Okay, great. Thank you everybody for joining us. My name is Mark Delaney, and I lead coverage of Jabil. I'm very pleased to be hosting Fred McCoy, EVP and the CEO of Jabil's EMS business, and Adam Berry, the VP of Investor Relations. As many of you know, Jabil is one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world, with over $30 billion of annual revenue. Jabil reports in two segments that are about similar in size. The Diversified Manufacturing Services, which serves end markets including electric vehicles, healthcare, and mobility, and then the Electronics Manufacturing Services segment that Fred runs, and that includes products for end markets including renewables, data center, 5G networking, and capital equipment. Actually, before we get going, I had an interesting anecdote. I was thinking about this this morning.
If I go back to February of 2020, we had our tech conference in San Francisco. I remember Adam was the very first person to say, "Oh, nobody at Jabil is shaking hands right now because of COVID." I was thinking of that and bring that up for two reasons. One, Jabil's deep supply chain expertise and knowledge of everything that's going on in the world. On a brighter note, Adam did shake my hand this morning when we ran into each other in reception, hopefully that's a sign of better things that are ahead of us.
That's actually a great memory that you have there in a sense that, I remember that conference very vividly as well, and we were talking to people back in China and Asia and, it was a really big issue.
Not only do I remember, you know, we were saying, "Hey, you need to be careful about this thing going forward," but also I remember getting into a very, very large auditorium with probably 600 people and I think, you know, there were some folks there from AWS presenting and I was thinking, "Wow, if one person in here has this could get pretty bad." I do appreciate you bringing that up because it does show you kind of the global power and nature of Jabil and just, you know, how big we are, how much information we have, and, you know, just the impact we can have in terms of knowledge and those sorts of things.
Well, yeah. Anyway, hopefully we're past those issues.
Hopefully.
I have some supply chain questions for you later. Before, we dig into some of those supply chain types of questions, Fred, I wanted to, you know, lead off with a question for you and maybe talk about what your key priorities are for the EMS segment currently and how you'd like that business to evolve over the next few years.
Yeah. We've had some really good secular tailwinds, and we're gonna continue to lean into those. You know, first of all, I guess I should say thanks for being here. You know, I view Jabil as an industrial company. We're 230,000 employees, 25 million square feet of manufacturing and machining, you know, sheet metal, electronics. You know, I think of ourselves as more of an industrial company than a tech company sometimes. The EMS business is growing. You know, we're leaning into some key tailwinds, data center and cloud. You know, obviously artificial intelligence has gotten the buzz lately. We're involved there with our cloud customers and building out data centers and infrastructure for that. You know, there's megatrends in the renewable space.
We've invested heavily in energy storage and energy conversion and grid-level power management. You know, we've got some key priority growth in the 5G rollout that continues around the globe. You know, so. Then there's some smaller trends like our warehouse automation and some of the retail automation that's going on that we think power growth you know, for the next several years.
That's a great overview. Maybe we can dig into some of those end market trends in a little bit more detail. I think overall, Adam, double check me on this if I say anything wrong, please. I think the company guided for 2% growth this year in the EMS segment and expecting to be roughly $17 billion of revenue in total.
Those numbers are correct.
Okay.
The one caveat I would point out is that, roughly halfway through our fiscal year, we went into a consignment model with a handful of customers. The impact to revenue is roughly $600 million-$800 million for the year. It hits us. If you normalized for that, it would be more like 6% growth for the EMS segment. No, your numbers are correct.
thank you. Well, speaking of the consignment model, maybe we can talk on data center and 5G. It's a market that's been very strong for Jabil, especially if you exclude that, you know, change for pass-through revenue. A lot of companies have seen quite a bit of weakness, somewhat in hyperscale, you know, more broadly in telecom, but it doesn't seem like Jabil's really seen that. Maybe talk a little bit more around what you do in those markets and why you've been seeing some strength.
Sure. Yeah. I think we're kind of the last, the last mile in the data center, so the final configuration of the racks, the infrastructure, whether it's the switchgear or the cooling. You know, we're leaning heavily into some of the customization trends that we see. A lot of, you know, a lot of data centers are moving to bespoke silicon solutions for, particularly for some of those AI and ML applications, but also for other workloads. You know, that plays to our sweet spot of being able to do kinda higher mix, more bespoke manufacturing and engineering solutions for our customers. You know, we're seeing that power our growth versus sort of the commodity, you know, server and storage platforms where you're seeing declines in the marketplace.
It sounds like there's a content story here, not just a unit type of opportunity.
Absolutely, yeah.
I know this is a tough question because it's, you know, AI is such a new, you know, or, you know, increasing focus, especially some of the new applications like large language models. Maybe talk a little bit more, if you could, on where Jabil may be exposed to some of the AI spending?
Yeah. We're seeing AI drive a number of things in the data center. You need, you know, you need obviously specialized computing, so there's a lot of custom silicon solutions which I mentioned. That's with our large, you know, customer, but also with other smaller customers, whether it's in the financial services industry, or in, you know, in kind of tier two cloud providers, we're seeing, you know, that. The other big need in AI/ML is this, the data transfer and, you know, copper doesn't work. We're seeing high-speed optic, you know, high-speed optical interconnect being a critical priority in the data center. We're seeing changes in the networking philosophy inside the data center and then in the wireline communications from the data center back to the networks.
Those are areas that we've invested heavily in. We have some of our own products in, we have, you know, capabilities in. We're leaning heavily into that.
Could you comment on the breadth of Jabil's exposure to hyperscale customers? I think AWS was a 10% customer at one point and disclosed in your 10-K. You know, how should we think about the breadth of this business? Is it mostly for one customer, or is there a broader set of, you know, data center companies that you sell into?
Yeah, there's a broader portfolio. I mean, I'm not gonna, you know, hide behind the fact that AWS is our largest customer. They're a great partner and we're expanding, continually expanding the scope of what we do with them. To build and have another customer that meaningfully offsets that is gonna be difficult in the short term. But you know, as I said, we're heavily engaged with a number of folks and we're Intel's launch partner in their new compute platform, a high-density modular compute platform. That's not an AWS solution that sells into. I think you'll see more and more of that, and hopefully we can, you know, we can open up a little bit more with our customers, you know, when those rollouts continue.
Today I'd say, you know, I'd say we've got, you know, two handfuls of customers in that cloud space.
That's helpful. On the 5G part, I think Jabil's been gaining some share over the last few years, in 5G, but, you know, some of the telecom CapEx trends had slowed a bit in some of the regions around the world. Maybe double-click a bit, if you could, please, on what you're seeing.
Sure
... with 5G.
Yeah, I mean, 5G, the rollouts are asymmetric around the globe, and, you know, I think that really plays to the favor of a company like Jabil. You know, we can, we can provide a solution in any region of the globe for our large customers. We're actually the largest producer of 5G radios in the world today, aside from the vertically integrated, guys in Asia. You know, we've got the ability to quickly move the production assets from one region to the other. North America's been down this year. I think, you know, the telcos have all kind of signaled they're slowing CapEx in North America. We're seeing, you know, India and some of the other emerging geographies pick up.
you know, on balance, our business is flat, you know, and we're gonna see continued growth as massive MIMO and some of the newer, fixed wireless applications come out.
That's helpful. On networking, maybe talk a little bit more on your business there. I imagine there's some overlap as well in terms of some of the customers that, you know, maybe a data center customer will still use perhaps some of your networking capabilities?
Yeah. The networking, you know, again, for us, we tend to do well, I'd say globally as a company, you know, where it's complex, you know, highly engineered solutions. We're seeing that again in the networking space. You know, the big networking and some of the big cloud providers are coming out with custom solutions, custom silicon, and integrated optics in their networking products. They're relying on, you know, on Jabil to help industrialize those products and bring those to market for the data center application. These are higher ASP, much more content rich for us. They offset some of the weakness that we're seeing in sort of the core enterprise networking. It's a similar trend.
You know, again, you know, people are moving away from a standardized solution, moving to more customized solutions and we can do that because the cost of producing custom semiconductors has come down so much.
That's helpful. One of the markets that was stronger than I was at least anticipating on the last earnings call and kind of continuing to trend was in your capital equipment business. I think there's been some weakness in semi CapEx, but you commented how, you know, renewables are actually becoming a really big driver of that segment for Jabil. Maybe you could elaborate a bit on what you're seeing there.
Yeah. If you look at the way we report, our industrial and semi-cap businesses together for a variety of reasons in our supply chain and our factories, that's about a $4.5 billion business. It's growing. It'll grow 17%-18% this year. That's with the semi-cap business being down, you know, 15%-20% like our customers are indicating. You know, we're still, we're still in a good position in the semi-cap space, both in the wafer front-end equipment and in the back-end test. We're continuing to launch new pro-programs, and we're seeing the fab growth will maybe pick up next year. That's being offset heavily by our growth in renewables.
You know, we've got Bill Mitchell here, who runs our renewables business, and we've invested heavily over the last four or five years in energy conversion, power management solutions. We're doing everything from grid-level energy storage, grid-level power management solutions, you know, think of big containerized, you know, systems, to smart metering and energy efficiency in the home and storage in the home. We don't see the secular trends changing there. You know, obviously the Inflation Reduction Act here in the U.S. has accelerated that. We think that's got a multiyear tailwind behind it.
How large is renewables holistically as a % of that capital equipment business?
I don't know what I would say, not of the capital equipment business, but of that entire industrial and semi-cap business that we have.
Sure
I'd say it's 65%.
60, 65%. Yeah.
Then, you know, I think we call that business industrial. I don't think it's very reflective of what we do today.
you know, down the road, I'd like to see us represent that business better as a renewables business and, you know, better reflect what Bill and the team, over there in the industrial space are doing because that's where we're seeing the growth, that's where we're seeing the real traction, with customers. I don't wanna correct Fred in the slightest bit, but.
13%, not 17% growth for the year.
Okay.
We're not here to, update the guidance on the industrial business here today. That's where we're at.
Okay. No, that's helpful. You mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act. Maybe talk a little bit around where you're manufacturing products. I mean, I imagine with that in place, you may be doing more specifically in the United States and, you know, talk about any potential credits and how that perhaps gets shared between Jabil and partners.
Sure. You know, we've seen the trend kind of in regionalization, I think really start in 2018 with the Trump tariffs, kind of picked up steam with COVID and some of the supply chain disruptions. We just see the Inflation Reduction Act as a continuation of that long-term trend. We're gonna see more regionalized manufacturing, you know, and optimized solutions for the end markets for those products. The Inflation Reduction Act right now, I would say is not meaningful in terms of our, you know, of our guidance. We still are working through, and I think the Treasury and the Commerce Department are still working through what the rules are gonna be on that, and I think there's been a lot of press about that.
I won't speak to that. I think folks are up to speed there. We expect that there will be, you know, continued investment in the U.S. We've opened a facility in Salt Lake City within the last 12 months, really before the Act, and we're at full production now for energy storage solutions there. We've got a parallel facility coming up in Memphis, Tennessee. We'll have East Coast, West Coast, and we're gonna continue to. I think we're gonna continue to see that. Again, that was really propelled by a regionalization trend, and now the Inflation Reduction Act, we're gonna see maybe more content being added on to that in order to trip whatever the thresholds are that are required to get the incremental credits. It's unclear yet on how all that works.
I mean, in all likelihood, you know, our customers or the utilities will be the beneficiaries of the credits and, you know, it won't really affect our margins at all.
Are you having any difficulty finding either, factory floor space or labor when you think about you know, potentially how much more is taking place in Mexico and in the United States? I mean, you hear some news reports of labor shortages and a lot of wage inflation or even, you know, lack of warehouse, square footage being available. What's Jabil seeing on that front?
Yeah. We're seeing constraints in certain markets, in certain geographies. I think that's, you know. That leads us to how do we, you know, how to drive better efficiency of our floor space, so whether that's warehouse automation solutions, you know, or our factory floors with factory automation. If you look at our company right now, I think, you know, we're actually down about 20,000 employees, so maybe 260 to maybe 240, 230, despite the fact that our revenue continues to grow. We're leaning more into both business process automation. Think of AI for the, for the office and for the designers, but also factory automation and our factories and our warehouses.
You'll see that reduction in labor, and that helps to offset some of these labor trend increases. It gives us better density in our warehouses, that we don't have to deal with safety issues 'cause we've got robots, you know, picking. That allows us to offset some of the cost headwinds that we're seeing for our customers.
I think you've announced new facilities in Mexico, for example. You are still finding ways to grow, as I understand it.
Yeah. I mean, we're expanding in our footprint across Mexico. We're expanding in Eastern Europe. You know, we're expanding in Southeast Asia. We're actually, our revenues in China, you know, I think this year will be, you know, at or close to the record. You know, we're seeing, you know, kind of a global, you know, improvement in our business. You know, we haven't had a labor constraint. You know, I think we have a local for local mindset, so our leadership in the regions, you know, tailors the solutions and the compensation and the work rules to the local market. We don't impose anything from corporate. I think that's also given us a little bit more flexibility and nimbleness in how we ramp up those regions.
Do you guys have any sense, and I realize this is a very tough question, but do you have any sense about how much share maybe you've taken because of your presence in North America? You, you've been in region for so long, very well established, and as some of your customers are wanting to do more in North America, I would think that would position you very well. I mean, I know maybe you can't always ascertain exactly why you're getting business.
Yeah.
Any sense about maybe how much share you're taking that you could perhaps attribute to this phenomenon?
I think that's pretty hard to quantify. I don't know. I mean, there's so many variables. I mean, we're seeing fabulous companies that we're doing business with. We're seeing vertically integrated companies that are going to an outsourced model. We're seeing non-traditional customers, whether it's Asian or European. I don't know. I'd struggle a little bit. Maybe Adam has a better-.
Yeah. I don't have any exact numbers for you to offer here today. But, what I can tell you is companies like ours, big global companies where, you know, the customers today need manufacturing processes in three different regions. They need them launched all at the same time with the same quality, the same systems, the same line and everything. There're becoming very few companies that can accomplish that in the world today. You know, I'd certainly say Jabil is one of those companies. Then being a U.S. domiciled company certainly helps to Fred's point.
I can't put, you know, dollars and cents on it, but it's certainly driving people to in the doors to Jabil to kinda understand what we do, how we do it, and how we can help them out. Maybe we could talk a little bit on profitability, and I'm old enough to remember when EMS target margins were more 2%-4% and, you know, you're now looking at 5%.
Don't lie.
Yeah. What's allowed you to get to 5% and how sustainable do you think that is?
Yeah, I think the business mix has changed dramatically. You know, we were largely build to print. We were largely electronics manufacturing, and we were largely in, you know, legacy, call it outsource businesses, whether that was PCs or networking and storage. If you look at the breadth of our business now, we've purposely, you know, since about FY2018, put a big focus on diversification. We've got a pretty rigorous strategic review process, and we're targeting, you know, healthcare end markets. We were one of the early, you know, early identified the electrification and autonomy in the vehicle, and we invested in that, you know, 8, 10 years ago. We've invested heavily in renewable energy and some of the power management there.
We developed some interesting, you know, business models for customers, in the cloud that, you know, with our design to dust offerings. We do everything from design the product to recycle it at the end of life in a secure fashion. I think we, you know, I think we've tapped into the right, you know, mega trends, and we've invested in some core capabilities. We've invested in factory automation and improved our productivity as well. You know, we've got a single SAP instance now across the company. We've got some new AI workflows in our manufacturing processes and in our back office.
A lot of things, whether it's, you know, end markets or productivity, I think those two have driven us to where we think are sustainable margins, you know, 5% plus. you know, I think that's. We've got a pretty rigorous investment process to make sure that we don't take on business that doesn't meet those kind of thresholds or else provide some other, you know, benefit to us, whether it's a new capability or better cash flows. I think we've gotten a bit more disciplined as well in how we grow.
Yeah. Are there different return on invested capital metrics you look at now versus what you maybe did 5 or 10 years ago? I mean, we've seen it in the business, right? I mean, that the margins have moved up. Maybe just talk about, you know, when you guys are evaluating new business, what's different today about what you evaluate versus maybe the metrics you would've considered historically?
I think, you know, I don't think the metrics themselves have changed. I think maybe our benchmarks have changed. Obviously, you know, money was cheap for a long time. You know, the hurdle rate maybe was a little bit. We accepted a little bit lower hurdle rate than we might today. You know, we also were, you know, on a quest to diversify the business, you know, having had the challenges that Adam mentioned, you know, with some of our largest customers. I don't think the metrics have changed. I think we've, you know, we're still focused on margins and free cash flow and returns on invested capital to our shareholders.
Again, you know, maybe we're a bit more willing to accept, you know, lower returns to get certain things, you know, into our portfolio, whether it was healthcare or optical capabilities or our cloud business. I think we've tightened up those controls a bit more. You know, we're growing, you know, pretty significantly year-over-year, and we don't need to do growth for growth's sake. We really need to focus on generating margins and cash flows.
Yeah. I'd absolutely agree with that. I'd add from my perspective, there's much better internal competition for $, right? From an investment standpoint. You know, maybe in the mid two thousand tens, you know, it was more about growth and just let's latch ourselves onto the next trend, which I think today we do a much better job at being even more thoughtful around the allocation of our capital expenditures and where they go, what the impact's gonna look like. Then to Fred's point, which I think is just very, very critical when you think about the Jabil model today, it's about a portfolio and a diversified business.
You know, you can take a business that has certain economics, but it plays a role, and then you take another business that has a different set of economics, but it also plays a role. At the end of the day, we're trying to achieve certain goals at the enterprise level. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that in fiscal 19, I believe, or maybe it was 18, we transitioned some of the way that we compensate the executives and down into the company, and it's more margin and cash flow based than it was at that time. When you do that tends to motivate people as well.
I'll tell Mike to start you guys need a 7% margin target maybe is what I hear.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
Sure.
Yeah.
Maybe after I retire.
No, you know, joking aside, I mean, what about getting to six? I mean, you said five plus. If you think about these higher margin levels, you have to hold back on growth, and there's obviously some balance that you have to do. I mean, is six something you think you may be able to achieve at some point?
We think we're on a path there. I don't know when that occurs. I think we're providing better value to customers and we have a kind of a different set of customers that have different value, that value different things from us. Yeah, I think that's wholly there, wholly possible. I don't know if that's, you know, I don't know what the timeline is there. You know, we're taking it, you know, we're trying to close FY23 and beat our, you know, meet our numbers there. We'll talk, I guess, in September at our Investor Briefing about, you know, where we go from there.
Yeah. I'd say, Fred's absolutely right. You know, I'm also old enough to remember a time when people were asking us, "Do you think you Jabil could get to four?
Yeah.
You know, if the year works out as we think it will, we'll be at 4.9% this year. A lot of the trends that have helped us get from
3.5%-4.9% are not only have they not peaked, but they're gonna continue into the future. You know, as we sit here and we run just kind of our own internal models, you could see a number higher than 4.9%. To Fred's point, you know, we'll have to update everybody when that is and we'll do that. Things are good, you know. The one thing that's really powerful for me is it's not coming from one portion of the business. Brent and Bill run the industrials business. It's growing very well. We've got an EV business that we think is gonna grow 42% this year.
Steve Borges and Andy Priestley on the healthcare team, you know, they've done an incredible job. That business is gonna grow 10% this year. It's coming from all over, and then there's a whole bunch of businesses that I didn't mention, but it's really a team effort and, you know, it gives me a lot more comfortability than if we just had one rocket ship within the company, but we've got a bunch of rocket ships.
Yeah, and maybe kind of you can zoom out a little bit and you have a bunch of these growth markets, right? You mentioned electric vehicles, you mentioned healthcare that I would think would be a little bit countercyclical in the macro. Maybe kind of talk about some of the puts and takes overall for Jabil, and are you seeing signs of recession in some businesses, but you've just been able to overcome it with share gain in some of these newer businesses? How should we think about that?
Yeah. I mean, I think that was kind of our goal four or five years ago, was to diversify the portfolio knowing that we're gonna see a cyclical economies, and then we knowing that all markets aren't correlated. We're seeing, you know, this year we've seen a pretty significant reductions in our connected devices business. We're down 13%.
Yeah, 17.
17%.
I think that's it.
Maybe I got them reversed. We're down 17% in that space. Yeah, we're seeing a recession in some markets. The semi-cap business is down, you know, pretty substantially as well. you know, You can see our overall results. We're gonna put record revenue and income and cash flows up. you know, we think that that continues and, you know, we expect, you know, maybe there's gonna be, you know, I hear talk about cloud and is cloud gonna dip? Maybe it does, but I think it'll be offset by EV. We're launching, you know, seven new EV platforms globally that, you know, are just in the early days.
Our healthcare business, where we're launching, you know, you know, Andy and his team are launching some really high volume diabetes glucose monitoring and diabetes management products. You know, I think there's enough trends in here that we feel very comfortable with our plans for this year, and we feel comfortable that, you know, we're not gonna see the kind of dips that we've seen in past downturns.
That, that's helpful. Maybe talk about the cost environment, right? There's been so much inflation going on, you know, the CPI report out this morning. What's Jabil seeing on the cost side? Are some of those inflationary pressures subsiding? You know, what's your ability to pass on higher costs at this point if you do still see higher cost?
Yeah. We're seeing cost increases for sure. Labor costs, you know, continue to rise, particularly in some of the key markets that we're in. You know, as a result, we're looking at diversifying and we're opening new factories, you know, to try to diversify our footprint there. You know, we're seeing input costs from components. We're actually seeing things start to moderate in that space. You know, electronics, we're going through a shortage. Steel, you know, a lot of the commodities that we buy, we're seeing that, those signs that that's abating. You know, our model is generally, you know, I would call it a pass-through with our customers.
You know, it's not probably a little simplistic, but, you know, we don't own that risk and we aren't forced to arbitrage that risk, of those cost inputs, with our customers. You know, it hasn't been an impact on margin and, you know, I don't expect it to be. We're seeing, you know, we're not seeing those signs of cost reduction. I mean, transportation and logistics have come way down and so there are puts and takes, but we're not seeing a meaningful slowdown in the challenge. I don't know if you have anything else to add.
You know, I'd just say it's somewhat related in the sense that, you know, as we look to take cost out and become more efficient, you know, that helps offset some of that cost. It, it also goes back to the margin conversation we were having. I had the opportunity to run through one of our factories in Mexico last month, and the line for EVs was almost fully automated. Just the power of seeing a fully automated line, not a lot of people, you know, just you can think about the cost savings there going forward. I think JJ Creadon and his team on the operations side have just done a tremendous job, and we haven't, to my knowledge, even begun to roll that out globally, right?
You start to think of the impact of that over the years to come. It's gonna be another tailwind, I think.
Have you seen any customers pushing back more on these pass-throughs, especially if perhaps some of your customers are struggling a bit more with a weaker macro environment in some sectors?
It's the nature of our business. We're always getting pushback. I mean, I've been in this 22 years. I mean, there's never an easy time. You always have currency headwinds or you have, you know, you always have something. I think it's a dialogue that our customers are used to having. You know, we're not one to come to them with a problem. We usually come to them with a solution. You know, "Hey, we've got this cost increase, but we can mitigate it by, you know, investing in automation or relocating the manufacturing to another geography or splitting how we build the product or, you know, or improving yields or whatever." I mean, we, you know, we need to provide those solutions to customers. It's not a simple pass-through. Yeah.
I mean, those conversations would be tough if that was the approach we took.
I promised the audience some questions on supply chain at the start, maybe we can go there. I think as of the last earnings call, there were still some supply constraints in automotive, but Jabil was seeing a good line of sight by this summer and having a lot of those supply constraints and chip shortages of mature nodes largely behind you. Is that still tracking to your expectations?
I'd say the short answer is no. We're still seeing constraints and it's dragging on a bit longer, and I think part of that is driven by just the uptick in demand in, you know, an EV and a, and a solar inverter and a battery storage system all share a lot of common electronic architecture that can, you know, convert power from AC to DC and to manage the batteries. You know, we're seeing constraints in some of those legacy nodes still. There's capacity coming online, you know, we don't think it's going to fulfill the demand.
You know, we're starting to look out into the next year and the next year and we're seeing other commodities where there's been underinvestment and we're concerned about, you know, future shortages of, call it 2024, 2025. We're still kind of in the golden screw mode. I think that continues through much of this year, much of the calendar year for us.
When you talk about commodities in 2024, 2025, is that chip types of commodities or something that's non-semiconductor?
No, these would be semiconductor-type commodities, so resistors, capacitors, you know, some of the things that are more mundane that you don't really think about, but they require pretty significant capital investment to stand up fab facilities and they take a long lead time. you know, we're concerned and we're working with our supply partners, and we just had our supply chain team, Graham, and Frank over in Japan and Korea meeting with some of our partners there and working on how we can mitigate some of those shortages.
Yeah. Adam, and we were talking recently, before turning in, Jabil's inventory is up, a fair amount. You do have some customer deposits, to help offset that. Maybe talk a little bit about what you're doing on your inventory management to try and deal with some of these supply chain issues.
Yeah. We've been focused on this for a long time. It's just, it takes, you know. You know, when COVID hit, the reaction of a lot of our customers was to kind of pile up inventory, not knowing when the disruptions would end. You know, and suppliers extended lead times. You know, I would say over the last 12 months, we've had a more, you know, as things started to open up, we've had more, and we've got better visibility with suppliers. We've had, you know, more pointed conversations with customers on different supply chain models and planning models and demand forecasts to get that in line. Unfortunately, just with the lead times it takes, you know, we had 72 week lead times. We had 100-week lead times on parts.
To get through that cycle, it's taking us a year, you know, to 15 months, and we're starting to see the end of that. You know, again, our customers supported it because, you know, we've got pretty significant inventory deposits from customers, you know, equivalent to about 19 days of inventory?
I think 21.
Right.
Yeah, right around there. Right around there.
Something, 19, 20 days of inventory. You know, they've been in lockstep with us on this strategy. They understand that it's gonna take time to bleed off, and they've been willing to put their money behind it. You know, I think we're starting to see that, and I think we guided in our last call that we're gonna start seeing those numbers, you know, normalize a little bit more in the coming quarters.
Great. Well, unfortunately, we're out of time. I'd like to thank you both for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.