Lattice Semiconductor Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 10, 2025

There are 14 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Lattice Semiconductor Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year twenty twenty four Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Rick Moshe, Senior Vice President of IR.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. With me today are Ford Tamer, Lattice's CEO Tanya Stephens, Lattice's Chief Accounting Officer and former Interim CFO and Lorenzo Flores, Lattice's CFO. We'll provide a financial and business review of the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four and the business outlook for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. If you have not obtained a copy of our earnings press release, it can be found at our company website in the Investor Relations section at latticesemi.com. I would like to remind everyone that during our conference call today, we may make projections or other forward looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company.

Speaker 1

We wish to caution you that such statements are predictions based on information that is currently available and that actual results may differ materially. We refer you to the documents that the company files with the SEC, including our 10 Ks, 10 Qs and eight Ks. These documents contain and identify important risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward looking statements. This call includes and constitutes the company's official guidance for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. If at any time after this call, we communicate any material changes to this guidance, we intend that such updates will be done using a public forum such as a press release or publicly announced conference call.

Speaker 1

We will refer primarily to non GAAP financial measures during this call. By disclosing certain non GAAP information, management intends to provide investors with additional information to permit further analysis of the company's performance and underlying trends. For historical periods, we provided reconciliations of these non GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures that can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at latticesemi.com. Let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Ford Tamer.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Rick, and thank you everyone for joining us on our call today. I've just returned from customer and partner meetings and sales conferences in North America, Asia Pacific and Europe. We capped off the European sales conference with a very productive and promising executive summit with our top European customers from the industrial, automotive, communications and aerospace and defense sectors. We also visited Pune, India, where we inaugurated our new state of the art R and D site. All of this came on the heels of our Lattice Developers Conference in December 2024.

Speaker 2

This was a highly successful event with 6,000 registrant and over 90 show floor demos. Many of you were able to hear directly from some of our leading customers and see firsthand how they're deploying the impressive innovations from Lattice in their systems. As a result of these events, I'm even more energized and confident in the long term outlook for Lattice. Today, we're pleased to announce a further strengthening executive leadership team with three new additions. Lorenzo Flores is joining Gladys as Chief Financial Officer from Inted, where he was CFO for the foundry business.

Speaker 2

Prior to that, Lorenzo was Vice Chairman at Quixia and CFO at Xynix. Nicole Singer is coming on board as our Chief People Officer from Cy5, where she was CHRO. Prior to that, she was CHRO at Synaptics and Vice President of Human Resources at Xylinx. And we're promoting Erhan Sheikh to Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. Erhan has been at Lattice for over four years and prior to that, he spent over twenty years in executive sales and field engineering roles at Altera, Xilinx and Fungible.

Speaker 2

I am confident that this new team will make significant contributions to Lattice's next phase of growth. I'm also pleased to announce the appointment of Tania Stevens to the role of Chief Accounting Officer. In her nearly six years at Lattice, Tania has been a tremendous asset, most recently serving as our Interim CFO. We are thrilled she will stay on this new role and look forward to continue working closely with her. Tania's expanded scope along with Erhan's promotion demonstrate Lattice's bench strength.

Speaker 2

And when you combine Tania's and Erhan's deep company backgrounds with the experienced industry veterans choosing to join Lattice, it is clear that we're building one of the semiconductor industry's strongest management teams, which will enable us to build near term and future shareholder value. At a high level, the overall FPGA market is continuing to grow in importance, driven by five secular trends acting as tailwinds and Lattice is uniquely positioned to leverage those trends. First, AI is driving shorter system design cycles, which provide less time to integrate auxiliary functions, and FPGAs are best positioned to enable those functions. Second, as ASIC and ASSP development costs continue to increase, the bar rises for which functions could justify that ROI and that pushes more designs towards FPGAs. Third, as the cost of advanced nodes skyrockets, mature process FPGAs are much more economical to perform certain functions.

Speaker 2

Fourth, emerging applications like security have fast changing requirements. A perfect example is post quantum cryptography or PQC. Programability is a much more effective solution than a fixed function ASIC that cannot easily be respond. Lastly, Edge AI is requiring contextual intelligence near the sensor. Lattice is already in the sockets today, performing other functions, which gives us a critical advantage with customers.

Speaker 2

And it is far better to implement tiny AI model in our far edge devices, which save processing power of the near edge inference chips for other tasks. Furthermore, the small and mid range FPGA segments are growing faster than the rest of the market, led by new applications, amongst them data centers and cloud, robotics, industrial automation, self driving cars, electrification, IoT, telematics, medical devices as well as artificial intelligence across all these segments. These applications have driven an explosion of sensors everywhere, which require massive amounts of data to be bridged, aggregated and fused to upstream processing units. Lattice has done a good job in these markets and our goal is to lead in this growing Far Edge AI market segment. This is an example of just one of the catalysts that gives us added confidence in Lattice's long term growth opportunities as we continue to execute.

Speaker 2

Over the near term, we're seeing improvement in customer consumption. We continue to ship below estimated true demand and are working closely with our customers to ensure we're effectively supporting their product roadmaps. We also continue to be encouraged with our stronger backlog and for the first time in six quarters, our book to bill ratio has been over one for the past few weeks. Taken together, this bodes well for our business in the coming quarters. Now moving on to our Q4 results.

Speaker 2

From a high level, fourth quarter twenty twenty four revenue was in line with our guidance at $117,400,000 and developed as expected. On an end market basis, Communications and Computing was down 5% sequentially and Industrial Automotive was down 9%, primarily due to continued inventory normalization. We continue to make significant progress in the realignment of our resources to best support customer demand and ensure the long term success of our company. In Q4, this included taking the opportunity to clean up a material liability we discovered after a comprehensive internal review. Tania will provide more details in her prepared remarks.

Speaker 2

We do not expect any additional one time charges and are confident that this is another example of the specific actions we're vigorously implementing to position Lattice for sustained long term success. Revenue for the full year 2024 was $509,400,000 with a strong EBITDA margin of 31.8%. A bright spot to highlight is that our Computing subsegment grew in 2024. Design win momentum continues to be robust as we achieved record design wins in 2024. Additionally, our new product momentum continues to be a highlight as revenue from our new products, including Nexus and Avant, grew double digits in 2024 compared to 2023.

Speaker 2

Earlier, you heard about our successful developers conference in December. There, with the launch of the Nexus two platform and two new AVANT devices, we expanded our leadership in the small to mid range FPGA segments. This further builds on Lattice's differentiation in low power, small size, cost effective solution and ease of use. These new offerings add connectivity advancements, performance optimizations and leading security and reliability capabilities to meet the increasing demand for edge applications. We had multiple customer keynotes at our developers conference that demonstrated the significant benefits of using Lattice solutions in their systems.

Speaker 2

Furthermore, because of our focus on ease of use, we also introduced new tools and solutions to speed up our customers' deployments and time to market. If you're not able to attend in person, our website has multiple videos showcasing applications like Lattice Sense AI for edge AI, Lattice EmVision for embedded vision, Lattice Automate for factory automation and Lattice Drive for automotive designs. We also introduced new versions of our award winning Lattice Radiant and Lattice Propel softer tools. This continued innovation in our softer tools and solutions will enable customer differentiation and make our solutions stickier and multi generational. Looking ahead, as you heard during last quarter's earnings call, we expect more of a U shaped recovery in 2025.

Speaker 2

We are very pleased to be guiding our Q1 EPS above the current consensus estimates in a quarter when other companies in our industry are expecting a guide down. For the full year 2025, we continue to anticipate low single digit revenue growth compared to the full year 2024. We expect that channel inventory would begin moving back to the midpoint of our target range and enable Lattice to execute to our long term revenue growth target of 15% to 20% in 2026 and beyond. In summary, over the past five months since I joined Lydus, we've taken significant actions to drive the next phase of our growth. As you heard earlier, some of these actions included our holding three recent successful sales conferences across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe, inaugurating our new state of the art R and D design center in Pune, India, holding another highly successful developers conference and expanding our product portfolio with Nexus two, Avant and associated IP, tools and solutions.

Speaker 2

We're also continuing to focus on financial discipline, including a strategic and comprehensive 14% workforce transformation we implemented in Q3, a material liability charge that was taken in Q4 after a thorough year end review and the further strengthening of our executive team was key additions. All these actions combined with an improvement in customer consumption, a stronger backlog and book to bill ratio reaching over one for the past few weeks provide us increased confidence. Overall, Lattice remains committed to our long term strategy and we're very optimistic about 2025 and beyond. Let me now turn the call over to Tanya for a detailed review of our results. Tanya?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Ford. Working closely with you as the interim CFO has been both a rewarding personal and professional experience. I'm excited to continue my growth in my new role alongside Lorenzo, one of the most respected and accomplished CFOs in our industry. I also want to welcome Nicole and congratulate Eirhan with whom I've worked closely. With the strengthening of Lattice's executive team, we have a tremendous opportunity to build on Lattice's strong track record and expanded leadership product portfolio to drive Lattice's next phase of growth.

Speaker 3

In 2024, we continued to generate solid operating, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow margins and returned cash to shareholders through share buybacks, while experiencing continued customer inventory normalization and shipping under true demand. Additionally, as we mentioned on the Q3 twenty twenty four earnings call, we implemented a workforce reduction of 14%, which better aligns our resources to support the current business level. We are confident that this action will be a key driver for double digit earnings expansion in 2025. Let me now provide a summary of our results. Fourth quarter revenue was $117,400,000 down 8% sequentially from the third quarter and down 31% year over year, which reflects a combination of continued inventory normalization and macroeconomic softness.

Speaker 3

Full year 2024 revenue was $509,400,000 down 31% from 2023. While computing was up for the year, both segments of communications and computing and industrial and automotive declined double digits for the year. We started to see signs of improvement in communications and computing in the second half of twenty twenty four and expect to build on that in 2025. Our Q4 non GAAP gross margin was 62.1%. This included a $7,000,000 1 time charge related to materials purchased by our assembly and test partners during the supply constraint that due to the current business environment are no longer expected DBUs before expiration.

Speaker 3

Absent that charge, our non GAAP gross margin would have been 68.1%. Our non GAAP gross margin for the full year 2024 was 67.4%. Adjusting for the one time charge, our full year non GAAP gross margin would have been 68.7%. Q4 non GAAP operating expenses were $52,800,000 down 2% sequentially and down 5% year over year. We are making significant progress on the realignment of our resources to best support the current business environment.

Speaker 3

These efforts are already driving results of reduced operating expenses. Non GAAP operating expenses for the full year 2024 decreased 4% to $215,600,000 This was primarily driven by diligent operating expense management and the partial impact of the workforce transformation implemented in Q4, which we will start to see more benefit from in Q1. Our Q4 non GAAP operating margin was 17.1% and included the $7,000,000 1 time charge mentioned earlier. Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin was 24.9%. Our non GAAP operating margin for the full year 2024 was 25.1% and adjusted EBITDA margin was 31.8%.

Speaker 3

Excluding the one time charge, we delivered non GAAP operating margin of 26.4 and adjusted EBITDA margin of 33.2%. We continue to have a disciplined approach to investing in the long term growth of the company. In Q4, non GAAP EPS was $0.15 per share with 138,300,000.0 diluted shares outstanding. Without the impact of the $7,000,000 1 time charge, Q4 non GAAP EPS would have been $0.2 per share. Non GAAP diluted earnings per share for the full year 2024 was $0.9 Without the impact of the $7,000,000 1 time charge in Q4, twenty twenty four full year non GAAP EPS would have been $0.95 per share.

Speaker 3

Now let me provide you with an update related to our taxes. GAAP income taxes for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four included tax benefits of $27,700,000 related to the release of certain long outstanding tax matters, which were previously reserved as uncertain tax positions. This tax benefit was adjusted out for non GAAP reporting resulting in a non GAAP effective tax rate of 5.3% for the full year 2024. Moving to our cash flow and balance sheet. Cash flow from operations in the fourth quarter was approximately $45,400,000 up slightly from Q3.

Speaker 3

Free cash flow margin increased to 34% up from 31% in the third quarter. Our inventory at the end of the fourth quarter was $103,400,000 which is a decrease of approximately $1,000,000 from the prior quarter. In Q4, we repurchased approximately 367,000 shares or $20,000,000 of stock making Q4 our seventeenth consecutive quarter of executing share buybacks. Over that period, we have repurchased approximately 6,000,000 shares, thereby reducing dilution by 4.3%. Additionally, our Board recently approved a $100,000,000 share buyback for 2025.

Speaker 3

We will continue to prioritize investing in the organic growth of our business, but intend to continue returning capital to our shareholders through share repurchases. Let me now review our outlook for the first quarter. Revenue for the first quarter of twenty twenty five is expected to be between 115,000,000 and $125,000,000 Gross margin is expected to be 69% plus or minus 1% on a non GAAP basis. Total operating expenses for the first quarter are expected to be between $50,000,000 and $52,000,000 on a non GAAP basis. Our non GAAP tax rate in the first quarter is expected to be in the 5% to 6% range.

Speaker 3

Based on the above inputs, our non GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of $0.2 to $0.24 per share. Operator, that concludes my formal comments. We can now open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. Thank you. Our first question is from Melissa Weathers with Deutsche Bank.

Speaker 4

Hi there. Thank you for letting me ask a question. Congrats on the new role, Tanya, and welcome to the call, Lorenzo. I guess my first question is, cyclically, it seems like you're starting to see some improvements. You talked about the backlog improvement and the improved B2B.

Speaker 4

So any particular end markets that are performing better than others that you're seeing? And how much of this is Lattice specific versus kind of the distis you're making progress on getting under the channel inventory?

Speaker 5

Thank you, Melissa. I think there are three factors. As you said, number one, the channel inventory, we're making progress as expected. We do expect to continue to glide down inventory as we previously discussed to get to regular inventory level by midyear twenty twenty five. So that's probably factor number one.

Speaker 5

Factor number two, if you compare this against the backdrop of other companies in our sector that are guiding down, we do believe we're taking share in our markets. So we are encouraged by the continued design wins on our Nexus, Avant and new product lines and continuing to take share. And number three, we have seen improvements across our industrial automotive as well as the communication sectors. Computing has always been strong, continued to be strong, but we're seeing recovery in the other segments as well. So three factors, Melissa.

Speaker 4

Got it. On that comms and computing side, I know computing did grow in 2024. I don't think you've given us a mix of how big the comms side is versus the computing side. But can you just at a high level talk about like what are the different trends you're seeing in those two sub segments? And what should we be expecting in the coming years between those two businesses?

Speaker 4

I think we've heard from your peers that the comm side is a little bit weaker. So help us think about those two different sub segments.

Speaker 5

So I think the percent of comms in compute is roughly the same as last quarter between Q3 and Q4. We see a slight increase in that segment, but not very meaningful. And the percent industrial auto and consumer, again, are pretty much the same, a slight decrease in those segments. Within industrial and automotive, we have seen a nice recovery in automotive this past quarter. So that's a positive.

Speaker 5

And we do expect all segments to grow into Q1.

Speaker 4

And anything on Communications in particular?

Speaker 5

Communications in particular is slightly stronger in Q4 compared to Q3 and expected to be steady going to Q1.

Speaker 4

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from David Williams with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Hey, good afternoon and thanks for letting me ask a question and congrats on the solid progress here. So I guess maybe first, Ward, if you kind of think about where you're seeing demand across that automotive segment, where are you seeing that picking up in terms of the market? Is it on the electrification side or more on the just the general ADAS side? And should we think about maybe the traditional Versa, EV or hybrid platform where you have greater exposure or potential strength?

Speaker 5

Yes. We're thank you, David. We're designed in across all the various applications and we're in production today in entertainment and display and ADAS and charging applications as well as the other electrification factors. So we continue to see newer application and do see automotive as a long term growth driver for us. We're also getting increasingly more convicted that we are going to have a place in this far edge AI where our chips are the first hop, if you wish, from a sensor.

Speaker 5

The sensor could be a image sensor, could be a lidar, could be a radar, could be other sensor. The FPGA, the small and mid range FPGA are the perfect first hop from that sensor before it goes to a near edge, if you wish, AI engine. And so we're the perfect case to tag to do all kinds of functions to make that near edge device more productive. And I do believe that having these far edge applications in our FPGAs are going to be a great place for us to provide value in automotive moving forward. If you think of a car, you've got literally tens of these sensors in the car and they all need to be aggregated, fused and processed before they go to this near edge device.

Speaker 5

And again, RFPGA are the perfect place to do that.

Speaker 6

Great. Fantastic color there. Thanks so much. And then maybe secondly, just as you kind of think about the R and D center in India, is that a market that you think is an opportunity for you all? Or is this more about maybe the cost structure?

Speaker 6

And does this give you an opportunity, do you think, in that geo to maybe drive sales and really add to your portfolio there? Thank you.

Speaker 5

Great question, David. I think, again, maybe three factors. Number one, we are excited about reopening of this R and D center. We are finding great skill set over there, including AI. Some of the new graduates are all steeped into these AI type of technologies in Pune, and we should be able to double down not just on chips, but also on software and AI type of skills in that market.

Speaker 5

And then number two and three, I would say from a customer and sales point of view, there are two type of opportunities, if you wish. One is the direct customers there, and obviously, we're engaged with some of the industrial automotive in that geography. But even more importantly, a lot of the OEMs and Tier one that we are doing business with are actually increasing their sort of manufacturing system bids in that geography. So it could become a global OEM in Tier one bidding and bid geography and again, being our support center there could support them directly. So R and D, local customer as well as global customer setting up shop in India.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Christopher Nolan with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 7

Hi. This is Aaron Naktell in for Chris. Thanks for taking the question. In doing an acquisition, would you be interested in just the low to mid range of the FPGA portfolio or would you have a preference towards moving higher up in capabilities?

Speaker 5

Thank you, Aaron. Good question. As we look at the market, we do believe that the small and mid range FPGA segments are the most interesting ones. They're the ones growing faster. If you look at the large FPGA, the ROI in that category has not been stellar over the past, I don't know, fifteen years probably.

Speaker 5

If you look at the usage of the larger PGA and cloud or wireless infrastructure type application, they've been challenging. And so we do believe that the investments that we've made in the small and mid range, our focus on small and mid range is where the money is and where the growth is. So we're going to continue to focus on those segments. Having said this, we do want to continue to broaden our portfolio. And so over time, we'd be open to address the various segments that our low power programmable offerings can address, but we'll do it in a differentiated way, not try to follow incumbents that have been there for many years.

Speaker 7

Thanks. Thank you for that. And given your history in networking and AI, can you talk about new products that you can develop using FPGAs in these areas?

Speaker 5

Yes. Again, we are very mindful of our place in the hierarchy and the food chain. So we are a partner to the NVIDIA's, the Amazon's, the many training and accelerator companies in the space. We work with them on reference design as well as the partners that they have on the switch and the NIC and storage. So we work obviously with the Broadcom, the Marvell and other companies that are developing switches and networking equipment very closely on reference design and partnership opportunities.

Speaker 5

So we see these companies as partners. We have no ambition or desire right now to go do a FPGA for cloud. We believe in those spaces, you're much better off with a fixed function ASIC that is optimized. These are multi hundreds of million dollar type of ASICs that are not well suited for FPGAs. On the other hand, if you go so that's the only way on the cloud and the high end.

Speaker 5

Then if you look at the edge devices, there has been talk about the far edge and the near edge. The far edge is those devices where we are near the sensor and the near edge are sort of these main brains inside some of these systems. We do believe that we're better suited for the far edge. And the far edge is near the sensor. And so what you need there is you need a low power device, which we provide you need a low latency device, which we provide you need fast boot time.

Speaker 5

And we've shown at our latest developer conference a 10 times faster boot time compared to competition. We just totally smoked the competition in those spaces. Actually, we smoked them on small size and low power as well. I mean, the chip was small enough I had to drop it at the developer conference. The power is we're talking milliwatts of power.

Speaker 5

FPGAs are great at parallel processing and that's what we do. And we are focused on AI model like a YOLO, MobileNet. We've got our own version of these models for vision and speech and text that are very well suited for these far edge near sensor type application. If you look at the Dell customer presentation from our developer conference at our website, you'll see Dell refer to the contextual intelligence. And so we are in the laptop sitting next to the camera inside that laptop, looking at the glare at the glance from the user and powering down the laptop as an example, if there's no user there to save battery power.

Speaker 5

We're being looked at today in many applications in industrial and automotive for Far Edge. So we're very excited about our place in the ecosystem and being able to provide additional value to make our partners shine in their near edge and bigger inference and training engines.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Ruben Roy with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Ford, I wanted to start by asking about one of the trends that you mentioned. I think trends two through five, we thought a little bit about over, I don't know, the last several years. But the first trend that you mentioned, that AI is driving shorter system design cycles, it's sort of new to me. I think it's starting to show up here and there.

Speaker 9

But I'm wondering if you could drill into that a little bit and how you're thinking about that. And I ask that because when I think about Avant and moving into the mid range and getting into slightly more complicated FPGA structures and designs, it would seem like those types of system designs would take longer to design and put out into the market. So I guess the question is, do you think this might accelerate the pace at which we would see AVANT start to gain some traction in the marketplace?

Speaker 5

Yes. Thank you, Ivan. Good question. What I was referring to there is the cadence of accelerators and switches and other fixed function devices being released every two years and companies in that space like Nvidia and others trying to get to a one year cadence. The cadence probably somewhere in between right now.

Speaker 5

But what I was referring to is, as you drive to this faster cadence between different releases of these chips, there can be some auxiliary functions that could not be comprehended. And so we could be a good place to put these functions, especially that we're still on older technologies, advantage on 16 nanometer, Nexus on 28 nanometer. So some of these functions could be much better done in our older processes as opposed to put it in a bleeding edge two nanometer expensive dye, right? And so that's what I'm referring to and we've got some evidence that point to that trend.

Speaker 9

All right, got it. Thank you, Ford. And then as a follow-up, can you kind of give us an idea of where inventories are today and sort of what you're targeting? I think you said by mid year, you're expecting to hit the target. And here too, I'm asking, it's great to see that the book to bill creeped over one over the last several weeks and it sounds like things are getting better in some of these markets that have been weak for a while.

Speaker 9

And so I'm just trying to figure out your inventory commentary relative to bookings and then sort of maintaining the low single digit growth for the year. Just how you're thinking about those the puts and takes of how to get to how you're thinking about the year would be helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Yes. Let me get started and turn it over to Tanya for additional color. As I said, we're encouraged by the early signing recovery in industrial automotive. That book to bill has been on a steady climb for the past two years. We it was, I don't know, call it, seven quarters ago and then steadily climbing back to where we are right now.

Speaker 5

So we're excited about this. The second one, as you mentioned, is the consumption demand is very another very important metric that we track, and that's up. And so that, again, is positive. And working with our channel partners, we continue to glide to this healthy range of inventory, and they've been very supportive. So we expect this more vibrant demand to come back in the second half of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 5

Now let me turn it over to Tania to give you a bit more color. Tania?

Speaker 3

Yes. As we said last quarter, Dixie inventory can the inventory can fluctuate on a quarterly basis and it was at the high end of our normal range, but we're in the process of actively bringing that down from the high end to the midpoint of our target range, which is three months of inventory and we're seeing good progress on that. As Ford mentioned last quarter, we expect to see that back to the midpoint of our target range in 2025. So we're making progress on that and we see positive signs like Ford said with consumption and POS picking up. The other piece, the other two pieces of the inventory equation is inventory at the end of customers, then in the middle is the inventory at Medici's and then of course, Lattice owned inventory.

Speaker 3

And we're seeing the same positive trend on Lattice owned inventory. We do expect to be bringing that down in Q1 as well. But a reminder relative to FPGAs and our products tend to have a very long product life cycle selling fifteen, twenty, twenty eight years. So the risk of obsolescence with some of that inventory is very low and more important to ensure that we have the right amount of inventories to support our customers. Their design win ramps, new product revenue ramps, the AVANT, the Nexus and any upticks in customer demand.

Speaker 9

Very helpful. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you, Ford.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Quinn Bolton with Needham and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 10

This is Nick Doyle on for Quinn Bolton. Thanks for letting me ask a couple of questions. Sorry to keep asking about inventory, but maybe I'll just ask a little differently. To get to channel inventory to the three months by June ish timeframe, can that be done with just solid execution? Or do you need to see the market start to recover to really get that inventory to your target?

Speaker 10

Thanks.

Speaker 3

What was the last part of that question, Nick?

Speaker 10

Just if you need to see the market recover to get the channel inventory to your target in that timeframe, that June, July timeframe?

Speaker 5

Yes. I mean, look, I mean, it's been a gradual recovery, as I said, for like eighteen months now. So I mean, the low end has been probably eighteen to twenty months ago. And we are seeing early signs of recovery, and we expect a more vibrant recovery in the second half. So yes, we do continue to see we need to continue to see the market recover as along the same trends we're seeing now to get to these targets, Nick.

Operator

That makes sense. Thank you. And you

Speaker 10

pointed out the twenty twenty four computing revenue grew year over year. Can you talk about some of the drivers there? Anything you can tell us about server or networking attach rates would be really helpful?

Operator

Thanks.

Speaker 5

I think the trend there has been the same trend as you've seen in data centers. So we are designed in into quite many applications across the servers. So like on at their developer conference, we had a rack from one of our customers shown up with over 50 FPGAs per rack. We're not disclosing the exact amount, but it's well over that number. So applications all the way from security to IO expansion to bridging to doing some control pass functions across the board.

Speaker 5

And so that market has been strong for us, as I said, not only across GPU and accelerator, but also across networking function, across controller, across storage cards, across the board in the server. And the computing segment has been driven by servers. For the full year, server grew double digit and driven by both the general purpose and AI servers.

Operator

Thank

Speaker 11

you, Gord.

Operator

Our next question is from Duxan Jang with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 12

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have a follow-up on the server question just now. Could you talk about how much of your server and computing business is driven by content gains and how much by units? Because I think we're expecting some weakness into Q1 from some of the larger CPU vendors.

Speaker 5

Yes. So that's a good question. We have had a nice probably 50% increase in content from one generation to the next, Duxan.

Speaker 12

I see. And that applies to this currently ramping generation as well?

Speaker 5

Yes, it does.

Speaker 12

Understood. And then I have a longer term question. I think you mentioned that by 2026, you expect to get back to your longer term 15%, twenty % growth rate. It seems like though that the industry has historically grown maybe high single digit at best. So I know you're embedding some share gains in there, but I'm just curious about the puts and takes into your what's driving the 15% to 20% gain longer term?

Speaker 12

Thank you so much.

Speaker 5

Yes. So I think this will be driven by new products. The new products have been growing double digit. We had a really nice growth in double digit product this year. Actually, if you look at our Nexus Avant in Q4, it's probably a historical high, very healthy growth in Nexus Avant from Q3 to Q4.

Speaker 5

And we expect that to continue to grow into 'twenty six and 'twenty seven driven by we see now the funnel increase nicely. We see design wins increase nicely. We're just at the early phases of rolling out these new generations. So you've seen us announce new variants of Avant at the developer conference. You've seen us announce a new Nexus two platform.

Speaker 5

AVANT today in its current time in the ramp is actually much faster ramping than Nexus in that same sort of time frame in its ramp. So we're excited about all of the new products. We continue to also roll out new solutions to make it easier to use for our customer and increase their time to revenue and time to market. So I think it's going to be a fact you put all these factors together, that's what's contributing to it.

Speaker 12

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Joshua Buckhalter with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 3

Hey guys, thank you for taking

Speaker 13

my question and congrats on the results and congrats on to Lorenzo on the new role. I guess it was great to see the new products contribute double digit growth in 2024 despite the correction year. Any metrics you can give us on sort of how you expect them to contribute to growth in 2025 as a bond starts to ramp and Nexus two also begins to layer into revenue? Thank you.

Speaker 5

Yes. I think so what we could tell you is Avant was almost nonexisting in 2023. It's now making a difference in 2024. It will continue to grow and make a bigger difference in 2025 and beyond. Same with Nexus.

Speaker 5

I mean, so they went from sort of think about it in 2023, Nexus Avant were single digit percent of our revenue to now they're mid teens percent of our revenue. So in one year, we almost doubled the percent of revenue coming from Nexus Avant, and that should continue to get better into 2025 and beyond.

Speaker 13

Okay. Thank you. And then I guess with Avant out for a couple of quarters now, at least with the EG and X families, anything you can give us on sort of how you view the competitive environment because it's obviously a different competitive set with mid range FPGAs than what you traditionally competed for in the market? Thank you.

Speaker 5

Yes. I think, Dan, what I could refer you to is, if you look at our developer conference wall of boards and we have the videos and the photos on the website to remind people. We've done well in proof in showcasing a lot of these Avant wins. Again, the power and size of these offerings, these are offerings that are tailor made, custom made for these markets. These are not large FPGAs that we're taking or even mid range FPGA we're taking and then cutting them for small or taking large, cutting them for mid.

Speaker 5

These are custom made low power, low side. Our competitors have taken this we have this unique architecture, the slot four architecture. And we love the fact they're taking shots at us on this. We do believe the slot four architecture is ideally suited for the sort of $700,000 logic sales and below, which where we're paying. Avan at this point goes to $500,000 And so we're optimized for these the architecture, the whole offering, the power techniques are optimized for the small to mid range.

Speaker 5

And so we're very confident that we'll be able to continue to grow and win because the customers are telling us we've got tremendous benefit in these markets.

Speaker 13

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have time for one more question. Srini Pajuri from Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 8

Hi guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. A couple of follow ups, Ford. First on the one of the trends that you mentioned that of the five drivers that you talked about is the post quantum cryptography threat. I know it's early days, but at the same time, I think your customers need to prepare for that sooner than later.

Speaker 8

So just trying to understand what you're hearing from your customers in terms of the timeline for that? And also if you can talk about how actually Lattice benefits from that? Is it does it require new products or is it more content? Is it a combination or any color you could provide us in terms of how we should think about this market potential?

Speaker 5

Yes, Srini, this is one of the most exciting trends we have. I mean, actually, we're the only ones today that have a solution today available for PQC or post quantum cryptography. And what that is, is that the bad actors are storing people's data today for decrypting tomorrow. And there's some NIST regulation that says you've got to be post quantum ready by next year. And we're being designed across the board by our networking and security customers at major Tier one OEMs across the world.

Speaker 5

And none of our PGA competitors have a solution. None of the fixed function ASIC have a solution. And the solutions, by the way, are still being defined. And so even our solutions today are going to need to be potentially changed as this peak this post quantum world evolves. So we're very positive and confident that this solution is actually one of the solutions that are that's enabling us to take share.

Speaker 5

It's being adopted, as I said, widely across the board, and we're surprised about how quickly people are designing demand. I would refer you to the Microsoft keynote at our developer conference, where Bharat talked about CALYPTRA and the adoption of Lattice for PQC alongside with that. And it's probably a good example of how this security and FPGA is not an FPGA anymore. It's now all of a sudden almost like a fixed function solution made for security. So very excited about it.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. Thank you. And then a question on OpEx. Obviously, you took some costs out last quarter, Ford. But at the same time, if I look at the trends that you're talking about, shortening design cycles and share gains and new products, it seems like a lot of opportunity out there.

Speaker 8

So just wondering how to kind of think about OpEx and R and D spend because it looks like there's a lot of opportunity where you could potentially spend even more to be able to capture that to address that market potential? Thank you.

Speaker 5

Yes. So I'll start and then let Tania take it from here. I think we are in a bit of a transformation where we are growing in international locations. So we've moved a lot of these jobs to international location. We're aggressively hiring.

Speaker 5

Our Pune, India was zero people eight months ago. We're at 70 now, and we're expect to get to about 100 people in that location at the one year mark. So aggressively hiring in these international locations to transform our OpEx in those geographies. And then I think we're maintaining financial discipline, and we expect to continue to grow R and D as we grow revenue and recover. So Tanya?

Speaker 3

Yes. I'll just add to that. So of course, we took the action after very careful consideration in balancing exactly what you said with R and D and the focus on investments there. So cutting OpEx, especially in the R and D area doesn't mean less resources. In fact, moving to the lower cost geos has enabled us to be able to add resources and we're aggressively ramping up like Ford said, so that we'll have even more capabilities in that department with even lower costs.

Speaker 8

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Nick Doyle with Needham. Please proceed.

Speaker 11

Hey, this is Quinn. I don't know, can you hear me?

Speaker 5

We can, Quinn.

Speaker 11

Hey, Ford. Sorry, I jumped on late, got the names crisscrossed. But I just wanted to come back to your comments about the revenue contribution for Avant and Nexus. You said you're sort of mid teens up from single digits last year. Was that a cumulative that it's mid teens across both Nexus and Avant?

Speaker 11

Is it both or at that level? And I guess the related question is, if it's cumulative, it sounds like then pre Nexus is still roughly 85% of revenue?

Speaker 5

If you remember last quarter, Quinn, we had broken it up at 13% and we said we're not going to break it up moving forward. All I could tell you in Q4 is that number is higher than that 13%. So but we're not we're going to try not to break it up. So we've made good improvements from last quarter. And yes, last year was single digits.

Speaker 5

So you could see we're making good improvement on Nexus Avant moving forward.

Speaker 11

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the floor back over to Lattice Semiconductor's CEO, Mr. Ford Tamer, for any closing comments.

Speaker 5

Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's call and for your continued support. Our focus is to continue to drive innovation, create value for our customers and stakeholders and proactively adapt to market conditions to maintain the stability and integrity of our leadership product roadmap, customer support and demand creation infrastructure. I look forward to sharing the company's progress with you in the coming quarters. Operator, that concludes today's call.

Remove Ads
Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Lattice Semiconductor Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00
Remove Ads