All right, we'd like to get started. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Toshiya Hari. I cover the semiconductor space at Goldman Sachs. We're very psyched to have the team from Qorvo with us this afternoon. We have Grant Brown in the center, Senior Vice President and CFO. We also have a special guest, Philip Chesley, Senior Vice President and President of the High Performance Analog business. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us.
Thank you. Appreciate being here.
Really appreciate the time. I have a bunch of questions. I will open Q&A to the audience, so to the extent you do have questions, please be prepared. I wanted to kick off with a couple of near-term questions. You reported June quarter results that were above consensus, very strong results. You guided September quarter revenue to grow 16% at the midpoint. Maybe take us back, talk through the key highlights in the June quarter, and what are some of the key drivers that went into your September quarter guide?
Sure. Again, thanks again for having us this year, but before I start, I just wanted to remind the audience that the safe harbor language that applies to our earnings releases and press releases still applies to today's discussion. In looking at the June quarter, revenue came in above the midpoint of the guide. It was largely due to our ACG or our Advanced Cellular Group, which is in the smartphone market. The strength there was across multiple customers, but the biggest impact attributable to our largest customer. In CSG, we saw a strong pull for our ultra-wideband products and some of our Wi-Fi solutions, including our first ultra-wideband win in a mid-tier smartphone.
In HPA, which Philip can speak to, as we get into it, we were down a bit on the timing of some large defense programs. We had a record Q4 last fiscal year, and we expect to do very well in the second half of this year as that grows, but due to that seasonality, we were down. In the September quarter, we expect some broad-based growth across key markets. In ACG, obviously, the ramp at our largest customer is the single largest driver sequentially, and we do expect Android to be down sequentially. We're coming off of some very large content gains on large customer programs in the flagship spaces, and those ramp down as we see a ramp up in our largest customer.
But we do maintain very good representation there, those customers. In CSG, we're benefiting from the Wi-Fi rollouts in some developing countries like India, as well as the move from Wi-Fi 6 to 6E into 7. So there's an underlying driver in that. And then in HPA, as I pointed out earlier, the sequential growth would be in the defense and aerospace area, where our GaN, GaAs, and some of our advanced packaging capabilities are really critical, enabling technologies for those customers. That said, there's some headwinds that remain. You know, the more interest rate sensitive areas of our businesses are still impacted for our customers. Those are the base station, broadband, and solar markets. Again, as the interest rates have crept up, the capital intensity of those rollouts slows down.
But, you know, generally speaking, our power management portfolio and our SatCom and beamforming products are all doing very well. I'm sure Philip can comment on this.
Great. Thank you for that. A couple of mobile questions before we go to HPA and Philip. Hoping you could characterize the current inventory environment at your customers and the broader space. So you've been going through an inventory correction for a year, year plus, depending on how you look at it. How would you characterize where your customers are at from an inventory standpoint, compare where you are today versus three, six months ago, and if you can differentiate between iOS and Android, that would be great.
Sure. In terms of the comments for inventory, historically, we've talked about channel inventory in the context of Android. From an iOS perspective, we sell direct to the contract manufacturers that are all working according to a master production schedule, so there's very little inventory for Qorvo that would have any impact. On the Android side, last fall or thereabouts, we started to ship through a considerable amount of the excess inventory in the channel. We consider it normal today, and we're back to shipping to end market demand, which is a positive. It's at an absolute level, a lower level than what it had been in some of the trailing years, but generally speaking, it's healthy to be back shipping to end market demand and having cleared that excess inventory.
Okay, great. On your recent earnings call, Bob mentioned that you're not modeling the strong replacement cycle as it pertains to smartphones. But curious what your high-level expectations are for smartphone unit growth over the next couple of years. You know, your largest customer had a couple of announcements. From an AI standpoint, what are the potential killer apps, in your view, that could drive some pent-up demand?
Sure. In terms of overall smartphone unit growth, we don't have very high expectations of growth. It's, it's relatively benign in the, you know, call it a percentage or two. The more impactful growth rate for Qorvo is the growth rate in 5G units, which we expect in around the 10% range, and that's been pretty consistent. The, you know, the question about what would trigger a meaningful upgrade cycle, AI has come up as an example. We're taking a bit of a wait and see approach. We haven't, you know, taking too big of a position on which killer apps might drive it.
It's clear that having AI in the palm of your hand will be pretty exciting, but you know, as it plays into consumer purchasing behavior and what's actually available and when, we haven't taken a big position. So if it drives a super cycle or an upgrade cycle, then it would be upside to our house view. The, you know, ultra-wideband technology is maybe for Qorvo, an interesting area that we could play, as we look out in time. Today, we're in certain areas like the digital keys and some building navigation. In the future, you could imagine other AI applications that are context-aware, where that technology could play in and be very helpful, not only in the handset, but also in the accessories and the environment that the user is in.
You know, beyond UWB, I'm sure AI will deliver or generate more RF requirements that require more and better RF capabilities. You know, those AI opportunities are going to be, if it's on device, a power-hungry application processor, and the RF can help enable, because of the power efficiency, that we could help with on the RF side, those application processors in any AI. So there's opportunity for us, a relatively conservative view on the uptake at this point until we see what types of applications will be there, and then, you know, I would also say as we get into the HPA business with Philip, there's opportunity in AI for Qorvo beyond just the handset.
Mm-hmm. Got it. Grant, you touched on this a little bit, but when we think sort of AI in a smartphone, we think, you know, powerful processors, maybe a little bit more DRAM. What role does or will the RF industry play, and more specifically, Qorvo play, as we sort of transition into the AI era, if you will?
Sure. I think, you know, we're touching on it a little bit, what we call more and better RF. So for Qorvo, specifically, the AI-enabled phones are more likely to be a flagship device or a high-tier device, and those naturally have more RF content in them. It's also the case that within those devices, from a power consumption perspective, you're gonna have higher-end RF capabilities. RF will not only handle the communications piece of the puzzle, and if there's computations happening in the cloud for AI, but it'll also be the case that, you know, it could leverage UWB technologies, as I pointed out, context awareness. You know, there's a lot of different ways in which, I think the RF capability will enable, AI. Again, the unit story is something that we're taking a wait-and-see approach.
You know, but beyond that, you know, it's probably upside to our view if we see any further growth in the unit volumes because of it. But largely, unit volumes, flagship smartphones, and then more and better RF content in those phones.
Got it. At your largest customer, you gained, you know, significant content in the fifteen. You also seem very pleased with, you know, the continued progress in the sixteen. You've also been really vocal about sort of the outlook into next year.
Mm-hmm.
I guess, what's led to your success at your largest customer, and what's giving you the visibility and sort of the conviction to speak to the out year? Because typically, you know, you've got limited visibility, but you've been pretty vocal, or Bob, in particular, has been pretty vocal.
Yeah.
So what's giving you the confidence there?
Sure. We have a very strong relationship with our largest customer. You know, we've had design win activity that spans multiple years with, with them, and then we have, on a forward-looking basis, incremental design activity that looks beyond that. So you're, you're working on multiple generations at any given time, and we've enjoyed consistent success there. We've been growing our share in highly integrated modules we participated in the past, and so we've, we've proven ourselves there. I think we also have a very competitive leading position in certain areas, such as, you know, antenna tuning, RF power management, and other integrated products. So, you know, we've proven ourselves in the past. We've made it a priority. We've spent a lot of time with that customer.
You know, and I think you know we can have some discussion around you know that later this year and then early next, of course, but again, you know, feel very good about our position with the customer. That said, we're underrepresented in terms of that particular customer as they relate to the overall RF TAM for smartphones, and you know, being underrepresented gives us an opportunity for incremental growth, and we're looking to take advantage of it.
Okay, great. On the Android side of your portfolio, how should we think about... Similar question, how should we think about potential content uplift? I guess, you know, what's unique about Android vis-a-vis iOS is that you still have the 4G to 5G transition that's ongoing. Like, where are we in that transition, and how should we think about the incremental content opportunity from here?
Sure. First of all, I'd say, in our Investor Day, I think, Frank Stewart, who runs that group, did an excellent job of laying out, you know, the path forward for Android. It isn't the case that there's a discrete upgrade from 4G to 5G and from 5G to, you know, beyond. It's the case that 5G will probably be a lot like 4G, and that there's incremental upgrades as we go. So 3GPP has defined different release standards. Those will lead to bigger amounts of content, and that'll find its way into the different phones at a certain level of mix over time as they adopt those different technologies. So, you know, we're probably just past the halfway point in terms of Android adoption of 5G.
You know, and as I mentioned earlier, we're looking at around 10% growth, unit growth, in the 5G category of Android. ACG doesn't address 4G phones today, or at least discrete 4G phones. You know, we're looking at those 4G phones and migrating to 5G. Those are coming in at the entry tier. You know, a lot of those phones, the holdout customers there are more price-conscious, and so we're seeing that in terms of mix in the Android ecosystem today. Or we're seeing some of that mid-tier migrate to the premium tier, as they're taking advantage of some of the AI components or just generally upgrading to a flagship device.
We're seeing that as a bit of a distinction as the mid-tier separates into the premium and the entry tier. For us, the content opportunities, as Frank had pointed out, is really, you know, more and better RF. There's receive MIMO, transmit MIMO. You've got some non-terrestrial network types of communications, and then the incremental demands of 5G will find their way into the filtering and all the other capabilities as well as power management and the power consumption and efficiency of those parts. Integration plays a key role in those achieving those RF goals.
Great. Shifting gears a little bit, I want to bring Philip into the conversation. Just for context, I think you joined Qorvo about two and a half years ago, and now you lead the HPA business, obviously. Curious how you're spending your time, and what would you say are your top priorities as the leader of HPA? And to the extent your priorities have shifted over the past two and a half years, how so?
Yeah, that's a great question. I, you know, I think, for me, priority one is how do we, you know, is scaling our defense, aerospace, and our SatCom business. You know, we have a goal to double the size of that business. There is a tremendous amount of opportunities in defense and aerospace when you look at just our footprint that we have in the RF front end of radar platforms today. Scaling that technology with additional products around our RF front end. We have some capability. You know, the electronic warfare market space is really starting to gain a lot of momentum. So there's a lot happening in that space, and really, you know, capturing those opportunities, you know, is really priority one for me.
I think the second priority for HPA and where I spend a lot of my time is building a power management franchise. You know, we are, as we mentioned at Investor Day, you know, we are driving down a path of getting to where we're 50% handset, 50% not handset. And to do that, power management's gonna be key in building a new revenue vector for us. And so I spend a lot of my time taking the, you know, the products that we've either bought through our Active-Semi acquisition, adding additional IP to that and talent in that area. I think in terms of how my priorities have shifted, I think for the first year or two, it was really...
You know, the first year, you're just trying to get your hands around the business and the history and, you know, the customer. I think really, you know, after that, it was really about two things. It was about, if we're gonna scale these businesses, we have to speed up our development cycles, right? And so we spent a lot of time on how do we get faster at developing products. I think in power management, a lot of my time was spent on bringing in talent that, you know, through industry connections that I have and others that, you know, to build a team that can develop really innovative power management products. I think we've done that. You know, we have critical mass in both those areas.
Really, most of my time now is more on the innovation side and market expansion side. How do we, you know, how do we get those innovative products? What markets we're going after specifically, you know, to really, you know, grow HPA.
Great. Quick follow-up on growth going forward. I think you presented a CAGR of 19% for your SAM through 2029. You spoke to opportunities across a range of applications. Maybe to level set, can you first give us a rough breakdown of your business by end market? I think the market's still getting accustomed to the new segmentation of the business. What the key growth drivers are. You spoke to A&D and a couple of others. But yeah, what are the key drivers, and how should we think about those going forward?
Yeah, I won't specifically talk. I'll talk more about kind of the end market piece. But if you looked at, you know, defense and aerospace, 40-45% kind of a range, right? You got SatCom that adds to that. I think the other businesses that we have in end markets are kind of evenly split between industrial. When I say industrial, I'm not just saying base station and broadband. We actually have power management in some industrial areas. And then we have small and growing businesses, both in data center as well as in automotive. Okay? I think for me, though, you know, when I look at the markets that are really gonna grow, I start. I come back to what I talked about, really, defense, aerospace, and SatCom.
You know, when I look at the upgrade cycle that's happening in these Active Electronically Scanned Arrays or AESA, we're still in the early to mid-innings of that transition. And then on top of that, you have these upgrade cycles within AESA to get capabilities that the war fighter needs urgently. So we're seeing, you know... In my twenty years of developing products for D&A, I'm seeing the fastest cycle of trying to get new technologies and upgrades that I've seen in my career. You add to that, you know, the Ukraine war has shown drones are now a key part of that, the battlefield.
And, you know, how you deal with that from an electronic warfare perspective, using high-power RF energy, is really becoming front and center. We have really great technology to scale that up. So I see that as a growth engine. And then I think the other one I would say is that in HPA, it's Satcom. You know, we bought a company called Anokiwave a little while ago, probably six months, a year. I forget. Time goes by fast, I can't remember the exact time. But, and what that really brought us was beamforming capability that really works well with our RF front end.
You know, today, when you look at Satcom, we're well positioned in the satellite side, but we want to expand in the terminal side, whether that's a consumer terminal, whether that is, you know, the upgrade cycle that's happening in aircraft to bring, you know, to be able to watch Netflix on a plane, real time. That's happening, and now we have kind of, you know, the technology and the product, and in some cases, pole position in some of those markets. So I still think we're at the beginning of this whole LEO satellite, you know, communication, bring internet through satellites, transition, and I think Qorvo's in a good place there. So I'm excited about that.
I think in power management, you know, power management, when I look at AI, when I look at all the trends that are driving electrification, you know, in the industry, power management is front and center in every one of those, right? You were talking about handsets and AI. I mean, the same challenges are the defense industry is facing, right? They're looking at AI. How do you put that into a drone? And now all of a sudden, you gotta, you know, you gotta have the memory, but you also gotta have power management to be able to, you know, run those things efficiently, right? And so, you know, we are picking our markets of where we apply our power management technology carefully.
You know, we're looking at handsets, we're looking at defense, we're looking at, you know, some portions of automotive, but I think that market, in general, has a lot of tailwinds over the next, you know, 10-15 years, and you know, we want Qorvo to be a big part of that transition.
That's great. Yeah, thank you. The base station business, which you obviously manage-
Mm-hmm.
- has gone through a cyclical correction post, the fairly significant build-out, of 5G. Curious what your forward expectations are, in that business, and can you remind us what drove the decision to exit from-
Yeah
... from the GaN PA and PAM businesses?
So I think, you know, my take on base station is that I think it's hit bottom. It probably has more, you know, tailwinds than headwinds at this point. You know, you look at the market, you still have 70%-75%, depending on the research report you read, of cell, you know, base stations that have not been upgraded to 5G. So I think, you know, we're starting to see that business, you know, have some forward momentum. I think the rate and pace of that rollout will really depend on, you know, interest rates, CapEx, you know, base station guys. But I think the worst is behind us. I think in our broadband business, it really, you know, I think the same thing.
I think we've kind of hit rock bottom, and I think things are improving. DOCSIS 4.0 is starting to roll out. You know, a lot of that certification testing is ongoing. Some of it's passed. We're starting to see that. So you know, my expectation is those businesses will be, you know, not headwinds for us. They'll be tailwinds for us. In terms of the decision around to exit the PAM business and the PA business, it really came down to two things. The first is, you know, once Huawei got banned, you took a big player out of the market, and then for all intents and purposes, ZTE became not really a customer you could sell to, right? So all of a sudden, your two biggest users are out of your SAM. So that's one.
I think the second thing that really drove the decision was people think GaN. Well, GaN for defense and GaN for base station, they're both GaN, they're the same. They're not. What you need for GaN for base station is linear power. What you need for GaN for defense is, you know, kind of pulse power. They're two very different developments. I'm a big believer in focus. I thought the opportunity in defense was bigger, and so we decided to take, you know, to stop that investment and move those R&Ds and double our focus in the defense and aerospace market.
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. The question on China, and this could be for Philip, it could be for, for Grant or both of you guys. The overall business grew 6% sequentially, in the June quarter. It was up a nice 30% year over year. But when you kind of go back in time, it's still less than half of where you were, at the peak. Is the peak-to-trough decline, is that a function of end demand, weakness in China? Is it inventory? Is it competition? Is it all the above? Maybe, Grant, if you can speak to overall Qorvo, and Philip, to the extent you've got comments on HPA, that would be great.
Yeah, sure. I'll cover the handset part, and then if you want to talk about the infrastructure piece, Philip. So on handsets, you know, there continue to be some macroeconomic headwinds. I'm sure everyone's read, written, or read some of those in the news that are impacting both demand and mix. I pointed out the SKU shift to some of the entry-tier devices in Android specifically, and that's definitely a piece of the puzzle. Sell-in is at an absolute level, lower than we had seen in some of the prior years, and that would impact the overall number of units sold and the RF content available for us.
Now, it's stabilized and, you know, at this point, and we've cleared the channel inventory, so it's not in a bad spot, but at an absolute level, it's lower. There are some export markets for our China-based handset customers into Eastern Europe that have some geopolitical uncertainty and unfortunate events unfolding there that are impacting demand, so you know, we're seeing some constraints there, and then I'd go back to the 5G units that are new to 5G, are likely 4G units coming into our SAM, and those are gonna be at the lower end of RF content in terms of total dollars, and we're seeing a SKU shift there, as those incremental buyers are more price conscious, so we're seeing all of those impacts.
You know, on the handset side, you know, we managed through the inventory correction, and, you know, we're in a better spot today, but at an absolute lower level. And I think you have to put the overall demand on the handset side in perspective of the peaks of, you know, what consumers were purchasing coming out of COVID and upgrading all of their home equipment and devices, and then the troughs we saw in the inventory correction. You normalize that. I think the peaks were somewhat of a distraction or a bit misleading. I don't expect that we'll regain those levels on the handset side. I don't know if, Phil, do you want to talk to the infrastructure?
Yeah, I think on the infrastructure side, I mean, the biggest headwind HPA has had was the Huawei ban. And, you know, if you normalize for that, you would see HPA's growth story look very, very different, right? And I had said that at Analyst Day. I think that when you look at least for HPA, for China today, we don't have a ton of exposure there. Where we do have exposure is mostly in our motor control power management products for segments like garden tool. And what we see there is still soft. You know, I think one of the areas that still have some inventory and some things to work through, I think that's the one end market that's still kind of recovering a little bit.
But all in all, I, you know, HPA doesn't have a significant exposure anymore in China.
Okay, great. Going back to mobile RF for a second, curious what you're seeing from a competitive landscape kind of perspective, relative to, you know, a year ago or maybe two years ago, how would you sort of describe the current setup, relative to the traditional players, the, you know, the Broadcoms, the Skyworks, the Qualcomms of the world - Mm-hmm - and also relative to some of the emerging Chinese players like Maxscend and Vanchip. Are you seeing more of them, less of them? Any changes?
I guess I'd begin by saying we're a strategic supplier to all the leading manufacturers in the Android ecosystem, nearly across the board.
So, you know, in terms of us having good visibility and a good presence in the Android space, you know, there's no change there. There's always been and likely always will be local Chinese competitors that we'll see. One of the more important things that we look at is the gap between the performance in our products and their products. They're getting more capable, but of course, so are we, and we're maintaining a gap there that provides some differentiation for our products.
We see the differentiation mostly in the highly integrated areas, where we're able to take our entire portfolio of technologies, BAW filters, SAW filters, especially those things that aren't in a foundry network and available elsewhere, and couple those with, you know, other high-performance gallium arsenide products for the PAs and switching technologies, put it all together into an integrated package. We've commented in the past on our LMH or low, mid, high product being as a good tool to address some of those mid-tier areas in the Android ecosystem. So, you know, not a substantive change there.
You know, the areas where it is more competitive is in those very entry tier 5G spaces, where those 4G units are migrating in, and we are seeing a bit more of that these days. So the mix shift is probably a bigger determinant rather than our technology competitiveness, if you will. But our customers still rely on us to deliver the highest levels of integration across the mid, high, and low bands, as well as other areas in the phone, and I don't see that changing. We have great relationships with our Android customers and are well positioned there from a technology and capacity standpoint.
Okay, great. Maybe a question on gross margin.
You know, you're guiding September quarter gross margins to improve, I think 560 basis points, 46.5% of the midpoint, which is really good sequential improvement. But you are still roughly 350 basis points away from your long-term target of 50%. Where are some of the near-term puts and takes, and what gets you sort of back to that fifty-ish percent level over time?
Sure. I can provide a recap, and then I'd also cite the Investor Day, where I had, you know, a lot of material there and some slideware that you could refer to for a full discussion. In fiscal 2025 and early 2026, we're impacted by improvements in utilization that's helping to drive some of that.
You know, I commented that, you know, in the September quarter, you know, we'll have sold through a lot of the high-cost inventory that, we were carrying in the past, and we'll have a, a much smaller headwind associated with the underutilization impact from that. And then, as we look into that kind of fiscal 2025 second half and into fiscal 2026, you know, our utilization should still improve, so we won't be having as big of a headwind, but there's still room to go. You know, we're still not at levels where I'd consider us fully utilized across our factory network, and so we can improve, on that front from an average utilization standpoint.
One of the comments that we also made in the last quarter that I'd highlight is we're now 100% eight-inch BAW in our Texas facility, so larger wafer diameters, and we're continuing to shrink the die size for our latest generation BAW technology on those wafers. All of that leads to a more efficient production and manufacturing capability and will help our gross margin profile over time. It isn't the case that it's discrete. All of a sudden, all of our filters inside of any given module are 100% latest generation, smallest die on the biggest wafers. It's gonna take some time for that to work its way in. So I'd say that's a tailwind as we look forward over time. As we move maybe beyond fiscal 2026 and 2027, we start to see a business mix.
So we'll start to shift towards our fifty/fifty model of, over half of our revenue coming from non-mobile areas of our business, of which HPA is margin accretive, and we'll see a benefit there. You know, we would expect that, you know, those products and in our businesses that are, higher mix and lower volume, naturally have a larger gross margin and, and would be accretive, that applies to HPA and, and CSG for, for that matter.
Okay, great. I'm gonna pause here and see if we have any questions from the audience. Okay, I'll keep going. In terms of capital allocation, you guys have been, you know, fairly acquisitive over the past several years, mostly tuck-ins, to be fair. How would you characterize your appetite, as it pertains to M&A today, you know, versus a couple of years ago? To the extent, you know, you are still considering M&A, what kind of financial or, you know, technological characteristics would you look for in a potential target?
I'm very much active reviewing on a consistent basis, and no change there. We have a strong balance sheet and ability to finance acquisitions that we think are attractive. In the ACG business, you know, the latest we had done there was a company called Cavendish for MEMS-based technologies. You know, you could see things there, but most likely, the acquisition candidates we're gonna see that are attractive for us are gonna be in Philip's business in the HPA space. We recently did Anokiwave. I don't know if you wanna talk about that, Philip?
Yeah. You know, we did an Anokiwave, right? That was more of a tuck-in. That was more of a technology play for us to get beamforming technology, as I had mentioned earlier, to help kind of round out our portfolio, to be able to go fill kind of the whole system. I think, though, we are constantly looking for areas in HPA for acquisitions that makes sense, right? One, we got to be a better owner. Two, you have to be able to get a deal done. And that's more complicated, I think, these days than it's been in the past. But in particular, GaN is an area. If we see something there that makes a lot of sense, I think that's an area that we're super interested in, too.
Got it. Right. I guess as a follow-up, Philip, you talked about power management-
Mm-hmm.
Being a big focal point for you all. Do you feel like as you sort of compete in that market, pursue that opportunity, you have the complete set of assets to do so, or do you still see full of holes that you need to fill?
We're still probably early innings on this. I think, you know, we have, we've built a strong development team, you know? I think, we are going to build out our field and sales capability, you know, as we get wins, right? You can't just do it all from an optics perspective overnight. You gotta kind of, you know, walk before you run. But I'd say we've made a significant stride in both those areas. And again, you know, we're not looking to necessarily go greenfield on new customers. We're looking just to apply some of the innovations that we have in power management in the markets that we're in today before we kind of expand beyond that.
You know, that helps us at least kind of, you know, in the near-term target, you know, customer relationships and things like that that we already have, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Okay.
So yeah. Still some work to do, but we've made a lot of progress.
Okay, awesome. Outside of M&A, Grant, how should we think about your capital allocation priorities? I think you've, for the most part, focused on opportunistic buybacks, but dividend, does that ever come up in internal debates or with investors, for that matter?
Sure. You know, just to start with the dividend, you know, it has been discussed and, you know, we just recently did an investor survey, and it hadn't come up as something that investors were interested in. We have used the buyback over time to return value to shareholders and appreciate the flexibility it offers and opportunities as the share price becomes dislocated from what we feel is fair. In terms of other capital allocation strategies, you know, we look at it as a waterfall-type approach. I mean, there's of course, you know, some amount of cash on hand, and you look at working capital, and you kind of go down the list. You know, there's no shortage of internal investment opportunities right now.
We have, you know, within our CSG business and HPA business, there is plenty of opportunity there on what we choose to fund, and so making those investments are critical for us to diversify the business. There's also, even within our ACG business, you know, we've talked about trying to grow even at our largest customer, which takes a upfront investment to get in sync with those product development roadmaps, and we're making those investments, too. We see that in our OpEx today, and then we're investing in ourselves, right? Our digital transformation is another opportunity for us to invest in ourselves and come up to speed on the systems that we use to run the business.
So, you know, there's no shortage of investment opportunities, but we would still look to use the share buyback as the means to return value to shareholders. The one thing I would point out beyond that would be our 2024 notes. They're coming due in December, and we expect to retire those unless something dramatic changes with interest rates.
Got it. Okay. AI obviously is a huge topic these days. I've been asking most of my companies, how you're leveraging AI-
Mm-hmm.
as you operate the business. At Qorvo, has anything changed on that front over the past year or two, to the extent you are leveraging AI internally, whether it be chip design or day-to-day operations? How are you leveraging AI, and what kind of benefits or returns have you been able to identify?
... Sure. For Qorvo, we've been using AI for quite some time. It depends on how maybe the nomenclature, if it's, you know, machine learning or, you know, if you've got neural networks or, you know, large language models and some of the latest tools. But we've been using all of these things for quite some time. We'll look to lead where it impacts our customers, our relationships, our product design, and those types of areas. It's highly specific to what we do, and so we're gonna have to invest more to make those tools because they're not available in the open market.
We're more content to be a fast follower on the types of tools where, you know, they're available commercially, either as a general use AI tool or as something that comes inside of one of the commercial software packages that we use today. So, you know, we'll leverage those tools. Going back to our digital transformation, you know, that's really one of the opportunities for us to recalibrate around systems that are more modern and able to leverage some of those AI and commercial off-the-shelf tools that we wouldn't have had access to, and then we do use it in products, too, so-
We do, we do. You know, we, you know, again, it's more ML than maybe, you know, large language models, but in particular, in power management, and in particular in battery management, where you're looking at state of charge, you're trying to, you know, predict things, we're finding that, you know, using ML is, you know, really an area where we think we can add value to our products and add value to our customer solutions. So there's quite a bit of work happening, both in power management, and we're starting to even look at delivering that in some of the RF products that we have as well.
Yeah, it's pretty exciting. You can train in the cloud and then embed it in your product. It's pretty-
Yeah.
-pretty exciting.
Yeah.
Nice. Nice. That's great. I guess in the last two minutes, really wanted to give you the opportunity to speak to anything that we may have missed. I know we've kept you busy with investor meetings, all day. Throughout your conversations, anything you feel like, as a collective unit, we missed about maybe it's the HPA business or overall Qorvo, anything that we underappreciate about the Qorvo story?
Sure. I think you hit on it. I mean, we're really trying to highlight the diversification aspect of our growth strategies. You know, it isn't to say that we don't want to grow in ACG. We've targeted, you know, certain areas where we have a differentiated solution, and especially at our largest customer. We can take the profitability from that business and reinvest in areas like HPA and CSG. The defense area is a really interesting opportunity for us. We've commented on the second half, looking even stronger after coming off last year's Q4, which was a record. So, you know, we're very well positioned, and Philip talked about that, and then the UWB market within CSG, another nascent market.
We're very early on the adoption curve there, but we're well positioned with our portfolio of products and had some sizable design wins that we're waiting to come into the revenue line, but we're supporting those customers and building those products today. So you know, I think the diversification strategy and the reuse of some of that capital as it's deployed into our diversification-oriented businesses within HPA and CSG is by far the biggest piece of our strategy. The end result, if we're successful in the coming few years, would be to achieve our target operating model. That would put us at less than 50% of our total top line coming from the mobile side and a much more broadly diversified business.
Okay. Philip, anything from your end?
I'd say, well said. I think the last piece on the DNA side, maybe just, you know, we also have an onshore capability for advanced packaging, and I think, you know, as the industry moves to where you're having to fit this advanced capability into smaller and smaller spaces, I'm not sure that that's completely, you know, as visible maybe as it, as it needs to be over time, because I think that's gonna be a real strong asset and a growth driver for Qorvo as well.
Great. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the time.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks.