Synaptics Incorporated (SYNA)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2023

May 3, 2023

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Synaptics Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Munjal Shah. Please go ahead.

Munjal Shah
Head of Investor Relations, Synaptics

Thanks, Sean. Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today on Synaptics Third Quarter Fiscal 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Munjal Shah, and I'm the Head of investor relations. With me on today's call are Michael Hurlston, our President and CEO, and Dean Butler, our CFO. This call is also being broadcast live over the web, can be accessed from the investor relations section of the company's website at synaptics.com. In addition to a supplemental slide presentation, we have also posted a copy of these prepared remarks on our investor relations website. In addition to the company's GAAP results, management will also provide supplementary results on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes share-based compensation, acquisition-related costs, and certain other non-cash or recurring or non-recurring items.

Please refer to the press release issued after the market close today for a detailed reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP results, which can be accessed from the investor relations section of the company's website at synaptics.com. Additionally, we would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, Synaptics will make forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial condition, results of operation, plans, objectives, future performance, and business. Although Synaptics believes our estimates and assumptions to be reasonable, they are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties beyond our control and may prove to be inaccurate. Synaptics cautions that actual results may differ materially from any future performance suggested in the company's forward-looking statements.

We refer you to the company's current and periodic reports filed with the SEC, including a most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Synaptics expressly disclaims any obligation to update this forward-looking information. I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Thanks, Munjal. I'd like to welcome everyone to today's call. Our fiscal third quarter revenue was slightly above the midpoint of our guidance range, a solid result against a challenging economic backdrop. We maintained strong gross margins, which ultimately drove EPS above the midpoint of our guidance. Let me start by highlighting how the recent macro events are impacting our business. We reported previously we've been focused on reducing customer and distributor inventories in our consumer-facing businesses such as virtual reality and Wi-Fi. We have been surprised by the slower pace of inventory drawdown. Sell-through hasn't returned to the degree we expected, largely because our customers have further reduced their forecasts in response to weakening end demand. While we reduced shipments into the channel significantly from our peak levels, we have not seen a commensurate drawdown in inventory.

Another unanticipated macro change was the deterioration in corporate confidence toward the end of the quarter. This led to reduced IT spend, impacting our enterprise-facing businesses such as video interface and audio headsets. Given these dynamics, recovery will take longer than we initially forecast, and we now anticipate that the inventory bleed will take us deep into calendar 2023. In response to these near-term demand challenges, we are working with customers, allowing them to align backlog to demand in a concerted effort to reduce inventories to normalized levels. We have confidence in our product roadmap and continue to invest in our long-term opportunities. Until we get past this acute period, we are tightening our belt and are reducing spend by freezing hiring, decreasing outside services, and lowering all non-essential spending.

The board recognizes Synaptics' fundamental market potential and has approved an increase in our share repurchase program, bringing our total available authorization to nearly $1 billion. We are confident in our ability to return to growth once the inventory digestion is behind us. Given the June quarter guide, which Dean will cover in detail, we can say unequivocally that the business is shipping between $75 million and $125 million below where it should, even factoring in the weaker demand profile. Given the structural improvements we have made over the last three years and the share taken in product areas such as automotive, Wi-Fi, and enterprise telephony, there is no reason to believe that the current state persists beyond this inventory correction. There are bright spots in the business. Our automotive products continue to outperform, benefiting from the transition to TDDI.

In addition, with a $4.3 billion IoT funnel, Synaptics continues to win new designs and expand its future market position at key OEMs like Amazon, Cisco, Samsung, Dell, Ford, BMW, Toyota, ADT, Verisure, and DIRECTV. We expect to emerge from the current downturn in better shape, consolidating share positions and advancing technology in our franchise product areas. During the quarter, we stayed focused on executing our plans. We won new Wi-Fi designs, and the activity level continued to increase throughout the quarter. We introduced our second Triple Combo device that doubles throughput for high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity and integrates LE Audio for multiple concurrent Bluetooth 5.3 audio streams. The solution is ideal for intense streaming applications, advanced automotive infotainment systems, and high-end multimedia systems. Additionally, we have a new mid-range, cost-effective Wi-Fi 6E product that will be sampling to customers in the summer.

While our business has taken a step back as we bleed off inventory, we still believe that we are on track to have a $1 billion business in three to five years. In fact, our Wi-Fi opportunity funnel has grown more than 30% year-over-year. We had several new customer product ramps this quarter, Unify and NEC for our enterprise telephony products, Razer and Jabra for new gaming headsets and speaker phones, and Lexus and Toyota for automotive TDDI solutions, among others. We are also expanding our product offerings at ADT with the integration of our smart voice glass break detection technology and security systems. While we are winning new sockets in our IoT portfolio, we also continue to cross-sell, increasing content in existing platforms, such as operator set-top boxes and enterprise telephony. Another bright spot for the portfolio was our mobile business.

Revenue was ahead of expectations due to higher demand from China, with customers like OPPO seeing stronger than expected product ramps. Outside of China, we are working on a new product launch for high-end touch controllers with a customer in Korea. Overall, our market position is strong in high-end flexible OLED screens, and we expect to see an increasing TAM as the technology moves down into higher volume tiers. To conclude, the near term is challenging, but our secular opportunities are unchanged. The number of connected devices is expected to increase significantly over the next few years, driving our wireless business and keeping us on track to our long-term goal. Infotainment content is growing in new cars, which should lead to continued strength in our automotive business. We still believe in wireless workspaces and the opportunity to drive content gains in the docking station platforms.

We are in an extremely strong position with design wins, new product innovation, and portfolio expansion, giving me confidence in our long-term growth prospects. Before I turn the call over to Dean for a review of our third quarter financial results and fourth quarter outlook, I should mention that we plan to update the investment community regarding our long-term strategy at an Investor Day later this fall.

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Thanks, Michael. Good afternoon to everyone. I'll start with a review of our financial results for the recently completed quarter and then provide our current outlook. Revenue for the March quarter was $327 million, above the midpoint of our guidance. March quarter revenue from IoT, PC, and mobile were 71%, 16%, and 13% respectively. Year-over-year, consolidated March quarter revenue was down 31%, with declines across all three product areas of our portfolio. March quarter IoT product revenue was down a modest 3% sequentially, but down 23% on a year-over-year basis. The year-over-year decline is most pronounced in our virtual reality, wireless, and audio headset products as these markets continue to face macro headwinds. In PC, our March quarter revenue was down 6% sequentially and down 41% year-over-year, as we continue to under ship end demand.

We expect the PC market to continue its bottoming process as customer inventories are being depleted. However, corporate enterprise IT spending likely remains muted due to macro pressures, complicating the recovery trajectory expected in the second half of the calendar year. Our March quarter mobile product revenue was down 27% sequentially and was down 47% on a year-over-year basis. Mobile, however, was better than our prior expectations as the customers in China experienced better than forecasted new product sales. We expect continued improvement in the June quarter, but remain cautious as the end demand in this geography is still volatile. For the March quarter, our GAAP gross margin was 52.8%, which includes $23.7 million of intangible asset amortization and $900,000 of share-based compensation costs.

March quarter non-GAAP gross margin continued to be strong at 60.3% within our guidance range, but a bit lower than our expectation due to product mix. GAAP operating expenses in the March quarter were $138.1 million. Which includes share-based compensation costs of $28.9 million, intangibles amortization of $8.5 million, and amortization of prepaid development costs of $800,000. March quarter non-GAAP operating expenses continued to track as expected at $100 million, which was the midpoint of our guidance, and is up only 1% over the last four years, despite being a larger and more diversified company. On a year-to-date basis, our GAAP tax rate was 43% and our non-GAAP tax rate was 17%.

In the March quarter, we had GAAP net income of $10.4 million or GAAP net income of $0.26 per diluted share. Our non-GAAP net income for the March quarter was $57.3 million, a decrease of 15% from the prior quarter and a 51% decrease from the same quarter one year ago. Our non-GAAP EPS per diluted share of $1.89 was above the midpoint of our guidance range with higher net interest income during the quarter. Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $934 million of cash equivalents, and short-term investments on hand, an increase of $75 million from the preceding quarter, with cash flow from operations of $109 million, partially offset by $26 million of cash used under our share repurchase program during the quarter.

As Michael mentioned, the board has approved an additional $500 million for share repurchases, bringing our total plan to $2.3 billion with an available authorization of $977 million. We continue to be steadfast in our capital allocation philosophy. Our balance sheet is extremely healthy, and we continue to allocate our cash usage between share repurchases, debt management, and potential tuck-in acquisitions, seeking the best long-term return for shareholders. Capital expenditures were $14 million, and depreciation for the quarter was $7.6 million. Receivables at the end of March were $218 million, and days of sales outstanding were 60 days, a reduction of five days from 65 last quarter.

Days of inventory were 102, below 112 days last quarter, and ending inventory of $148 million was down $30 million as our shipments out once again exceed our inbound new inventory purchases. We anticipate a further reduction in the June quarter given forecasts, but are cautious about drawing inventory down too far once demand turns. Now let me show the outlook for our June quarter. The macro situation continues to weigh on our customers' forecasts, with their focus squarely on lowering inventory levels. Even in markets where demand has reached close to trough levels, recovery is taking longer than we originally anticipated.

Given the need to further burn customer inventory, we expect revenue for the June quarter to be in the range of $210 million-$240 million, a sequential decline of approximately 31% at the midpoint. We expect our revenue mix from IoT, PC, and mobile products in the June quarter to be approximately 57%, 19%, and 24% respectively. IoT-based customers have experienced the most acute inventory position and as a result are disproportionately expected to decline in the quarter. Our most aggressive shipment holdbacks are occurring in these areas. We expect many of these customers to deplete their inventory throughout the balance of the calendar year before returning to normal run rates.

PC products are expected to decline in the June quarter, but are seemingly close to trough levels, while our mobile products likely increase during the June quarter, as demand plus new product launches moves these customers back to modest growth. As a result of these mixed dynamics, we expect GAAP gross margin for the June quarter to be in the range of 44%-47% and expect non-GAAP gross margin in the range of 56%-58%, a decline from the previous quarter and are comparable to prior periods where our IoT products represented a lower mix. We expect GAAP operating expenses in the June quarter to be in the range of $138 million-$143 million, which includes intangible amortization and share-based compensation.

We expect non-GAAP operating expense in the June quarter to be in the range of $98 million-$102 million, consistent with the March quarter. We're taking actions to maintain our expense discipline, including freezing hiring, cutting outside services, and reducing discretionary spend. Synaptics has strong expense controls, having expanded spending by only 1% over the past four years since 2019.

We remain committed to our focused investment areas to drive long-term growth opportunities for the company, therefore continue our prudent stance despite lower revenue levels, which we believe will ultimately prove to be temporary. As a result, June quarter GAAP net loss per basic share is expected to be in the range of $0.55-$0.85, non-GAAP net income per diluted share is anticipated in the range of $0.25-$0.65 per share on an estimated 40 million fully diluted shares. We expect non-GAAP net interest expense in the June quarter to be approximately $7 million. Finally, we expect our non-GAAP tax rate to remain unchanged in the range of 16%-18%. This wraps up our prepared remarks. I'd like to now turn the call over to the operator to start the Q&A session. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Kevin Cassidy of Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is now open.

Kevin Cassidy
Senior Research Analyst of Semiconductors, Rosenblatt Securities

Thank you for taking my question. You know, with your guidance, at the midpoint being 57%, and that's your long-term target, should we assume that this is the mix you're gonna be expecting going forward, meaning, the IoT somewhere in the 55% of revenue range as we come out of this? Or, is there some other factor about the 57% long-term gross margin target?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Good question, you know, Kevin. I think you got it right, which is this is largely mix-driven. We would not expect our mix between the three product areas to maintain at this level. We think the mix of IoT specifically goes back, you know, 70%-75% once we return to normal run rates. I think what you're experiencing now is sorta as the mix has shifted between the three product areas, you're seeing that impact on the margin line item.

Kevin Cassidy
Senior Research Analyst of Semiconductors, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, great. Thanks. Just your internal inventory, even though it did come down, but it's elevated, compared to history. Are you comfortable with this level, or is that gonna come down more? Maybe is that why, you're gonna ship from inventory? I guess, are you cutting back on your suppliers as, with the wafers and just gonna ship from inventory and work it down? Maybe what is the optimal, inventory level internally?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Maybe just a couple comments on that one. We do expect our internal inventory to continue to come down, you know, as we look forward into June and probably a little bit beyond that. Our typical goal on inventory would be to hold closer to 70 days versus sort of where we are now, about 100 days. What we're doing is, you know, we're certainly cutting back on shipping into channel, we've cut back in a considerable way on our inbound inventory from our suppliers to sort of keep that in balance. You know, on the flip side, we are being a little bit cautious on, hey, when the demand does turn back, that we don't get caught sort of in a bad situation. We are sort of keeping a close eye on it.

Net-net, I think it probably continues to come down a little bit over the next couple of quarters.

Kevin Cassidy
Senior Research Analyst of Semiconductors, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Rajvindra Gill with Needham & Company.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director and Semiconductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Co

Yes. Thank you for taking my questions. A question on the IoT business, you know, down, you know, 45% sequentially. You know, you mentioned, you know, last quarter, or the last two quarters, we kinda felt that we're at a bottom in terms of the inventory purge, at least with respect to the consumer IoT customers. That appears, I guess, to be taking longer to purge. And then we're kinda seeing, I guess, softness in the enterprise side. Just on the enterprise portion of the IoT business, is there a way to kinda quantify, you know, that as a percentage of sales or percentage of IoT?

You know, I would assume that the IoT budgets are gonna be set for the year, so we should not kind of anticipate a recovery in the enterprise IoT portion of that business. I just wanna get a sense of what's going on in the consumer IoT, the consumer wireless. You know, when do we think that will bottom in terms of inventory and any indications of healthy demand? Thank you.

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Yeah. Raji, maybe let me give you just sort of a rough characterization of sort of you asked what's the kinda size of inventory or size of enterprise. You know, roughly within IoT, you know, enterprise is nearly the same size as consumer, so both make up a pretty sizable sorta chunk in the end market that we service. You know, Michael, do you wanna talk about some of the market dynamics around a few of these?

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah, I mean, it Raji, I think you got it right in your remarks. If you look at docking stations, you look at enterprise telephony, we've just seen a softness there, and we haven't, to your point, seen recovery in the consumer. Consumer is kinda hanging around where it was when we last updated you guys, but then that's obviously been compounded by the additional weakness that we've seen in the enterprise over the last

You know, handful of weeks, that's definitely taken a fairly significant turn for the worse.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director and Semiconductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Co

Right. Okay. In terms of just the gross margins at 57%, trying to kind of keep that as the floor. I know in the past you've articulated on numerous occasions that 57% would be the floor. Obviously the IoT business is at a hopefully at a trough level. I guess the question is if we see more declines in IoT, and combined with the fact that there are higher input costs, you know, still from TSMC, is there more downside to the 57% gross margin, or is there other offsets you could implement?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Well, what I would say, Raji, there's probably two factors at play here. In the near term with the inventory corrections, IoT's taking a step down, you know, enterprise, you know, end customers being a good portion of that's really going to play against us in the gross margin mix. Over like the next couple of quarters how that mix plays out is going to have an effect on how our gross margins move from here. I think the important thing to note is when demand is back at its normal levels, and we sort of get through this inventory correction, we continue to believe 57% is the right level and the right sort of target, and that we're, you know, continuing to feel very good about.

Really sort of near term, hey, how the mix plays out, you know, is really sort of the, you know, pluses or minus. There's a little bit on the input cost. Input cost continues to be a bit of concern, so we work through that. Unfortunately, it's kind of an environment that it's less likely to be able to be passed on to many of the customers. That's gonna be a little bit of a headwind. I wouldn't think about it as, hey, there's like a significant sort of change, you know, long term.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director and Semiconductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Co

And, and just last-

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Yeah. I think, Raji, to your point. Yeah, just to add to what Dean said, I think structurally, we feel the business is in the same place, and 57 is the kind of the floor. I think there's gonna be some potentially near-term choppiness, but if you look out the right way to think about it is still 57.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director and Semiconductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Co

Got it. Just last question, Dean, and I'll step back in the queue. You talked about kind of OpEx spending controls. But the guidance for OpEx is, you know, I guess roughly flat sequentially in terms of total OpEx, and you've been kind of running around $100 million a quarter in the past. Where are the spending controls? Should we be expecting lower OpEx as we progress throughout the year, given kind of the significant decline in revenue, or is $100 million kind of where you need to operate the business at?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

I think for the near term, we're probably gonna continue to target kind of around this 100 mark. I mean, there's a couple of dynamics as we, you know, cross the new fiscal year boundary. There's some resetting of OpEx that probably has a bit of a headwind, we're trying to mitigate any sort of up on the OpEx and then keep at least flat, if not down a little bit. Really what we wanna do is sort of work through this inventory correction and size the business for the real run rate and not the inventory correction run rate.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah. I think that's important to understand, Raji, is we don't believe that the structural revenue run rate is, you know, $225, right? We believe it's something significantly higher than that as we tried to outline. I definitely think that there are gonna be some things we do around the edges on OpEx, but I wouldn't expect big changes on that line. You know, if we see this persist and suddenly there is a, a few point change from us in terms of the structural nature of the business, then we'll make modifications as appropriate.

Rajvindra Gill
Managing Director and Semiconductors and Automotive Technology Research, Needham & Co

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

One moment as we bring up our next question. Our next question comes from Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum.

Anthony Stoss
Senior Research Analyst of Technology, Craig-Hallum

Hey, Michael. Hey, Dean. Two things. Michael, I'd love to hear more, so your talk or comments here about adding designs to the Wi-Fi solution. When will that be or have a breakout revenue quarter, something that's sizable? Just wanted to confirm from either of you two guys if that IoT deal that slipped from December into the March quarter actually closed in March?

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

A good question, Tony. I mean, the way I think about the Wi-Fi business is we're probably gonna turn the corner on that one, you know, again, calendar 2024. We have a pretty appreciable inventory situation to dig out from, I think we get back to our run rate level just on the wins we have. We get back to the run rate levels, you know, sometime in early calendar 2024. To your point, probably, you know, late third, our fiscal third, early fiscal fourth, we start layering in some of these design wins, and we start seeing that business grow from the levels it was pre-inventory build up. We've got a lot of good things going on in that business with.

Operators with some of the consumer applications, some of the enterprise applications that Dean discussed. We continue to be pretty confident, but it's masked right now with inventory, we've got to break through that first and then start layering in these design wins, which I'd expect in early 2024.

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Tony, you had a second question on this IoT deal that we talked about in last quarter's call. The update we gave was we expected December quarter, but then, you know, didn't make the milestone inspected in March quarter. That deal did close, so we completed all the necessary milestones there. That deal, as we put it in our guide and that we told everyone, so that did close in the March quarter.

Anthony Stoss
Senior Research Analyst of Technology, Craig-Hallum

Got it. Last conference call, you teased us a little bit about the presence detection solution having a role to play beyond, you know, Dell and Panasonic deals outside of PCs. Anything new to report on that outside of PCs?

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Nothing, nothing material to report, Tony. Good question. I think what we're, you know, this is a sort of a long range statement. I think what we're looking to do is expand that platform from PCs to other computer vision types of applications. I mean, essentially, this is computer vision. We're using a camera to make decisions on the PC. We think that we have applications beyond that that are pretty interesting and low power types of states where we can use a solution that is built and tailored for the presence detection and then expands into other areas that necessitate low power computer vision. That's kind of the idea. Obviously, we want to expand our footprint even in the computer vision area.

Computer vision, you've got it right, we're kinda down to two OEMs. We think we should be able to do better in the near term across the OEM base, but, you know, nothing there to report.

Anthony Stoss
Senior Research Analyst of Technology, Craig-Hallum

Got it. Best of luck, guys. Thank you.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Thanks, Tony.

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna.

Christopher Rolland
Senior Equity Analyst of Semiconductors, Susquehanna

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. You guys talked about shipment holdbacks, and that's kind of an interesting topic because there are some in the industry that don't hold back anything. Was just wondering your philosophy there, how you kinda handle that, and what are the cases in which you, I wouldn't say force people to take it, but strongly urge them to take shipment.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, eventually, Chris, the piper comes calling, right? I think that, you know, we obviously expected to turn the corner kinda now-ish when we talked to you guys last time, and that clearly hasn't happened. I think the situation has been compounded by the enterprise weakness that we've talked to a couple of times here. Our view at this point is rip the bandage off and really allow the current state of demand to settle in. I think, you know, we're there. It's unfortunately a pretty significant drop, obviously from peak to trough. We believe that by now allowing this to settle out, allowing the bleed through to happen, and not jamming more and more into the channel will be better off long term.

You know, I think some of those behaviors that you're describing causes churn with customers and they remember that. It causes churn with distributors and channel partners, and they remember that. You know, we certainly heard and seen some of the same things that you're discussing, but, you know, we took a slightly different path here and decided, "Look, we need to let this thing settle out.

Christopher Rolland
Senior Equity Analyst of Semiconductors, Susquehanna

Thank you. Then maybe a follow-up overall. For IoT, in particular, in terms of the inventory build up, like, why do you think this happened? Why did it happen at this point in the cycle, and why were they over ordering? Was it does this go way back to the time in which there were shortages or, you know, why is this hitting now? Almost feels like we should be coming out in consumer.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah, I know. I think it goes back, to your point, it goes back several quarters ago to when there were these semiconductor shortages. I think everybody expected there to be a drawdown by now. Certainly, you know, in our thinking, there was gonna be this drawdown, but there simply hasn't been a drawdown. I don't know, Dean, did you wanna add?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

I mean, the only thing I would say is, you know, just as customers sort of ratcheted their forecasts up during sort of the supply crunch, I think customers were a little bit reticent to change their forecast, you know, into us as suppliers, you know, in a rapid way. I think what you see is sort of this, you know, slow sort of ratcheting down, and that has caused sort of the supply chain along the way to sort of move at honestly a much slower pace than what we had expected, relative to just, you know, a few quarters ago.

Christopher Rolland
Senior Equity Analyst of Semiconductors, Susquehanna

Thanks. That's great color.

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Krish Sankar with TD Cowen.

Speaker 11

Hey, guys. This is Eddie for Krish. Thanks for taking my question. There were reports of Amazon discontinuing their Halo product. Our under-understanding is that you had exposure there at some point. First, is that accurate? Second, in case that is true, how much of the IoT weakness is due to that product line? I have a follow-up, please.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

I think you got it right, Eddie. Yeah. We had exposure to Halo. You know, our understanding is it's canceled. It's canceled because it didn't sell very well. In terms of any revenue exposure we had there was not at all material. It never really took off. Even from an inventory perspective, it's not a driver of the inventory that we're talking to. That probably captures it in a thumbnail there.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Michael. That's great color. Some investors are concerned that a good part of the weakness is due to increased competitive pressures as other suppliers carry huge amount of inventory, and there's more foundry capacity versus one year ago. What makes you confident that the weakness in IoT is more related to end demand weakness versus competitive pressure? Or maybe another way to frame it, did you have to walk away from some opportunities because of some irrational behavior from competitors? Thank you.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah, again, a good question. At least as far as I know, we have no losses. Pricing competition, and we've outlined this on previous calls, has increased, so there's no question about that. But at least as far as I know, we haven't lost a single socket. Nothing that's out there from our end is due to competition. Even from a pricing perspective, the gross margin, you know, is all mix related. Even though there's an increase in this pricing, it's on stuff that won't hit for quite some time. By the time it does hit, you know, we think our enterprise business, which is high gross margin, will be back on again, and we'll be able to hold to this 57 mark that we talked about with Raji.

Speaker 11

Great. Thank you, Michael.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Thanks, Eddie.

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ashley McCurry with Wells Fargo.

Ashley McCurry
Equity Research Associate, Wells Fargo

Hi. This is Ashley McCurry on for Gary Mobley at Wells Fargo. Curious in terms of ASP versus unit dynamics, going into next quarter, how are you guys thinking about the trade-off there in terms of your quarter-over-quarter decline in the guide? Is that driven by volume versus pricing press-pressure? Are there any areas where you guys are seeing a more resiliency in pricing?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

Ashley, I think to answer your question, it's largely unit driven. At this point in time, there's not, at least from our perspective, a great trade-off on, you know, the elasticity on demand at ASP. You're lowering your ASP in this environment isn't spurring demand. Really what we see is it's almost entirely unit driven. Now, as Michael spoke just on, I think, on the very last question, there is a little bit of ASP pressure from competitors, and it's coming from sort of a few areas where in sort of times of desperation, you do get some competitors that will start lowering their ASP to see if they can spur demand. What we've seen so far is that hasn't been true.

Ashley McCurry
Equity Research Associate, Wells Fargo

Relatedly, are you guys still seeing increased foundry quotes? A few people have talked about that on their earnings calls this week. How are you guys passing along those cost increases to customers?

Dean Butler
CFO, Synaptics

We are still seeing increase in foundry pricing. To date, in the last couple of, you know, months, we haven't been all that successful in passing along prices, you know, certainly not to the same degree that we did during the supply crunch. I mean, there are little pockets where actually, you know, foundry pricing is coming down, but it's actually in pretty, you know, small, discrete pockets. I wouldn't expect, you know, sort of the ability to pass along increased input prices here in the near term. I think, if anything, that's gonna be a bit of a headwind, probably throughout calendar 2023 is my guess.

Ashley McCurry
Equity Research Associate, Wells Fargo

Thank you.

Operator

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Martin Yang with Oppenheimer.

Martin Yang
Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Emerging Technologies and Services, Oppenheimer

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. My question is on your Wi-Fi funnel, where it highlighted 30% year-over-year growth. Can you maybe talk about, you know, where does that growth come from? Is there any particular verticals that were driving the most growth?

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah. Thanks, Martin. We see, you know, strength across the portfolio. I think if you look at our Wi-Fi business, it's largely driven, as we've characterized before, in high performance applications, cameras, operator set-top boxes, video streamers, things of that nature. What I'd say here is it's less, kind of application driven and more customer driven. We have some new, I'd say, very significant customers that are driving a lot of this activity, and those customers supply a whole host of products, I mean, across, you know, various verticals. We think that we could start moving into some of these tier one customers.

I mean, if you look at our business today, we are characterized by these module, one module guy that ships it to lots or Wi-Fi products to lots and lots of different end customers, and then really only one big tier one customer. I think what's changing for us now is there's a handful of larger customers that we expect to come online here over the next year or so that, as I said in my prepared remarks, gives us confidence that we're gonna continue to build toward this $1 billion business over the next three to five years. It's probably more customer driven than it is necessarily application driven.

Martin Yang
Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Emerging Technologies and Services, Oppenheimer

Got it. Just to make sure that I understood. You had one tier one customer that you already have. Is that OEM versus module maker?

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Yeah, that's right, Martin. I mean, we have one, you know, what I would call. We obviously have lots and lots of different customers, but one, you know, big OEM makes up a decent chunk of our Wi-Fi revenue. We expect to continue to do well with that guy. Another big chunk is this module maker. We kinda have two guys that are relatively big poles in our business. We expect to get three, four, and five big poles here over the next little bit.

Martin Yang
Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Emerging Technologies and Services, Oppenheimer

Would that come from other, larger OEM customers or module makers?

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

No, these are OEMs. These are specifically OEMs. Although, to your point, we do expect that we'll be bringing on additional module partners as well. We like that channel. That's been a pretty effective channel for us to serve a distributed customer base. Today, we really only have one module partner. We'd expect to bring on a couple more here as we've really booted up our engineering capability in the Wi-Fi business. When I refer to this customer expansion, it's mostly OEMs. It's all OEMs.

Martin Yang
Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Emerging Technologies and Services, Oppenheimer

Got it. Thank you, Michael.

Operator

I would now like to turn it back to Michael Hurlston for final comments.

Michael Hurlston
President and CEO, Synaptics

Thanks, Sean, and I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today. We look forward to speaking to you at our upcoming investor conferences during the quarter and, of course, during our analyst day that we'll do in the fall. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.

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