Applied Optoelectronics, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Applied Optoelectronics fourth quarter 2020 and full year earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the start key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lindsay Savarese. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'm Lindsay Savarese, Investor Relations for Applied Optoelectronics, and I'm pleased to welcome you to AOI's fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results conference call. After the market closed today, AOI issued a press release announcing its fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results and provided its outlook for the first quarter of 2021. The release is also available on the company's website at ao-inc.com. This call is being recorded and webcast live. A link to the recording can be found on the investor relations section of the AOI website and will be archived for one year. Joining us on today's call is Dr. Thompson Lin, AOI's founder, chairman, and CEO, and Dr. Stefan Murry, AOI's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. Thompson will give an overview of AOI's Q4 results, and Stefan will provide financial details and the outlook for the first quarter of 2021. A question and answer session will follow our prepared remarks. Before we begin, I would like to remind you to review AOI's Safe Harbor Statement.

On today's call, management will make forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions and current expectations, which could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as believe, anticipate, estimate, intend, predict, expect, Plans, May, Should, Could, Would, Will, or Think, and by other similar expressions that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes. Forward-looking statements also include statements regarding management's beliefs and expectations related to the expansion of the reach of our products into new markets and customer responses to our innovation, as well as statements regarding the company's outlook for the first quarter of 2021. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this earnings call to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in the company's expectations. More information about other risks that may impact the company's business are set forth in the risk factors section of the company's reports on file with FCC, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. Also, with the exception of revenue, all financials discussed today are on a non-GAAP basis unless specifically noted otherwise. Non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between our GAAP and non-GAAP measures as well as a discussion of why we present non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings press release that is available on our website. Before moving to the financial results, I'd like to announce that AOI management will virtually participate at the Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference on March 1st. The presentation at this conference will be webcast live and links to the webcast will be available on the investor relations section of the AOI website. We hope to have the opportunity to interact with many of you virtually. Additionally, I'd like to note that the date of our first quarter 2021 earnings call is currently scheduled for May 6, 2021. Now I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Thompson Lin, Applied Optoelectronics founder, chairman, and CEO. Thompson?

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Looking back on 2020, I'm proud of the entire AY team and the progress that we have made these years. Despite a slow start and end to the years with changing and evolving market dynamics, we are encouraged by the double-digit revenue growth we generated in 2020, which was driven by growth in each of our three major business segments, which killed 30 total design wins last year. I'm proud with the record 31 in 2019. Given the difficulty around the pandemic last year, I'm very pleased with this design win result. We will continue to expand the reach of our product to a diverse customer base, evident by the declining concentration of revenue from our top 10 customers. And on this front, we are pleased to report a new greater than 10% customers during the first quarter in our CETV segment. Turning to the fourth quarter, we delivered revenue in line with our expectation, gross margin below our expectation, and Nugget EPS at the high end of our guidance range. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of $52.8 million grew 8.5% compared to the fourth quarter in the prior year, and as we expected, was now 31.1% sequentially. As we mentioned, on our Q3 call, we began to see some slowing in order from some Audea Center customers in the later part of the third quarter, which extended into the fourth quarter. This slowdown was related to inventory normalization following the surge in demand that was driven by the shift to working from home early last year. We continue to expect generally slow conditions in Q1 in the data center segment, followed by an increased activity in this segment in Q2 and beyond. Long-get gross margin of 27.5% was below our guidance range of 28.5% to 29.5%. Due to many product mix and slightly higher expectation cost than anticipated, As we ran our CATV production during the quarter, non-GAAP net loss was $0.20 per share. Similar to Q3, we continue to see broadband demand for our 100G products. Total revenue for 100G products increased 41% from Q4 of 2019. In our CATV segment, the overall demand environment continue to be strong as MSO, particularly in North America, continue to upgrade their networks. Total revenue for our CATV product more than doubled year over year and increased 37% sequentially to $15.9 million, which is the highest quarterly revenue for the assessment in over three years. Revenue from our telecom product of $3.5 million was up 59% from Q4 of 2019, but was down 61% sequentially. As we mentioned, on our Q3 earning call, several of our China Telecom customers notified us that their 5G deployment has been paused by several large network operators while they revisit their supply chain following the disruption caused by uncertainty surrounding Huawei's US band. We believe that this disruption will be shown live and expect to see a recovery in our telecom segment in Q1. Looking forward, we are excited about the growth opportunity ahead, driven by the continued need for higher bandwidth and increased capacity within the CATB and Dare Center Markets and increased demand for 5G products in our telecom markets. We look forward to meeting again in person hopefully soon. With that, I will turn the call over to Stefan to review the details of our Q4 performance and outlook for Q1. Stefan.

Thank you, Thompson. As Thompson mentioned, we delivered revenue in line with our expectations Gross margins below our expectation and non-GAAP EPS at the high end of our guidance range. While we saw strong demand in the CATV market, as we anticipated, our fourth quarter results were impacted by softness in the data center and telecom markets. Looking back on the year, despite challenging and evolving market dynamics throughout 2020, we are encouraged by the double-digit revenue growth we generated. which was driven by growth in each of our three major business segments. And we are pleased with the progress we made in diversifying our revenue streams and customer base. We secured 30 total design wins in 2020, similar to the record of 31 in 2019. Of the 30 design wins, 18 were in our data center market, five were in our CATV market, four were in our telecom market, and three were in other markets. In total, for the fourth quarter, we secured three new design wins among two customers, all in our CATV segment. Given the difficulties around the pandemic last year, I am very pleased with these design win results. We have continued to expand the reach of our products to a diverse customer base, which is evident by the declining concentration of revenue from our top 10 customers from 2019 And on that front, we are pleased to report that one of our CATB customers exceeded 10% of our revenue for the first time. Turning to our quarterly performance, total revenue for the fourth quarter of $52.8 million was in line with our guidance range of $50 to $55 million. Revenue increased 8.5% year-over-year and decreased 31.1% sequentially. As we mentioned on our Q3 call, we began to see some slowing in orders from some of our data center customers in the latter part of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter related to inventory normalization following the surge in demand that was driven by the shift to working from home early last year. We expect the headwinds we are seeing in our data center market to persist through Q1 and then begin improving in Q2 and beyond. We continue to see increased customer interest in our 400G product portfolio and expect to see revenue contribution from these products in the second half of the year. In the fourth quarter, 62% of our revenue was from our data center products, 30% was from CATB products, with the remaining 8% from FTTH, Telecom, and other. Our data center revenue came in at $32.8 million. compared with $39.3 million in Q4 of the prior year. In the fourth quarter, 22% of our data center revenue was from our 40G transceiver products and 71% was from our 100G products. Turning to our CATV product segment, the overall demand environment remains strong as MSOs, particularly in North America, continue to upgrade their networks. We generated revenue of $15.9 million up 37% sequentially and up 136% from $6.8 million in Q4 of the prior year. Our CATV performance in the quarter is the highest that we have seen since the third quarter of 2017. We ended the quarter with a strong backlog of CATV products, which we expect to continue to drive growth in this segment going forward. Revenue from our telecom products increased to $3.5 million up 59% from $2.2 million in Q4 of the prior year, but was down 61% sequentially for reasons we discussed on our Q3 call. During the fourth quarter, 5G demand in China was impacted by a pause that several of our China telecom customers were seeing as several large network operators revisited their supply chains following the disruption caused by uncertainty surrounding Huawei's U.S. ban. We continue to believe that sequential growth will resume and our telecom segment in Q1. We are pleased with our progress in our customer diversification efforts. Overall, for the fourth quarter, our top 10 customers represented 85.1% of revenue, down from 87.5% in Q4 of the prior year. The concentration of revenue among our top 10 customers decreased from 88.1% in 2019 to 81.8% in 2020. We had three 10% or greater customers in the fourth quarter, one of which was in the data center market and two of which were in the CATV market, including a new 10% or greater customer. These customers contributed 36%, 14%, and 11% of total revenue, respectively. For the full year, we had two 10% or greater customers in the data center segment that contributed 38% and 12% of total revenue, respectively. In Q4, we generated non-GAAP gross margin of 27.5% compared to 27.6% in Q4 of the prior year. Gross margin was below our guidance range of 28.5% to 29.5% due mostly to unfavorable product mix and a slightly higher production cost than anticipated as we ramped our CATV production during the quarter. Total non-GAAP operating expenses in the fourth quarter of $20.6 million or 39% of revenue compared with $19.4 million or 39.9% of revenue in Q4 of the prior year. Operating expenses as a percent of overall revenue decreased from the prior year and reflect our efficient expense management. Non-GAAP operating loss in the fourth quarter was $6.1 million compared to an operating loss of $6 million in Q4 of the prior year. GAAP net loss for Q4 was $13.4 million or a loss of $0.57 per basic share, compared with a GAAP net loss of $35.4 million or $1.76 per basic share in Q4 of 2019. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for Q4 was $4.8 million or a loss of $0.20 per basic share, which was at the high end of our guidance range of a loss of $4.5 million to $5.8 million or a loss of $0.19 to $0.25 per basic share. and compares to a net loss of $3.6 million or loss of 18 cents per basic share in Q4 of the prior year. The basic shares outstanding used for computing the net loss in Q4 were 23.6 million. Turning now to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with $50.1 million in total cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash. This compares with $58.1 million at the end of the third quarter and reflects $14.1 million in cash used for operations. As of December 31, we had $110.4 million in inventory compared to $111.4 million in Q3. This inventory level is higher than normal due to continuing uncertainty around COVID-19 and concerns leading up to the Lunar New Year in China. We made a total of $2.5 million in capital investments in the quarter, including $1.6 million in production equipment and machinery and $0.1 million on construction and building improvements. The construction on our new China facility is largely complete with all having construction done. Total 2020 CapEx was approximately $12.5 million, which is considerably below our prior expectations and reflects the slowdown in our business during Q4. We are still in the process of evaluating our CapEx plans for 2021 and we expect to share our numbers when they are available. I would also like to provide a quick update on the at-the-market offering we announced in February of last year. To date, we have raised $55 million in gross proceeds under this program, including $17 million raised in Q4. As we have stated previously, we intend to use these proceeds to continue to make investments in the business, including new equipment and machinery for production and research and development use. Before moving to our outlook, I would like to provide an update on our operations in Texas following the historic winter storm that occurred last week. I can report that our facilities did not suffer any meaningful damage as a result of the storm. Due to process control issues related to the extremely cold temperatures and the inability to obtain regular deliveries of chemicals, including liquid nitrogen, we were unable to run operations as normal last week. Many of our employees suffered damage to their homes and were therefore unavailable for work during all or parts of last week. We expect to incur some additional costs as we work to increase production over the next few weeks to ensure that we meet our customer commitments to the extent possible. Currently, we expect these costs to total between $0.5 million and $1 million, and these expectations are included in our guidance. Moving now to our Q1 outlook. We expect Q1 revenue to be between $47 million and $51 million, and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 23.5% to 25%. Non-GAAP net loss is expected to be in the range of $7.3 million to $9 million, and non-GAAP loss per basic share between 23 cents and 28 cents using a weighted average basic share count of approximately 26 million shares. With that, I will turn it back over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Simon Leopold from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Hello, Simon. Is your line muted?

Sorry about that. Yes, it was muted. You'd think I'd know by now. So thanks for taking the question. Hopefully the folks in Texas are thawing out and recovering from last week. Saw that on the news. Sorry to hear about that. What I wanted to ask first about was specifically the new cable customer. So I'm intrigued by this. I want to get a better understanding of when you talk about a new customer, is this a U.S. operator that is new to AOI or is this a new customer from outside the U.S.? And what's the nature of the deployment? Is it a DAA or some other application?

Sure, Simon. First of all, thank you for your comments regarding all of us down here in Texas. It's thawing out nicely. We had a little bit of a rough week last week, but it's back to normal now, so I appreciate your kind words on that. With respect to the cable TV customer, it's not a brand-new customer. They've been with us for roughly a year. It is a U.S.-based company. They're a manufacturer or manufacturer. reseller of cable TV equipment and they are supplying primarily US well almost entirely US and well let's just say North American MSOs with gear for upgrade projects. The specific products that we're selling to them right now are useful in both DAA and traditional applications. and I think that probably the deployments that are going on there are a combination of both of those types of technologies.

And I guess I'd like to get an understanding of how you're thinking about the broader trend in your cable TV market. I recall speaking about this a couple quarters ago, at which point you thought that maybe in the construction season spring to summer 3Q21, you'd be getting back to kind of mid-teens revenue. I want to recheck where you're thinking today about the cadence of your cable business through 2021.

I think we probably can be significantly higher than that level later on in the year. We're sitting right now on the strongest backlog of cable TV products I think we've ever had. And as I noted in our prepared remarks, the fourth quarter was the best quarter in cable that we've had in several years. So where we're standing right now, I think I see pretty strong performance in the cable segment certainly through Q3 and probably through the end of the year.

Thanks. And then maybe just one last one for me, if I might, is on your data center business, particularly the hyperscalers, I appreciate that quarterly visibility can be a little bit difficult, but what sort of linearity or expectations do you have for the full year. And part of my question goes back to the capital spending forecasts look like high teens to maybe 20% spending growth by the group as a whole. I just want to understand if that's a good indicator for the kind of growth rate we should think of for your business in that vertical.

Thanks. I think it's difficult to draw a direct line between capital expenditures on the part of The hyperscale operators and our revenue, I mean, if you've looked at our revenue in that segment over the years, there's probably some high-level correlation, sort of a macro correlation, but it's very difficult, certainly, to draw any conclusion on a quarter-by-quarter or even annual basis, really, from those CapEx numbers. For us, in particular, I think a lot depends on the trajectory of 400 gig. As we mentioned, we do see 400 gig contributing revenue in the second half of the year. And depending on, you know, exactly how soon and how fast that comes on and the trajectory of 100 gig as that occurs, that will kind of dictate our results in the year. So, you know, I can't give you firm guidance for the year on that, but I don't think it's reasonable to draw, you know, correlation directly from the overall CapEx in the market.

I appreciate that. Thanks for taking the questions.

Thank you, Simon. The next question is from Paul Silverstein from Cowan. Please go ahead.

Stefan, I trust from your response to the last question that your visibility in terms of what has been communicated to you by your various status center customers, that it's relatively limited at this point, or is that not the case? Let me ask the question more openly, in a more open way. What has been the communication from those customers, if anything?

Well, okay, so I guess there's two issues that we've been communicating significantly with our customers regarding. One is the sort of near-term trajectory of the inventory drawdown. to the extent that those customers have that situation. I would emphasize it's not all of our data center customers that had too much inventory. It's limited to a couple of them. But with those customers, we've certainly had ongoing discussions about their inventory. And relative to that, I would say our expectations continue to be in line with what we said on our last earnings call and in our prepared remarks today, which is that we see that inventory correction persisting through Q1 and then resolving itself in Q2. So that's one area of and I think that's largely unchanged from our previous expectations. The second area where we've had some significant discussion with these customers or all of our data center customers really is around their 400 gig or I should say maybe 200 gig and 400 gig plans and I think those discussions particularly with the customers who are implementing 400 gig continue to progress well as we noted in our prepared remarks. We continue to see more active cadence of discussions. Questions now are moving, in many cases, are moving less into sort of technical, detailed technical specifications and topics like that into questions about capacity ramp-up, time frame for availability, things like that that would be, in my mind, more indicative of a hardening of their plans to deploy in the second half of the year. And so those discussions, I think, have been quite positive as well.

I assume it goes without saying it's way too early to think about what pricing will look like.

Yeah. I mean, I can't give you any firm guidance on that. I mean, it's certainly a topic of discussion as well with the customers. Yeah, I don't have an indication on where that will play out at this point. It's too early to say.

Understood. I appreciate it. I'll pass it on, guys.

Thank you, Paul.

Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question is from Sami Chatterjee from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. If I can just start off on the 400 gig wins, and you mentioned in the press release that you're seeing customer interest. I'm just wondering, what are your expectations in terms of timing of deployments? Because I'm just thinking if deployments are in the second half, as most of the industry is telegraphing at this point, shouldn't we expect to see more acceleration in wins on 400 gig? I think As far as I remember, you've announced one win at this point. So just help me think about what the base of design win should look like if we are expecting deployment in the second half, or is that not really the case in terms of deployment timing right now?

I wouldn't say it's late to hear on those wins at this point. We are having discussions with customers about our capacity ramp-up plans in the second half of the year. I don't think they're feeling pressured right now that if they don't announce a win or something like that, that we're not going to be ready to go. They know our plans. I would say that in order to meet the plans that customers are indicating to us now, I would expect that we would have to have design wins certainly by the end of Q2 or very early in Q3. But, you know, now it's not alarming that we don't have more wins at this point in my mind.

Okay. And then just a quick follow-up. I think you mentioned on the slowdown that you've seen related to China Telecom, you're starting to see that move up sequentially in one queue. Just wondering, are you hearing anything that's more driven by the supply chain having worked through the restrictions on Huawei, or is it that the supply chain is being routed to other customers and you're having to customize the product for other customers to then deploy it in the network?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I want to use that opportunity to try to make sure that we're crystal clear on what we're trying to say regarding Huawei. It is not our intention to try to say that Huawei's ban necessarily caused any disruption to our customers' ability to deploy their networks. What we are saying is that there was significant uncertainty because of the speed and the unexpected nature of the Huawei ban that our customers had to take a pause in their deployment plans to reassess whether those plans were still able to be achieved either with Huawei or with an alternative source. So it wasn't so much that customers had to necessarily scramble to find alternative sources. It was simply that they had to take a time out, if you will, to figure out and make sure that whatever plans they had didn't need to be changed in light of the Huawei ban. So that being said, what we have seen, as you indicated and as we indicated in our prepared remarks, is that some of our customers have begun to We're feeling fairly comfortable now that we will see some recovery in Q1 and then probably more activity in Q2, Q3 and probably towards the end of the year. What we're hearing from our Our sources in China is that we still expect a pretty sizable increase in the number of towers and therefore the amount of optics that's used in those 5G networks in 2021 compared to 2020. We expect the number of towers deployed to be anywhere from 60% to 80% higher than what we saw in 2020. and that would indicate a similar increase in the number of optics that are deployed. So we're pretty bullish on China. 5G in the year, albeit getting off to somewhat of a slow start, but certainly better than what we saw in Q4. Great.

No, thank you. Thanks for the insight, sir.

No problem. The next question is from Ryan Kutz from Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for the question. Quick question on your strength in the cable TV segment there. You know, cable CapEx, not really doing a whole lot, but you guys are doing well. Do you attribute that more to, you know, share gains in the optical node designs, or do you attribute it more to a mixed change of spending by the MSOs on more node splitting? Any thoughts there?

Thank you. Oh, yeah. I think it's both. We've been spending a lot of time and effort developing a new line of cable TV products, including some amplifier products and other node sub-assemblies and things like that related to these rollouts. So we've expected for some time that these rollouts would start to occur, and we've engineered our products accordingly. So I do believe that we're picking up market share. from what we had, let's say, in the previous deployments that had happened several years ago. But I also believe that the MSOs, you know, the observation that I have, and AOI has been in the cable TV business now for nearly 20 years, 18, 19 years, and the observation that I have is that cable CapEx generally doesn't change that much, but the areas where the cable MSOs spend their CapEx can change dramatically. So I think right now we're seeing a shift from spending in sort of central office and maybe certain CPE-type applications to investing in the network. So I think it's a combination of both and the related, right? We develop products because we felt that the MSOs, based on their feedback, were going to shift their spending and start building on the outside plant again. And indeed, that's what we've seen happen. So it's a combination of share gains and... and Shift and Spend.

Do you think some of what your differentiation is around expanding the addressable spectrum in the plant and looking for more upstream capacity? I mean, I imagine there's some kind of design changes and requirements you have to meet.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, the deployments that we're aware of and the equipment that our customers are purchasing for those deployments are squarely aimed at increasing the amount of bandwidth, and as you indicated, specifically the amount of bandwidth in the return path direction. That's an absolute requirement for most of these deployments.

Super helpful, Stefan. Thanks so much. Congrats on the core.

Thank you.

Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question is from Tim Savageau from Northland. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. First question for me is on the kind of overall topic of diversifying customer base, and you mentioned your new 10% customer in cable TV. You've also apparently got some new 8% customers, I think thanks to some very helpful and transparent disclosure in your filing. On the data center side, I wonder if we might get some similar commentary, and I thought that was a great call you gave on the cable TV customer. I assume one of your data center operators is just another cloud titan whose name we haven't discussed yet. But on the network equipment supplier, I'd be interested if you had any color on the application there, whether that's kind of a client interface for router type application or a switch guy heading into the data center or any color you might be able to add on those new pretty significant customers.

Yeah, it's a switch guy. Switch Vendor, who's selling largely into the data center. So some hyperscale, a lot of tier two, and some enterprise.

Okay, on the NEM side. And then in terms of the direct data center operator, any color there, or should we assume it's one of the bigger guys that have not been discussed in the past? It's a fairly large data center operator, U.S.-based. Got it. And congrats on that diversification. With regard to the potential recovery in the Datacom business, I think you mentioned a couple of separate issues around 100-gig I think it's notable that your 40 gig business has gotten so small. And then the potential uptake, an inventory situation there and a potential uptake of 200 or 400 gig. Is there a potential relationship there, number one, I guess, between inventory digestion at 100 and preparation for a ramp at 200 and 400? And as you look at your Q1 guide in particular, that sort of flattish to slightly down. It seems like telecom should be up. It seems like cable could be as well. So are you expecting that data center business to decline slightly and bottom out in Q1 and then recover as a result of perhaps both of those factors, 100 gig recovery and initial 200 or 400?

Yeah, I think your characterization in terms of data center spend sort of bottoming out in Q1 is probably accurate. I would caution, you know, Q1, when it comes to cable TV in Q1, just keep in mind that our cable TV production is largely done in our China factory, so we do have the Lunar New Year holiday. And so, you know, our capability in terms of just raw number of days to produce product in the cable TV segment is limited in Q1 compared to other segments. Now, we have pretty strong demand. I mentioned earlier about the backlog. And also, this year in China, Relative to other years, we had a lot more of our employees stay, you know, either stay in the factory or at least nearby as opposed to returning to their homes. Largely that's due to COVID and the Chinese government's discouragement of traveling long distances for fear of spreading the disease. So I think that we're on track to have a somewhat, you know, Thank you for joining us. But we do expect, like I said, both in our prepared remarks and really in our last earnings call as well, that the 400-gig contribution will begin to ramp in the second half of the year. And I think that will certainly – if we're successful in getting those wins and we start to see that ramp, then that will certainly contribute to revenue. I don't believe that that has anything to do right now with the slowdown in 100-gig I believe that the slowdown in 100 gig is related more to, I mean, we saw a very large volume of purchases of 100 gig in the middle part of last year because of COVID. Well, I mean, it was because of the shift to, it was a combination of the shift to working from home, driving demand, and fears that our customers had, whether those fears were well-placed or not, that there would be supply chain disruptions, significant supply chain disruptions because of COVID. I think the working from home trend certainly played out. There was a lot of demand that was caused by that working from home. But I don't believe that our customers saw the magnitude of supply chain disruptions that they were fearful of. And therefore, by the end of the year, the inventory levels that they'd accumulated were no longer necessary to support what they thought could be a tough patch in terms of their supply chain. I think that's really why we saw a slowdown in Q4 and Q1 in data center. I think it'll get a little better in Q2, and then 400 gig hopefully will drive a lot of our performance in the second half of the year in that sector.

Great. Thanks very much.

Pleasure. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dr. Thompson Lin for any closing remarks.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. As always, thank you to our investors, customers, and employees for your continued support, and we look forward to virtually seeing many of you at our upcoming investment conference.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.