Good morning, everyone. For those who need it, there's still coffee in the hallway. Thanks, I'm Chris Danely, your friendly neighborhood Semiconductor Analyst here at Citigroup. Next up, it's our pleasure to have one of our top picks, Microchip. We have Ganesh Moorthy, the President, CEO. We also have Sajid Daudi , VP of IR. I'll start with the most obvious question. One of the reasons why we like Microchip so much is it can't get any worse, right? With sales down the most among the analog names, and it's a very high-quality company. We don't think that the business model has really changed.
Right.
Ganesh, maybe in your own words, why do you think that your sales have gone down more than peers?
Sure. So before I get into the answers, let me give you the obligatory. During the course of this discussion, we'll be making projections and other forward-looking statements regarding future events of the financial performance of the company, and we wish to caution you that these statements are predictions, and actual events or results may differ materially, and we refer you to our filings with the SEC for any risk factors that might impact our business and results of operations. The magnitude of the change, you know, has to be seen on both sides of the cycle, so we probably had some of the largest growth as well in some of the prior quarters, and all of that was a psychology of fear in terms of where customers were with their shortages.
And we had this COVID-driven oscillation that began in 2021 timeframe, 2021 timeframe. Drove a lot of people who were trying to get capacity, get supply for themselves, and that. And did it overdrive along the way? It probably did. Part of it was customers were afraid. We had a higher exposure to Industrial and Automotive. Many of those customers build end products that are quite expensive, didn't want to be held back by products that were... The semiconductor components where they were much smaller in the BOM for them. And then the second part of what happened is their own business began to soften against their view of their business back in 2021 and 2022 and 2023, when they thought the growth was gonna be continuing at a rate, right?
Overall macro slowed down. Interest rates went up, and so their view of their business began to slow down. Their ability to keep the inventory became harder in a high-interest rate environment, and so we're going through an unwind, first of the inventory, and second of the macro weakness that they are trying to work themselves out of, and in an environment where supply is plentiful, lead times are short, you know, customers have a comfort level of not carrying inventory, not providing much visibility-
Yeah
... because they wanna contain their own risk, which is driven by the macro at this point to some degree of uncertainty.
Just to dig in on some of that, you know, you have two main businesses, Microcontrollers and Analog. Have you seen more weakness in either, and if so, why has one been weaker than the other, you think?
In the aggregate, I don't think they're materially different. You know, these products go together into the end systems that we are working with customers to get designed into. You know, there may be more of one content, less of another content, but really, we're selling them as total system solutions when we go approach a customer. And I don't expect there's a material difference between the Analog product, and those are just product line designations
... less to do with end markets and applications.
And when things do bounce back, would you expect them both to bounce back roughly at the same time, any one more than the other? Any insights there from what you've seen so far this year?
I would expect when they come back, again, they come back together. You know, the timing of any one customer or any one end market may be slightly different, but we sell as complete solutions into these customers, applications, and markets, and they will go down together, they will come back together.
Great. And then let's just dig in on the inventory trends. Where do you think inventory is in the best shape out there, and where are you more concerned?
You know, customers don't report inventory to us. You know, they maintain that as their internal planning. Different customers have different views of, you know, how strategic are they thinking about inventory and many of the CEO conversations today. Customers are as concerned about, you know, is there gonna be a shortage in 2025 or 2026, and the next subpart of the cycle is where they're concerned. Not everybody's thinking along those lines, so what inventory a customer carries is a reflection of what business they're in, how strategic is their thinking process, and then, you know, how much are they, you know, cash-constrained in running their business, and where do they wanna go run things at, but they're all over the place in where they're at, and it's not just customers, right?
Some often, they have inventory, too, with their channels, with their end markets, and where they're at. So there's multiple levels at which, that's there. But the water level is declining every quarter as we under-ship the demand, and at some point it will flip. You know, we're not trying to predict exactly when it'll flip, but I think we're closer to the later innings of this inventory correction.
Why do you think we're closer to the later innings? What, what gives you some confidence there? What are you seeing?
Judgment by time and what has happened over multiple quarters. Some of the patterns we see of people starting to provide more, you know, accelerated orders, people coming in with expedite requests, people pulling in orders from, say, next quarter back into next quarter. All of that would indicate that their inventory is getting to a point where they need to buy. They don't need to give us visibility, they need to buy to just keep building what they have in the short term.
Given that, you know, inventories are going down, do you think there's any risk that we see some sort of extension in lead times as things do start to bounce? I mean, you mentioned a few pull-ins. Has that impacted lead times at all, or is it now we're still in inventory, like, burn mode?
Yes.
How do you look at it operationally, I guess?
So, you know, for the period of time where, at least in the early phases of any recovery, lead time won't be immediately starting to push out. Number one, we have inventory, and we have inventory positioned in such a way that we can respond quickly. That's how we get positioned for turns orders
... in an uncertain environment from where we're at. And we have capacity that we have underutilization for which we can turn on and add more. It all is a function of, do we have enough of a lead time that customers start to place orders in? So what happened in 2021 was, you know, a lot, many customers simultaneously hit the accelerator, and so it takes time where production cycle times are closer to five, six months, whereas we have lead times that are four to eight weeks. And we maintain that difference by having strategic inventory position, either in finished goods or, to a greater extent, in die bank, which is, it's finished with a wafer fabrication.
And as long as the demand comes back at a rate that is a reasonable rate, we think lead times will stay short. At some point, you know, they could get tighter, but if I go pre-COVID, we ran at less than eight weeks for years-
Yep
... as a standard model in which we ran. So I think that's the steady state we wanna run in. I also believe short lead times are good, not only for, you know, the customers, but for us as well. The demand signal is a lot cleaner, because customers are not trying to predict where's the business gonna be in six months or nine months, or whatever timeframe, things are gonna be. They're able to, you know, adjust to market changes, that are taking place, and we're able to adjust as well. So in general, short lead times help everybody in the chain be adaptive to where the market is.
You mentioned, as far as what gives you a little bit of confidence that we're getting close to the bottom, you've seen some more accelerated orders and some pull-ins. Is that any different than what you had, say, three months ago or six months ago, or doesn't this happen, just to play devil's advocate, doesn't that happen every quarter?
There is some.
Maybe not a year ago, but-
No, there is some, but the rate at which we see the number of expedites that are coming in, the number of pull-ins that are coming in, right, continue to grow. And so that is a sign that more and more customers, and even a customer-
Yeah
... is not monolithic, right? They may have certain parts of the business on which they have inventory, but other parts of the business that, you know, is out of inventory and where it's at. But that rate of, number of customers, number of times we're being asked to expedite, is growing, and I think that is a sign that inventory is, you know, getting down to the bottom in many cases.
Is there any consistency or rhyme or reason where you're seeing it? Is it more prevalent in any particular geography, end market, anything else, any sort of pattern you can see out there? Just out of curiosity.
Harder to discern some of that because of how broad-based we are. I think geographically, as we said at the conference call a month ago, Europe is the weakest area.
Yep.
And I think Europe is also in its. Not only has it got a weak macro, if you saw the German GDP numbers and where it's at within the last week or two, you know, it reflects that. But also they are in their, you know, holiday quarter
... in the September quarter.
Yeah.
And so there's less production in terms of where that is taking place. But Europe is, it started later, but it's, you know, it's got the most headwinds in it. The U.S. has headwinds. I think the PMI numbers in the U.S . reflect that. I think it's 21 of 22 months we've had a negative PMI five months in a row, I think, at this point in time, in terms of the announcements this week. There is stabilization we're seeing in China. And, you know, the rest of it is an okay shape.
Just to get the geos down, you'd say Europe is weakest, even though it's a seasonally slow quarter for them?
Yeah, I think it is more than just seasonal in terms of-
Yeah
... European weakness.
Would you say the U.S. is a little weaker than seasonal as well, and then China is the strongest? Has that been true for the last, would you say, you know, couple of quarters, or any changes you've seen?
... over the last six months out of any of those three geos?
You know, I think the U.S. is, again, seasonal at this point is hard to tell. We haven't had a seasonal quarter in, like, five years, you know.
Up or down?
What's that?
Up or down?
Yeah, so I mean, you know, between the different shocks in the system, you know, there was tariffs, there was COVID, there was inventory correction, there really hasn't been something you could say, "All right, we're kind of in a steady state," and you could call it.
Yeah.
So I meant seasonal for Europe only in that they have more holidays in the September quarter, and that's what I meant there. Outside of that, I think you know, there's weakness in the U.S. that I don't- I wouldn't attribute to seasonality, but I would just attribute to you know, industrial base
... is weak, and Automotive is not as strong as it used to be, at one time, and with respect to China, I would say it's more within the last three months, or so, three, four months.
Okay, and can you just remind us what your rough splits are between those three regions?
Yeah, it's about, you know, 20%, mid-20s% in each of Europe and the Americas. The balance is in Asia, and China, including Taiwan, is probably close to 30%, and Asia, excluding China and Taiwan, is a balance, 20% or so.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Plus or minus a couple of percent.
Sure. And then maybe switching gears to the end markets. You talked about the dynamics of the geographies. Are you seeing any difference between, you know, say, the Auto or Industrial or Aerospace and Defense end markets in terms of strength, weakness?
So, Aerospace and Defense has been a steady performer, and you know, commercial aviation is still strong. It's the smallest piece of A&D for us. Space tends to be lumpy, depending on programs and where it's at, and Defense, perhaps not always for the best of reasons, but it's strong in where it's at. Industrial, excluding Aerospace and Defense, is weak. You know, Automotive is still going through its correction, and it's, I would say from our perspective, it's weak. The Data Center, on the other hand, is strengthening.
So, you know, for a while we had the AI subset of Data Center, which is about 30% of our Data Center business. You know, always doing well, and now the rest of Data Center is also strengthening for us, so that's a good sign in where it's at. It's hard to see much improvement in most of the other ones at this time.
Sure. Would you say there's any difference between the Auto and the Industrial space as far as is one weaker than the other?
Yeah, Industrial is weaker.
Okay, and why do you think that is? Do you think it's the underlying demand trends, or do you think that as there's been a little more inventory build, or both?
I think there are many causes. I think all of those are good reasons why. I think Industrial also has large capital spending that is associated with it. As companies slow down capital expenses, et cetera, you know, that slows our Industrial down as well. Automotive tends to be more of a consumer, you know, spend for the most part. Of course, consumers are stretched with the higher interest rates and what they can pay. So, I think there's a little of both, but the industrial piece is certainly weaker.
Okay, and so, you know, you spend a lot of time with the customers. What are they saying as far as their own inventory goes? Do they wanna take it back to normal levels, below normal levels? They... Is it just, like, massive inventory everywhere? I hope not, 'cause we're already down 45%. Any insights there?
Again, as I started earlier, I, you know, I think customers are very, very different in how they think about things.
You know, a lot of the end products that we end up in are high-value products, right? If you think of medical, industrial, automotive, I mean, these have semiconductor content, you know, that may be a couple of percent of what the total value of the end product is, and in that you have a choice, so there are many customers that say, "Look, I don't ever wanna be in the position I was in in 2021 and 2022, and so I'm going to make the strategic investment
... of having inventory to ensure that doesn't, in a semiconductor inventory. So there are many customers that I speak to who still very much are thinking along those lines. Maybe they don't need to have excess inventory, but they certainly wanna have an inventory that allows it to not get bottlenecked by semiconductors more therein. There are others who say, "Hey, you know, my cash flow is tight. My CFO is, you know, pushing on this what I could afford in inventory when interest rates were 1% to what I can afford when interest rates are 6% or 7% is quite different.
And why do I need to carry inventory when supply is ample and lead times are short? So it all is a function of each company's thought process and what they wanna go do. I don't think the need for fear-driven inventory is there. And so, you know, there was a bubble, perhaps in the 2021, 2022 timeframe, where that fear caused people to try to find, you know, some... It's a bit of a hoarding that tries to take place. Now, you couldn't supply everybody with everything, so, you know, it didn't get as big as it perhaps could have been. But I think people will be thoughtful about semiconductor inventory going into end products that have high value.
What would be your overall take on just underlying demand trends in semis? When I say trends, I mean, do you think that demand has gotten worse over the last three months, or stabilized, or better, or somewhere in between?
You know, it's hard to read the tea leaves, so when you say demand, I think-
That's why I'm asking.
I think you have to think about when you, you know, when we think of demand, we think of what's end consumption doing? And, you know, to the best of our ability to read it, you know, because that's what ultimately drives the overall chain.
That helps drain the inventories. That's what drives the builds and all of that, and I think we're seeing one is inventory is draining, but the macro is weak, and people are uncertain as to, you know, what should they build for? What kind of growth rate should they assume? There was a time back in, you know, the 2023, 2024 timeframe, where many, many of our customers saying, "Hey, our demand, you know, trajectory has changed. You know, we're gonna be growing 10%, 15%, 20% a year.
Yep.
As much as we were skeptical on it, right, I mean, I've had multiple CEOs calling us, you know, beating on us for product, saying, "You're limiting my 15%-20% kind of growth rates, and we're gonna project that for the next so many years." That's clearly gone, in terms of where that... There could be individual customers that are doing that, but not the entire market, you know, where it's at.
Okay.
So I think today, what is reflected through the chain back to us is, in part, the inventory reduction, which I think, as I said, is in the later innings, but in part, an uncertainty of their own markets. I think the uncertainty in the markets is creating as much of an issue today, where they don't quite know what should they build and to what extent should they build. You know, they will get clearer on that. Hopefully, some of the uncertainties in the market, you know, what's interest rates gonna do, what's, what is the election gonna do, et cetera, will provide a degree of comfort and confidence on what should they plan for?... and more cuts.
I have a sort of a macro question on that. I mean, you were around the last time rates went down. There's a lot of speculation they're gonna go down again. So, I mean, do you think that rates going down is going to help the tech or semi industry in general? And do you remember, like, what happened last time the rates went down?
Yeah, so I think, you know, the how the rates go down and how much they go, and is it, you know, three cuts or two cuts or whatever, I think those are less than those are it's in the right direction. What rates going down does is it helps build confidence on the direction of where things are gonna be over a longer period of time, you know? So we're less worried about, you know, is it a September or October cut, and is it a quarter point or a half point, et cetera. But if the market gets confidence, and if customers get confidence, that the trajectory we're on is going to create economic stimulus.
That's the more important outcome from this.
That's interesting. Next question's a little difficult. I have to ask it. We're no-spin research here. We mentioned that your sales have fallen more than the competitors. I'm sure this keeps you up at night. Why would this not be share loss, or do you think there is some share loss in there?
So we haven't lost the customers that we're generating the revenue for, when we were going through the higher quarters itself, right? We know, and we're in touch with all of them.
Yeah.
We have an idea of where things are at. So I don't think this is a share loss issue as much as it's a decrease in, you know, customers bringing their inventories down, and it's a slowdown in their businesses that is driving it. And we have to look at the way I think about it is if you look at area under the curve, which is how much revenue was generated, and you start from January 2020, so you use the December 2019 quarter as an index of normality, whatever that is, pre-COVID, and you look at the next 2018, 2019 quarters, and you can plot it for any of the folks that are out there-
Yep
... you'll find the area under the by revenue, so some may have done it earlier, some may have done it later, it's gonna be almost identical for everybody, indexed to the December quarter of 2019.
Hmm, okay. Would you say that your visibility now versus where you were, let's say, three months ago, has that changed? I mean, can it get any worse? Have you seen any signs that it's getting a little bit better, or is it about the same? Is it still, like, just pure charcoal when you look at the order rates out there? What do you think?
Yeah, visibility has not improved, and I think that's because the environment hasn't improved. What has improved is the level at which, number of, expedite requests are coming in
... and et cetera. And so I think that's the best way to think about it is, I don't think there's any improvement in visibility at this point in time.
Yeah. Can it get any worse, by the way?
You know, anything can get worse. Who knows? But it doesn't feel like, you know, it's gonna... That's where the issues are gonna be.
Yeah. Here's a question you probably haven't heard for a while, but turns percentage. Maybe talk about what the typical percentage is and what you're looking at these days, and do you expect that to change at all?
Yeah, so, you know, historical turns percentages are not as relevant today. I mean, it's an important data point. So if I go back to pre-COVID, you know, we used to run 30%-35% turns in a given quarter.
Yep.
But I think turns in an environment in which there's inventory is different, where you may think, "Oh, I should be back at 30%-35%," but if there is inventory to drain, those are not gonna show up as turns in the quarter. So we gotta manage through all that. I think in our guidance is built in what we expect in terms of turns, as well as what do we expect in terms of inventory that's draining. But we have to keep both those in mind
... as inventory drains, and won't just be looking at historical alone.
Got it, so you mentioned that, you know, you've seen some signs that we're getting close to the bottom. I remember back at, one of our, dastardly competitors' conferences, a few months ago, I think it was in May or June, you talked about, I think, some green shoots or signs that things were, you know, could be bottoming. Are you seeing, you know, any difference now versus then? 'Cause obviously, since then, your sales have fallen again. Maybe compare and contrast. Do you have more confidence now, or is it just, "All right, we're seeing a few signs, and who knows?
I think at the time we looked at it, the one difference was that bookings were starting to grow month after month after month.
We were starting to see, you know, highest bookings rate in prior 12 months, multiple times. I think bookings have stabilized, and I think in part it's because, you know, people don't need to book when they have an environment in which lead times are short, and often, bookings, you know, reflect lead times. You know, you get tons of bookings when lead times are long, even if they're wrong, because people really don't know what they want, but they said, "I better get in line and order something." Which is why I think the short lead times are helpful to give people an ability to book in such a way that it reflects the best demand signal that they have on it. We have also given customers more leeway in terms of, you know, cancelable windows.
We've reduced all of that stuff to give them more flexibility in where that is. So while the turns are still high, the bookings are more stable, and I think bookings are gonna stay that way for until there's more confidence that customers have in the environment, which goes back to the interest rate and other uncertainties. As they get more clear, we'll come back to that. And of course, as people hit bottom, more orders just need to be placed to get the consumption, right? The up cycle will play out in two phases. In the first phase, it will be people getting back to consumption, which is higher than where today's shipments are taking place.
Yep.
And the second phase, it will be around people's growth, driven by macro factors, adding to whatever consumption is, and it goes from there.
How are you guys managing inventory? 'Cause, you know, we've started to see some of your peers bounce back. They're starting to see some, you know, above seasonal order trends, which you would expect to happen. And how do you, you know, sort of manage your inventory, right? You don't wanna take it down to nothing, because then when the orders bounce back, your lead times-
Sure
... shoot out to infinity. So how, how does that work as a CEO?
So it's a... It's got multiple facets. So we got a part- 60% of our business is done through the foundries, and so that's, that's really not reflective on our factories. It's working with our foundry partners on how are we managing through it. There are some challenges there because people are also end of life, certain of our processes, and we're building, you know, end-of-life inventory and high gross margin products, et cetera. I think it has, you know, at the last count, it was like 19 days or something in our, days of inventory that I was carrying. There's our factories. Our factories are running underloaded. And, you know, every quarter we have an underutilization charge, but we also have, you know, things that we write off because it doesn't meet our rules.
But it's all good inventory that we build, and in every cycle in the past, you know, that inventory has been something we monetized and, you know, it generated cash and what we did, and we'll do that again. So where we are today is, we do have high inventory. It is at the best possible place for it to respond to a change in demand.
This is not very substantially different, although not at the same magnitude, as where we were in 2020, right? 2019 was a weak year. We built inventory, and then as we went into 2020, post-COVID, a lot of that inventory is what helped us to, in the early phases-
Yep
... response demand. And then that gives us some time to turn the factories back on and to think. But keeping the factories running allows us to have equipment, people, et cetera, ready to go.
Just adding more, you know, people to run more systems and improve the utilization from where it is to where we would like it to be.
So yeah, I think, I don't know if you guys are still doing furloughs, but maybe talk a little bit about utilization rates now. Are they pretty much as low as they're gonna go, where your inventory days are, where you expect them to go? Will you keep a little bit more, even though we're at the bottom of the cycle, just in case the order rates bounce back? How do you look at that?
We did furloughs in March and June quarters. We are not doing one this quarter. We are at a place on inventory where we're comfortable with where it's at. It's high, and but it's also the place I think we need to be positioned. Days of inventory is a backward-looking indicator, and it divides by the lower revenue or the lower, you know, cost of goods
... reflected by lower revenue, and so that number can change quite dramatically, as revenue starts to grow-
Yep
... because you get both consumption of the inventory, but also higher, you know, the revenue and COGS grow as well. So days of inventory is one indicator, but we also need to be thinking of forward-looking. Where do we expect revenue to be, and then how does that inventory support
... where we need it to go? So I think we're in a place we wanna be with respect to that. In the back end, our packaging and testing facilities, we use rather than furloughs, we use shutdown days. So, you know, we'll add a day or two here and there, and through the course of the quarter, have multiple days that are there. That still is a a part of what we do to manage, because you don't want to wrap packages around the silicon or, you know, get them customized to what the final product is gonna be until the demand signal is clear.
Because there's no furloughs this quarter, did you lower utilization rates, or were utilization rates flat this quarter versus last quarter?
You know, utilization rates are roughly the same. They're not... We're not trying to meaningfully adjust them, in terms of where they're at. Now, we can, you know, still be running less product through the factories, you know, depending on how many wafers we start and what cycle time they're running through them, et cetera, but I think it'll be roughly flat with last quarter.
Okay. And so what would that do to inventory days? Do you expect inventory or inventory days to go up, how much this quarter, and then beyond?
So, don't have an exact number, but by definition, if our revenue goes down this quarter, inventory days will go up.
Yeah
... because of the way the calculation gets done.
Got it. Now, given, you know, you have inventory, there's inventory in the channel, this has been going on for a while, are you seeing any pricing pressure? What, what should we think of as far as pricing goes for, for Microchip?
Let me take a moment more on inventory, just to give some comfort. So, vast majority of our products are very, very long-lived products. So these are products that have 10, 15, 20 years, and that's where we'll build inventory is on things that have, you know, low to no risk of obsolescence. So I want you to take away that the high inventory doesn't have an obsolescence risk. It does have some, you know, timing over which we have to go
... draw it down, and our pricing is not, you know, unlike a more commodity market where there's high elasticity on pricing that adjusts, you know, what happens. This is a much more inelastic market. It's much more driven by, you know, where design takes place and the length of time it takes. So we could reduce prices tomorrow and have no impact on revenue in the next, you know, six to 12 months of time in where it goes. So pricing is much more disciplined. Pricing, when you're fighting for new designs, has always been competitive. This is not something new. This is the way it's been 30, 40 years of time. Everybody is using the best new product capabilities that you have because price is not the only decision-making criteria.
It's cost of ownership, it's the technology you bring, it's the other value that you bring, in terms of where it goes, and we remain competitive at the point of design.
So are you seeing any more pricing pressure, say, now versus a year or two ago?
You know, every good purchasing manager is gonna ask you for a lower price, but that is not something everyone necessarily needs to respond to. If you're talking about at the point of design, of course, everybody is going to be price-aggressive there. But I'm saying that's not a new characteristic.
Yep.
You know, with the exception of two years during COVID, when new designs got suppressed because customers were just playing triage-
Yep
... trying to get their production running, get their, you know, substitute products, et cetera, designed in, so at the point of design, it remains competitive, has been competitive, always will be competitive.
Will that go away once whenever the upturn starts, or will it take a couple quarters based on your experience in previous cycles? Does it take one quarter, two quarter, three quarters of the upturn and better orders and sequential increases in revenue before the pricing pressure goes away? Or do you expect it to just remain, like, fairly constant within this level, as long as, you know, nothing crazy happens?
Again, to separate out, at the point of design, we're always competitive, right? I mean, you say pricing pressure, it's not only price. Design decisions are made for 10 other reasons, and price is one of them, but it's not the only reason why. That is the way it always has been historically. It will be, and I expect it will be going forward.
Yep
... as well. The only exception was during COVID, when fewer designs were being done. With respect to pricing from a production standpoint, it's stable pricing, right? We work that into how the negotiations are at the point of design. And I'm not expecting that, you know, where this is not a commodity market where, you know, you raise prices just because it's supply constrained.
Yep
... and you lower prices just because you have extra capacity available.
Great. I had one question. So you said that you had furloughs in the March and the June quarter, but none this quarter, right?
Correct.
Why was that decision made? Why no furloughs this quarter?
Well, it's the way we want to manage our business. We had gotten the headcount down to where we need it to go. We've got the factories. We need the factories to run at a certain level so that it builds and has consistency for the upcycle. So we've got to think these things not on a quarter at a time, but really on a longer-term basis, where it needs to go. Sometimes there are shorter-term goals you're trying to achieve to go with it, as well. So that's all built into what we need to do.
Great. Let's do a little more longer-term question, get off the short-term stuff. 2025, what are you most excited about for next year?
You know-
As far as longer-term trends go.
There's no single item that excites us or not. I think we're excited by the amount of innovation that semiconductors are driving in the markets that we play in, in the megatrends that we are, you know, focused on, in the way in which customers are using the entire capability of Microchip. So no matter what end market, what megatrend we're in, if I look at the design-in activity, I expect the outcome from that design-in activity as it goes to production and the fruition into our revenue growth to be something that is, you know, what we look forward to. Hard to see that in today's environment, when revenue is constrained and where it's at, but that's what we live for, is to create the future, build the pipelines, win the designs to drive growth.
I was hoping you were gonna pull out a crystal ball and say, "We're looking forward to the upturn." As far as the gross margin drivers from here, clearly number one is utilization rates. Talk about anything else going on, and then do you think that your gross margins can eventually get back to the previous peak?
So on the latter, absolutely, we think we get back to 68%, which is our target. You know, how we get there will be a function of, you know, how the upturn plays itself out. But there are many factors that go into it, so underutilization, reversing that is certainly a key piece-
Yep
... of how that goes. Product mix and continues to be a way in which, you know, we have different gross margins in different product lines, and then how that all changes in time will be there. And then just ongoing improvements and yield improvements and factory, you know, capabilities and all that, which is kind of the nuts and bolts of how semiconductors run
... all drive there. So there's no piece of the gross margin drivers. And I would say the fourth piece is pricing discipline. So, you know, maintaining that pricing discipline is as important as all the operational efficiencies down to where we get to. But, you know, gross margin's in our blood. It's been you know, it's a mindset in what we do, all the way from what we do operationally, how we design our products, to how we price our products. And so I expect we will get back there as the revenue goes back towards where it was before.
Great. We have a few minutes left. I'd be remiss if I didn't see if the audience had any questions out there. Going once, going twice. I'm fine continuing to flap my gums and pester the heck out of Ganesh.
Go ahead, Ganesh.
Yeah, do we need a microphone or?
Yeah, thanks. Ganesh, a quick one. On the GM side, you know, one of the biggest contributors was, as you started doing more packaging for some of the, you know, acquisitions you did. Are you guys done there, or do you have any more to go on that side? And then just to follow up, you just mentioned that pricing discipline. Well, a few statements ago, you said that it's pretty inelastic. So is it pricing discipline for a certain part of product, or is it like, you know, I mean, in spite of the inelasticity, there's always some-
Sure
... pricing you said?
On your first question on the internalization of packaging. A lot of our capital expenses went into that as we went through the upcycle. And what has happened is, the percentage of what we build in-house has gone up, and we constantly look at that as an opportunity to see, you know, if we were to make an investment, how quickly would we be able to recover that? And obviously, you know, we will internalize whatever makes sense, as long as it has a payback that is reasonable in terms of the time window that we wanna get to. And historically, our percentage internal for packaging and testing, you know, has run about 70%-ish on packaging.
It's running slightly above that today, I think, and then on testing, you know, closer to 80%, 85%, 90%, in that range, but it's purely an economic decision we wanna make, which is that it makes more sense, and that it will consistently stay at a high utilization by bringing it in-house. On pricing, what I meant is, you know, the pricing discipline in times when there's uncertainty can be something that people, you know, gravitate towards, well, how do I win this design on price, and what we teach our people, and what we have as our system is how to sell on value, and price is one element, but there's so many other pieces of where it's going. It does take a mindset to have a pricing discipline.
We have the benefit of a sales force that is not driven by commissions in their regional revenue that they generate. That helps us enormously in making sure that the teams inside don't compete with each other on price, so that their commissions can be driven from region to region. That happens in many, many companies, many of the acquired companies that we have done as well. And so people are looking at, How do I optimize for a given situation and retain the discipline on pricing, through an economic cycle, through maybe a call that comes from a team, for the same customer out of China that comes from, let's say, Boston, and, you know, how do you make sure that you keep the price whole, based on a given design?
We have time for one more in the corner over there.
Thanks, guys. Ganesh, can you guys talk a little bit about your Data Center products there, traction, growth drivers, and market share shifts? Because I think that seems like a very interesting and obviously explosive growth in market. Thanks.
Yeah, so Data Center is about 18%-ish of our revenue. Data Center and computer. Data Center is probably about a percentage less than that. Let's say 17%-18% or so. A lot of it started in storage network. That's what a big piece came from, Microsemi acquisition, but we were also in, you know, highly energy-efficient power supplies and some of the other, you know, temperature controls and backplane controls and all that from the Microchip Microcontrollers, et cetera.
In more recent times, as the AI servers have taken off, there's been more opportunities in some of those platforms on some of the switching that is required on those platforms, some of the security and root of trust capabilities that are required on these platforms, some of the timing accuracy that is needed on these platforms, and then many new things that we're working on that are intended for the data centers of where things go. So, you know, it is and we have more detail that we provide that's on our website or otherwise, we're happy to go do it in terms of where the data center is.
It is clearly a megatrend that we have, for many years, have been focused on, and the products we build attach. And then we have also solid-state drive controllers that go into how the memory is being used for high performance, as well. So those are all the areas in data center that are key to us in terms of driving growth.
Great. I think that's all we have time for. Thanks, Ganesh. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.