High quality growth opportunities ahead of us. We continue to invest in our infrastructure and operational capabilities. In 2021, MPS grew capacity by 40%, and we are on track to expand capacity in 2022, well beyond $2 billion, allowing the company to successfully ramp new product revenue and achieve strategic market share gains. Here are a few highlights which we achieved in 2021. Brought online a new 8-inch fab and continued to qualify parts in the 12-inch fab we brought online in 2020. We will continue to invest in growing fab and assembly capacity. We designed processor cores and MCU technology into products requiring more sophisticated power solutions, such as USB Power Delivery, smart motor drives, and high power electrification. Our first prototype of a high precision analog-to-digital converter product for medical applications achieved outstanding silicon performance in lab evaluations.
We have started customer sampling in Q1 2022. Validation of this technology is a strong first step in developing a new business segment, supporting both industrial and infrastructure and market applications. We believe new product revenue from a large number of previously released designs will ramp in 2022. The representative sample includes products supporting applications in VR14, 5G, BMS, ADAS, AI, USB PD, DDR, and many more. Turning to our full year 2021 revenue by market segment compared to 2020. Automotive revenue was up 87.5%, computing and storage revenue up 47.0%, industrial revenue up 54.5%, consumer revenue up 28.1%, and communications revenue up 15.3%, demonstrating just how broad-based our full year 2021 revenue improvement was. Automotive revenue grew $95.4 million to $204.3 million in 2021.
This 87.5% year-over-year gain primarily represented increased sales of our highly integrated applications supporting the digital cockpit, automated driver assistance systems, and connectivity. Automotive revenue represented 16.9% of MPS' full year 2021 revenue, compared with 12.9% in 2020. Full year 2021 computing and storage revenue grew $119.1 million over the prior year to $372.3 million. This 47.0% increase primarily resulted from strong sales growth for enterprise notebooks, cloud computing, and storage applications. Computing and storage revenue represented 30.8% of MPS's total revenue in 2021, compared with 30.0% in 2020. Industrial revenue grew $65.2 million- $184.8 million in 2021.
This 54.5% year-over-year increase was broad-based, with each of our primary product lines enjoying better than double-digit revenue growth. Industrial revenue represented 15.3% of MPS's full year 2021 revenue, compared with 14.2% in 2020. Consumer revenue grew $61.9 million- $282.3 million, reflecting increased product sales for home appliances and smart TVs. Consumer revenue represented 23.4% of MPS's full year 2021 revenue, compared with 26.1% in 2020. Communications revenue grew $21.8 million- $164.1 million. This 15.3% improvement reflected higher sales of products for both infrastructure and wireless routers and gateway applications. Communications revenue represented 13.6% of our 2021 revenue, compared with 16.9% in 2020.
Switching to Q4, MPS had a record fourth quarter, with revenue of $336.5 million, 4.0% higher than revenue generated in the third quarter of 2021, and 44.4% higher than the comparable quarter in 2020. By market segment, revenue for computing and storage grew 91.6% year-over-year. Communication grew 54.7%, automotive grew 43.2%, industrial grew 33.3%, and consumer grew 1.9%.
Fourth quarter 2021 GAAP gross margin was 57.6%, same as third quarter 2021, and 230 basis points higher than the fourth quarter of 2020. Our GAAP operating income was $78.6 million compared to $77.1 million reported in the third quarter of 2021 and $40.0 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2020. Fourth quarter 2021 non-GAAP gross margin was 57.9%, 10 basis points higher than the third quarter of 2021 and 220 basis points higher than the fourth quarter of 2020. The year-over-year expansion in fourth quarter non-GAAP gross margin was largely due to a shift in sales mix favoring high-value greenfield products and operational efficiency gains, which more than offset higher product input costs.
MPS achieved noteworthy market share gains in 2021 due in large measure to product availability and disciplined sales price management. Our non-GAAP operating income was $112.0 million compared to $108.4 million reported in the prior quarter, and $66.3 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2020. Let's review our operating expenses. Our GAAP operating expenses were $115.3 million in the fourth quarter compared with $109.2 million in the third quarter of 2021, and $88.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Our non-GAAP fourth quarter 2021 operating expenses were $83.0 million, up from the $78.7 million we spent in the third quarter of 2021, and up from the $63.6 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2020. On both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis, fourth quarter 2021 litigation expense was a credit balance of $420,000 compared with a $3.4 million expense in Q3 2021, and a $1.5 million expense in Q4 2020. The credit balance in fourth quarter 2021 litigation expense reflected an ITC settlement, refund of a legal retainer, and lower than anticipated fees. The differences between GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses for the quarters discussed here are stock compensation expense and income or loss from an unfunded deferred compensation plan.
Fourth quarter 2021 stock compensation expense, including $921,000 charged to cost of goods sold, was $31.2 million, compared with $31.6 million recorded in the third quarter of 2021. Switching to the bottom line. Fourth quarter 2021 GAAP net income was $72.7 million or $1.51 per fully diluted share, compared with $1.44 per share in the third quarter of 2021, and $0.90 per share in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Q4 2021 non-GAAP net income was $102.1 million or $2.12 per fully diluted share, compared with $2.06 per share in the third quarter of 2021, and $1.31 per share in the fourth quarter of 2020. Fully diluted shares outstanding at the end of Q4 2021 were 48.2 million. Now let's look at the balance sheet. As of December 31, 2021, cash equivalents and investments totaled $727.5 million compared to $744.5 million at the end of the third quarter of 2021.
For the fourth quarter of 2021, MPS generated operating cash flow of about $28.2 million compared with Q3 2021 operating cash flow of $117.8 million. The between quarter drop in operating cash flow primarily reflected a $51.3 million increase in inventory and higher accounts receivable. Fourth quarter 2021 capital spending totaled $17.6 million. Accounts receivable ended the fourth quarter of 2021 at $104.8 million or 28 days of sales outstanding compared with the $79.9 million or 22 days of sales outstanding reported at the end of the third quarter of 2021, and the $66.8 million or 26 days reported at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020.
Our internal inventories at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021 were $259.4 million, up from the $208.1 million at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Calculated on a basis consistent with our past practice, and as you can see from the webinar video, days of inventory rose to 166 days at the end of Q4 2021 from the 134 days at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Historically, we've calculated days of inventory on hand as a function of the current quarter revenue. We believe comparing current inventory levels with the following quarter's revenue provides a better economic match.
On this basis, again, you can see days of inventory increased to 152 days at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021 from 133 days at the end of the third quarter of 2021. I would now like to turn to our Q1 2022 outlook. We are forecasting Q1 2022 revenue in the range of $354 million-$366 million. We also expect the following. GAAP gross margin in the range of 57.4%-58.0%. Non-GAAP gross margin in the range of 57.7%-58.3%. Total stock-based compensation expense of $36.9 million-$38.9 million, including approximately $1.1 million that would be charged to cost of goods sold.
GAAP, R&D, and SG&A expenses between $119.2 million and $123.2 million. Non-GAAP, R&D, and SG&A expenses to be in the range of $83.4 million-$85.4 million. This estimate excludes stock compensation and litigation expenses. Litigation expenses to be in the range of $2.3 million-$2.7 million. Interest income is expected to range from $1.0 million- $1.4 million before foreign exchange gains or losses. Fully diluted shares to be in the range of 47.8 million-48.8 million shares. Finally, I'm pleased to announce a 25% increase in our quarterly dividend to $0.75 per share from $0.60 per share for stockholders of record as of March 31, 2022.
In conclusion, MPS's strong financial performance in 2021 was largely due to a 40% increase in fab and assembly capacity, which supported our high-value greenfield product revenue ramp. Looking ahead, MPS is on track to expand capacity in 2022, well beyond $2 billion, allowing the company to successfully ramp new product revenue and achieve strategic market share gains in 2023, 2024, and beyond.
Thank you, Bernie. Analysts, I would now like to begin our Q&A session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the participants icon on the menu bar, and then click the Raise Hand button. Our first question is from Tore Svanberg of Stifel Nicolaus. Tore, your line is now open.
Yes, thank you, and congratulations on the very, very strong results. I'm gonna ask this question differently. You know, usually people ask you know, how come you carry so much inventory? Your inventory days that high, how are you both finding the capacity and, again, being able to build the inventory in spite of this very, very tight environment we're seeing in the industry?
Well, as you know, in this business, building the inventories and qualify fabs. These are now one-day, two-day things. They're not short-term. We planned all these a few years ago. Now we're kind of just, the opportunity presents itself, and we just catch it. Nothing was short-term. We don't have a crystal ball for the future. We just react. We just plan ahead and react as fast as we can.
I think to add to that shows that we have a lot of inventory on hand that presents the capacity to allow us for sales in the next two quarters. What we've done is made conscious investments in inventory in the supply chain, and what we're trying to do is manage such that we hold the inventory. We're still keeping channel inventory lean, and we're trying to make sure to the best of our abilities that we're in touch with the inventories that our customers are keeping, so they're likewise lean.
Yeah. I also wanna add, okay, as you remember, a few years ago, I talked about MPS going for well beyond a million or couple million dollars. I wasn't joking. We plan ahead for our business. That's what we sought a few years ago. Now you grow this much is, of course, we didn't expect that. But we do have the capacities, again, we do have to do some creative ways and the scramblings to get to 45%. That's all that is. Like it wasn't, we don't have a magic tricks in the last six months or so.
It's good, as Michael noted, we crossed the $1 billion revenue threshold, and our revenue growth rate has accelerated from historic precedent.
Yeah. No. Well done. As my follow-up question, could you just add a little bit more color on the $2 billion worth of capacity? You've talked about now, you know, ramping in on 8-inch. You're also qualifying products on 12-inch. Will there actually be 12-inch product sales, this year?
Yes. We are qualified. You know, as you know, MPS don't build a fab, and we don't have a lot of capital spending, but we do have an increase in all these capacities at qualified fabs, okay. To answer your questions, like, we do transitions. Now, nowadays, we get all this capacity, whether it's 12-inch or 8-inch, as much as we can.
Just to add to that was our second 12-inch fab that we brought online in 2020.
Yes.
Right. Very good. I'll go back in line. Thank you, and congrats again.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from William Stein of Truist. William, your line is now open.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the eye-popping results and outlook. I wanna ask about the module business that you've spoken about in the past, this thing that might, you know, even accelerate growth further over time. I'm wondering what percentage of revenue modules contributes today and how we should think about the trajectory of that business. And if you could also comment on any potential tuck-in acquisitions that were either executed or contemplated in the future to fulfill your strategy in that area. Thank you.
Yes. Okay. Well, glad you asked that question. The module business, I think, is a shade under 10% in the fall this year.
It's actually mid-single digits.
Okay.
Yeah.
You can quantify it much more accurately, okay? I don't know all the numbers in detail. All I know is we grow 100% every year in the last couple years, and now you're using the word accelerating this year and the next couple years. That's what I see now. The other things, the second part of your questions about acquisitions for the tuck-in technology or to enhance our future growth by using our MPS technology for those companies.
Yeah, we are engaged with a handful. It's a handful of companies, like more than five or six companies. So far we're engaging with it, and nothing material, like we should announce it now.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Alex Vecchi of William Blair. Alex, your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and I echo the congratulations on the outstanding results. Just maybe to expand on Tore's question with regards to the capacity expansion from $2 billion on, can you quantify, you know, how much more capacity you think you'll be adding in the next year or two or three? Is that the right way to think about it? I think in the past, you've alluded to the fact that the current product portfolio can support upwards of $3 billion-$4 billion in revenue. Is that sort of the right way to think about the long-term trajectory?
Yes. That's absolutely correct. For the semiconductors, yes, we have to have fab capacity and for that kind of revenues. Even going forward, okay, because we're selling more high-dollar modules and solutions which utilize silicon even less. Our silicon wafer capacity will even be less of a factor.
That's actually really helpful. Similarly, with the comments on in terms of the segment breakdown, you know, the storage and compute segment was very strong in the quarter and I think you've talked a little bit about enterprise notebooks. It seems like that's one of the areas, notebooks in general, where there's a little investor trepidation going forward. Can you maybe talk about what the opportunity there is and/or maybe what the SAM is for your notebook outlook over the next few years?
Sure. I think it's important to qualify that the growth that we've experienced, in particular over the last two, three years, has really been at the enterprise level, where we're selling into units that would retail for above $1,200. We've been very successful as far as capturing a large part of market share that really is not necessarily driven by consumer trends. They're not as prone to the downward unit numbers that are being projected for notebooks.
Yeah. You know, overall, we wanna achieve a balanced growth. We don't want to be known as a notebook company. As MPS' strategy is diversify the growth.
Just to pick up on Michael's point, we saw a very strong uptick in our cloud and server business, particularly in Q4, which we expect to continue to ramp into 2022.
Yeah. Overall, the notebook revenue is a single digit, you know.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. With that, I'll hop back into queue.
Yeah.
Our next question is from Quinn Bolton of Needham. Quinn, your line is now open.
Hey, guys. I'll offer my congratulations as well. Bernie and Michael, I'm surprised you haven't gotten a question yet, but I followed the company for a long time. I think this is the biggest gross margin beat you guys may have ever put up. If I got my numbers right, you beat gross margin by 130 basis points in this quarter. Looking back to the third quarter, I think you had a $4 million litigation revenue in the number that you know drove strength in gross margin, but that was clearly a one-time issue. Can you talk first about what drove the strength in gross margins, and you're guiding them effectively flat up 10 basis points technically in the first quarter. It looks like that margin strength continues.
Can you just talk about gross margin?
Sure. We tried to reflect on that a little bit in the prepared comments, where I indicated that, we're benefiting right now by a more favorable shift in our product mix, which is higher margins on the new greenfield business, but also operational efficiencies. As far as we indicated earlier, the percentage of silicon that's coming from 12-inch, but also, is a reflection of our improved quality standards. I think that, as we've reflected on what the sustainable margin going forward, that we've offered sort of a new floor, which we look to grow again 10-20 basis points sequentially. Although, obviously, we'll keep our eyes open if there is an opportunity to have another step up.
Yes, there's another slide. Okay. A few years ago, we talk about our greenfield product, and then, you actually, I remember asked him, okay, there's no headwind in. Is there any headwind in the gross margins? The answer was, all these new product, greenfield product will all aim at the high-end, high-end products and higher values. The gross margin should be better. This time, we didn't increase the price that much. We pretty much passed the cost to our customers or not even passed to our customers.
As Bernie said, have shifted to 12-inch and also the internal efficiency of improvement. With a high gross margin product, that is the majority of the gross margin improvement.
Got it. As a follow-on, you know, for two quarters now, you've seen a pretty nice increase in your internal inventory levels. Wondering if you could just comment, you know, as you're building that internal inventory, how much of that is for new greenfield products versus, say, the run rate business?
Clearly, we shifted away from a consumer side. So that we allocated a lot of product for these high-end targeted MPS targeted market segment. We grow the inventories in the fall for those segments.
I think something to add there is that we do have some high volume business and we're treating that as run rate. It's probably the area that has the tightest capacity. Where we have these new products, the greenfield opportunities, and we have new customers and new markets, as an insurance policy to make sure that they're perceived very positively and that we can cover upside potential, we have been building inventory to support that. I think that's being reflected very well as far as the customer acceptance of the new products, as well as market share gains afforded by the appropriate inventory levels.
Got it. Thank you.
Our next question is from Ross Seymore of Deutsche Bank. Ross, your line is now open.
Thanks for letting me ask this question, and I'll echo the congrats. I wanted to follow up on the second half of your answer to Quinn's question there, Bernie. In the past, you guys have always gained market share and very consistently so. Well, this past year was no different, but you also had significantly greater availability than your competition. I just wanted to see what the client or the customer relationship, how that's been enhanced because of the availability. Do you believe that the wins you've gotten from availability will lead to sticky relationships going forward? You mentioned moving up into kind of first-tier customer base. I'm just trying to figure out the sustainability of the revenue growth because of that availability dynamic.
That's a very good question. Okay, how the hell are we growing like a 45% over our process to a billion-dollar base, okay? I mean, well, when you think about it, okay, all these are product that we released in the greenfield products, okay? These two are first-tier customers. Usually these are large customers. They're ramping a new supply very carefully, so they don't allocate a large percentage. They always have a second source. Now it's like, okay, I have a shortage everywhere. MPS has capacities. Everything shifted to MPS. That's one factor. The second factor is that we talk about MPS products are more programmable, and our customers find out.
Before, they care less. Now they find out and like, okay, our product, single product can do a multiple purpose, and that contributes another factors. We can replace, and like we can shortly redesign, our customers redesign, another source out, to adapt to MPS solutions. By these two points again is very sticky, so again, especially the second point. Our MPS products are more programmable and they enjoy that, and they solve their problems, and they realize the values. I would say they're very sticky.
Great. I guess as my follow-up question, I thought you talked about another greenfield opportunity, which is a huge part of the analog market, which is getting into the converter side of things. Can you just talk a little bit about your aspirations there, some of the applications you're going after, and what sort of opportunity you see unfolding in that?
Yeah. We just do have silicon in-house, and the performance is outstanding. These are the new market segments, and these are purely in a single site, which we never had, okay? We designed internally developed. We have a group of people, and they have a lot of experience. That's a new market segment for us. The focus will be the communications and also medical applications like imaging, X-rays and ultrasounds and those types of things.
Just to add, as far as the characteristics of this technology, there are not a lot of companies that have been successful with this. The ones that have carved out pretty exclusive markets. As a result of that, they command very high gross margins. We look to be a new market entrant, but also with a big competitive advantage.
Yeah. It's a milestone for MPS. As a so-called high performance analog company, they tried it and they achieve a mediocre, you know, result. Now it's like, okay, see what we can do. We do have a product and then for the next couple of years we'll just see what we can do. Okay.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Chris Caso, from Raymond James. Chris, your line is now open.
Yes. Thank you. For my first question, we sort of talked a little bit about seasonality. You know, obviously, the Q1 results are better than what we normally expect in a seasonal Q1, and I suspect that's because of some of the capacity additions that you're bringing on. Can you talk about these capacity additions as we go through the year? Are they brought in? In the road to the $2 billion revenue level, capacity level, is that going to come on fairly evenly during the year? Is there a step-up at some point? When that happens, do you think that you will be fully able to meet your customer requirements, you know, presumably this year?
Chris, I think you get credit for three questions there. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep the thread going. The first issue had to do with seasonality, and generally speaking, from Q4 to Q1, we observe a modest dip. In fact, because we have such an imbalance, an unprecedented demand supply imbalance, that in fact seasonality is not as much a function today as opposed to your second question, which has to do with product availability. That's sort of the gating item for how fast that a company can grow.
As Michael pointed out earlier, as part of our company, we've always built capacity alongside the development of our new products. We in fact got out in front of this upsurge in the market and have been able to participate and in fact accelerate our capacity build-out. That's really a reflection of, you know, how we're looking at 2022. I think that one thing that we've always done is we've had to make intelligent decisions many years ahead of when the capacity has been needed. We're in discussions in order to be able to get capacity for 2023, 2024 and beyond. We feel very secure in what we're capable of doing in 2022.
Well, to answer your questions, honestly, okay, if it give us another 50% growth years for this year, we'll be in trouble.
Okay. I think that would be welcome trouble if that were the case.
Yeah.
I'll take the liberty to ask one more that you were nice enough to answer my three, which is with regard to pricing. Bernie, you made a comment on the call. You spoke about disciplined sales price management, as I think how you termed it. Could you explain what that means and the extent to which pricing has been a contributor to year-on-year growth, and you know, whether that's something that's in the rearview mirror or you'd expect to continue to increase?
I think that most people have recognized within semiconductors and even specific to analog that created an opportunity for many companies to effect price increases with their customers. A lot of them implemented that as early as Q1 of this year. We chose, we made a conscious decision not to increase our prices on a broad base. There were selective market opportunities, but broadly, we did not. We did that along with having the product availability as a means of being able to secure a higher level of market share. Now as we look at 2022 we are going to implement selective but more broad-based price increases, but they'll be at a more modest level than some of our peer companies have implemented.
Yeah. When we look at it, we invest in our customers for the future growth and for the future opportunities. We do have a modest gross margin expansions. As our models, we keep saying it, we have a steady-state growth on every segment.
Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.
Our next question is from Rick Schafer of Oppenheimer. Rick, your line is now open.
Oh, thanks, let me add my congratulations to you guys on a nice quarter, another nice quarter. Maybe if I could, just a quick question on 5G. I mean, you guys have talked in the past about, you know, 5G as a pretty significant opportunity for MPS. I think, Michael, you said potentially hundreds of dollars of potential content there, sort of similar to server or data center cloud for you guys. I don't know if you could give us any update on design momentum, sense of when you know, revenue contribution might sort of start to inflect, if that's still kind of the second half of this year. I'm curious as part of that question, I mean, we...
Are you gonna see QSMod sort of be part of that initial ramp, you know, this year, or is it gonna be more sort of, you know, point of load, E-fuses, you know, sort of how you know began your journey in server? If you could give any color there, that'd be great.
Yeah. So to answer your first part of the question first. In 5G, there's actually a lot of 5G products in, especially the high current side, and again, all relate to QSMod. In a similar technology-based product, again, we power up the 5G in all areas and from small signal to all the way to transmitters. We don't see a very high rate of ramping. So they're still steady state. The other question is QSMod in the data centers.
This year, we have to say it. We occupy. It's still less than a single digit of a total percentage of the total TAM of the market. The significance is from almost nothing to a high end of a single digit. Earlier I said it. If we don't occupy the 30% of our market, we should not be in that business. We still have a lot of room to grow.
I think. Michael.
With the release of VR14, that we're at a very good inflection point in the cloud and in the data center.
Yep. Mm-hmm.
Michael, just to follow that, but it took, I think, about three or four years to sort of get point of load and eFuse share to today, which I think is about 30%. Are you saying that's sort of a good proxy for QSMod could be in the next couple of years?
Yes. Okay. Yes. Let's take naturally longer than that, more than three or four years. Okay. I always wondered why it's so long. In the early days, I said we could grow very quick. Okay. I didn't know what I was talking about. Okay. For the next, as Bernie mentioned, the VR14 and VR13.5 is like a sort of MPS accepted as a player, okay? VR14, I think we have pretty good shares to start to ramp. But not, it's not happening now, okay? Sometimes this year, right?
Yeah. The VR13 has been delayed again. It's more likely to be Q3.
Yeah.
You are right.
Yeah.
You observed in Q4 an uplift as a result of 13.5.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Thanks. If I could ask just a follow-up to Bernie, probably. I just, you know, wanted to ask. I haven't asked in a long time. You know, balance sheet looks great, obviously. You know, I was just curious if you could give us an update on use of cash going forward. I mean, obviously, you've done a really good job of investing in future growth and R&D, but I'm just curious how much, you know, you need to run the business here and, you know, feed R&D, et cetera. Thanks.
It's a great question because you wanna look at it sort of three levels for our particular story. One is we have to keep a certain amount of cash available in order to fund our growth, particularly as it relates to receivables and inventory. But also, we're expanding operating expenses worldwide at an accelerated rate. All of those demand a level of liquidity. The next thing that we've talked about is building infrastructure and capacity. Even though we're outsourced as far as our fabs and assembly, we do a lot of our own testing. In fact, with the quality requirements of some of the new markets we're going in, we can't outsource that.
We do all of our own testing, and that requires an additional investment. Then you have buildings, which, as you know, we purchase our own footprint to house our growing staff headcount. We're gonna continue to leverage the balance sheet in order to help accelerate our growth, while at the same time, as we announced in the prepared comments, we're increasing the dividend by 25%. We're also mindful that we need to return some of the cash back to shareholders.
Yeah. What Bernie said, he said accelerated and expense growth. No, we're not accelerating. No, absolutely not. Let's make that clear. We are a little bit above our models. Okay. Growth, MPS growth, the expenses growth. Okay. For the return of cash to our investors, we have overwhelming base of support from our investors in dividend and not buyback. We thought about the buybacks, okay, now, we said, okay, let's delay it, okay, because we got feedback, okay, they want to do it. I don't know whether it relates to a tax issue or not.
I think in the past, we said our models are consistently okay and increase the dividends. Okay. The other side of using cash is we want to acquire a company not for revenue growth. It's cheaper to grow MPS revenue by its own. We can do this. MPS has a lot of growing variety of different products and we can enhance a couple of areas to the end product. We want to acquire those small targeted products, very unique and sustainable growth, and sustainable. Based on MPS technology, we can grow those companies. That's the company we're really interested in.
Earlier, I said that we're engaged with a few companies now.
Thanks for all that color, guys. Congrats.
Our next question is from Matt Ramsay of Cowen. Matt, your line is now open.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Michael, I've been asking you about this for, I don't know, three or four years, but in the last, I guess, three or four months, you guys talked a bit more about opportunities for MPS in the electric vehicle market, some in drivetrain, some in regenerative braking. I wonder if you might talk a little bit more about the revenue opportunity per car with your lead customer, the timing of that, and how wide is the pipeline in terms of the number of engagements that you might have in the EV market? Thanks.
EV market, again, in, we are in an ADAS area. I think that we are in an ADAS 2.5 or 3.0. We engage with almost everybody. I can give you numbers. For pure electric car, MPS has about somewhere $80-$100 shipped to date. We're starting this year. Well, starting not this year, actually last year. If you're involved with a regenerative braking and a drive train, those will add another over $1,000. Those are. We don't have those revenues yet, but we do release those products.
Got it. Any of those larger ASP products, any thoughts on timing?
There's a mini product that we are talking now. We'll release a couple of them already. I mean, or more than a couple of them already. The key is that we want to offer the total solutions. Customers, pretty much, you can use the MPS reference design.
Got it. As my follow-up question, it's a different topic. One of the things that I've been having investor conversations about is the broad-based industry adding investing a ton of CapEx and adding a ton of capacity, and this fear that the industry is adding it at a peak, right? You see a couple of new fabs coming online from Texas Instruments in the next number of quarters. Infineon's up in CapEx. Pretty much everyone is. You guys have been in a unique position to have a ton of capacity come online when others have struggled to do it, and it sounds like that's gonna continue for you. I just wonder any concerns as the industry catches up with capacity, Michael?
Maybe you could contrast the type of capacity, the process node that you're on, the nature of the capacity that you're bringing online versus that the rest of the industry may be adding. Thank you.
Yeah. That's a good question. Okay, you know that. Okay, first thing is I should answer that, you know, MPS don't build anything. We don't build anything. We don't have a fab, but we do have all the technologies. Usually, how we getting a fab capacity is those fabs are empty. We go in there, we want it. We said, "Okay, we can fill you up." Again, it's a long-term partnership. Like this year or last year, you wanna add a capacity, forget it. Okay. I mean, those guys are busy shipping, okay? There's no empty fabs. We engage with them in many when they're in the downturns, we implement our technology.
Remember, it's not like building a fab. We don't build a fab. The cost is minimal. But we do have some commitment, and we do have to get some consignment or some equipment, okay? But these costs compared to building a fab is much, much less.
Okay.
Thanks very much, guys. I appreciate it.
Yeah. Okay.
Our next question is from Tore Svanberg of Stifel Nicolaus. Tore, your line is now open.
Yes, thank you. Just two quick follow-ups. I know it's early in the year, but you have four horses that are running really fast. You have one horse that's, you know, kind of just running slowly. If we look at this year, which of the horses do you think will grow a bit faster? I know there's a lot of talk about auto and server, but yeah, which horse should we bet on this year?
I wouldn't want to be in those. MPS is auto company. Definitely not a mobile company. I think it's, we're shifting clearly this year from consumers to, well, at least the last couple quarters, we shift from a consumer to automotives and servers from a cloud computing side. Again, these are for this year, probably remain the similar. Okay, that's where we see it.
Yeah. I think that when you say that we've got five strong horses, that's a more accurate reflection because I'd say that in the current year, we were surprised by the strength of industrial. I think that's gonna continue on into the next year. As we talked about earlier, the communications market while it may not be coming on as fast as we'd originally hoped for or expected still looks very promising in the second half of this year. I think really the thesis remains being broad-based growth.
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah.
Let's say that all these other market segments slow down. As a consumer business, and every half years, we can shift it.
Yeah.
We can shift it quickly. Okay, that's currently not in favor, okay? We can shift quickly. By end of the year, so maybe we grow consumer business.
Sounds good. Coming back to the data converter topic, a new segment for you. What are some of the things that we should track for your success there? You know, we all know it's very difficult to crack into that market. Are you going into that market really at the high end of data converter technology? Will that be the way for us to track your success there?
So far, yes. It's a very high-end product. That's a new market segment. Like, earlier I said, okay, we said we're gonna ramp in the data center very quickly, okay? It turned out to be it wasn't the case. I don't wanna predict that. I know the technology is good and the test data showed, okay, we can be, okay, we're far better than on the existing market product.
Great. Yeah, I mean, if you could even get to $100 million there, I'd be very impressed.
Oh, yes. Okay. It's a matter of time.
Sounds good.
I'm confident of that. Along the way, probably we'll learn a few things. Yeah. Okay?
Very good. Thank you.
All right. Okay.
If there are any follow-up questions, please click the Raise Hand button. As there are no further questions, I would now like to turn the webinar back over to Bernie.
Well, once again, I'd like to thank you all for joining us for this conference call and look forward to talking to you again about our first quarter, which we'll likely hold in April. Thanks again, and have a nice day.