Welcome to Avnet's third quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings call. I would now like to turn the floor over to Joe Burke, Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations for Avnet.
Thank you, operator. Earlier this afternoon, Avnet released financial results for the third fiscal quarter of 2022. The release is available on the investor relations section of the company's website. A copy of the slide presentation that will accompany today's remarks can be found on the link in the earnings release as well as on the IR section of Avnet's website. Lastly, some of the information contained in the news release and on this conference, call contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Such forward-looking statements are not the guarantee of performance, and the company's actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Several factors that could cause or contribute to such differences are described in detail in Avnet's most recent Form 10-Q and 10-K and subsequent filings with the SEC.
These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or supply new information regarding the circumstances after the date of this presentation. Today's call will be led by Phil Gallagher, Avnet's CEO, and Tom Liguori, Avnet's CFO. With that, let me turn the call over to Phil Gallagher. Phil.
Thank you, Joe, and thank you everyone for joining us for our third quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings conference call. I am very pleased to share that our team's continued focus on execution has yielded yet another quarter of strong financial performance and competitive gains across our business. Our focus on accelerating the growth of Farnell and on strengthening the operational efficiency and critical partnerships of our core distribution business is yielding consistent results. This is demonstrated in the numbers. We posted 32% year-over-year revenue growth, with Asia exceeding expectations by defying the traditional March quarter seasonality two years in a row. Margins were also very robust. In the quarter, revenues of $6.5 billion were up sequentially and year-over-year. Our adjusted operating margin increased sequentially to 4.7%, driven by the continued margin expansion of Farnell in the Electronic Components business.
We are competing favorably across the board and are pleased to see continued improvement in our Americas business, where strong demand and expanded supply chain orchestration opportunities helped us grow revenue by over 40% year-over-year and achieve our fifth consecutive quarter of operating margin growth. We are also especially pleased with strong results from Farnell, which has proven to be an important needle mover for total Avnet and is now responsible for 7% of our sales and 23% of our adjusted operating income. Robust demand was again widespread across our end markets. We continue to see strength in the automotive, transportation, and industrial segments, and we expect the aerospace and defense segments to remain elevated over the coming quarters. Overall, we continue to forecast favorable demand conditions to hold throughout the second half of this calendar year.
Before I turn to segment performance, I would like to briefly address the conflict in Ukraine. Our team has been deeply saddened by the violence that has unfolded and continues to closely monitor the safety of our colleagues in the region. Our thoughts are with all who have been affected by these tragic events. We have just a small number of employees in Ukraine, most of whom have safely left the country. We also have some in Russia and of course, many partners, suppliers, and customers in the region. Due to that, we do expect some minor impact to our business. While we have no distribution or integration centers in the region, we have ceased all business activities in Russia, which represents less than 1% of our annual revenues and gross profit dollars. Our focus remains supporting our impacted employees and partners.
While I am deeply unsettled by the situation in Ukraine, I've been heartened by the incredible efforts undertaken by Avnet and the Farnell employees to provide direct support to Ukrainian refugees entering Poland, including through the delivery of supplies and equipment. I couldn't be more proud of these efforts and the supportive culture we've built here at Avnet. Turning to the performance of our Electronic Components business. Revenues were up 11% sequentially and 33% year over year in the quarter due to strong sales across all of the regions. We posted double-digit sequential growth in EMEA and in the Americas. As previously mentioned, this is usually a seasonally slower quarter in Asia due to the lunar holiday.
We were very pleased to see results in Asia that exceeded our expectations for the March quarter, which we believe was driven by sheer growth in the region, solid demand creation, and growth in the power and programmable logic controller segments. We saw a continued rebound in our Americas region, which was again up significantly year-over-year and sequentially. What's more, the team's ability to maintain expense levels while also capturing significant business opportunities from new and existing customers driving improved margins in the region. Of note, we have expanded opportunities in the Americas and EMEA to engage directly with tier-one automotive and transportation companies. Very exciting. This broad engagement speaks to the value Avnet brings with our deep expertise in supply chain orchestration and is exemplary of the new contracts we are winning across our business. Our book-to-bill ratios at the end of the quarter remained strong.
Lead times remain consistently extended at this point in time. We continue to tightly manage our backlog and are satisfied with our inventory levels as we support strong demand across our operating regions. Our continued investments in digital and design tools and field application engineers are paying off, as demonstrated by another solid quarter of design and engineering activity across all regions. These high levels of design registrations and wins in prior quarters resulted in yet another quarter of record demand creation sales and gross profits. Turning to Farnell, sales were up over 18% year-over-year, a reflection of the impact of our investments in Farnell inventory and its e-commerce capabilities. We added over 19,400 SKUs in the quarter, which gets us well on our way toward our plans to add 250,000 SKUs through 2022.
Our sustained investment in Farnell's e-commerce platform and improving the user experience has yielded meaningful results. 56% of our total sales and 72% of the total transactions were placed through Farnell's e-commerce platform this quarter, and we expect that to continue to see increased traffic and new customer acquisitions in quarters to come. Our e-commerce web speed is 54% faster than in the same quarter one year ago, providing a much better customer experience. Over the past 18-24 months, Farnell has added 40 new supplier partners, quite a few of whom are existing electronic components partners. This really speaks to the distinct value proposition of Farnell and the complementary offering it provides alongside our electronic components business to Avnet, its customers, and suppliers. In summary, we're very pleased with our performance over the past several quarters.
I'd like to personally thank our employees for their unwavering commitment to executing on our strategy and delivering top and bottom-line growth. Their efforts, coupled with the durable changes we have made to our business over the last several years, have helped us gain considerable share and continue to position us to capture new opportunities as we progress through 2022. I remain very optimistic about what lies ahead for Avnet. I look forward to sharing more on these opportunities at our upcoming Investor Day. With that, let me turn the call over to Tom to report on the financials for the quarter. Tom?
Thank you, Phil. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for attending today's call. As Phil mentioned, we are very pleased with our third quarter performance. Our team's focus on growth and margin expansion continues to drive higher top and bottom-line performance. I'm excited to share further highlights from the quarter. Our revenues of $6.5 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $2.15 both exceeded guidance. Farnell revenues grew 18% year-over-year and 6% sequentially to $469 million. Operating margin in Farnell increased 123 basis points sequentially to a record 14.9%. The growth in margin expansion is in large part due to the Farnell team's focus on improving the total customer experience, and as Phil mentioned, adding suppliers, many of which have been long-term electronic component suppliers and are now also with Farnell.
Electronic Components grew revenues 33% year-over-year to $6.0 billion, driven by increased demand creation and IP&E revenue, as well as new supply chain orchestration engagements. Both Americas and EMEA benefited from the growing supply chain engagements. These are large-scale engagements to help customers manage supply chains. We were specifically pleased by the continued improvement in our Americas business, which grew 17% sequentially and over 40% year-over-year. We also had better than anticipated results in Asia, where we did not see a seasonal decline. Electronic Components operating margin improved to 4.4%, an impressive 92 basis point improvement from the prior quarter. Each of our regions grew gross margin over the prior-year quarter, benefiting from pricing and continued expense management during this period of significant growth.
For total Avnet, we couldn't be happier with our seventh consecutive quarter of adjusted operating margin improvement. A 4.7% operating margin is far higher than we've seen in the past. The reason is we are a different company, a stronger, more resilient company. Today, we are focused on our distribution capabilities, being efficient and meeting our customer supply chain needs. Our supplier base is solid, with suppliers like AMD Xilinx, Broadcom, and others that differentiate Avnet. It's a wide breadth of suppliers with no one supplier greater than 10% of revenues. Our investments in FAEs and online design tools have increased our percentage of revenues from demand creation. Demand creation as a percentage of revenue is now 500 basis points higher, which means higher gross margins.
Our Americas team has made great progress with strength in automotive, industrial, EMS, and aerospace and defense, all high-growth verticals. This quarter, operating margins were well ahead of our previous expectations. Americas is now a solid contributor to our success. Farnell, we've invested in Farnell for four years to create a better customer experience. We have an engineering community, online tools and product info. Our ordering process is streamlined. We offer a much broader selection of inventory, as well as more payment options, all of which make it easier to buy from Farnell. Best of all, most product is shipped same day. All of these contribute to the higher revenues, better pricing, and a more efficient fulfillment process as reflected in their financials. Lastly, our expense structure is more streamlined today.
We've talked to you for four years about our $245 million OpEx initiative, saving money in the back office and investing in the front office. Compared to four years ago, our quarterly revenues are $1.7 billion higher, yet our adjusted operating expenses are up only $30 million. That is why you see tremendous drop-through to the bottom line. All of these contribute to Avnet today being a stronger and more resilient company. Some of our investors and analysts are concerned about pricing and its contribution to our operating margins. We've been very transparent about this, and we'll continue to be. In this quarter, we estimate that higher year-over-year pricing contributed 220 basis points to Farnell margins. In Electronic Components, the contribution is about 45 basis points.
Combined, our Avnet adjusted operating margin of 4.7% would have been a healthy 4.1% without the benefit of higher pricing. Our teams continue to manage our balance sheet and generate cash. Cash flow from operations this quarter was $244 million. That was comprised of $77 million of cash generated by operations and $167 million from a cash income tax refund. Our days' working capital decreased to 67 days this quarter, down from 70 days in the prior quarter. Inventory dollars increased sequentially by $138 million, though continued to be in line with the increase in customer demand, as evidenced by the slight decrease in inventory days from 60 days last quarter to 58 days this quarter.
We continue to maintain a solid liquidity position with cash and equivalents of $199 million and $1.6 billion of available lines of credit. Our gross debt leverages this quarter was 1.4, and net debt leverage was 1.2. To build on what Phil said about our business activities in Russia and Ukraine, we took non-cash reserves of $26.3 million, primarily related to reserves on receivables in the region. We do not expect to incur any further reserve adjustments going forward due to the conflict. Regarding progress on our capital allocation priorities, we repurchased $1.1 million shares in the quarter, and our dividend of $0.26 per share represented a 23.8% increase over the prior year. We remain committed to increasing shareholder value by delivering a reliable increasing dividend and continued share repurchases.
Let me finish with a few notes on guidance. Our fourth quarter guidance today is based on current market conditions, including ongoing strong demand and pricing and the current state of COVID restrictions as well as geopolitical events. For our fiscal Q4, we are guiding revenue in the range of $6.0 billion-$6.4 billion and adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $1.90-$2.00. In conclusion, we remain committed to providing reliable returns to shareholders through revenue growth and margin expansion and a commitment to our dividend payout and share repurchases. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for questions and answers.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Melissa Fairbanks with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, guys. Great quarter and outlook. Thanks for taking my question. I assume you'll be giving us some updated long-term margin targets in June at the Investor Day. I was just wondering if you could maybe give us a little bit of, kind of, near-term expectations. The operating margins have been running kind of well above, you know, where your target was exiting last year in the back half of the year. Just wondering if you could, you know, maybe guide us to the sustainability of those margin levels, how much of that is demand creation, and how much we should factor in from demand creation going forward.
Sure. First of all, hello, Melissa. Thank you for having us at your conference this year. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Near term, operating margins, 4%-5% range is pretty solid. We feel very good about the execution and the demand creation and the cost structure and that will continue for the near term. You know, longer term, we will address it at Investor Day. You know, like we said at your conference, this is all about investing for growth and margin expansion. It's growing for now, embedded, Americas, our digital platforms and more. You know, we'll be showing a path to a greater than 5% operating margin. More to come, and everybody on the call, it's June 6th in New York, and we welcome your attendance.
Yeah, Tom, I'll just jump on that, on top. Hi, Melissa, it's Phil. Thanks for the question and the compliments. On the demand creation, specifically, to your question, that we had a record demand creation revenue a quarter, and the pipeline actually grew nicely as well. That's for sure contributing, and will continue to, okay? It's not a spike by any stretch. It's just continuing to grow in a positive direction.
Excellent. Very much look forward to the updated targets. Maybe one quick follow-up. I know you said that demand creation has grown 500 basis points. Have you broken out what percentage of total revenue demand creation is today?
Yeah. It's roughly 30%. Between 20%-32%, in that range. That's total revenue. That, which includes a lot of products that aren't sole source or proprietary.
Okay, fantastic. Thanks very much, guys.
You got it, Melissa.
Thanks, Melissa.
Thank you. Our next question is from Ruplu Bhattacharya with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong quarter. I have two questions. Maybe I'll start with the one for Phil. You know, some investors are concerned about recession, either in the U.S. or maybe in Europe. Phil, can you talk to us a little bit about if there is a recession, you know, how would your playbook change? When you look back at the 2008, 2009 downturn recession then, how has Avnet changed over the years? Do you think, you know, the company's better prepared to weather a downturn if it happens? Maybe just give us your thoughts on, you know, how you see the company positioned if there is a recession coming. In a recession, do suppliers use distribution more?
How would you see that, you know, your services trending?
Yeah. I'd say, yeah, that's a great question, Ruplu. A big question, by the way. First of all, first 2008, 2009, you know, we're 100% components now, so we don't have the computer side of the business, so that's. We're free from that. I shouldn't say free. Just disengage with that, obviously, as you know. Our whole model is about variability, right? And drive and drop through. So a lot of our costs are variable from the standpoint of, you know, commissions and freight and logistics costs and whatnot. So we adjust those, you know, as we go, and some of them just self-adjust, right?
As far as the mix, you know, so back on the component side, with a much higher margin business that we think is sustainable, Tom talks about it in Farnell, that even in a downside, you know, we believe that will maintain a double-digit operating margin line, okay? Even if there is a downturn. We think between the mix and to Melissa's question on demand creation continuing to grow our line card, we think we can drive through it. Hey, we'll have to make some adjustments. The other thing we do, Ruplu, you know, if there's a downturn, hey, we spin off a lot of cash, which makes Tom really happy, okay? And Joe, right? We're countercyclical.
At that point, we spin off the cash. On the supplier side, I'm really excited about the suppliers. I mean, right now they're working with them in more and more new and advanced opportunities. I think the engagement's as good as ever. Even in downturns, they leverage us as much as they possibly can because of the variable model that we bring them from a scale standpoint. I don't see much adjustment in the mix from a supplier standpoint of TAM to DTAM or whatnot, you know? I'm very confident there. Never comfortable, right? I talked about that all the time, but very confident of our supplier engagements, whether it's an upmarket or down-market.
Got it. No, that was quite helpful. Maybe the second one, and my follow-up for Tom. You know, Phil mentioned strong cash flow during a downturn, and you've had strong cash flow quarters. Can you update us on your capital allocation priorities, I mean, in a macro environment like this? You mentioned investments in Farnell have really driven, you know, margins in that segment, and a lot of your customers are using the e-commerce side of that business. Can you tell us how much more investment is still left in that business and how that impacts margins going forward?
Yeah, good question. A lot there. Capital allocation, I think you're really driving at, you know, dividend and buybacks. We're committed to both. We're committed to shareholder returns. You know, the dividend, we're really happy with where it's at. We're going to get it on an annual sequence. You'll see increases. You know, the last couple of years was to get it to the level it is today. On buybacks, you know, we bought back about 1% of our shares this quarter. Last quarter, we talked to you about, you know, over three years, reducing the outstanding share count by 8%. You know, that's still our minimum intent.
One thing we will talk about at Investor Day is, you know, buybacks are a very important part of the shareholder return, and we'll be doing more. So that'll be explained in June. You know, I think what Phil said is very important. You know, we look at this as in a growing economy with our investments in Farnell and Embedded. Yeah, we are over 4% op margin, faster than we thought. Over three years, you know, we can get it up over 5%. The way we think of a downturn, even though we've done a lot of work internally about, you know, maintaining margins during a downturn, the opportunity for us in the downturn is generate cash and buy back shares, and that's the way we're gonna be thinking about this.
You know, you mentioned the recession. Last time in 2007, 2008, I believe we had more debt. You know, one of the things we said a few quarters ago was our debt level today is pretty similar to at least 2010, 2011. I say that because we're much better positioned going into a downturn when and if it so happens, right? You know, it's ironic. If you look at our metrics internally, we show no evidence of anything slowing. Our book-to-bill is still high. Our percent of the quarter booked is higher than it's ever been. You know, there's more price increases coming but, you know, we'll lay this out in Investor Day. Capital allocations show the returns is very important.
As far as for now, well, we still have, you know, a lot of inventory we're going to be adding, and this is a good thing. This is what's helping drive revenue and margins. You know, we're going to be expanding what's in the Farnell inventory. We have semis, IP&E. We have some MRO. You know, Chris Breslin, our president, will talk to you more about this in June. In terms of dollars, you know, you still have another $100 million to go in Farnell. It's not OpEx. It's primarily inventory. That's what we've done the last three years. With those expenses and those inventory investments, Farnell has continued to expand operating margins, continued to re-expand returns on capital, and that's going to continue our plan for the next three, four years.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks again, and congrats on the strong quarter and guide.
Thanks, Ruplu Bhattacharya.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Sheerin with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Yes, thanks. Hello, everyone. My first question, guys, is just on the guidance and this guidance sequentially down. I think if you exclude the TI divestiture a few quarters ago, looks like you've been growing sequentially for, like, seven or eight quarters in a row. This is going to be the first down quarter. Is that coming from across the regions, or is it more in Asia because what you're seeing with COVID restrictions and the fact that we've probably had some significant pull-in in the March quarter in Asia?
Up to you.
Yeah. Hey, Matt, it's Phil. I'll take first crack at it. Yeah. We think the guide's actually quite good coming off the strength. I mean, as we point out in the script, Asia now two years in a row has gone against the grain of the typical seasonality being down in March quarter, and they're actually up, okay? We had a really strong quarter in Asia, as we did in Europe and the Americas, as you saw. I look at it more as, you know, last quarter, we were up 25% year-over-year, this quarter 34%, next quarter, the current guide's still an 18% growth year-over-year, okay? That's given even Maxim, which you didn't mention. We're actually pretty confident with the guide. I feel pretty good about it. Tom, you want to comment on that?
No, Phil, I think you said it all. Yeah. We're coming off a really strong quarter. You know, there's more uncertainties with Asia COVID restrictions and geopolitical, but you know, those are reflected in, and we think we'll do quite well.
Understood. On inventory, you know, your inventory remains lean, and a lot of suppliers already this week are pointing to distribution inventories as being low and no concern about an inventory build. Yet if you look at most of the EMS players and OEMs, their inventories are at record highs and concern about an imbalance of inventory, where obviously they're waiting for hard-to-get parts and building others. Are you seeing that at all? At what point would you start to see it in your order book? Is that when lead times stabilize and ERP systems correct? Or what are some of the things that you'll be looking for?
Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Yeah, we're watching that with our customers as well and anticipated that question. Yeah, there's you know for sure a bit of a build out there but. I've been to most of the guys you're referring to that are public, and their backlog is solid, you know? They feel really good about their backlog, although inventories might be elevated a bit and they're just you know the determinant is the golden screw, right? Everybody's waiting for that golden screw. When you go back, you check with their OEM and you work back up the line or down the line, any way you wanna talk about it, the demand looks really solid and real, for lack of a better word.
On our end, we're tracking that very closely on the amount of MRPs we take in across the spectrum, the EMS, OEM, et cetera. We feel confident with the backlog that we have as well. Okay. Now it's further out, right, because lead times are further out, but we feel really good about the backlog. Yeah, we'd love to have a little bit more inventory. That would be a good thing. You know, we're servicing the customers at, you know, pretty darn well. Although, one expedites call is pretty much every day, still. The indicator we look for, Matt, is the book-to-bill will start to come down, you know, if there's any kind of correction, and they've remained elevated, as we pointed out. We look at cancellation rates, right? Cancellation rates we look at.
You know, cancellations and in that bucket, we look at pushouts or pull-ins, right? It's a combination number, if you will. That is steady state right now. We are not seeing an elevation in adjustments to backlog that are out of the norm. Our normal adjustment is in a let's call it the 18%-20% range in any given day. That's typical, and that's about what we're running. That's what we'll be watching really closely.
Okay. Thank you. That's super helpful. Just if I can then just ask another question regarding the supply chain engagements or orchestration engagements that you talked about with big customers needing help. That sounds, you know, fairly new. I know you've been talking about it the last couple quarters. Could you tell us, you know, how big that is, how many customers, and what the margin profile? I would imagine maybe a lower margin or perhaps you get a consignment fee, you know, that's higher.
Yeah. It's a very in-depth question. We will be covering that in detail, by the way, at the annual state of the union Tom referenced in June because it's continuing to grow, Matt, which is a good thing. We call it our Avnet United, which is the large global engagements as well as velocity, okay? It's growing in numbers of opportunities of, well, I'll call them nontraditional customers coming our way, and suppliers taking us in that need help with the supply chain management and the orchestration, the control towers, if you will, to help the end customer manage their supply chains through and with the EMS providers if they're using those.
As far as financial modeling, a lot of these reports right into finance, believe it or not, right? We don't do any of these without a model that gives us the fair returns. Some might be more inventory heavy, others may be inventory light or zero inventory and a service fee, right? They're all above our return on capital, okay? That's how we model them, Matt. It's a completely different. We'll keep that out of our core distribution business. Their capacity and growing, which is exciting. Tom? Go ahead, Tom.
Just to add to what Phil said, Matt. You know, a good portion of these are services type arrangements, so we're not really taking the inventory, so to speak. They tend to be higher margin. They tend to be higher margin engagements, and that'll help us.
Got it.
Help us over three or four years.
Okay. All right. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Matt.
Thanks, Matt.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. Our next question is from Jim Suva with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. You mentioned the consignment model some and, you know, some of these new terms like Avnet United and One and stuff like that. Is this kind of the result of having gone through, you know, COVID, trade wars, shipping constraints, challenges, logistics, power outages and all that? If so, is it kind of more the consignment model you see is winning out more or more of your customers like EMS companies or your end customers asking you to hold more inventory? I'm just kind of wondering how this sorts out. Is it more becoming a consignment model that's the new chapter or more holding more inventory and getting paid for it or some type of hybrid?
First of all, what you started off with, Jim, is true even though we've always done these engagements, they've really accelerated because of the last two or three years and the supply chain disruptions, the shortages. You know, our team here, and we'll talk about this more at Investor Day, you know, these are typically main customers, large scale engagements, where they want Avnet to manage some portion of their supply chain because we have multiple routes to move material. We do hold inventory. But many of these, you know, because they want us to solve a problem, even though it has the same financial effect as consignment, it's not technically consignment. It's more a services type arrangement we have. Phil, anything to add on that?
Yeah, no, Tom. Hey, Jim. We've talked about this a little bit before. I wouldn't say hybrid is the right word, but it's a mix of all those, Jim. So, some of our traditional consignments are still alive and well. We do consignments. We don't do any of these, again, without the financial modeling, right? The consignment, and there has to be more inventories held, great, that's fine. You know, who's going to pay for that? I would sum it up just saying that I've said this many times, you know, we're in the center of the technology supply chain. I think in these past several years, I think companies in general, in our industry and outside, kind of took supply chains for granted, right? Until they can't get what they need.
I think we've always known there's an appreciation for what we do and the expertise we bring. I think there's a renewed appreciation of what we can bring to the party with the analytics and the expertise that we have. Again, these are very complex engagements. I mean, these aren't done in a week or two. You're talking months to rebuild the processes from the back end all the way up.
Great. Thanks so much and look forward to seeing you in June.
Yeah. Thanks, Jim.
Thank you. Our next question is from Nikolay Todorov with Longbow Research. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon, and congrats on great results.
Thank you.
Question on, I think the acceleration in the March quarter is quite substantial, either sequentially or year-over-year. It really begs the question, you know, are you seeing any signs of supply loosening? I mean, based on your comments, I don't think so, but how would you explain that acceleration? Maybe similar to how you broke down the impact of pricing on margins, can you give us any sense of how pricing impacted revenues sequentially or year-over-year?
Yeah, Niko, I'll take the first crack at that. I'll turn it over to Tom. As far as, let's just talk about your real first party questions are lead times coming in or, you know, whatnot. For the most part, as we pointed out in the transcripts, there's no real indication of lead times coming in. That's a general statement. There's some that might be getting better and some that are getting worse, but overall, it's still pretty tight out there. As I said, I'm on calls pretty much every day with customers and suppliers trying to work the expedites. Again, pretty much across the board, it still hasn't gotten worse, okay, for the most part, but it's pretty steady as far as lead times goes.
As far as ASPs, it's a great question, and we've got a lot of analytics around this. We have a lot of conversation internally and met with a customer last week and shared some of the data. You know, some ASPs have actually come down, right? We look at this by average selling price from, you know, zero to a dime and dime to a quarter. You can imagine that the amount of data and the millions of items that we're shipping and then above $10 ASPs, which we love to have more of those, but above $10 and 5 to 10. When you average it all out, that's the biggest increase has been in the higher ASP parts. Okay. That's where we've seen more of the price increases.
If we average it out, we're estimating somewhere between 6%-7% of the growth is in ASPs. Again, that's an estimate. I will say in all categories, the units, okay, which is the real demand, right? The units are up, okay? In all categories, the units increased. Hopefully that helps give you a little bit of color. We look at that again by average selling price, by technology, discrete, analog, controller, caps, et cetera.
That's good, Phil.
Okay. Go ahead, Nick.
Yeah, just to kind of follow up again. So, is that pricing impact 6%-7% first? I'm assuming it's a year-over-year comment. Is that substantially different from what you were seeing in the December quarter? Just again, because judging by the sequential increase in revenue, it implies that you were able to get your hands on a lot more product than you probably anticipated going into the quarter.
No, it would be similar in the December quarter. I would just say that we got the products we needed to suffice the backlog that we had. You know, some of that you don't know all of that going into the quarter. There are some suppliers or certain commodities that there aren't commit dates yet, but we have the backlog rights. But there's no firm commit from the supplier based on all that's going on. So, we got some shipments in the end of the quarter that were. You know, they come in and they go right out. So yeah, we probably got a little bit more in some products that we weren't expecting. They're not shipping ahead. Make it really clear, not ahead.
It's due to the backlog, but we did get some at the end of the quarter that enabled us to have a good quarter. It was just good demand, Niko Todorov. I got to give our product teams, again, our supply chain teams a call-out. I mean, they're doing a heck of a job in some constrained times working with our suppliers. Again, our team's done a nice job in product and asset.
Yeah, most definitely. Tom, one question. You know, if we look at the guide sequentially, is there any way you can give us any kind of directions or breakdown? What are the assumptions in terms of impact from China lockdowns and potentially from Maxim? You mentioned that it's some of that is starting to tail off as well. Any color additional would be appreciated.
Yeah. You know, we're Maxim's way behind us. We've made up that business. The way we look at our guidance is its similar mix, very similar gross margin. Our OpEx will be down, you know, just a bit because we're guiding the revenues down. You know, the operating margin, because of slightly lower revenues, they're not gonna be 4.7%, but they might be in the 4.3%-4.5% range. Everything else, Nick, down the line should be about the same. Same interest expense, same tax rate, 23%. Hope that helps.
Okay. Yeah, that does help. All right. That's all I have. Thanks, guys. Good luck.
Thanks, Nick.
Thanks, Nick.
Thank you. Our next question is from Joe Quattrocchi with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. You know, I think you earlier mentioned that you're seeing further price increases coming. I'm curious, you know, how do we think about the percent of increase, you know, relative to maybe what you've been seeing in the past quarters? Are you starting to see that, you know, price increase percentage, you know, kind of slow down in terms of the momentum there? Good question. No, I don't see much of a change, Joe. It's what makes it hard to answer that question is it's so many different suppliers and different types of commodities, so it's hard to make a one fell swoop.
It's just, you know, at this point, we've had well north of 50 different suppliers raise prices upwards of six to seven different times, and more coming as was pointed out in the script. Tough to answer the question. When you net it out, as I just shared, when you net-net, you know, we think it's somewhere between 6% and 7% total because remember, some suppliers, some commodities are still very competitive, and ASPs aren't going up.
Got it. That's helpful. You know, I think earlier you mentioned opportunities maybe opening up at tier one auto suppliers. Can you just double-click on that, help us understand what that opportunity looks like? You know, is that more of a fulfillment or are there some kind of additional services and things that you can add on from a supply chain perspective that those could be pretty good margin looking opportunities?
Yeah. You obviously can't share who, but you know, there's different types of vehicles out there, right? It's really, you know, we try to use transportation. We did say automotive in the script, but internally it's transportation because it's really broad, right? It's from, you know, golf carts to cars to tractors and trains and everything else. But some are services, as Tom pointed out earlier, where it's going to be more of a supply chain as a service, okay? Very working capital light. Others are, I'll just call it maybe a little bit more traditional in our supply chain services. Then others, we're actually doing demand creation right on through supply chain, okay?
Particularly when you get into EV and the grid and battery management, things along those lines are a huge opportunity for us. In those cases, it's everything that we do from demand creation, IP&E, semis and supply chain. They're all a little bit different.
Thank you.
Thank you, Joe.
Thank you. Our next question is from William Stein with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on these really eye-popping results. A lot of my questions have been asked and answered, but I have a couple sort of off the beaten path ones. First, I wonder what you're seeing in terms of your customers and your own ability to source completed kits during the quarter versus what the ability looked like a quarter ago. Do you think that ability has been improving in the last quarter? That's sort of how I'm interpreting the inventory reduction that we saw.
Let me try and understand the question. Well, you said what we do we think customers have more width on. That they can.
No.
Go ahead.
I think inventory had been somewhat elevated in at least the last quarter, and one of the things you spoke to, Phil, was this problem of not being able to source complete kits. In some cases, you had these mismatched situations, and that was driving at least part of the elevated inventory. This quarter, we saw that reverse, and I wonder if that's a message that, in fact, either you or your customers through using your services and maybe others, are a little bit better able to source complete kits today, or am I over-interpreting that?
Yeah, you might be over-interpreting it a little bit, Will, I think. It's a great question, though. You're right because our inventory did, you know, you're right. It's a couple quarters. We shared with all of you on the phone that we were fine with that inventory because we knew it was going to go back out, so it did. I would say it's going to be really customer specific, Will. To the earlier question, you know, we did get some good shipments in the end of the quarter that we've been, you know, expediting and you have customers that, you know, lines down that you're trying to help out. We did have a nice last few weeks of the quarter.
Okay.
It was a bit ahead of what we thought.
Appreciate that. The other question is about Farnell. I think in your prepared remarks, you noted that there were a lot of suppliers that you added to Farnell that you already had in the components business. I want to make sure I understand what this is. This sounds like there's a supplier that you serve sort of regular way components distribution, and you're now adding the same supplier and same product in this Farnell channel, which is, of course, I don't know, we could call it higher service, but we know it's higher margin also. Is that the way to interpret that, or is there something else going on? Is it the same supplier, but you're adding more unusual parts or more, I don't know, lower runners or is there some other way to interpret this?
Yeah. No, it's a good question. Well, the point what we're making is we talk, and from day one, it's like the opportunity of Farnell gives in new products introduction to the core business, right? Cause it's their service in a lot of new products introduction and a lot of FAEs and designers. Then we can transition it, if you will, or share that lead with our core business, which is great. We can get our account managers, salespeople, et cetera. What we wanted to point out is there's a lot of leverage here and opportunity the other way around too, where Farnell, you know, Newark here in the U.S., you know, may not have had lines like a Micron or. I don't want to go down the whole pike, you know.
Where we have great relationships with some major suppliers that Farnell just didn't have, okay? Farnell was definitely higher in the IP&E space than the semi. We were able to now share those lines, you know, expand the authorization, the franchise authorization to Farnell. When we looked at it over the last several quarters, two years ago, sort of said, "Wow, that was a big number." It's a lot of the same products. Again, remember, the difference, though, is Farnell carries a really broad SKU count, right? Cause they're handling the engineers and it is higher service with quote-unquote, "And they want to get to ship complete kits." They're having a broader line card, expanded SKUs that help service that customer base better. That's been a real opportunity.
There's other lines we've added, like, and we've talked about this before, like National Instruments, and I wouldn't carry that on the core side. You know, that was a big win for Farnell to get the one of the top instrumentation companies out there, and that's on the Farnell line card. That's just been added in the last few quarters, and we expect that to drive some really nice top line growth. Hopefully that helps.
Great. Thank you, and congrats again.
Thanks, Will.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Phil Gallagher, CEO, for any closing comments.
Yeah, thank you, and I'll be brief. I really appreciate everyone joining our call today. Much appreciated. I look forward to speaking to you all and seeing you at the upcoming Investor Day on June sixth. By the way, we'll have a lot of our executive team with us from around the world in supply chain and design, demand creation. You'll have a chance to meet much of the team that makes all this happen, because without them, we don't have a business. Anyway, thanks again. Appreciate it. We'll catch you June 6th, hopefully. If not, we'll catch you in August at the fourth quarter earnings results. Take care.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.