We've set out to really reposition the company strategically, but also from a financial posture. Over the last few years, we've really focused on what we can control, and that became even more important and relevant in the last couple of years with all the volatility that we've had, whether it's demand, whether it's geopolitical, and, and, and. What does that mean? What are the things that we can control? You've seen us maintain investments in new products, and I'll talk a little bit about the penetration of new products that are helping with the growth back, but also growth forward. We have focused on our manufacturing footprint, rationalizing our manufacturing footprint to match our portfolio of products with high value. We even, as soon as last quarter, talked about taking capacity offline.
Not only have we reduced our physical footprint of a fab, part of our fab lighter, but part of our fab right approach is really focusing our manufacturing to the areas where we add value, but also having the right manufacturing capacity to support our growth. All of these have led to a much more predictable, but also a much more certain environment from a gross margin expansion perspective, where coming out of this, you're going to see a margin expansion that is better than what we would have otherwise gotten had we not done those changes. With the current existing footprint, I talk about it as a strategic realignment, but it's also a competitive advantage knowing the geopolitical environment we are in. We have set out to have, for example, from manufacturing, a primary and a secondary.
When you have a primary and a secondary, one in the U.S., one outside the U.S., when you have geopolitical uncertainties, that becomes a competitive advantage. We have been utilizing that competitive advantage to maintain stability from our customer and really capture the demand without the volatility. Now, we cannot prevent all volatility because customers still have their factories that they have to rationalize, but from our exposure, we give the customer that supply resilience that they have asked for starting in COVID, but now it is for different reasons. From a demand environment, we started to see signs of recovery. We talked about signs of recovery in the industrial market, which is our second largest market. Based on the outlook that we see, net of any changes in the environment that we talk about, we do expect Q2 to be the bottom even in automotive. We are expecting growth.
We're expecting growth driven by our penetration and our success that we've had in EVs in China. We are also going to benefit from a broad-based recovery based on the signs that we see even for the second half of this year, of course, net of any changes in the geopolitical outlook. Net of those disruptions that are not that we don't know about, we feel good about the second half. Of course, next year is too soon to talk about next year, but the second half is the first step of did we hit the bottom and are we going to see recovery from there.
Got it. I do not want to read too much, Hassane, in the body language, but it is the first time after a while that I have heard you use the word good and recovery. Right? Or am I reading too much? Because with the last number of quarterly calls, you have been more kind of guarded, right? Because of what? Is it fair to say you are feeling a little better now? If yes, what is driving that?
Look, you've known me for a long time. As far as I'm going to call it for what I see it. And I've always said, I'm going to talk about what I see, not what I hope to see or wish to see. Now, that works out for or against you. When I started talking about the softness in industrial and automotive, I was public enemy number one. We are seeing signs. We talked about it on the call. We're seeing signs of recovery in industrial. Both Thad and I talked about it. Industrial is going to be better in the second half of the year than it's in the first half of the year. Automotive, bottoming out, like I said, in Q2.
Second half of the year is going to be better than the first half of the year, driven by ramps of new products in automotive that we have already seen in the market. I was at the Shanghai Auto Show last month. I saw the models that we are in. They are released. Those we expect to ramp. Those are facts. They're not projections or those are facts. That's what I'm referring to. So yeah, based on the facts that we see, again, net of any disruption that I can't project, the second half is going to be more favorable in the markets that we address. Now, of course, you haven't heard me talk about I didn't call out AI, which I'm sure in this conference, the first word out of everyone's mouth is AI. AI has doubled year on year for us in the first quarter.
It's smaller revenue than our primary markets of auto and industrial. Even there, that's more of a penetration. That's not a recovery comment because that market has been good. From our side, from onsemi , we've been investing in that. You've seen us, we acquired the Silicon Carbide JFET. As the rack power increases in that market, now you're going to see more of our penetration in that market because now it's in our sweet spot of high power, just like auto and industrial is.
Got it. On the automotive side, the second half strength, is that China or are you starting to see some signs of recovery outside of Chinese OEMs also?
There are signs outside, but the primary driver is really the new product ramps for us, which is driven by China. But also outside of China, we have had share gains as well. So share gains, you can call it recovery, but that's specific to onsemi . But from a general market recovery, we're going to benefit just like everybody else. But there are a few that are onsemi specific. The share gains and the China ramp, those are onsemi specific.
Got it. I remember, Hassane, in the last almost a year plus or so, one reason you had been a little more measured and guarded in your outlook was because of channel inventory, right, where you mentioned that it was not just on, it was a number of your competitors. Where do we stand today in automotive specifically, and then we will talk about industrial. Do you think most of the excess inventory is kind of done with on the automotive side, or are there still spots that we have to worry about?
Yeah, so you mentioned channel inventory. I want to break the inventory question in two different pieces. From a channel inventory, we pride ourselves with the execution that I've talked about. We've set the company up very well with really tight control of channel inventory. Even in a downturn, you've seen us some quarters drain channel inventory in dollars, so less and less. We've been very measured and very disciplined as far as what we ship. We have to see the demand and get the certainty of demand before we fulfill it through the channel. Otherwise, it will get stuck. That we've done very well. That's been really always been in our sweet spot. We've increased the weeks of inventory a little bit in the channel for a very specific reason. We have starved the broad market during the shortages.
We said we're going to increase in order to service the broad market. Our customer count in the broad market since that decision was made has increased 19% year- on- year. We're getting more customers in that broad, which for us is a strategic decision why we increase inventory. From a dollar perspective, that's been very, very steady. Inventory on the balance sheets, again, right in our sweet spot. Our base inventory is 119 days. You can think about it, we want to fluctuate between 100 and 120. That's there. Back to everything we control in a recovery, we don't have to wait to burn inventory in the channel and burn inventory on the balance sheet before we take our utilization up. As soon as the recovery, you're going to start seeing our utilization go up. Two quarters later, margin expansion will start.
That is what we have set the company up for success during downturn. Back to the things I started with, the things we control. The second part of your question, specifically on automotive, that is not a channel inventory. That is more on the customer. We believe we are kind of, we are there. It is not an industry answer. It is more customer by customer. There are some customers that still have inventory and they are going to kind of continue, but there are customers that have achieved their inventory burn. I say customer by customer because the level of inventory, if you ask me, well, where do they want to be, it depends on the customer and their financial position. If they can afford to have working capital tied to inventory, they are going to have higher weeks than others.
We believe even without a recovery, just to go back to demand from undershipping demand to demand, you're going to see that benefit in the outlook for us.
Got it. Makes sense. Whenever people hear about strength in China, the perception is, this is all silicon carbide and just because of the strength of their EV market and silicon carbide sooner or later is going to commoditize and these sockets are not going to be sticky. Maybe just if we take a step back, Hassane, talk to us about the silicon carbide market as it exists today. How strategic is it for you? Your China exposure, is it just that one aspect or is it more broad based? Just how sticky are these sockets in China?
Sure. From a silicon carbide, yes, the silicon carbide technology and the market is still strategic for us, not just in automotive, but renewable energy. When I mean renewable energy, I am not talking about residential solar inverters. I am talking about charging stations, about energy storage, container level battery packs. Utility grade and commercial grade, all of these are areas we win and we win because of the value. What does that mean, the value, and why do I still consider silicon carbide strategic versus a lot of the news and the headlines you see out there? I have always been very consistent from the beginning. You only win if you provide value. I never talked about the cost curve. I never talked about any of that. What is that value and why do we win?
If we at onsemi , our products give 10% more efficiency from a silicon carbide and the customer can remove 10% of the battery, that's way more dollars than a piece of silicon given it for X% less. So the customer will pay more for a highly efficient silicon carbide if they can get their cost out of the battery. That's not a problem at all. Why is that important in China? Because the customer sources the battery and the silicon carbide. There's no tier one. Think about it in a traditional model, you have a tier one that does the inverter and a tier one that does the battery. If I say, hey, you got to pay more for silicon carbide on the inverter because I get 10%, you can save the battery, they go, I don't make the battery. Efficiency doesn't matter.
The fact that EVs are decision points at the OEM highlights the value that we provide because the OEM can do the trade-off and the optimization at a system level. That is why we win in China. That is why we win in Europe. That is why we win in North America. Point number one, that is silicon carbide EV. EV penetration, plug-in hybrid, last quarter, I talked about how even plug-in hybrid, we have got a North American plug-in hybrid design and design win with silicon carbide. As plug-in hybrids start to use that, they want to extend the range beyond the 50 mi kind of plug-in hybrid to 75 and 100. Now silicon carbide becomes the name of the game. We are starting to get that penetration in, which will support our growth.
Whether it is China, Europe, and North America, you win with silicon carbide if you provide the customer the value that they can extract out of the system, starting with the efficiency. We do that. That is why we win. That is why I call it the consistency to win. Are there and has there been silicon carbide suppliers in China? On the substrates, yes. On devices, there are a few. How close are they? Not close. The next thing people say is, well, they are going to catch up. Yeah. Do we think we are standing still too? They are going to catch up to the prior and prior generation. On the call, I talked about our trench silicon carbide. We are also advancing at the boundary of what we can offer our customers. That is how we are going to win. It is not about China or China EV or against Chinese competitor.
It's about how do you win with silicon carbide? That bottom line is efficiency, not just on the device, but also on the packaging.
Also for the Chinese OEMs that are looking to export outside of China, that efficiency matters, right? Just good enough is not going to work outside of China. They have to compete with the other disruptors and OEMs. They have to differentiate that in that export market as well.
Great point. Got it. Now, what about the Western EV? Like the ex-China EV market, right? You have a fairly prominent North American customer. We know that outside of China, EV volumes have been softer, right? What are you seeing just as a kind of a broader Western market EV adoption? Has that trend rolled over? Do you think it's going to pick up at some point? How are you modeling that in your growth?
By the way, it didn't roll over. Specific OEMs have challenges and headwinds. If you look at an aggregate, somebody else is getting that because the total number, EVs in Europe are starting to increase. They're not going down. The slope is not what we thought from four years ago or three years ago, but EVs are still a growth market from a unit perspective.
As those EVs get to the 800-volt battery, which is kind of where the market is going, silicon carbide is going to be more and more. A lot of these EVs have been historically on IGBT because silicon carbide was not that accessible when those cars were designed four years ago or five years ago. We're starting to see that conversion. Pretty much 100% of the RFQs on 800-volt batteries today are silicon carbide. You got to see that penetration come in. The growth in silicon carbide specifically is not just tied to the EV volume and EV penetration, but you have the silicon carbide penetration into existing EVs as well. That's the double growth that you can start seeing.
Got it. To put you on the spot, Hassane, if I could, a few years ago, you had sized that market at roughly three-ish billion and you had said ON at that time had mid-20s or so market share. What is that snapshot of the market today and what ON's market share?
I won't give you the market because a lot of the quotes for the market is a lot of the third-party reports, which I don't have to tell you have been wrong so far. I can give you based on our view, the 20% sole market share has only increased since then. Our target remains 30%-40%. That's been our target in the market has increased. We've talked about share gains in North America. We've talked about share gains in China. We've talked about share gains in Europe. Our share has been increasing. Regardless of what the market does, it's going to be bumpy. We've always said the market's going to be bumpy, but our share is increasing and that will remain. That's on track. That's increased since we talked about it a few years ago.
One last question on silicon carbide. There is a well-known kind of smaller competitor of yours, right, that is going through a lot of financial turbulence right now. Does that impact your share or your customer engagement in any way depending on whatever happens there?
It does not, based on, you kind of call it the last six months, because the last six months have been the financial struggles, right? That has, was, and I have talked about it publicly before. A few years ago, when the execution issue started with that peer, that is when customers started coming to us and starting to talk about conversion. A lot of design wins that are forward-looking. A lot of them are new designs that a customer just made a new EV and we are the incumbent. Some, they were using that competitor. Based on the challenges from two years ago, we have been converting since, for two years now. The current environment is not what is causing a shift or an opportunity in the short term. That opportunity has been coming along for the past few years. From a supply side, we do not have any impact.
From a supply side, part of our competitive advantage to customers is we do not have the dependency on third-party substrates. We are vertically integrated from that perspective. That has proven to be a very, very good point versus some of the peers, the other peers that source from them.
Got it. When we think of on, people and autos, people always bring up silicon carbide. The one other important thing you guys are very strong at is emit sensors, right? Talk to us about what is the state of that market, especially as it relates to a lot more ADAS adoption in cars. Is that still a growth opportunity for you? Is it kind of being caught up in all these macro issues? Where are you in emit sensors and then how much of a growth market is that for you?
Yeah. For us, emit sensors market is not just auto, but we also industrial. As you see a lot of the automation, you're going to see that robotics and factory automation using a lot of our sensors. Automotive is a very interesting market. We've always said we have high share in the market. We're about 60%-80% in ADAS specifically, but 60% in auto. Market share is high, which means that it's more tied to penetration and volume. It did get caught up with the inventory burns that we've had. Some of the SOCs talked about their inventory that they had to adjust. It is a very interesting market. It is definitely a focus market and it is a growth market.
What I mean by that is even in the first quarter, we talked about a big Chinese OEM that is going down the path of autonomy across a much broader platform. We started ramping there as well. We are focusing on that business. We have new products coming out and we will continue to push that penetration as more and more automotive cars get to that autonomy. It is more tied to volume and penetration. Remember, three, four years ago, we thought we would be in level four and five today, right? We are level two plus. It is kind of that. Every car now is getting that content. Now the capability is going to keep evolving. The more OEMs that introduce a higher level of autonomy, the more we are going to see the benefit from that business.
That's what I wanted to ask. You expect ON to participate in some of these new autonomous car, robotaxi type projects?
I don't want to robotaxi is a term apart.
Yeah, autonomous car, right?
Autonomy, yes.
Okay, understood.
I'll keep it at that industry term.
One thing, Hassane, that came up on the earnings call was the concept of pricing that the industry has gone through, not just ON, but just broadly, pricing that was supposed to be kind of flattish, but it went up a lot and then it was supposed to kind of stabilize at flattish, then low single digit. I think on the last one or two calls, you spoke about price concessions that kind of caught some investors by surprise. Where are we in terms of how you think about pricing going in the next handful of quarters?
Yeah, look, to me, I talked about price movement, not really concession because think about it this way. Pricing being flat and unmovable is not a business decision you can stand behind. Price stability is something we can talk about. Let me explain what I mean. We have new products coming out as an example. We take cost out of our products. If I take 10% cost out of a product and I work with a customer and say for more share, I get 3% cost reduction as an example, I'll take that deal any day because I took 10% off the cost, manufacturing costs, and we've been working on our manufacturing network and costs and so on, incentivizing to gain share and using that. That is why I call this surgical and strategic. It is not like pricing across the board is deteriorating.
I very specifically said it was strategic and it was surgical in nature in order to achieve a business outcome. It is one tool like I have in the toolbox with other tools. New products, value, all of these are tools in the toolbox for us to gain share and win designs. Pricing is a normal thing. It is not a change in strategic outlook is my point.
It wasn't something that is happening to cause you further?
No, I mean, the stuff that falls under that is the things that we've been very clear about, we're not going to chase it down, we're going to walk away because there's no value. It's purely a pricing discussion. It's not surgical. There's no change in our strategy. From a day-to-day, yeah, but don't expect pricing news to keep coming up quarter on quarter. That's not where we are.
In aggregate, how would you kind of characterize the pricing environment for you overall in, let's say, 2025? Down, low, mid-single, or is it any different than what you?
It's no different than what I talk about, what I already talked about. No increase, no further. It's stable.
Yeah. What Hassane referred to is the business that we walked away from, the $475 million, which was volatile business, right? We talked about there is pricing pressure on that. If you remember, we kept about $300 million because the margin was favorable. That we are seeing some pressure and we always said we were not going to chase that. Now that $300 million could disappear over time. We will see how the market plays out. That is one where we are not going to compete on.
Okay. How many more quarters do you think that business has to go?
I think it's going to depend on demand, right? If demand comes back, it may not disappear at all, right? I mean, not all of it will go away. I think it's more dependent. I'm hoping by the time we get to 2026, we're not talking about this.
Understood.
I remember we thought we were going to be done with it two years ago.
Right. Still lingers on.
Still here, yeah. It's market dependent.
Understood. Some of your bigger competitors are in Europe. What I'm leading to is given what we see because of all the geopolitics and trade and tariff issues, do you think that they may have an edge in terms of winning future business because they happen to be not based in the U.S.? Are you seeing customers change behavior because of these factors or not really?
No, because it goes back to, I mean, I'll give the perfect example of our success in China. If that were the case, now I'll flip it the other way. Would that same? By the way, I don't think that's true because of the win in China. If I take your scenario, then we have a much better advantage in the U.S. because we also manufacture in the U.S. You see what I mean? The point I'm trying to make is our manufacturing footprint that we have, U.S., Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and some China, we're in a much better position to service customers no matter where they are. Number one. Number two is we do have customers, that Chinese customers that want to export back to what's that said. Therefore, what about their manufacturing for the export market that they want out of China?
Flexibility of supply and a manufacturing network like we have is actually a competitive advantage, not a disadvantage. But at the end of the day, you have to have better products. That's the bottom line.
All right. One other thing I can't resist but go back to your kind of feeling of optimism is some of your peers, right, as they have started to use words like inflection or recovery, they have often pointed to above seasonal quarters. Are we at that point where you think one could talk about?
Remember what?
You opened the door, so I'm just.
No, no, that's fine. I also characterize my approach as I'm going to call it to what I see it. Talking about seasonality at this point means nothing. What is seasonality? We have been four or five years of no seasonality. What is seasonality? I do not talk about seasonality. It is either up or not. What it is will happen over time. Seasonality, you need normalcy, whatever the new normal is, but you need normalcy for at least two years. You get two data points. That is when you start hearing me talk about seasonality and so on. For now, I am managing to do we see green shoots? Do we see growth? Can I understand why the growth is? Is it new designs like we talked about? Is it broad-based? Is it industrial?
Those things I can measure, I can track, and I can hold my team accountable to. That's what I can talk about. Overall trends, it is too soon to talk about trends.
Got it. And then gross margins, do you think gross margins also will bottom at roughly where your sales are bottoming? We should be looking for some recovery. Obviously, they're not always perfectly aligned because of utilization and such, but.
Yeah, you hit on it. Gross margins are going to be driven by utilization in the short term, right? Longer term, as the new products come out, Treo, we're going to have the accretive margin products ramping as well. In the short term, if I think about this year, it's all utilization, right? Every point of utilization is 25-30 basis points of gross margin improvement. If you think about where we are today, roughly 60% utilized, it is going to step down slightly here in Q2. The rest of this year is going to be kind of in this range of where our Q2 guidance is. By the way, our Q2 guidance, if you take out the under absorption, that's 900 basis points. You can just add to that, right?
That's the full impact of getting from, let's call it 60% to the kind of low 80% where we maxed out. There is this two-quarter lag for the P&L. For the remainder of this year, we're going to be kind of in this range. As we take up utilization in the second half, assuming there is a recovery, you're going to see the margin impact start as early in 2026. We expect that. As Hassane was saying, we don't have to wait for an inventory bleed, right, on our balance sheet or at the distis to have that increase in utilization. We can react very quickly and that margin will hit us a couple of quarters later.
One thing, in the short term, it's all about utilization, but I do want to make sure we touch on the longer-term margin expansion, which is the new products. He mentioned Treo. I talked in the first quarter. We recognized revenue on Treo already. We expected that, of course, in the second half of 2025, but we've already achieved.
What application did that?
Those are on the industrial, specifically on the medical and so on. By the way, if you know the medical market, you do not just make a product and get into medical. You have to prove the reliability. The fact that we achieved the milestones is, again, proof point that, one, that product and that technology is competitive. The first dollar on a brand new technology is always the hardest. Now we have confidence in the funnel, we have confidence in the ramp, we have confidence in the breadth. Right now, what we are focusing on is the breadth of the product. We are on track to doubling the number of products on that platform. That is going to fuel the growth towards that $1 billion by the end of the year by 2030 and with a margin of 60%-70%.
As that business becomes a higher % of revenue, then the margin expansion is going to start coming from mix on top of just the short-term utilization impact.
Got it. Finally, Hassane, in terms of data center, right, you mentioned that that is a growth driver. When do you think you get to a point where you might be able to call it out separately also so one can track the progress in that?
I'll let you know.
Okay. Do you see enough opportunity in the end?
I see enough opportunity. We talked about we acquired the Silicon Carbide JFET. That's a very differentiated technology. You're going to start seeing a lot more kind of announcements and.
It's a crowded market though, right?
That is why you do not hear me. You have not heard me talk about it because I am not going to run after a crowded market. That is why I very clearly talk about Silicon Carbide JFET. Nobody has got that. As the voltage starts coming up and they need that specific technology, that is where we add value. We are going to penetrate that market. We are not going to go in and kind of elbowing everybody because if you do not provide value, now you are talking about pricing. That is not the market we are in. We are going to be very disciplined, but we are going to be strategic. We have value to offer customers with the technologies we provide. That is where the progress is going to be, not just general purpose.
Makes sense. On that optimistic note, thank you so much, Hassane. Thank you, Thad. Really appreciate you joining us this morning.
Thank you.