Good morning, and welcome to the Seagate Technology fiscal second quarter 2015 financial results conference call. My name is Kathleen, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Kate Dolm, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please proceed, Kate.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's call. Joining me today from Seagate's executive team are Steve Luczo, Chairman and CEO; Patrick O'Malley, Executive Vice President and CFO; Jamie Lerner, President, Cloud Systems and Solutions; Dave Mosley, President, Operations and Technology; Rocky Pimentel, President, Global Markets and Customers; and our General Counsel, Ken Massaroni. We posted our press release and detailed supplemental information about our fiscal second quarter on our investor relations site at seagate.com. During today's call, we will review the highlights from the December quarter, and we will provide the company outlook for the third fiscal quarter 2015. We will refer to non-GAAP measures, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in our supplement. After that, we will open up the call for questions.
We are planning for the call today to go approximately half an hour, and we will do our best to accommodate your questions in that timeframe. As a reminder, this conference call contains forward-looking statements about the company's anticipated future operating and financial performance, customer demand, and general market conditions. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current views and assumptions and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date. Actual results may vary materially from today's statements. Information concerning risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause results to differ from these forward-looking statements are contained in the company's SEC filings and supplemental information posted on the investor section of the company's website. Any non-GAAP measures referenced on the call are reconciled to GAAP figures in the supplemental information on the website. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Luczo. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Seagate demonstrated strong financial performance in the December quarter, achieving revenues of $3.7 billion, and on a non-GAAP basis, gross margin of 28.2%, net income of $452 million, and diluted earnings per share of $1.35. Our results this quarter reflect revenue in line with our expectations and sequential margin improvement. We had record storage shipments of 61.3 exabytes, up 17% year-over-year, with average gigabytes per drive for the quarter increasing sequentially and continuing to average over one terabyte per drive. Cash flow generation was again strong in the December quarter, and we achieved $670 million in operating cash flow and $455 million in free cash flow, excluding the partial payment for the arbitration award from Western Digital of $773 million.
Our non-GAAP operating expenses were $546 million, slightly lower than our expectations, due primarily to expense control around the core business and commensurate with our revenue growth. Capital expenditures were in line with our expectations, and inventory, both internally and externally, are within manageable levels. Our balance sheet remains healthy, and we ended the quarter with $3.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents. We raised approximately $500 million in debt and retired approximately $375 million in principal of higher-cost debt this quarter, effectively staggering and extending our debt maturities. We believe we are the first high-tech BBB- company to issue a 20-year coupon, which is a testament to the market's confidence in our management team, the strength of our technology portfolio, and our financial and business policies. Turning to our outlook.
While we are generally optimistic about calendar year 2015 in terms of the demand for storage and overall economic activity, especially that of the United States, we are tempered somewhat by the instability of the European business environment, as well as the commodity and currency volatility throughout the world. For example, Europe represents approximately 20% of our revenues, and in retail, we would have historically experienced an increase of about 5% revenue in the December quarter, and in fact, it declined by about 5%. While we expect Europe to be challenged economically for most of 2015, it's difficult to assess the degree of impact this will have on revenue and demand.
While central bank activity can alleviate some of the issues that are impacting specific country growth issues globally, these instruments are by design temporary, and given the low level of interest rates we are now experiencing, are by definition less effective, at least on the measure of providing cheaper credit. While our forecasting continues to maintain a sense of caution due to these macroeconomic conditions, the trends we are seeing in the marketplace continue to align with our long-term expectations for exabyte demand and the growing need for economical and efficient storage. Industry estimates for the HDD market demand are forecasting a seasonal decrease. Sorry. We believe TAM will be approximately 135 million units in the March quarter. This is primarily driven by a seasonal decline in the client and retail market, which is also expected to be the low quarter for the calendar year.
The traditional enterprise market is estimated to follow seasonal patterns as well, although this market has been more resilient than we have forecasted over the last several quarters. The cloud enterprise market is estimated to be relatively flat, reflecting continued demand strength for high-capacity storage. We anticipate the cloud market will exhibit relative strength throughout the calendar year as the acceleration, which began last quarter, continues. We are experiencing supply constraints in some key products for this market, and we expect to be supply-challenged for the next few quarters based on current demand signals. Pricing in the client and cloud enterprise market was slightly more aggressive in the December quarter than the five prior quarters. In some accounts, we participated, and in others, we did not. As we look ahead, we believe this is a temporal issue related to specific industry conditions.
Given the increasing demand trend from a broad base of customers towards the higher-capacity products, we also believe this level of price erosion is unsustainable to fund the required capital and R&D investments needed in our industry. We anticipate we will need to drive margin expansion at least towards the higher end of our long-term range of 27%-32% to fund the long-term capital and R&D budgets related to the increased demand for cloud-based storage products. Seagate's product portfolio is well-positioned competitively in this demand environment, and we expect to achieve revenue of at least $3.45 billion in the March quarter. We are planning our non-GAAP gross margin to be up sequentially and at least 28.5%, due primarily to seasonal product mix shifts, while also taking into account continued dilution impact from our recent acquisitions.
We are planning for operating expenses of approximately $570 million in both the March and the June quarters. These expenses include some increases in core R&D as we refresh nearly our entire HDD and SSD product portfolio this calendar year, as well as investments in our new market adjacencies. Based on customer engagements to date, we are encouraged that our value proposition for cloud computing is gaining traction. Our revenue potential is likely greater than our original expectations. I thank our employees for their hard work and our customers, vendors, and suppliers, and shareholders for their ongoing support. I'm going to open it up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star, then the number 1 key on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Our first question comes from the line of Aaron Rakers with Stifel. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Steve, if you wouldn't mind, if you could go a little bit deeper into the commentary around the pricing environment and specifically to the enterprise space. You had suggested that maybe there were some temporal issues. Could you be more specific on what maybe you're seeing from a competitive perspective? Then also on top of that, how should we think about the constraints that you might be seeing in that space and how that might translate to pricing on a forward basis? Thank you.
Thanks, Aaron. I think the pricing discussion can't be limited to just the cloud space. I think it's really a relationship between the cloud space and the client space. The client pricing, even though it's quite low, continues to be kind of strangely aggressive. The reason I say strangely is that most of those components are low capacity for the most part. You have a lot of single-disk, two-headed products there, so you don't have a lot of cost opportunities. Yet, in a demand environment that's been volatile, relatively flat, both in notebook and desktop, if you take a one-year perspective, there's not a lot of movement for absorption or cost reductions from especially the single part component companies.
Continued price aggression there kind of doesn't make a lot of sense, but there are certain market segments, for example, in retail, where a couple of our competitors seem to be battling it to the end of who can have the last half a point of market share. It's just been kind of silly. It relates to the cloud market in that people can manage their overall gross margin, obviously, because the cloud products, by virtue of their increased difficulty to manufacture and test, do carry higher margins. The reality is, given the shift that we've had towards high capacity, we won't be able to match supply long term at these margin structures because the shift to high-end requires a lot more tests, it requires a lot more heads and disks.
They're harder machines to make. Therefore, we have to have margin structures, I think, in the 30%-32% range to fund the mix change that we've seen already. The mix change that we're at is probably a year ahead of where we thought we would be. I think we view it more holistically of what's happening across the portfolio. It just doesn't seem sustainable for the industry to continue like this. I think as it relates to your specific topic, Seagate does have some product leadership in particular categories where we're very constrained. That obviously relates to pricing that remains more firm. As I indicated, there's a couple of classes of product that were effectively sold out through the rest of the year, subject to what we can do on the manufacturing side to increase supply.
I do think that in the last few weeks, we've seen some firming around the pricing on cloud. I think the reality is to really get the investment rates that we need long-term, we're going to have to see an end of the erosion so we can basically rebuild the margin profile.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Benjamin Reitzes with Barclays. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hey, Steve. How you doing? Can you talk a little bit more about the client space? What are you seeing there sequentially? With the weakness in desktops and some of the strong results in notebook and consumer, how do you see that playing out and impacting your business into the first half here? Thanks.
Yeah, it's in flux. I think that the whole balance between notebook and desktop has been interesting and dynamic over the last calendar year, to say the least. We had a start of the year that had a lot of relative strength in desktop, especially relative to what people were projecting. Then the second half of the year kind of really flipped the other way, where the relative performance was on the notebook side. I think as we left the December quarter, we were, I suppose, discouraged a bit by the lack of momentum in the client space, which I think, again, lends to some of the cautiousness that we're seeing as well as Intel's forecast was about 7% down on their revenue estimate, and that's with probably not nearly the pricing pressures we have. I think the client space is a bit in flux.
It feels for us right now that actually, oddly enough, that maybe desktop demand is doing well already these few weeks in the quarter, whereas notebook seems to be having troubles getting started. I think it's just going to be this constant dance between the two. Again, what you're probably looking at is relatively small growth, low single-digit percentages on a TAM basis through the calendar year. That just doesn't support the price aggression that we've seen in the marketplace. I think it's something the industry's going to figure out, and I think our supply chain is being pretty firm with us that they just don't have additional cost to give us, especially, again, if they're single part providers to each platform.
Okay. Just to clarify, though, you think the pricing there gets better as we go throughout the year as well, though?
I think the price erosion has got to stop.
Got it. Thanks, Steve.
Our next question comes from the line of Rich Kugele with Needham & Company. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. Let's talk a little bit about the cloud system side. I think you talked about it being ahead of where you thought it would be from a demand perspective, but any additional color you could provide, and how much did that weigh on gross margins in the December quarter?
Well, obviously, again, Rich, those class of products carry higher margins, just because they're much more complex machines to build and test and develop. That business began to pick up a couple of quarters ago after, as we know, a few quarters of less than expected growth. We all talked about, was that a function of deployment? Was that a function of utilization rates, or was that a function of time to deployment? Our thesis was it was probably time to deployment and utilization rates and that there'd be an acceleration, and that's kind of what I think we're seeing. I think the backdrop of end user demand hasn't slowed. Again, anything that's high content video is just going to drive more and more demand for that class of storage. I think for Seagate, the portfolio is quite strong.
Our position in six terabyte is really good, and we see a big demand profile. I think for a lot of the CSPs, especially the top 15, they'd almost take any amount of capacity per spindle that you could give them. If we had an eight or 10 terabyte drive today, they'd take it. They have software that knows how to manage that much data under a spindle now. As our portfolio shifts to that, I think we've had some relative advantage, and that's helped the margin. Again, the client space is aggressive, and it all mixes up. I think the other thing to remember, though, is on our new businesses, and I'm not sure this has been modeled well, but I'm not sure that we've been probably able to give you as much detail to model it well, so I'm not being faultful.
Our cloud business is dilutive to gross margin. That's a business I think that we've described we're going to grow into the margin. We're adding revenue. We have really excellent confidence in the revenue profile going forward. If anything, like I said, I think we're probably either on the June quarter call or we'll do it at the analyst meeting, we'll reset our revenue expectations. Again, that business comes in at a lower than corporate gross margin, and we will grow into it. We will exceed the corporate gross margin when the thing is all flushed out. I think that was probably a little bit heavier in the quarter than we would have expected. The client pricing was a little bit heavier than we would have expected in the quarter.
Those were the two main drivers, offset, as you point out, by better margin from the higher demand for our cloud products.
Okay, that's helpful. What element of your manufacturing is the tightest to be able to produce the high cap cloud drives then? Is it test?
Just for supply, for competitive reasons, Rich, I'm not going to specifically answer that question, but let me say this way, that product has long lead times on wafer, and it has a lot of tests. Between wafer and tests, you're looking at 20+ weeks of supply chain that has to be managed. If the customer set doesn't have that fully baked into their ordering system, or if they're seeing demand increases that are inside those lead times, it creates a lot of stress on the system. What we're seeing now, is a lot of stress on the system for the demand that we see this quarter and next, let's say. We can't really do much about this quarter unless we have yield improvements, right? Because you've got either a wafer issue or a test issue that's more than the quarter in duration.
It's really all the work we have to do for the September quarter and the December quarter. Of course, for that, we have to go back to our customers and say, "These are pretty firm orders, because we're going to do a lot of things through our supply chain to accommodate that demand, which will impact our total portfolio." It's pretty dynamic right now, and it's a good problem to have. The lead times in this class of product, it's not like calling up and saying, "I need another million notebook drives." These are complicated machines.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from the line of Keith Bachman with Bank of Montreal. Your line is open.
Hi, thank you. I had two, if I could. Steve, I want to just talk about a comment that you made previously about you thought that TAM in calendar year 2015 would grow. If I look at the March quarter guidance, you're actually guiding the TAM to be down on a year-over-year basis. Where are the pockets of growth as you see 2015? Specifically, do you think as you get into 2015 that the client side on units actually grows?
I think over the course of the calendar year, it does, probably low single digits. Again, we believe March is probably the low quarter, actually for the first time in as long as I can remember. We're looking at, from the customer demand side, it looks like June quarter will be up versus March on the client side.
Okay.
Obviously September and December are typically up as well. I think net we will see a little growth. I think the real issue is what's the nature of the growth and what's the class of machine that people are offering? I think the biggest opportunity the industry's going to see, I don't think it's a calendar 2015 event, by the way. I think it's probably a calendar 2016 event. There will be a smarter client. If we believe half of what we say about the value of the cloud, while it does talk to, in some applications, a lighter client, it also talks to a richer client. Whether or not that's greater compute or greater storage or greater bandwidth capabilities, especially for the knowledge worker and the value creator, these machines have to get more sophisticated, not less.
I don't think that's really been thought through completely. Things like Chromebook are gaining a lot of attention, but when you think about the use case of a Chromebook, let's just hope that's not where the world is going, to check my email and weather and that's all I do.
Right.
I have a lot more faith in humanity than that. I actually think we're going to see a big rotation in the client in 2016. I think in 2015, it's probably going to be low single digits and March is the low quarter.
Okay. Well, my follow-up relates to that, Steve, if I could, or Pat. In gross margin, you're guiding gross margins up sequentially. If you could just review some of the puts and takes, and what's the sustainability of that gross margin that you guided to, given the comments you just made about TAM, and that's it for me. Thank you.
Keith, this is Pat. Yeah, I think as Steve even highlighted in the revenue, we see some levers there that are becoming more apparent to us that help us manage that, even with the lack of visibility in some of the segments we'd like, we still feel confident that's growing. With the backdrop of that, we see where that revenue's coming from and how we model that, and we feel pretty confident in this range. As Steve said, that range needs to expand, and that's the backdrop of the erosion comments because the cost to deploy these are getting greater and greater. You see that in the gross margin and just as importantly as the OpEx as we fundamentally refresh. I think we feel fairly confident on this gross margin and staying in this range.
That is on the backdrop that the erosion needs to slow down. The cost takedowns have continued to happen, but you remember, these products are long in the tooth, and that's why you see the OpEx with the refresh of almost the entire portfolio this year. That's part of that as well. The gross margin, I think it's modeled pretty straight, and it's this classic how much price you can afford to make these investments. That's where it's lining up, we feel pretty confident we can hit these numbers.
We have good cost opportunities in front of us in some of the near-term things that we can do. We're also having this portfolio roll on us, which always gives us advantage as we ramp up the yield curve. Again, Seagate's kind of the only company that over the last 20 years has kind of consistently roll the portfolio across the company. We're just in one of those phases again, and it hits us a little bit on OpEx in terms of some of the things that we have to do to prep the lines and things like that, which these are one, two-quarter events. You roll into a new portfolio, and that gives us a lot of room.
I think for the next couple of quarters, we have underpinned cost takedowns that we're confident we can deliver relative to the shift in the portfolio. After that, we get a whole new product line that's going to help us on both the HDD and the SSD side. I think going forward, while that margin profile feels secure, my point was a little different. It's got to be higher than that, though, to maintain the level of investments that we need if the shift to cloud versus client continues at the rate it is. I think that's the challenge for the industry.
All right. Many thanks, Steve and Pat.
Yeah, thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Monika Garg with Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks for the invitation. My question is more on the OpEx side. If you look at the OpEx guidance is almost 16%. You talked about relating more towards the refresher portfolio and investment in cloud solution segments. Maybe, if you look last how many quarters, revenue is more like flattish on the quarterly basis. Maybe could you talk about all the investments we are seeing in the business? When can we see pickup in the top line and the impact, basically inflection in the revenue?
Yeah, we'll provide another update again, depending on where we're at on the cloud business off the June quarter, certainly at the September strategic update. Basically, we're engaged with a few significant opportunities that I think will put us in position of changing that revenue forecast. To date, the growth has been strong. We're happy with the engagement that we have. Even just based on what we've done, we would probably be ahead of what we anticipated we were going to be either for fiscal 2015 or fiscal 2016. There are a few opportunities that could change that in a more material way, which certainly justify the tiny incremental investment that we're making in the OpEx side.
Increasing the OpEx by $10 million-$15 million to get the type of revenue opportunity that we think is in front of us, we're quite confident is the right thing to do. Hopefully, we'll have more details on that, again, either off the June call or certainly at the September update.
Okay. Thanks, Pat. Thanks, Steve.
Our next question comes from the line of Katy Huberty with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Yeah, thanks, Steve. With a consolidated market at inventory levels that have been quite rational the last year or so, what do you think is driving the pricing behavior, and does it suggest that we need even more consolidation, maybe vertical consolidation in the industry? Secondly, why not buy back more stock in the December quarter, given the payment from WD came in early in the quarter?
Well, I think in terms of the consolidation, remember, in the client space, there's still five competitors. A lot of people forget, and I get it, because of two of the entities owned by, if you will, parent corps. The reality is, given the whole separate agreement that's been dictated by the Chinese government, there are five competitors in the notebook space and in the desktop space, although Toshiba is maybe not quite as strong there as they are on the notebook space. I think until that gets resolved, we're going to have this imbalance, and again, it's just an economic dislocation that it'll adjust one way or the other.
Secondly, I think in the retail space, there's been a battle between two of our competitors that just are refusing at this point to either give up share or not stop trying to gain share at no matter what cost. We don't quite understand it, but that's okay. We'll just walk away from business where it doesn't make sense and redeploy our assets in the products where we can make more money. Again, that'll end up creating a shortage, which then will be self-adjusting somewhere down the stream. In terms of vertical integration in the industry, it's an interesting point. I don't know that it's necessary from what's happening with pricing. I think the real issue is around continuity of supply under critical key components, and especially, again, those components that aren't gaining the value that we gain at the drive level of the shift to the high end.
It's more heads and disks. That's our two most expensive areas for capital and R&D if you take them together. We get the absorption we need with that shift, but if you're just selling one part per device, it's a tough world when TAM is not growing. That creates stresses on the supply chain that may need to either have tighter relationships in terms of the up- and downstream suppliers, or I guess theoretically could result in some types of consolidation in spaces that are critical components that either us or our competitors would worry about in terms of continuity of supply. More to come, I suppose, in terms of how does that really play out. In terms of buyback, I think we're still in the position that we were that when we had the last call and the stock was momentarily sub $60.
We said at these levels we would be aggressive and that's still our position. We will buy for any dilution and then we'll be opportunistic about buying below there. Again, we're thinking our buybacks over this fiscal year, next fiscal year, and we want to continue to commit to return capital at the levels that we've indicated. I don't think we're going to disappoint anybody on that front, either in terms of the buybacks or the dividends or the total amount of capital that gets returned to shareholders. We'll be advantageous where we can, but I think, like we said before, below $60, we believe is pretty attractive, and then it's just a function of timing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Ananda Baruah with Brean Capital. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Steve or Pat, just in the context of the comments around getting the margins up to the 32%-35% range to support cloud builds and customer deployments in the second half of the year, what are the levers that you envision, I guess, taking place to sort of create energy in that conversation? Should we have an expectation the margin potentially could go up in the second half of the year? Thanks.
I don't know that we see an adjustment that quick or that it's needed that quick. I think the point is if the shift that's occurred continues at the rate it is, then the margins have to adjust. So I think, we believe the industry should be behaving with a better sense of the long-term needs on R&D and capital and what our economic models have to look like to provide that. I think in the last couple of quarters, we haven't done that as well as we should have, given the demand profiles. I think we should certainly be trending in that direction as soon as possible, I don't think that means we get to the endpoint this year. By the way, it also drives revenue growth.
We keep talking about it in the context of margin, the reality is the industry should be exhibiting more revenue growth given the shift in demand to the higher capacity and more complex devices. We're not delivering to the extent that we should. I would like to hope that certainly for the sake of the long-term health of the industry, that we start making those shifts.
Thanks. Just a quick follow-up for Pat, if I could. On the OpEx guide, as you guys sort of roll the portfolio over the next couple of quarters, how long should we expect those levels to be the sustained levels for OpEx?
Well, as the model sits today, you'd probably see a roll-off coming in starting in the fiscal '16. As Steve said, we have opportunities in front of us that will continue to course guide that way. As we sit here today, you should see a roll-off of that starting in the fiscal '16.
Yeah. Think of it this way, we would generally manage our core flat. In the next couple of quarters, there's a slight uptick in core to, again, kind of prepare some of the things we have to for the roll. We would expect that part of the portfolio to roll back to flat. Obviously we go for leverage where we can there, and that gets back to this dynamic around are we getting paid what we need to invest in the core products. We have the adjacencies, whether or not that's the PCIe business or the cloud business, that carry a different load of expenses, but are also driving a different revenue profile.
I think we all have to work together here over the next few quarters as we manage the expense side and continue to try and provide you updates on the revenue, and then we get more confidence. At the end of the day, this model could be very different, but it would only be very different if we're generating the revenue growth and ultimately the margin growth that would sustain that type of OpEx increase. Right now we're feeling pretty confident about that, so we want to make sure we continue the investments that Jamie needs for his business, particularly building the go-to-market capabilities as well as some of the technical capabilities that are being put in front of us by a wide variety of customers, whether they be OEM or end user or startups.
Thanks a lot, Steve. Very much appreciated.
Thank you.
Our final question comes from the line of Sherri Scribner with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks. I just wanted to ask you, Steve, to remind us what your exabyte growth expectations are for the business and thinking about the cloud nearline drives becoming stronger as we move through the year. How do you see that playing out in terms of year-over-year growth?
Exabyte growth on the consumer side is really high, too. Depending on even the client products, if you're looking at a certain segment in the consumer area that's a lot of two terabyte drives get eaten up there and threes and fours for some of the consumer at-home applications. I don't want to not talk about desktop because it does drive a lot of high-capacity devices, and in fact, a lot of high-capacity devices. In the cloud, there seems to be fours will be the predominant capacity, I would think, for the leading-edge companies. There's still a lot of one, twos, and threes that are sold in the kind of generation of cloud companies behind them, whether or not those are private clouds or public.
The leading-edge ones are transitioning pretty quick to six, and like I said, if we could make eights and 10s, I'm sure they would take them. I look at it more as where is the exabyte growth overall relative to areal density growth, and then also thinking about it in terms of absorption of heads and disk channel capabilities and test. All of those measures are still moving in a way that says we're constrained. That whether or not you think of it as heads to disk or test time or lead times or complexity of channel or exabyte growth relative to areal density growth, they're all ahead of areal density growth that the industry can provide right now. I think that's the dynamic we think about long-term.
Okay. Can I just ask quickly, I know we've talked about it a little bit, but the TAM guidance is down about 7% Q over Q after a pretty soft December quarter based on typical seasonality. Seems kind of high to me. We haven't seen that kind of decline since 2009. Just trying to understand what you're seeing that makes you so cautious. Thanks.
Well, yeah. We didn't say 7%. We said we think 135. I had to rewrite that sentence, so sorry I garbled it. We don't really know where December came in, is the issue. Being the first reporter, it could be a 142, it could be a 144. Maybe when the dust settles in a couple of weeks we'll know, really. Depending on that range and depending on what your expectation is for TAM next quarter, it kind of talks to 5%-7%. I'm not going to debate that. That's kind of where we think. I think part of it is just, again, the momentum. December's always a tricky quarter because sometimes the momentum accelerates, and sometimes it decreases, and then sometimes it impacts what happens in the March quarter, and sometimes it doesn't.
It definitely slowed down on the client side in December. That has us cautious, and frankly, the issues around currency and what's going on in Europe, I just think it's wiser to aim for the lower TAM, and we can obviously leverage up a couple of million units pretty easily as an industry versus overproducing. Again, I have to look at the Intel midpoint, and that's a company that doesn't have a lot of price pressure, and they kind of guided down 7% on the midpoint of the range. We have to take that as an input as well.
Thank you.
Thank you. All right, everybody. Thanks very much. Sorry we went over here a little bit. We look forward to seeing you next quarter.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may all disconnect. Everyone, have a good day.