All right, we're going to get started. I'm Timothy Arcuri. I'm the Semi and Semi Equipment Analyst here at UBS, and we're very pleased to have Skyworks next in the agenda. Very pleased to have Phil Brace, who's the CEO of Skyworks. So again, Phil, thank you for the time.
Thanks, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here, and it's a great event and great conference.
Great. Well, let's start with the strategic rationale and the timing of the Qorvo combo. Some of my investor conversations seem to miss maybe what some of the opportunities are that you see. And can you walk us through why now is the right moment to bring these two franchises together and how you're managing focus and continuity for the company while this all plays out?
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, first off, I had known Bob and Qorvo long before I took the job, actually. And so I was familiar with the company. And when I came on board at Skyworks, it just became so clear to me that the combination of these two companies would create a very strong platform. And so sometimes it just takes a little bit of maybe a new perspective, some timing. We've got customer support. We have regulatory, pass-through regulatory, and I think just some hard work. And you take advantage of timing and have a little bit of persistence. I mean, the end state is going to be a company that has just a tremendous franchise, right?
$7.7 billion of total revenue, $5 billion mobile business that'll be more stable, and then a very attractive $2.6 billion non-mobile business that'll have really attractive franchises like defense and aerospace. We pick up GaN technology for both Power GaN and RF GaN. And finally, the capital structure of the company is very favorable and that really should allow us to grow from the future. So I couldn't be more excited. It's a tremendous opportunity. We're going to be stronger together.
And how are you managing the continuity and focus at Skyworks while this all plays out?
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, that's one of the, I would say one of the benefits of certainly the business we're in, right? It's a hyper-competitive business. What I joke with my team is a little bit, I'll use a football analogy. It's like American football. You win a game, you got to get up and put on your pads and go practice the next day. And so we have a Super Bowl every year, and we continue to focus on that. Our teams are super energized by the opportunity to work together with Qorvo, but also they're very focused on the day-to-day business. And we've got a select group of people that are focused on doing integration, integration planning. We're operating independently until close, and we're kind of trying to manage that very carefully.
Great. Can we also stay on the deal and just ask about the customer support for the deal? You've mentioned strong support among the major customers. Some investors ask me, why would your big customers be in favor of this?
You might imagine, just step back for a second. I wouldn't have taken, I don't think I would have pursued this deal. My board wouldn't have pursued the deal. Qorvo's CEO and Qorvo's board would not approve the deal without having some conversations with our largest customers on that. So we wouldn't have pursued it without some of those discussions. I think from their point of view, for me, one of the things I looked at, and I think from their point of view as well, the technologies are actually much more complementary than what people think on the outside. If you actually look at it today, they do things like envelope tracking and antenna tuners, ET PMICs. We use some of the PA's and some of the high-frequency stuff. The actual overlap is actually quite small.
And I think what they looked at is they looked at the landscape, and frankly, the landscape has changed over the last several years, right? They've seen Android kind of diminish in importance for that, and they recognize that having a strong supply base is important to them. They have two very large suppliers in that space, and I think they're very supportive of us doing that. And I think they also look at two companies together that frankly have some duplicate spending that they would rather see invested in stuff that's a benefit to them. So they've been a strong supporter.
There are some things that the combined entity could allow them to do that wouldn't have been possible if they were too small or subscale.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, some of the ways that I talk about that is in a very high-level analogy. Both of us are investing in basically core technology, right? We take elements from the periodic table and we turn them into technologies that power the world around us. Some of that technology that we do is just core development, transistor development, process technology development, packaging development. All of that stuff actually is before the customer really sees that. So if we can actually focus some of that instead of that duplication, focus on getting ahead of the curve, I think that'll be a benefit to them. And we haven't really underwritten any sort of, we'll call it revenue synergies.
We're not assuming any sort of magic occurs, even though we do believe that having more of the RF signal chain should give us the opportunity to innovate and create a competitive advantage for us long-term. We're not baking that into the models as of yet.
Yeah, can we talk about that? Because in the initial framework, you did talk about all the typical cost synergies. But can you sort of double-click on areas where the combined portfolio could unlock revenue synergy over time? And maybe if you could quantify that or at least direct us to what that might be?
Yeah, so I think that if you look at some of the numbers we've published, I've been very careful to actually not project that. We haven't baked in any revenue synergies. We haven't baked in any PE synergies, multiple expansion, any of that sort of stuff. Because I think right now we're just looking at the way that we can get focus on the value creation, which is the synergies and the synergy realization. If you step back and look at some things we could do longer term, I'll give you an example. We do have a small defense business. We're in some missile systems. You wouldn't know that today because it's small. Our Qorvo has a very large defense business. Is there opportunities to bring some of those things together? We absolutely think so.
Can we do some things where collectively we may make different priority capital allocation decisions about where we collectively invest resources or not? Maybe we will. We know from experience that we have one of our large Android customers based in Mountain View that we do the entire Signal Chain with, with the RF front - end. We know that there are things we can do technology-wise, different trade-offs that may be a benefit to the customer. Those are still early days, but those are just some examples of things we could do, and then just to remind everybody, the thing I get the most passionate about is the world is connected wirelessly. All of these AI data centers, they're going to need to get devices out to the individual people, and that's all going to be done wirelessly, whether it's cell phones, glasses, think about drones, electronic warfare, automotive, everything.
The world is a wireless world, and by the time this deal closes, 6G is going to be right around the corner, and we're going to be really well positioned.
Can we talk about the international regulatory path? Given you have relatively modest exposure in China, they had higher, but now that's actually coming down. And the RF market in China is already pretty competitive. How are you approaching the regulatory process from an international perspective?
Yeah, you know I think obviously we have to file in a number of different jurisdictions. I mean, China is the big one that everyone talks about. I mean, we feel like we're really well advised. I mean, we've got some of the best law firms on the planet, people that have done very recent, very large transactions and got them through. I think, as you noted, both of our exposures, domestic exposure in there is relatively low. It's hard for anyone to argue that there's not a viable robust business there. And I think that we're going to take a step-by-step methodical approach and frankly try and just do it matter of fact. We do get some questions around, gee, why the timing? What was the reason you sent out the timing? We just think that's being practical and prudent about when we think it's going to get done.
So I think we're just going to take a deliberate methodical approach. We believe we've got a path through, and we'll just keep doing that.
If China were to become a big regulatory problem, are the synergies and the strategic rationale great enough that you would close without China?
I don't think so. I think that what we've seen in the past is that I don't think there's a situation where they say no. I think they just don't approve, and they just go on forever and ever and ever. And I think some people just give up at that point. I don't think that's the case on this side. This is U.S. to U.S. There's a robust business there. I think we're going to pay special attention to make sure we understand their concerns, if any, and we'll do that. But I don't think, in the event, God forbid, that something should happen there, I don't think we'd be closing over China.
It'd be more likely that they would just slow roll approval and you would say, "Look, this is just, yeah, isn't worth it.
Yeah.
Yeah. Let's talk about the content dynamics at your largest customer. You provided color in the past on the mix shifts in their lineup. Obviously, you did lose content this year. You were very clear about that from the beginning. This year, you had previously said that this would be the trough in content. You sort of haven't really reaffirmed that per se recently. So I guess the first question is, is there anything that you would say on sort of the content outlook next year versus this year?
No, it's still a little premature. I'll say one thing, though. If you look at our recent results, our recent results have been better than expected. I think one of the reasons for that is that the mix is better than expected. And I think that brings up an important point that when you win or lose certain things, there's discrete decisions, and you're not entirely sure which models are going to sell well or not. So you kind of make assumptions based on that. I think right now I feel good about our competitive position. I think some of that stuff is still being worked out. The slope of that line that I've been talking about has been down. I'm hoping to change the slope of that line. I still feel good about ability to do that.
And I think we'll have some more color about directionally where that'll be in the next couple of months. But it's going to be just based on the mix shift. Like as of now, it's hard to predict which phones sell and which phones don't.
So you think it's more like there are sockets you might lose, but from a blended perspective, it'll depend probably more on what model sells versus another model?
Yeah. When you think, I think generally their strategy is going to be to try and dual-source things, and when they dual-source things, it's not like they put half of them on the same models. They split them up by model, so for example, one of the latest models isn't selling especially well. Some of the other models are selling better, well, if you happen to be on the models that are selling better, then you're going to do better. So I think there's some of that dynamic that's in play, and I think one of the things that go back to the combination, the thing that's really important about that, I think, is that because we're going to have more complementary products, the revenue base there should be more stable because single source risk will go down.
I think driving some stability in that business is going to be a very important factor, right? And if we can improve our utilization and get that up over 50%, all of a sudden now you have a more stable, growing business. And that's kind of what we've projected in the financials is kind of a mid-single-digit grower.
Yeah, I guess I don't remember there being this much variability model to model as to what the content is.
Yeah.
Do you think it doesn't seem like that's going to go away now? Maybe that has to do with the internal modem versus merchant modem. But do you think on a combined basis, when the companies are combined, do you think that that, and by then you'll be past the internal modem versus merchant modem, do you think that that will cause some of this near-term instability and unpredictability to sort of go away?
I think it should wane, because I think that when you add it up, you think about where they play and where we've played, it's kind of overlapped. And so the proportion of business for any one particular thing isn't going to be as high. And so therefore you should be able to count on a more stable revenue base over time. And then we talked about the fact that our gross margins should be able to improve over time. That's going to be really driven by things like mix as we grow our non-handset business, improved utilization, and maybe using our OSATs and things like that. And so I think that driving some stability in that business is going to be really important. And so that'll be something, one of our objectives for doing this.
And can we just talk about the impact of the combination on the competitiveness of the mobile market generally? Does bringing the two companies together extend your system-level capabilities in a way that improves the long-term content profile with these large customers? Similar to what I just asked you, but just.
Yeah, look, I think so. If you look today, we have existence proof where today, one of our large customers, we do provide pretty much all of the front end for the handset, and we have been able to do unique things and make trade-offs and things that I think give that customer a competitive advantage. We do think there's opportunity to do that in the future. Some of those things will take longer to implement because right now we're designing two generations ahead, so it's going to take a while for some of that stuff to converge, but I'm absolutely convinced there's opportunities here, and that goes beyond handsets, by the way. I think that's true in other markets as well.
And is there a reason why the big Android customer that you have, you have more content on that phone than on any other phone by far? Is there a reason why that customer is working so closely with you?
Well, one, I think we do a great job. I think we've got great technology. I think that that particular customer, I think they are very much focused on having a flagship product that really competes with the best of them. And if you actually look at the reviews of some of that Pixel product, it's done really, really well. And I think that they are trying to do that to maintain a halo over Android to make sure Android just doesn't go down. And I think that we've been doing really well there. And in fact, if you look in general, some of the other customers too, our products are very high performance and very low power, where they are almost like, think of it as Ferrari. We sell Ferraris. The other competitors sell Lamborghinis. Just depends kind of what you want at a given time.
We're not really selling Camrys or Yugos. So if you need those kind of solutions, those aren't for us. And so we try to focus those products. And that particular customer really values that. And the other thing they do, which is smart, in my opinion, is they have two-year design cycles in terms of win. So it enables you to amortize that investment over two years. So they do a good job of that.
I want to go back to the content that your largest customer. Historically, that customer has prioritized performance over everything. As you mentioned, the internal modem has caused some noise, I guess. But as you look back, what sort of gives you confidence? I mean, when you sort of deconstruct why you got to the point you did where you've lost content, what sort of gives you confidence in your competitive moat and your engineering edge?
I think I mentioned the first time I went and visited a large customer, they wrote down people's names on a whiteboard. They wrote down individual people's names and then said, "These are the best engineers in the RF industry." So that gives me a lot of confidence right there. Now, some of it you got to execute, and some of it's like a sports analogy. Sometimes you have LeBron James or Steph Curry, and you don't win every single game. You're competing. It's a very tough environment. Our competitors hire as good, smart engineers, and we need to continue to execute. I feel good about our technology. It doesn't mean it's not a competitive environment.
Do you think that the combination, if we talk about Google, do you think there's a potential for you to do even more with them on a combined basis, or are you getting all the content that you think you can even on a combined basis?
You know, the one thing I'm excited about them in particular is I think there's many other things beyond just handsets that we could do that I'd love to get more exposure into. So I think some of it for me is, okay, are there other technologies that we can bring to bear that would be interesting there, right? So I think that from a handset side, I mean, we're pretty strong there already, but I'm interested to see if we can expand our business there. They're obviously got lots of different businesses and business units that we can work on.
Yeah. Let's actually talk about Broad Markets. So maybe you could talk about your Broad Markets strategy and where you see the most momentum?
Yeah. So far, if you look at us standalone, we've had very good momentum on the Wi-Fi side. Wi-Fi has been a good product. I mean, the Wi-Fi 7 adoption is kind of in its early stages. That has a virtuous cycle and there's more content per device and more devices being sold. So that's kind of a double-edged tailwind that we have going on there. Wi-Fi 8 is just around the horizon, and we see really strong demand across both enterprise and consumer segments for that. So that seems to be very well. Automotive also tends to be another strong one for us. We do get some questions on, gee, everyone else has had trouble in automotive. We're actually fortunate enough in that we are small enough in automotive that we can still grow pretty well, and we're in kind of the growing parts of the market.
We're talking about vehicle connectivity, whether it's going to 5G, in-vehicle entertainment, and telematics, things like that, and so we've seen some good growth there, and then finally, on the infrastructure side, we're kind of finally behind inventory corrections, and we're starting to see some growth in the infrastructure side, particularly our timing products and our power products, so in general, we see pretty good tailwind across the board in our Broad Markets business. Inventory is low, and we're keeping a close eye on it, right? There's a lot of kind of turbulence in the market, as you point out, so we're trying to take a cautious and prudent view on that, but so far it seems to be good.
And which of those markets, if we go back to the Qorvo combo, which of these sort of sub-verticals within broad markets, which of those sub-verticals does the combination help you the most in?
Oh, defense. Defense, right? We don't have any. They bring GaN for both RF GaN and Power GaN. So we don't have that today. We have a small defense business today. We're in some missile systems. They bring a lot more of that. So I think that that's a huge plus. And given the geopolitical climate, I think that drones and electronic warfare and all that stuff is going to be around for a long time. And I think that really gives us a good spot in that space.
And can you sort of double-click on, as you exited last quarter, double-click on the Broad Markets business and break it down by each of its segments? I kind of think of it as being roughly one-third, one-third, one-third. It's not exactly that. But can you just talk about each of those markets? And you did mention that the infrastructure piece was hit hardest. Can you just go through each?
So if you look, we've got kind of the infrastructure space, which includes Wi-Fi space. And so that one's growing pretty well. We got Wi-Fi 7 on the back of that. So that one's going pretty good on that side. Did I say infrastructure? I say IoT. I don't know which one I said. We've got the automotive side, which includes connectivity and some of the elements there. That's probably second growing. And then third, we've got the infrastructure side, which includes power and power elements there from that side. So that's about right. You've got it there. Our top grower, I think, is probably on the Wi-Fi side in terms of dollars and magnitude. Auto is probably the second biggest grower. And then the timing business, which is timing and power, is growing quite well on the infrastructure side.
Wi-Fi 7, where do we stand on Wi-Fi 7? Is it still very early days?
I would probably say it's in the third inning of a nine-inning baseball game, right? It's probably where it is. I mean, we're going to see good growth into 2026 from that, and we're starting to see, I mean, we've got more demand than we can fulfill on that side.
And what do you think the long-term growth profile is of the Broad Markets business? And I guess, personally, how much did this factor into your decision to join Skyworks and, well, in the case of Phil Carter's case, come back?
For me, when I joined, what I loved about it is I love businesses where there are tough problems to solve. I did not get scared by the customer concentration element because, frankly, when you make the products we have, we have the best customer in the world, and we're everywhere in them. I think of this as a wireless world, and I think the opportunity to diversify ourselves into other businesses is a very powerful value creator. And I think the combination with Qorvo just enhances that capability. So I couldn't be more excited. I can't wait for the deal to close, and we're going to go from there. And I think Phil Carter coming back, right? I mean, I think he's here somewhere. You can ask him afterwards, but I think this is a strong statement coming back. He knew what he was getting into.
Maybe we could talk about you're sort of doing your own self-help along the way. You're not sitting around waiting for the deal to close. And you're already consolidating a site into Newbury Park. You guided gross margin to 46.5% for Q4 despite revenue coming down sequentially. So can you just talk about sort of how the consolidation of these sites helps gross margin and what the path the puts and takes will be on gross margin?
Yeah. So obviously, the factory consolidation was one I honestly probably should have been made a while ago. It was kind of one that we quickly decided to go get done. It's an example of us taking a look at it and consolidating that. We still have to migrate some of the long-life product lines out of there. So we probably won't see the effect of that until starting fiscal 2027. It should improve both operating expense and capital efficiency from that side. When we look going forward, we've got investments in our Mexicali facility in terms of assembly test. And we also continue to work on cost-down solutions across the board. We should also benefit from mix as our broad markets business continues to outgrow the handset business. That should help us on the mix side as well.
I think, shorter term, the mix is really going to be dependent on the biggest lever, the mix between mobile and broad. That's probably the biggest lever we have.
And can you talk about what you've done to streamline costs otherwise? I know you've recruited new people. I think you've consolidated the product marketing into individual businesses. Can you just talk about all that?
Yeah. You know, I made a lot of changes. About 25% of my staff is new, and some of it was just bringing in some fresh air. And one of the things I did immediately was actually put the product marketing people right in with the business units. We previously had the product marketing people right in with the sales and marketing people, and the business units in effect were just engineering organizations. That really created a problem in that the engineers weren't actually getting out there talking to customers enough. So I pretty much broke that down. We hired a new sales and marketing leader, and the difference already has just been tremendous in terms of the customer engagement. The customer needs to be getting out there. We need to have more touch points with the customers.
One of my theses, one of the prevailing theories that existed before I showed up was that our Broad Markets business distracted us from our large customer business. I actually think it's the other way around. I think the large customer just distracted us from all these other things, and we haven't done a good job of doing that. So for me, that kind of unlocked some of that, and there'll be some expected savings that come out of that. And then secondly, I just consolidated two of the business units into one, and I eliminated some executive positions. And really, that was to get better leverage and R&D across the businesses, but also just to shake things up a little bit. And sometimes bringing in some new talent is like listening to new music or breathing fresh air.
Just a different way to look at things, and you really drive some change and improvement that way.
Yeah. I mean, if I were going to play devil's advocate, I would say, well, the thesis was to sort of diversify away from your biggest customer. And now on a combined basis, after this deal goes through, you're going to have $14-$15 of content. I mean, it's going to be somewhere in that range, which is commensurate with what your content is at Google, basically. So it doesn't, I mean, yes, maybe from a percentage perspective, it's a little bit lower, but it's still pretty high.
Oh, yeah. What I would offer you there is, A, I think what we're going to get out of it is going to be less volatility. Customer concentration in my mind, the concern is rather with respect to volatility. If you look at someone else who has high concentration in that customer, you pick Cirrus Logic, for example, they have even higher customer concentration. They trade a higher multiple. Why? Less volatile and higher gross margins.
So if we can actually get to the point where we've got a stable business, that level of content, such that the single socket risk goes down, and you have that as a stable mixed single-digit grower that throws off a lot of cash, and then you can start investing in complementary technologies that allow you to grow your business at above market rates, then I think we're going to start seeing some of the multiple expansion and some of the gross margin expansion that I think will come in time. But none of that is underwritten in terms of the deal.
And you've met with a lot of folks here, and you've done a lot of meetings since you came to the company. What do investors overlook?
I think that, one, they overlook our Broad Markets business at all. I mean, if you look at where we've got fantastic strength in Wi-Fi and timing and power electronics, I don't think we spend enough time talking about that at all. I think the other thing people don't really understand is just the depth of the technology and the capabilities that we have. In some ways, we get a lot of questions around what's happening with one particular socket or another, and everyone's talking about how challenging it is to work with that one customer. When you make the products we do, this is the best customer model to have. I'm proud to have them, and I want to win their product every day.
The world is going to be wireless, and it's going to be wireless for as far as the eye can see. If I can use this time where there's light shining elsewhere to go out and kind of build my capability and get stronger and bigger coming out of this, right? If you look at other companies that had our footprint a decade ago, they're a lot bigger than they are now. I think that's kind of what I think there's a tremendous opportunity for. I can't wait to get it done.
Do you think that post-deal, I mean, both of you have been de-emphasizing China? Post-deal, do you see any opportunity to reverse that, or is that something that you're not even interested in?
No. So I think I would clarify the point as it goes back to we make high-performance, low-power solutions. To the extent that customers around the world want that and want to pay for that, then I'm happy to have that. But if they want us to sell a Ferrari at a Camry price, we're not going to be doing that.
So do you think that on a combined basis, do you think that the Chinese customers will come to you and maybe see more value so that that does open up opportunities for you?
Yeah. I think I'm certainly very open to have those discussions. And those are discussions we're having. Why we've been successful with our largest customer and the other customer in Mountain View is they value what we bring to the table, and they recognize how that differentiates their products. To the extent we have other customers globally that are interested in that and are willing to pay, then I'm happy to have those conversations.
And when I looked at your financial model for the merger, it's higher than what if I took the Street numbers, combined them, and I took your synergies. It's a decent bit higher than what the Street was expecting, plus the synergies. So that really speaks to some of the self-help that you're going to do between now and then. And can you just talk about maybe what else you can do? I mean, obviously, you've announced some facility consolidation, but where's the line stop where you're like, "Deal's going to close in whatever a year, so we don't want to do too much before the deal closes"? How much of a window do you have to truly do self-help?
Yeah. It's a good question. I think some of the self-help there is really driven by if you look at some of the mix shifts, right? I mean, you're probably talking about the gross margin operating income line. If you look at some of the self-help, it's really based on some of the gross margin mix shifts that happen. And you look at what's happening with Qorvo, they're actually de-emphasizing their China exposure. Android exposure is going down. So they're going to have mix shift within the mobile business, which should benefit them. And then they're going to have we collectively are going to have the same dynamic. So our mix inside mobile should get better, and then our overall aggregate mix should get better as we have more handset business. And then we've got some of the other actions we talked about.
In terms of other self-help, I mean, the one interesting thing as we go through the integration planning process, we obviously have to keep the companies very separate, but we also know, I mean, they kind of look like us, right? We kind of have a pretty good idea. And to the extent we see something that we go, "Oh, geez, we should be doing this anyway, regardless of the deal closes," then I think we're going to be taking an active look at that.
So you're proceeding on an independent path until it becomes abundantly obvious that the deal will close, and then you.
I think we have to pursue an independent path until it closes itself, and we can do integration planning and systems and processes and do some things like that. I mean, one of the things is we use the same ERP system, so that's already helpful, right?
And just to be clear, you've not baked in any revenue synergies in that model at all?
No.
Great. Okay. Well, that's all the time we have. Thank you, Phil.
Great. Thank you very much. Thanks for your support.