triton.

Speaker 2

So they're moving away from any of these dependencies to an open software platform. So the industry trends are in the right direction. Our maturity is in the right direction and our software stack has gotten much more mature we'll have a very smooth upgrade to FalconShores. So let me just close our time together and say thank you for the questions. Thanks for joining our call.

Speaker 2

We appreciate the update to give you on a very solid Q1. And we got a lot done in Q1 that gives us a great foundation for the future. We continue to drive our process and product and AI innovations and delivering on our process technology and leadership roadmap. If any of you are at Computex in a few months, I look forward to seeing you there. We have a number of products and offerings that we'll be announcing there as we continue our AI momentum and competitiveness.

Speaker 2

And as always, we look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you very much.

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Earnings Conference Call
Intel Q1 2024
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