Good afternoon, and welcome to the Seagate Technologies Fiscal Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is David, and I will be your coordinator for today. Session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Shane Heston, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury.
Please proceed, Shaney.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's call. Joining me are Dave Mosley, Seagate's Chief Executive Officer Gianluca Romano, our Chief Financial Officer. We posted our earnings press release and detailed supplemental information for our December quarter on the Investors section of our website. During today's call, we will refer to GAAP and non GAAP measures.
Non GAAP figures are reconciled to GAAP figures in the earnings press We have posted on our website in Form 8 ks that was filed with the SEC. We do not reconcile certain non GAAP outlook measures because material items that may impact these measures are out of our control or cannot be reasonably predicted. Therefore, a reconciliation to the corresponding GAAP measures is not available without As a reminder, this call contains forward looking statements, including our March quarter financial outlook and expectations about our financial performance, Market demand, industry growth trends, planned product introductions, ability to ramp production, future growth opportunities, Oppenital effects of the economic conditions worldwide resulting from the COVID-nineteen pandemic and general market conditions. These statements are based on management's current views and assumptions and information available to us as of today should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date. Actual results may vary materially from today's statements.
Information concerning our risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause results To differ from these forward looking statements are contained in our most recent Form 10 ks and 10 Q filed with the SEC, our Form 8 ks filed with the SEC today and the supplemental information posted on the Investors section of our website. As always, following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to you, Dave.
Thank you, Shaney. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Seagate exited its calendar year 2020 on a very strong note, delivering December quarter performance that exceeded our objectives. Compared with the prior quarter, we grew revenue 13%, Expanded non GAAP operating profits 31% and significantly increased free cash flow to $314,000,000 We began executing our recently increased share repurchase authorization and retired over 18,000,000 shares of Seagate stock where approximately 7% of the shares outstanding beginning of the quarter. Through the combination of share repurchases and our quarterly dividend, we returned a total of $1,200,000,000
in the quarter.
Despite the challenges of a global pandemic, Seagate grew annual revenue 2% in calendar year 2020, Achieving revenue growth inside of our long term financial target range. At the halfway point of fiscal 2021, Our performance puts us well on our way to achieving our objective to deliver relatively flat revenue for the year. In the remainder of my comments today, I'll provide an update on end market trends, share the progress we've made on our technology and product roadmaps and offer some insight into how these advancements position Seagate for the strong secular announced data growth trends ahead. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, 2020 was headlined by diverging end market trends, Strong cloud investments to support the remote economy and digital transformation were countered by significant disruptions to enterprise IT spending. However, during the December quarter, the enterprise markets began to recover for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
The improvement was most pronounced amongst large enterprise OEM customers, which led to strong sequential revenue growth for both nearline and mission critical drives. We anticipate this positive trajectory to continue, which is consistent with analysts' expectations for on prem IT hardware investments to pick up in calendar year 2021. Cloud data center demand remains healthy With the overall data demand drivers intact, analysts project strong double digit growth in cloud CapEx in 2021, which bodes well for Seagate and aligns with our expectation for cloud HDD storage demand to increase through the balance of the fiscal year And drive significant growth longer term. For a second consecutive quarter, we experienced stronger than expected growth in video and image Applications or via markets, due in part to pent up demand following the significant impacts incurred in these markets during the economic shutdowns early in the pandemic. Video and image applications are a key growth market within mass capacity storage.
As the number of devices generating data Close at the edge, mass capacity HDDs are vital to preserving and putting that data to work. For example, the rollout of 5 gs and rise of edge computing supports further growth in smart and safe city initiatives, as as well as smart factory opportunities. Gartner projects the number of 5 gs enabled outdoor video cameras to exceed 15,000,000 by 2023, A 6 fold increase from current levels. That would translate to as much as 1 exabyte of data generated each day, enough to fill about 2,000,000 security surveillance drives every week. Proliferation of video and image sensors and other IoT devices is expected to be a major driver of data creation at the edge in the coming years and will play a key role in the growth and evolution of the mass data storage industry.
Finally, strong seasonal demand for our desktop PC and consumer drives contributed to double digit sequential revenue growth in our legacy business during the December quarter. Overall, we expect demand for mass capacity storage to improve across the cloud and enterprise markets in the March quarter more than offsetting an expected decline in the VM markets and the typical seasonal slowdown in the consumer space. With the broader market environment continuing to firm, Seagate is executing well on its technology roadmap and hitting our committed milestones highlighted by the shipments of our first 20 terabyte HAMR drives in late November. With HAMR, we can drive aerial density compound growth rates 20% or higher to support the scale of our customers' infrastructure investments and enabling Seagate to maintain a significant economic advantage for mass capacity applications relative to enterprise SSDs that is expected to persist over the foreseeable Seagate's first to market dual actuator technology is gaining interest among a broader customer base who require mass capacity storage with higher performance for certain applications such as content delivery. We are increasing shipments of dual actuator drives today and expect to see higher volumes as drive capacities increase.
We are also continuing to strengthen our PMR product roadmap anchored by our industry leading 16 terabyte drives based on our common scalable platform. We broadened the adoption of 16 terabyte drives in the December quarter, gaining new cloud customers globally. We have started to increase the pace of the 18 terabyte product ramp, which will continue through the calendar year consistent with the strong progress of our qualifications and customer readiness timing. As drive capacities increase, the qualification process often takes longer and adds complexity. Our common platform approach is helping customers simplify the call process.
In fact, a number of leading cloud customers commented The qualification of 18 terabytes has been the smoothest ever. Additionally, we expect to continue to leverage the quality and scalability of this platform, which is extendable through 20 terabyte on PMR technology. The strength of this platform offers Seagate the flexibility to meet customers' timing and mass storage needs. For Seagate, the common platform strategy drives manufacturing efficiencies that allow us to ramp new technologies in production more quickly and then use our systems business to accelerate the pace of learning and market adoption. We are maintaining solid momentum in our systems business, Securing multiple customer wins in the December quarter, including our biggest systems deal ever, a multi quarter deal representing close to 8 exabytes of scalable storage.
Overall, with our leadership in HDD technology and execution on our product roadmap, Seagate is in excellent position to capture the $24,000,000,000 mass Storage opportunity that we forecast for 2025, which is driven by the burgeoning demand for data. However, to capture value From the avalanche of data being created, CIOs must overcome cost, scale and complexity challenges associated with moving, Analyzing and storing more data across the distributed enterprise. As a result, economics are forcing enterprises to keep Fortunately less of the data that's being created, which threatens business performance and competitive advantage. This dynamic is at the foundation of Seagate's innovation agenda. We are enabling CIOs to address the key challenges of cost, scale and complexity to preserve and put to work more of the valuable data they are already creating.
Our live storage platform offers a simple, cost efficient and secure way to manage massive volumes of data across the distributed enterprise. Live Mobile enables mass data transfer between the endpoints, edge and core And LiveRack powered by Cortex open source object based software provides enterprises with the lowest cost per petabyte. Cortex software is the foundation of Live Storage platform as maintained by a growing community of data scientists and enterprise storage many of whom participated in our first ever and highly successful hackathon event held last month at LiveLabs Israel. We have a growing customer interest for the live portfolio and continue to receive positive feedback on our existing engagements that span multiple verticals, including media and entertainment and autonomous vehicle technologies. Driving platform level innovation and addressing the Challenges faced by the distributed enterprise is a mandate that will help define our long term growth strategy.
We plan to share more details on the Live Storage platform and the rest of our unfolding strategy on February 24, when we will be hosting a virtual analyst and investor event. I look forward to having you join us. With that, I'll now turn it over to Gianluca to walk through the December quarter.
Thank you, David. Seagate continued to execute well and adapt to the rapidly changing business environment as shown by our strong December quarter performance, which was supported by the anticipated recovery in the enterprise market, record revenue for video and image application and seasonal demand for our consumer and desktop PC products. We achieved revenue of $2,620,000,000 up 13% sequentially and above our guidance midpoint. Non GAAP EPS of $1.29 up 39% sequentially, exceeding the high end of our guidance range and free cash flow of $314,000,000 up nearly 70% sequentially, reflecting our ongoing focus on operational efficiency. Additionally, we repurchased 18,200,000 shares of Seagate stock.
Our decision to invest in our shares The current environment underscores our confidence in the long term business outlook and future cash generation abilities. In the December quarter, we shipped a record of 129 exabyte of Ardis blood capacity, up 13% sequentially and 21% year on year. Roughly 3 quarters of our total exabytes were shipped into the mass capacity market, which include nearline, VIA and NAS products. Mass capacity shipments increased to a record 97 exabytes in the December quarter. We shipped a total of 365 exabytes in the calendar year 2020, up 59% year over year, which is well ahead of the long term CAGR forecast of about 35% for this market segment.
Our current outlook for the March quarter supports continued exabyte shipment growth, setting a strong start for calendar year 2021. On a revenue basis, HDD accounted for 92% of total December quarter revenue and mass capacity storage represented 62% of HDD revenue. Revenue from mass capacity storage was $1,500,000,000 up 12% sequentially and 15% year over year. The airline revenue increased sequentially driven by stronger than expected demand from enterprise and OEM customers. The airline shipments were 71 exabyte, up 11% sequentially and 45% year on year, reflecting ongoing demand for our 16 terabyte high capacity lines as well as increased demand for mid capacity nearline products as enterprise markets recover.
This dynamic resulted in average capacity per nearline drive staying relatively flat at 11.4 terabyte. We are continuing to expand the adoption of our 16 terabyte size and expect 16 terabytes to remain the company's highest revenue product over the next couple of quarters. We also continue to increase shipment of our 18 terabyte drives and make positive progress on qualification plans at multiple cloud customers with volume rent aligned with their timing. In the EMEA market, Revenue was above our expectation for a 2nd consecutive quarter as pent up demand from the COVID related pause in the first half of the calendar year led to strong recovery in September quarter and record revenue in the December quarter. Following this period of strong demand, We anticipate March quarter sales to be sequentially lower and below typical seasonal trends.
The legacy market represented 38% of December quarter's HDD revenue compared to 37% in the prior quarter and down from 47% in the year ago period. Revenue and exabyte shipments both increased 15% sequentially, resulting in a total of 32 exabytes shipped into the legacy market. The growth was driven by a seasonal uptick for consumer drives and desktop PC and improving demand for mission critical drives, consistent We currently expect the ongoing enterprise market recovery to moderate the seasonal decline we typically see in the March quarter. Our non HD business made up 8% of December quarter revenue, relatively flat on a percentage basis with the prior quarter. As chosen partner for Microsoft Xbox Expansion Card, Seagate benefited from strong holiday demand, We supported both double digit growth for our SSD products and a sequential improvement in non HDD revenue.
Within our system business, we saw early signs of recovery at large OEM customers, which, along with the customer wins Dave mentioned earlier, should benefit our system business in calendar 2021. In the December quarter, non GAAP gross profit increased to $704,000,000 compared with $614,000,000 in the September quarter. Property related costs increased slightly to $28,000,000 primarily due to elevated shipping costs. We are currently planning to incur similar levels in the March quarter as we balance customer demand timing with increasing higher freight costs and opportunities to utilize lower cost to ocean freight. Our resulting non GAAP gross margin was 26.8%, including about 110 basis points impact From this COVID related cost, HDD margin expanded slightly quarter over quarter, offset by a less favorable non HDD product mix.
Non GAAP operating expenses came in at $319,000,000 down $31,000,000 from the same period last year, reflecting ongoing benefit from working from home and overall operational efficiency. Looking ahead, we Our resulting non GAAP operating income was 385 $1,000,000 and non GAAP operating margin was 14.7 percent of revenue, up 200 basis points sequentially and in the upper half of our long term target range of 13% to 16% despite the COVID headwind I mentioned earlier. Based on diluted share count of approximately 251,000,000 shares, non GAAP EPS for the December quarter was $1.29 The $0.19 outperformance relative to our guidance midpoint was driven mainly by higher revenue and operational leverage, while our share repurchase activity enhanced EPS by $0.05 Capital expenditures We're at $159,000,000 in the December quarter, which represented approximately 6% of revenue. We expect CapEx to represent between 4% 5% of revenue for the fiscal year, which is below our prior target of 6% to 8% of revenue. We believe that CapEx levels will align supply with demand when considering the existing installed base capacity and continued demand growth for mass capacity storage.
Heavy inventory outstanding reduced by 8 days sequentially. Inventory value was relatively flat at $1,300,000,000 in anticipation of consumer strong mass and protect against potential future supply chain risk. We expect inventory levels to gradually decline as freight costs return to more normalized levels and we consumed these critical components. We generated $314,000,000 of free cash flow in the December quarter, up from $186,000,000 in the September quarter and up 10% year on year, supported by our focus on operational efficiency and improvement in demand trend and a strong linearity. In the December quarter, we used $167,000,000 to fund our dividend and utilized $1,000,000,000 We will retire approximately 18,000,000 ordinary shares, exiting the quarter with 240,000,000 shares outstanding.
We will continue to opportunistically retire Seagate stock and return capital to our shareholders. Additionally, We raised a total of $1,000,000,000 in capital, issuing 2 tranches of debt at the lowest average interest rate of any of our bond. Including the new notes, gross debt was $5,100,000,000 and the net debt was $3,300,000,000 We expect the interest expense for March quarter to be approximately $59,000,000 including $9,500,000 from the 2 new tranches. Cash and cash equivalents remain relatively stable at $1,800,000,000 As the new calendar year begins, we expect strong cloud data center demand and continued enterprise recovery in the March quarter to more than offset the seasonal decline in some of our other end markets. While we are still facing headwinds from COVID related costs, We expect this will gradually decrease over the next few quarters.
Taking all these factors into account, Our outlook for the March quarter is as follows: revenue is expected to be $2,650,000,000 plus or minus $200,000,000 Non GAAP operating margin is expected to be in the mid of our target range of 13% to 16% of revenue. And non GAAP EPS is expected to be $1.30 plus or minus 0.15 dollars In closing, Seagate is executing well across multiple levels, delivering on our financial commitments, demonstrating the ability of our business model to address customer demand and maintaining our commitment to return cash to our shareholders. I'll now turn the call back to Dave for final comments.
Thanks, Gianluca. 2020 was a very challenging year and many have and continue to face hardships. We are encouraged by progress with vaccines and signs of recovery. Through the efforts of our extended team, Seagate exited the year firing on all cylinders and we're well positioned to capture mass data growth opportunities in calendar 2021 and beyond. We are executing our technology innovation roadmap to continue delivering the lowest cost mass data storage.
We We are strengthening our mass data infrastructure portfolio by building on the positive momentum of our scalable common platform family of 16 terabyte and 18 terabyte drives and we're gaining interest for our live storage platform, which expands Seagate market opportunities, paving the way for future growth. Our success is founded on the dedication of our employees and the ongoing support of our suppliers, Customers and shareholders, employees remain the lifeblood of our company and we are focused on maintaining and strengthening our culture to provide an open, safe and respectful workplace and ensure all employees are able to thrive. Earlier this month, Seagate released its latest diversity, equity and inclusion report. I'm proud of Seagate's strong track record and reputation for promoting inclusion both within and outside the walls of the company and recognizing diversity is key to our ongoing success. We are equally focused on contributing to our customer success, which we believe will lead to higher revenue for Seagate and greater value for our shareholders.
We collect data quarterly to measure overall satisfaction across the breadth of our customer base. The December quarter indicators were among our highest ever, which reflects the care we take in providing high quality reliable products for all of our customers. In summary, I'm excited about Seagate's growth opportunities, Ability to generate cash and enhance shareholder value over the long term. Without, John Lungoon and I, we're happy to take your questions.
Please standby while we compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Karl Ackerman with Cowen. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Dave, I've got a question for you to start. With on prem still recovering, are you able to achieve 35% exabyte growth for your nearline business In fiscal 2021, I ask because I think you indicated in your prepared remarks that while customers are still suggesting 18 terabyte Offers a very attractive upgrade path, maybe adoption timing is a bit elongated. And then second, I think You noted that your 20 terabyte drive could facilitate exabyte growth of, I think, 20% or more a year.
So if you could just touch on your longer term exabyte growth expectations as well, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Carl. Thanks for the question. Yes, 35% is still in the cards to answer your question directly. There is What's astute about your question is there is a mix between the highest capacities and then the on prem tends to be a little lower capacity in the airline. So it could 8 or 12 terabytes, but we think still think 35% is a good number through the fiscal year exactly to your point.
Longer term, I think we've said 35% is fairly consistent. The cloud may actually grow bigger than that, but we have to wait and see some of the reverberations after COVID, but I still think that's a good number for bit growth in the mass capacity markets even further than just the end of the fiscal year.
Got it. If I may, just hoping if you could You know, touch upon shortages. I think with shortages of semiconductor components and even diodes, Does that preclude you from ramping your higher capacity drives, even particularly your 20 terabyte drive? And then second, are you able to extend your volume commitments within with data center providers given the shortages across the supply chain?
Thank you. Yes. Two interesting questions. The first thing is one of the reasons we really like the common scalable platform is we're flexible on questions exactly like you just asked. Relative to componentry, we have long visibility, but if we were changing platforms over and over and over again, then some of those things Hard to chase and the fact that we have more capacity and inertia on those platforms I think gives us a lot of flexibility.
But To your point, I think across all the supply chains, people are witnessing some of these kind of constraints And people are managing way out in front of them. And I do think it's forcing discussions to be a little bit more mature relative to what the mass Capacity needs are, what the needs are of silicon, for example, I think you've made reference to and some of the other components and making sure everybody has enough for the growth of our customers, Especially during recovery times and what they might need later on in the calendar year.
Thanks, Farrell.
Your next question comes from the line of Katy Huberty with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. Just with the improvement in demand that you've seen in a number of the end markets, can you talk just Qualitatively about where you are in terms of manufacturing utilization versus either a quarter ago or a year ago? And I ask because We have started to hear that some hyperscalers can't get all the product they want. We've seen some price increases in the channel.
I'm just wondering How tight things got in the seasonally strong December quarter and what that might mean for the next couple of quarters?
Yes, Katie, thanks. So in some of the markets that were tremendously disrupted, some of the legacy markets, for example, we had ample capacity throughout the period of Q1 and Q2, the COVID impact, pandemic impact and a lot of supply chains were disrupted as well. The cloud demand has been fairly strong and predictable for us. We were building what we had predicted. I think the way I think about our capacity constraints or our Manufacturing constraints, if you will, is more the long lead time stuff like wafer capital and some of those things, Wafer process time and things like that staging for the future, that's the stuff that's full.
At DRIVE LEVEL, we still have some And we did last quarter and so we were able to chase really aggressively say the via markets in particular That we're kind of racing ahead and there was some seasonality there, but some of it was just pent up demand based on how the impacted or the Pandemic had impacted all the supply chain. So if that's helpful, the longer lead time Outfront, manufacturing capacity we have is building up to your point. We saw some flexibility to drive them.
Okay. And then just To follow-up Gianluca, can you just bridge how you're thinking about the March quarter gross margin relative to December, just some of the Plus and minuses sequentially on gross margin, which seems like it's up slightly based on your guidance.
Yes. First of all, the December quarter margin has already improved sequentially, especially in the RBIS part of the business. We had maybe some negative impact on the SSD and System Solutions segment, but the hard disk starting to improve already in the December quarter. While the mix is going in the right direction, as we said in the script, Enterprise OEM was strong in December. Cloud was still very healthy.
And now when we go into the March quarter, We expect both segments to actually continue to improve sequentially. We will lose a little bit Of the legacy segment, little bit of surveillance, we think Mission Critical will be maybe less seasonal than what we have seen in the past And I know I think the quarter and the gross margin in the quarter. So I think we will continue to go in the same direction. Of course, we'll have some of the costs from COVID that continue to be there. It It was fairly high in the December quarter, a little bit higher than what we were expecting.
And now we think March will That would be fairly similar.
Great. Thank you for that and congrats on the quarter.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Sookin Ho with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my question. I've got a couple of them. Maybe the first one on the nearline side, maybe two parts Here, on the enterprise side, you talked about some recovery you've seen last quarter. How far do you think we're still below the trend line? The question is more on the on The alliance drives us feel free to talk about mission critical.
But on the cloud side, have you seen any kind of delays or pull forwards in capacity transitions Is it some of the large cloud data center customers compared to what you think a few months ago?
Yes. Okay. So, Neil, I'll take it kind of 2 parts. So, the first is just Enterprise, if you will, the on prem that we said during the early days of the pandemic is probably the most impacted. That is recovering somewhat.
I think it's recovering slowly because some of the on prem dynamics are not have not fully resolved themselves and
probably still won't, but it is
recovering slowly and it's more predictable now. So We still won't, but it is recovering slowly and it's more predictable now. So that's why we feel like we understand the market. This is kind of in line with the IDC numbers we quoted in the prepared remarks as well about the traditional IT is going to be up 3%. And I think that goes exactly to that point.
On the bigger cloud service providers around the world,
There's a
lot of dynamics going on because there's no one size fits all cloud obviously. But I would say in general, they A lot of applications pushed into the cloud and people had to react there with the budgets that they have, with the technology they have, with the platforms that they have and so on. And in some cases, they prioritized away from whatever storage infrastructure they were building on. In other cases, they prioritized to it. So It's fairly complicated right now.
My opinion is that because of the dynamics we've just seen the cloud is going to grow even bigger than what we've forecasted. And then So for the long term, we're projecting mass capacity to be $24,000,000,000 market in 2025. So we think there's strong secular growth coming in
the cloud, But it is still choppy based on some
of the dynamics that we just talked about.
Okay. Maybe a quick follow-up. I know I asked this question last Quarter on Huawei, but given the current restrictions on the shipment to Huawei, does that change the way you think about the total addressable market For this calendar year, for nearline, Josh?
Yes. So like I said last time, we don't comment on any specific customers. I think The market demand globally will not change on how it's ultimately serviced. So if that answers your question. The net demand for data storage products is out there and it will get serviced by one customer or another By one supply chain or another and these are very, very complex supply chains.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Thomas O'Malley with Barclays. Your line is open.
Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is really around capital returns. You obviously thought it was strategic to spend a decent amount in the quarter and ticked up some shares. Can you talk about what your view is on buying back more shares over the next couple of quarters?
And then obviously, with the new debt rolled into the model as well, how will you view the pros and cons We're paying some of that down and also buying back the shares.
Yes, Tom, obviously, there's kind of 2 parts of the question. There's what we just went through in the pandemic and The way we were looking at the market, but the bigger part is that looking forward, I really believe in the long term cash generation capabilities of the company. So our Decision to invest in our shares is weighing current environment and long term business outlook and cash generation capabilities. I do think that if this is helpful that we're kind of in an inflection point in data growth. I mean we from Seagate's perspective, We had to do a lot of transition from client server businesses, the factory transitions and so on into mass capacity.
We've kind of finished that. And now we're seeing mass capacity growing just simply because the demand for data is growing. We see edge opportunities and things like that. So So I think that this is an interesting time relative to all that. We look at the opportunistic The ability to retire stock, return capital, we look at the investments we have to make in ourselves.
We had a fairly strong thesis On all of this, it's good to have cash generation capabilities to underpin it all so we can make the trade offs.
It's Really helpful. The next one is just a high level question and totally fair if you answer from a very high level as well. But clearly, there's A lot of concerns about flooding the market with big capacity demand this year. How do you think in a market in which the cost environment on the flash side is Decreasing particularly your legacy markets will react. Obviously, you mentioned some seasonality in the Q1, but do you think that You'll see greater than expected declines there.
Can you just talk through the pros and cons of what you may see happening throughout this year if that flash environment weakens?
Yes, sure, if it helps. A few years ago, the narrative is very different when notebooks hadn't transitioned over and now they largely Cath transitioned over to Naehan. So I look at things like that as places where the 2 technologies are competing head to head and that Doesn't really exist anymore. People talk about, for example, mission critical drives and this is a little bit of inside baseball here, but mission critical drives for us, we haven't really That will be platform in quite a few years. We're a continuous service market that's out there.
There's a large number, tens of 1,000,000, maybe even more than that of slots that are out there with SaaS interface on and Pete have good value proposition. So we'll continue to service those markets. But I don't think a small change or even a fairly large change in the NAND price Changes that dynamic because the new architectures are not SaaS architectures generally speaking, some of them are NVMe architectures and That's where you need to be designing products for. So the overlap, if you will, between the two markets is not super relevant. And in the Mass capacity markets, it's night and day difference.
In massive data infrastructure, a small
I think that This is important point in the segments that are really growing like cloud and enterprise OEM and even surveillance, But there's no really overlap between our risk and NAND at this point, and we don't expect that to happen in the next few years, Satya.
Yes. The way I look at the datasphere for the software, Tom, is that there's a big growth in edge and cloud and And there's lots of different architectural components. NAND has definitely come of age. And so it's got a lot of opportunities. It has to be designed the right solutions for the customers.
And From that capacity perspective, we have the exact same problem. We keep driving our roadmap and we're going to be just fine.
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Fox Advisors. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. Good afternoon. I'm just having trouble footing everything you said with the new CapEx advice of 4% to 5% of sales. I know you were thinking it might not be as high as 6% to 8% previously, but can you just sort of talk about what's going into that decision? And then I had
Yes. I'll let John look at the SEC.
Yes. Basically, what happened is in the last couple of years, Seagate, and I think in general the industry, installed more capacity than what was needed. So the fact that the growing demand Now absorbing that capacity is obviously good news for the industry and for Seagate in particular. But we can still See some of additional capacity not being fully utilized, so we don't need to invest more in the short term list in order to absorb that demand and serve that demand. So we think that still investing a fairly High amount, that is now 4% or 5% of our revenue, it's not a small number, it's a big number.
But that is the right level for us To align supply and demand in the next, I would say, 2 or 3 quarters.
Okay. That's helpful. And then just maybe, Dave, if you can give a little bit more color on the AT and T V rollout. I know you've said consistently it is dependent upon When your customers want kind of some uptick, but is there any other color you can provide in terms of what may drive it sooner rather than later or later than you expect Yes.
We did say in the script that the 18 terabyte qualifications have gone very well. To the earlier point, I don't think from a mass capacity perspective, we're not in the You're in the industry anymore of just build a bunch and then try to ship them in at the end of a quarter or something like that. You have to have real good relationships with the customers know exactly what they want. So we over the last few quarters, we've been on a theme communicating this with you That we knew where 18 terabytes was going to be, what the customers were going to be asking us for and so we were fairly clear of that. The ramp has begun though.
And so and it starts by going back to wafer, which is many, many months ago and then making sure we're starting the We're making the transition to that product right now and we feel really good about it. We feel good about the quality levels, the yield levels, the ability to ramp All the components that we need because it's a common platform. I think we've been signaling this pretty well. I can't really comment on what the rest of the industry is or isn't doing because I just don't know, but that's relative that's the way I look at our plans.
Okay. Appreciate that color. Thanks very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Aaron Rodgers with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Aaron Rakins with Wells Fargo, your line is open.
Sorry about that guys.
I was on mute. I wanted to build on the last question with regard to kind of the visibility discussion. When I look at kind of growing your mass capacity at 35% plus this year, it seems to really imply a very, very healthy uptick in capacity shipping Into these next couple of quarters. So as we think about the visibility in the business, the change in dialogue that you you had with kind of your key customers. How would you characterize visibility into that kind of demand profile that pickup of capacity You shift into the back half of the year.
And I do have a quick follow-up.
Hi, Aaron. Thanks. Yes, I think it's not just about the highest Capacity point exactly what you're pointing out. We have good visibility on 2016s and what our customers needed. We have good visibility on 2018s because we talk to those customers That exactly what they need in most like quarters out as well.
But there's also something going on at 8 terabytes 12 terabytes and so on. So if you see that kind of transition based on the products that serve the lower capacity points Of the mass capacity market, if you will, that's where we start to see some significant growth as well. And that tends to be more global than Isolated a few accounts, so but that gives us confidence. And by the way, the platform that we have, The platform transitions we're making take costs and desks and heads and things like that out as we increase capacity, we can actually do that there. So we We're confident in our ability to go solution not better as the mix increases.
So go ahead with your follow-up.
Yes. And just as a quick follow-up, given the mix of business and kind of what's transpired over the last year plus, I'm just curious, How do you think about the variables, the drivers that get you back to that kind of what I think you characterize as a normalized gross margin Into that 29%, the 30 plus percent range.
Yes. As Gianluca mentioned before, HDD is almost there. I mean, There's some other dynamics of other businesses. But exactly to your point, we have these new platforms coming that will necessarily take cost We have to make sure that there's we're actually getting with the customers what they need, but I do expect some demand growth recovery Again, in some markets, but also growth as well that will allow everything to equilibrate more and get us back into the range. It's a it was a Very competitive market in the times of COVID 2020 and people are trying to keep their factories full and things like that.
Now we're into a period of with this growth and recovery, like Carl asked earlier, there's a lot of questions about Supply availability, making sure you have the right supply at the right time and we're into those kinds of discussions as well and we expect that to stabilize.
I think it's a combination of different items. Of course, The focus for us is always on cost reduction, and I think we are achieving that level of cost quarter after quarter. The second very important item is misalignment between supply and demand that should bring a healthier pricing environment for the industry. And then of course, Bara, those additional costs that we are incurring right now because of the COVID situation that We don't expect to continue for forever. We think a few more quarters and then hopefully a little bad part of the cost will go away.
Your
next Question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy with Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.
Thank you for taking my question and congratulations on the strong Maybe first with the enterprise customers coming back, have they been qualifying higher density Drive or is that going to just start now? Was there a delay? And what are the expectations going forward?
Yes. Typically, Kevin, the some of the enterprise customers do lag. They don't qualify the Highest capacity points are the branded product as fast as some other people do. There are exceptions to that rule, But they do lag. There's not really been any slowdown in qualifications for any reason.
I think people have even through the challenges, the logistical challenges of People have kept focused on what they need to do because they're seeing efficiency gains as well there. So but as we make some of those transitions, I think that helps us to answer the enterprise Demand the right way as the enterprise demand is starting to grow again.
Okay. Thanks. And just as a follow-up with the 16 terabytes and moving over to the 18 terabyte and the visibility you talked about. Do you see a crossover of Shipments anytime in 2021 or is that more of a 2022 calendar year event?
Yes. It's not Going to happen this quarter or next quarter, but just because of the sheer volume in the 16. But I do see it at some point, yes. And we're going to Ramped really hard. I mean, it's the same platform, so it's not hard for us to ramp per se.
There's also other efficiencies that we get by driving to the 2018 platform. So That's why we're pretty excited about it.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Ho with Stifel. Your line is open.
Thank you very much and congrats Nice quarter. Dave, maybe as a follow-up to Kevin's last question about the 16 terabyte to 18 terabyte transition. Obviously, the 16 terabyte has been a big share gainer for Seagate, and you mentioned the easy platform transition 18 terabytes. First, how do you look at, I guess, new customer wins with 18 terabyte? And maybe secondly, on top of that question, do you see more incremental share gains when you get, I guess when you move to 20 terabytes and above on the HAMR platform where there are, I guess,
Thanks, Patrick. Yes, I don't really think about market share per se. I think about Talking to the customers about what exactly they need. Now to your point, there are people who were on 14, for example, or 12 And said, I'm going to 'eighteen. And so they've been waiting the transition a little bit.
And so we'll work with them on those transitions and make sure that we have an ample supply for them. As we go even higher, I can't really speak to I can only speak to the discussions that we're having. I have confidence in 20 terabyte ramps. We made comments in the script about PMR capabilities to get there. We have the HAMR capabilities to get there.
I think we control those levers very carefully. So whatever a specific customer would want Performance wise or whatever we can get them for their new architecture, old architecture because there's still a lot of legacy architecture, there's even replacement architectures we have to Service, we'll go out and do that. So it's not to be flipping, but I just don't think about share gains rather I think about What do these customers that we're talking to need exactly from us and making sure we're aligned.
Great. And as my follow-up question for Gianluca, In terms of OpEx, you guys have done a really good job flexing OpEx during especially these challenging times In 2020, how do you look at OpEx and especially R and D given now that you're starting to release HAMR based Products, is there an ability to, quote, flatten out R and D in the near term with maybe a lot of the heavy lifting related to I don't want to say out of the way, but at least a lot of the initial ramp and start up costs embedded.
Yes. Actually, we have done that already. So you see the result already at least partially in our result of the quarter. And for the long term, I think last quarter we said probably a good model is Around $330,000,000 per quarter. Right now, we are a little bit below.
And now we will try to stay below as much as possible. Of course, we always look at opportunity for cost reduction, especially right now in the technology space where we have developed Ener, so We don't have the need for maybe all the spending that we had in the past.
Yes, it's a really good point. There's a this is the HAMR Technologies, smallest waves are ever shipped and the Smallest waveguide ever shipped and dialing it down to something 30 nanometer spot size or whatever it is. This is a really, really difficult technology. We've invested a lot to get to where we are, really proud of where we are being at the ships and units and get the learning out there and start Building the volume and everything else, we don't have to go through that investment again. And so that we get a lot of scale from here.
So yes, I appreciate your question.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Ananda Baruilla with Need Capital Markets, your line is open.
Hey, thanks guys. Good afternoon. Happy New Year and congrats On solid results here. 2, if I could. First, Dave, I guess sort of the 35% Matt, the exabyte growth for the year actually implies that the June quarter and then the March Q guide implies the June quarter is really the quarter where it kind of kicks up.
And then you had made some remarks, I think in the prepared remarks about calendar 'twenty one. I don't want to I'd really ask Looking for clarification, you said sort of continues through the year. And so I'd love to get well, first of all, could you just sort of Comment on if the June quarter does kick up in a meaningful way from the March quarter and then what your thoughts are September December quarter as well. And then I have a follow-up for Gianluca.
Yes. Thanks, Ananda, and happy New Year to you too. So yes, looking forward, we do see recovery in mass capacity. There was obviously The Via markets that grew last quarter and then have their normal seasonal downtick, but the cloud will continue to grow from here in exabytes. And so That underpins the forecast that we have right now.
It's still early, haven't seen through Chinese New Year, But things feel like very different than they did last year where there was a lot of disruption during due to COVID. I think it's Time for some of the people who are safe, who put off investments, frankly, to say, okay, now I need to make those investments. And Our pivot to mass capacity are getting over to the same platform and everything allows us the Really go address the markets with high volumes, so that's what underpins our confidence.
Okay, great. And then Gianluca, You guys are doing sort of on the op margins, you're doing sort of the higher end of the range right now or like sort of the upper 50%, upper half of the range. And it sounds like you're also talking about a couple a handful of things as you go through the year that can cause the gross margin to go up Couple 100 basis points, 2, 300 basis points. I'm putting numbers on that, but I think you've had 200 basis points of COVID costs, then You continue to get mix, you get pricing, pricing feels a little bit more normalized right now on nearline drives, etcetera, etcetera. So what will you do?
Does it mean how should we think about the I guess the normalized op margin range? If you're already sort of the upper 50% on the op margin range and you're going to capture 200, 300 bps on the gross margin, Would you show that in a normalized fashion? Or are there areas to go invest? And I guess that's really what I'm asking.
Thank you, Ananda, and Happy New Year to you. If you look at our performance before COVID, Our operating margin was already at the top of the range. We were already at 16%, even it's a bit higher. And then COVID happened and it's still happening, it's still impacting our results, but we are right now in the 15%. So We are going back to that level even with the COVID situation.
So of course, we expect Fairly quickly and based, of course, on the impact from the COVID additional cost To go at the level that we were before the pandemic situation and even better. And we are always looking internally at opportunity. We discussed it a bit the gross margin before. We are going in the right direction in term of mix. We think the industry pricing is also going in a better direction compared to, for example, a year ago.
So all those elements are, of course, pointing to better gross margin, better operating margin. And I'm sure we will discuss this more at our Analyst Day.
Gianluca, that sounds like 18% to 20% operating margins to me, by the way. I didn't say that. Just saying. Just saying. Thanks, guys.
Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Your line is open.
Yes. Thanks for taking my question. Just as a follow-up to the prior question, It seems to me that you have made some changes to procuring sub components. And I want to see or Get an idea when those cost savings would actually materialize and help you with growth and operating margin. And I have a follow-up.
Yes, Mehdi, we thanks. We discussed the biggest impact was To the gross margins was the COVID drivers and that's largely freight and logistics related and the world is still got a lot of challenges On those fronts, as I think a lot of people are feeling that. Relative to components, I think we feel fairly solid about our component supply chain. So It was tough in the early days of COVID. We had to make sure that people had the right factories open and we had To get in there and work with all of our suppliers, especially the ones that are positioned for some of the products that are continuing to grow that they're making the right investments in times that are pretty lean.
We're confident about how we did that. I don't really maybe to the earlier question, I don't really foresee any supply constraints, but it is forcing a different We have maybe to your that implies in your comments. Got
you. And then looking at composition of the near light, Especially as you highlighted opportunities with video and surveillance, could there be increased diversification of nearline and Into both cloud service providers as well as The like a surveillance in other words, surveillance moving into a higher capacity nearline and this So you get some diversification of end market demand drivers?
It's interesting because if you read the script, yes, to the point about all these cameras generating all this data at the edge And we expect that to be kind of a bow other for smart city, smart factory. There's a Some of it is video data, but there's other kinds of data being created at the edge. A lot of that data today actually dies at the edge. It doesn't make it back up into the cloud. You do start to see the nascent the beginnings of models where people say, how do I get that data from the micro edge All the way back up to the core cloud, because the cloud has some of the great applications to be able to process the data.
You just have to physically get it there. I point to our live product strategy for that's what exactly what we're thinking there. And it's not small, the amount of Data that's being created at the MicroEdge today and like I said, either being overwritten or you have to make a decision once you process the data and you never get to make that decision ever And I think it's a question of that decision again. Things like autonomous vehicles, you want learning to go on. So you need the data Got a resident for quite some time.
There's a lot of different models that are very, very interesting to us right now. And it is forcing a Symbiosis, I guess that's the right word between micro edge and cloud and the same kind of drives through service both.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jim Suva with Citi Investment Research. Your line is open.
Thank you. And I just have one question. It seems like on both gross and operating margins, Every indicator ahead, whether it be pricing looks better, COVID costs are peaking, shipping costs are likely to get Lower new innovations rolling out are helping. Am I right to just simply put operating and gross margins should just continue To tread higher through 2021 or is there some actually negatives or headwinds that we should be mindful of as we go forward?
No headwinds, Jim. The world is still fairly volatile place. Not everyone's through COVID, of course, and it's still impacting So from our perspective, we've narrowed down our product Portfolio to have the right products, make sure our factories, our supply chains are ready, talk to the customers and things like that. The story is coming out and we do believe there's data growth ahead, but we want to make sure that we're mindful of the realities They're in the economics today and that's why to our comments, we think we're positioned really well, but We'll guide you quarter over quarter like we normally do.
Thank you so much for the details. Yes. Thanks, Jim.
Your final question comes from the line of Nikolay Khodorov with Longbow Research. Your line is open.
Yes. Thanks guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for squeezing me in. I just want to go back to the CapEx question and maybe try to get a little bit more color.
Can you tell us a little bit more where do you see that supply and demand not fully balanced from your perspective? I have a guess, but I wanted to hear it from you. And maybe can you try to quantify how much of a headwind is that underutilization So you're
profitability right now whether on the gross margin line? Yes. Nikolay, thanks. It's a little bit tough because if you think About what's the demand environment that we were in, in calendar year 2020 and how disruptive it was. You have some of the legacy products that We're impacted quite a bit.
Some of them are growing back a little, but some of them that capacity can be repurposed back into max capacity as well. And then back capacity itself, the growth, the 18 terabyte drives, if you will, that requires what we call technology transition capacity, the Dollars that we actually have to spend. So blending all these things together, the world is through this demand disruption, supply disruption period We got through early last year and what we're saying is we think that we can manage from here at the 4% to 5% range Based on our modeling and that will be ample supply to be bringing online for what the demand is out there.
Okay. And is there a way to quantify the headwind? Do you see a meaningful headwind from that underutilization or?
Sorry, not really, not once the maybe way back to Katie's question, once the factories fill up heads, media drive, I think that headwind We'll be gone since that will happen here in a quarter or 2.
Okay. Just a quick follow-up. The legacy price per terabyte It declined for a second quarter in a row double digit year over year. I think over the last 4 or 5 quarters, it's been in the mid Single digits, a lot more benign. I just wonder if you can
give us any color what drove that? I think that's all about mix. And segments like Consumer growth grew quite a bit actually last quarter. So and that's some of that's work from home and Play from home, the gaming, things like that, mission critical obviously was still recovering, but still light compared to what it had been previously. So I think that's That gets to the mix part of that question.
Got it. Thanks guys. Good luck.
Thanks, Migli.
That concludes the question and answer session. I will turn the call back over to management.
Thanks, David, and thank you to all Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again, as Gianluca said, on our upcoming Analyst Day on February 24. Please join us there. I'd like to once again thank all of our customers, suppliers, business partners and our employees for their ongoing support of Seagate. We'll talk to you next quarter.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.