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Operator
Good afternoon. I will be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Applied Optoelectronics third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Lindsay Savarese, Investor Relations for AOI. Ms. Savarese, you may begin.
Lindsay Savarese
Thank you. I'm Lindsay Savarese, Investor Relations for Applied Optoelectronics. I am pleased to welcome you to AOI's third quarter, 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. After the market closed today, AOI issued a press release announcing its third quarter 2023 financial results and provided its outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. 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. Stephan Murray, AOI's chief financial officer and chief strategy officer. Thompson will give an overview of AOI's Q3 results, and Stephan will provide financial details and the outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. A question and answer session will follow our prepared remarks. Before we begin, I would like to remind you to review AOI safe harbor statements. 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, levels of activity, performance, or achievements of the company or its industry to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as believes, forecasts, anticipates, estimates, suggests, intends, predicts, expects, plans, may, should, could, would, will, potential, or thinks, or by the negative of those terms or other similar expressions that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes. The company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations, assumptions, estimates, and projections. While the company believes these expectations, assumptions, estimates, and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's control. 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 innovations, as well as statements regarding the company's outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. 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 Factor section of the company's Reports on File with the SEC, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. Also, all financial results and other financial measures 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. I'd like to note the date of our fourth quarter on full year earnings call is currently scheduled for February 22nd, 2024. Now I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Thompson Lin, Applied Optoelectronics, Founder, Chairman, and CEO. Thompson?
Lindsay Savarese
Thank you, Lindsay, and thank you for joining our call today. Our third quarter revenue and non-gov EPS were in line with our expectations. Oil oil market growth margin was better than our expectations. We are pleased by the continued progress we have made on improving our growth margin and by the continuous strong growth we saw for our 100G and 400G products in our data center business during Q3. The combination of revenue growth and improving growth margin allow us to generate $3 million in adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. During the third quarter, we delivered revenue of $62.5 million, which was within our guidance range of $60 million to $66 million. We delivered non-GAAP gross margin of 32.5% above our guidance range of 29.5% to 31%. by our favorable product mix shift and contribution from revenue recognized as part of our non-recurring revenue from Microsoft. Online GAAP loss per share was $0.05, which was within our guidance range of a loss of $0.06 to earning of $0.01. Total revenue in our CATB segment was $10.3 million, down 67% year-over-year and up 10% sequentially, in line with our expectations. Total revenue for all data center products of $48.8 million, more than doubled year-over-year and increased 77% sequentially, largely due to increased demand for our 100G and 400G products. As we continue to see the run-up of our 400G products, revenue for our 100G products nearly tripled year over year, while revenue for our 400G products increased more than 10 times in the same period. With that, I will turn the call over to Stephen to review the details of our Q3 performance and outlook for Q4. Stephen.
Lindsay
Thank you, Thompson. As Thompson mentioned, our third quarter revenue and non-GAAP EPS were in line with our expectations, while our non-GAAP gross margin was better than our expectations. We're pleased by the continued progress we have made on improving our gross margin and by the continued strong demand we saw for our 100G and 400G products in our data center business during Q3. The combination of revenue growth and improving gross margin allowed us to generate $3 million in adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. Before turning to discuss our detailed results and outlook, I want to provide an update on the sale of our manufacturing facilities located in the People's Republic of China, and certain assets related to our transceiver business and multichannel optical subassembly products for the Internet Data Center, fiber-to-the-home, and telecom markets. On September 12, 2023, we announced the termination of our purchase agreement with Yuhan Opto-Electronic Technology. This decision was based on Yvonne's failure to meet agreed-upon deadlines, and we lost confidence in their ability to complete the transaction. We were exploring additional options with new potential buyers. Turning to the quarter, our total revenue for the third quarter increased 10% year-over-year to $62.5 million, which was in line with our guidance range of $60 million to $66 million. As Thompson mentioned, the increase in revenue was largely due to growth of our 100G and 400G data center business. During the third quarter, 78% of our revenue was from our data center products, 16% was from our CATV products, with the remaining 6% from FTTH, telecom, and others. In line with our expectations, CATV revenue in the third quarter was $10.3 million, which was down 67% year-over-year and up 10% sequentially. We were encouraged by the sequential growth that we saw in our CATV business in Q3. Looking forward, we continue to expect that our near-term CATB business will be down compared to the historic highs we saw in 2021 and 2022 as the MSOs transition to next-generation architecture. We anticipate this transition will begin to take place in 2024. Looking further ahead, we continue to carefully monitor MSO plans to move to DOCSIS 4.0 networks, and we continue to believe AOI is a leader in technologies that will enable DOCSIS 4.0 and that our products are well-suited for when the push to install amplifiers and other network elements for DOCSIS 4.0 begins. In line with our new strategy of directly selling to the MSOs, we have continued to expand our product portfolio. Just last month, we announced the launch of QuantumLink, the latest solution within our quantum bandwidth line of products, designed to provide remote management and monitoring of cable amplifiers that we believe will reshape the cable broadband market. Operators using QuantumLink will now have the ability to remotely manage cable broadband amplifiers, ushering in a new era of efficiency, convenience, and enhanced service quality for our customers. Last month, we attended the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineering Expo, or SCTE, where we demonstrated our complete line of quantum bandwidth products, including various amplifiers and the QuantumLink control solution I mentioned above. We've received very positive reactions from many of our customers. They are particularly interested in our QuantumLink solution, which several customers have asked to become a standard for the CATV industry. We are pursuing the standardization with CableLabs and anticipate that this technology may be chosen by MSOs as their preferred control architecture for their upcoming deployments. Lastly, and in line with our new strategy, we are pleased to have secured a distribution relationship with Digicom, a stocking distributor. Digicom will be an exclusive go-to-market supplier of our Quantum 12 high-gain balanced triple and high-gain dual system amplifiers and line extenders. This relationship enables customers to receive the latest network equipment with the same quality and performance they expect while providing the industry's best product delivery lead times. Turning to our data center business, our Q3 data center revenue came in at $48.8 million, which more than doubled year over year and was up 77% sequentially, largely due to increased demand for our 100G and 400G products as our customers continued to purchase our existing products. In the third quarter, 74% of our data center revenue was from our 100G products, 13% was from our 200G and 400G transceiver products, and 7% was from our 40G transceiver products. Notably, revenue for our 100G products increased 75% sequentially, while revenue for our 400G products increased 74% sequentially and accounted for just under 11% of our total data center revenue in Q3. Looking ahead, we're encouraged by the strong demand we have been seeing, and we expect Q4 to be similar to Q3. As a reminder, as we have discussed on our prior couple of earnings calls, we signed two agreements with Microsoft earlier this year, including a development program to make next-generation lasers for its data center, both for 400G and beyond, and for the development of their 400G and next-generation active optical cables. While not guaranteed, we continue to believe that the revenue opportunity for our 400G and 800G products could be greater and a longer duration than the revenue contribution we saw from this customer during the peak of the 40G product cycle, which suggests that revenue from these products may exceed $300 million over the several years of these build-outs. During the quarter, we received requests from Microsoft to expedite our production ramp for these products, which we are attempting to accommodate. Based on these expedite requests, we believe demand for these products remains strong, and our production teams are working very hard to add capacity for this production, which we now expect will allow us to begin shipments later this month rather than in late December as originally planned. Notably, the revenue increase we saw from Microsoft this quarter is for mostly existing products. As I just mentioned, we still expect to begin shipping initial quantities of the products related to these new agreements to Microsoft by the end of this month for their testing, and believe that production will begin to ramp in December. We also believe that the value proposition that we offer to Microsoft is just as strong with other data center operators, and we are working with several of them to evaluate our technology and qualify our products. This includes our 800G products. During the quarter, we shipped samples of our 800G data center products to two different customers. By the end of the year, we expect to ship samples of 800G products to two additional data center customers. This would bring our total to four different data center customers who would be evaluating our 800G products by year end. Now turning to our telecom segment. Revenue from our telecom products of $3 million was down 55% year over year and down 27% sequentially, largely driven by softness in 5G demand, particularly in China. Looking ahead, we expect telecom sales to fluctuate around current levels. For the third quarter, our top 10 customers represented 96% of revenue, up from 86% in Q3 of last year. We had two greater than 10% customers, one in the data center market and one in the CATV market, which contributed 64% and 12% of our total revenue, respectively. In Q3, we generated non-GAAP gross margin of 32.5%, which was above our guidance range of 29.5% to 31%, and was up from 24.8% in Q2 of 2023 and up from 18% in Q3 of 2022. The increase in gross margin was driven mainly by our favorable product mix shift and contribution from revenue recognized as part of our non-recurring revenue from Microsoft. We remain committed to the long-term goal of returning gross margin to around 40% and believe that this goal is achievable. Total non-GAAP operating expenses in the third quarter were $21.4 million, or 34.2% of revenue, which compared to 19.4, or 34.3% of revenue in Q3 of the prior year, largely driven by increasing legal costs, increased shipping costs commensurate with our increased revenue, and increased marketing spend to promote our CATV products. Looking ahead, we expect non-GAAP operating expenses to range from $21 to $23 million per quarter. Non-GAAP operating loss in the third quarter was $1 million compared to an operating loss of $9.3 million in Q3 in the prior year. GAAP net loss for Q3 was $9 million or a loss of $0.27 per basic share compared with the GAAP net loss of $15.6 million or a loss of $0.56 per basic share in Q3 of 2022. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for Q3 was $1.7 million or a loss of $0.05 per basic share, which was in line with our guidance range of a loss of $1.9 million to a profit of $0.2 million, or a loss per share in the range of $0.06 to earnings of $0.01 per basic share, and compares to a net loss of $7.1 million, or a loss of $0.26 per basic share in Q3 of the prior year. The basic shares outstanding used for computing the net loss in Q3 were $32.8 million. Turning now to the ballot sheet. We ended the third quarter with $31.2 million in total cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash. This compares with $28.6 million at the end of the second quarter of this year. We ended the quarter with total debt, excluding convertible debt, of $46.6 million, down slightly from $46.9 million at the end of the last quarter. As of September 30, we had $67.5 million in inventory, compared to $66.3 million at the end of Q2. We made a total of $2.1 million in capital investments in the third quarter, which was mainly used for production and R&D equipment. As we disclosed in March, we initiated a new at-the-market offering. To date, we have raised $43.1 million net of commissions and fees under this new program, including $22 million raised in Q3 and $11.2 million raised after the end of the quarter. Moving now to our Q4 outlook. We expect Q4 revenue to be between $63 million and $67 million, and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 34.5% to 36%. Non-GAAP net income is expected to be in the range of a loss of $0.9 million to income of $1.2 million, and non-GAAP income between a loss of 2 cents per basic share and income of 4 cents per basic share using a weighted average basic share count of approximately 35.1 million shares. With that, I will turn it back over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator?
Operator
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 are 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. The first question comes from Jeff Coach with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Jeff Coach
Yeah, thanks, guys. In for Simon. Just really quickly on the Microsoft income that's non-recurring, can you talk about maybe quantify it for the quarter and like what's built in for guidance and how we should think about that relative to the ramps?
Lindsay
helpful thank you yeah well I can't comment on the exact amount of non-returning engineering costs that would be covered under our non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft so it was not the primary contributor to the increase in gross margin okay great and then maybe you just give some color on
Jeff Coach
the segments, like kind of how you're thinking about some of the other segments going into December? Yeah, just start there.
Lindsay
Sure, yeah. So as we noted, we're pretty excited about the progress that we're making on the data center business. As we mentioned, Microsoft is accelerating their demand for the new products that we've been discussing. based on the new contracts that we have, and that's really positive for us. I mean, there's a limit to how fast we can speed up the production, of course, so it's not going to dramatically change our revenue picture in the fourth quarter, but we're encouraged by the increase in demand that we're seeing. We're also really encouraged by the progress that we've made on 800G. As we noted, we've sampled that already to several customers, and we expect to sample it to several more customers before year-end, so we're We're really excited about both of those, you know, the progress that we're making on that front. On the cable TV side of things, we did have, you know, as you've seen from the other companies that have reported already, you know, the situation in cable right now across the board is muted compared to where it was a year or two ago for sure. But we're encouraged by the, you know, sequential uptick in revenue there. And the progress that we've made in terms of our new model of selling directly to the MSOs and the acceptance that the MSOs have had of our new technologies like QuantumLink, which we talked about in the prepared remarks earlier, has been really phenomenal. And we're really, really excited about the progress that we've made there as well. So those two segments, I think, obviously account for the vast majority of our business. The telecom market will be somewhat muted, as we noted earlier. The 5G business in China has been relatively slow, and I don't necessarily see a recovery of that, in the short term at least. But certainly the two business segments that account for the vast majority of our revenue are both heading in the right direction.
Jeff Coach
Could you see cable TV sequentially into December, or do you think that we continue to see sequential growth. And then is it, when do you see an inflection there from, like you were saying, is that for DOCSIS 4.0, is that more?
Lindsay
Right, so you were cutting in and out there a little bit, but I think I understood your question to be on cable TV, do we expect to see some sequential growth into Q4? I think you can tell from the guide, we don't expect dramatic growth in cable, but there's probably some opportunity for some growth there. As we discussed, the cable market will recover, or we expect the cable market to recover substantially during the DOCSIS 4.0 introduction, which will happen in the middle part of next year. In the meantime, we are seeing some customers that are finally starting to burn through their inventory of DOCSIS 3.1 products, the 1.2 gigahertz. So I expect to see some sort of modest improvement there, but the dramatic uptake that we expect to see will be with DOCSIS 4.0 in the middle part of next year.
Lindsay Savarese
Yeah, so basically, this is Thompson. We believe CRTB, we can see very, very strong growth in next year from, I would say, the end of Q2 or sometime in Q3 next year. And more important, the growth margin will be much better. That's the key. It's not enrollment. It's growth margin improvement.
spk01
Terrific. I appreciate the time. Thanks.
Operator
Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question comes from Tim Savago with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Tim Savago
Hey, good afternoon and congrats on the results and the positive EBITDA in particular. I have a question about the kind of pull-in that we're seeing from Microsoft in terms of, you know, 400 gig AOC type demands. And I guess one would be, you know, to what extent is that a factor in your guidance for Q4? And, you know, given you're ramping up production this month and through December, that looks like, you know, to set you up for a full quarter of production perhaps in Q1. And I'd love it if you can give us a sense of what that looks like for you guys from a revenue standpoint or what might that look like. Thanks. Sure.
Lindsay
So your question about Q4 I think is – The answer to that is that we're just beginning the production in Q4, so we don't expect it to meaningfully contribute to revenue in Q4. The reason for the commentary that we've been giving is just to illustrate the fact that the demand is still very strong for Microsoft. And, in fact, I believe from other data center operators as well, as we talked about. However, our ability to increase the production capacity, is, you know, we're doing the best that we can, but it's going to take us a little bit of time to get there, right? So we're not going to be fully ramped right at the beginning of Q1 either. There'll be some continued ramp during Q1. And in fact, you know, based on the production targets that they've asked us to meet, there'll be some increasing production capacity pretty much throughout next year. It's not going to be done in, you know, a month or even a quarter. So there'll be some improvement throughout the year in terms of our capacity there. The encouraging thing for us really is, again, that Microsoft is really, you know, looking for us to make these products in greater quantities faster, and that's an exciting thing for us. With respect to, you know, exactly how much, you know, will be in Q1, we haven't given guidance for Q1 yet. A lot will depend on, you know, the progress that we make over the next month or two. But certainly, you know, we believe this is incrementally positive in terms of timing and our overall production rate into Q1, and we're excited about that.
spk13
Great.
Tim Savago
I wanted to follow up on the 800 gig front where you noticed some progress in terms of customer samples and realizing you're probably in pretty early stages, but are you at a point or when do you think pending customer evaluation of these products, is this something that could start to ship in calendar 24? Yes. Okay, that was pretty clear, and then I'll try again then, which is, or further, which is, you know, any sense of timing on that within calendar 24? That, I think, is a little too early to say right now.
Lindsay
As you pointed out, I mean, you know, we're in early stages on it. I would say the demand picture for 800G looks pretty strong, and we're certainly having very constructive discussions with the customers, but you know, how long it will take and the qualification process and that is a little too early to say, but I do expect it to be in 2024.
Lindsay Savarese
Yeah, so maybe sometime in Q2 or Q3 next year. The qualification will take easily, you know, four to six months or longer. But the other thing that I want to emphasize is we are working very close with several big customers, about 1.6 T with 200 E per lambda. And I believe we are the technology leader. And I think the demand will be very strong, too. Maybe it's from Q3, Q4 next year. So it's only 800G. There's a lot of things going on for the data center, especially the high-speed transceiver technology, because the AI, the AI demand is really, really strong. So we are jumping right now, not only from the 100G to 400G in volume, and we're we stay 100, we can do the volume sometime next year, Q2, Q3, but even 1.60, we will start to see some volume during Q4 next year.
Tim Savago
Got it. And let's stay on this topic for a second. And, Stephan, you described four customers evaluating the products. Can you give us any indications of the type of customers those might be, large cloud operators, networking OEMs, you know, what have you?
Lindsay
Mostly large cloud operators with at least one OEM that supplies some of the large cloud operators. So it's all cloud, it's all hyperscale cloud related, whether it's directly or through an OEM that would supply them.
Lindsay Savarese
And one big AI company. You know what I'm talking about. I don't know how you define it. It's not cooperative, but it's really, maybe they'll become the number one customer in the world for the data center transceiver.
spk13
Okay, great. And last one for me, and maybe kind of related to that.
Tim Savago
I mean, can you give us a sense of kind of, I don't know whether it's unit volumes or revenue dollars, but how do you assess the kind of total opportunity for AI-related, we call it transceivers or AOCs, and how has that assessment of market opportunity evolved for you guys over the past quarter or so?
Lindsay Savarese
The number sounds crazy. What we heard is way under the, I think we are talking about maybe a minimum of six to eight million with very good ASP, more than $600 or $700, so you can see opportunity next year.
spk13
Thanks very much.
Lindsay Savarese
So it's at $4 billion per hour next year. And some people even come up, some even higher on price. That's what I see. I'll be very happy if that's true. That's why we are putting our resources. into AIG and 1.60 business. 400G, I think, were very competent. That's very existing. The volume is coming up for sure. But really, the big charm is AIG and 1.60 for AI-related business.
spk13
And that's what we heard from the customers. Great. Thanks very much.
Operator
The next question is from Dave Kang with B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.
Dave Kang
Thank you. Good afternoon. First question is on cable TV. So you said by middle of next year, we should be expecting pretty strong recovery. So are we talking about like a you know, prior peak of, like, say, $30 million or so per quarter, is that what we should be expecting or not quite there yet?
Lindsay
I mean, without putting a specific quarter on it, yeah, certainly the expectation is that we can exceed the prior peak levels because at that point we weren't really in even an upgrade cycle, right? It was just a sort of business-as-usual case. As we move into an upgrade cycle, which is what we think will happen that portends, you know, the growth in DOCSIS 4.0, I would say the opportunity there is significantly larger than, you know, than the previous peak for sure. Not to mention the fact that because of the business model change, you know, our ASPs are going to be higher because we're not selling through, you know, a middleman essentially. And so, you know, not only will it have higher unit demand, but ASPs will be higher as well.
Lindsay Savarese
Oh, let me say, I would say by Q4 next year, our CATV pin, it should be, I would say, more than $40 million in Q4 next year, which very good gross margin. I would say around 40%. OK. And then just on the data center, 100 gig,
Dave Kang
little surprised why that was so strong because, uh, others are saying it's really, um, 800 gig that's, uh, enjoying strong demand. Whereas, uh, a hundred gig, uh, which is not really not considered to be part of, um, AI, um, you know, a hundred years a week. So are you just like gaining market share and how should we think about, you know, uh, you know, going forward, should we be expecting a hundred gig to be flat and eventually, uh, you know, decay? Can you just talk about the next, uh, What to expect over the next couple of years?
Lindsay
Sure. So I think in 100 gig, we're taking market share. You know, I think there's been some increase in purchasing with maybe a couple of customers, but I think we're gaining market share there. You know, we've talked about some of the dynamics, for example, that being a U.S.-based manufacturer, you know, gives us some advantages there in terms of being able to – attract, I would say, more interest maybe than in the past relative to some of our competition in China. And that's helpful for us in gaining this market share. As far as how that plays out in the future, I think, look, what we saw at 40 gig is that the older technology has a very long tail. I mean, it lasts a long time. And that's what I expect with 100 gig as well. I mean, I think that So eventually 100 gig will decline as 400 gig begins to grow, but I don't think it's going to be a dramatic. I mean, I kind of feel like we tell the same story every time there's a technology transition, right? Wall Street tends to think, well, one technology comes on and the other one goes away immediately, and we always try to caution that, no, that's not what happens, right? It's a gradual shift. The new technology tends to come on relatively quickly, but the old one tends to last a long time because there's already a number of Switches, for example, that are out there that haven't been fully populated yet, they're going to fill out those ports and those switches. And that portends a long period of, I would say, relatively flattish, maybe down slightly, but relatively flattish demand. So I would caution not to remove 100 gig from the picture as quickly as you might be tempted to.
Dave Kang
Got it. And just wanted to clarify, did you say that regarding fourth quarter, expect similar revenue mix with third quarter? Did I hear that right?
Lindsay
We're just saying that the data center portion will be consistent with Q3, right?
Lindsay Savarese
No, but we can see some growth, but the mix will be different because we can see much more energy than 100G.
spk08
Okay.
Lindsay Savarese
Okay. I actually, yeah, that's what I was after. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.
Dave Kang
And, uh, and my last question is, uh, regarding that, that, uh, termination, um, that the fee of $3 million, um, uh, who is responsible for that?
Lindsay
Uh, we believe that UConn is responsible for the breakup fee. we're pursuing, you know, them for the payment of that.
spk09
Okay, got it. Thank you.
Operator
Next, we have a follow-up question from Jeff Coach with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Jeff Coach
Yeah, just really quickly, just want to talk about your thoughts on data center going into March. Is it ridiculous to think that, you know, you could be up sequentially again – I know historically that's not the strongest seasonally.
Lindsay
I mean, I think it's not ridiculous to think because, again, the 400 gig business that we're talking about, the new programs with Microsoft, will be ramping during the quarter. So you're correct historically that ordinarily Q1 is sort of a challenging quarter just seasonally. A large part of that is because historically most of our data center products have been made in China. and we do have Chinese New Year, both in China and Taiwan. In this case, we're producing more of these products in Taiwan and even in the U.S., and so the impact of Lunar New Year should be less for us. That, in combination with the fact that the 400 gig will be ramping in terms of production capacity, paints a pretty good picture in the March quarter for us, I think.
spk13
Great. Thank you so much.
Operator
At this time, we have no further questions, and I will turn the call over to Dr. Thompson Lin, AOI's founder, chairman, and CEO, for closing remarks.
Lindsay Savarese
Again, thank you for joining us today. As always, we want to extend a thank you to our investors, customers, and employees. For your continued support, we look forward to updating you on our next earning call.
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. you Thank you. Thank you.
spk15
Thank you.
Operator
Good afternoon. I will be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Applied Optoelectronics third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Lindsay Savarese, Investor Relations for AOI. Ms. Savarese, you may begin.
Lindsay Savarese
Thank you. I'm Lindsay Savarese, Investor Relations for Applied Optoelectronics. I am pleased to welcome you to AOI's third quarter, 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. After the market closed today, AOI issued a press release announcing its third quarter 2023 financial results and provided its outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. 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. Stephan Murray, AOI's chief financial officer and chief strategy officer. Thompson will give an overview of AOI's Q3 results, and Stephan will provide financial details and the outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. A question and answer session will follow our prepared remarks. Before we begin, I would like to remind you to review AOI safe harbor statements. 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, levels of activity, performance, or achievements of the company or its industry to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as believes, forecasts, anticipates, estimates, suggests, intends, predicts, expects, plans, may, should, could, would, will, potential, or thinks, or by the negative of those terms or other similar expressions that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes. The company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations, assumptions, estimates, and projections. While the company believes these expectations, assumptions, estimates, and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's control. 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 innovations, as well as statements regarding the company's outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. 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 the SEC, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. Also, all financial results and other financial measures 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. I'd like to note the date of our fourth quarter and full year earnings call is currently scheduled for February 22nd, 2024. Now I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Thompson Lin, Applied Optoelectronics, founder, chairman, and CEO. Thompson?
Lindsay Savarese
Thank you, Lindsay, and thank you for joining our call today. Our third quarter revenue and non-gov EPS were in line with our expectations. Oil oil market growth margin was better than our expectations. We are pleased by the continued progress we have made on improving our growth margin and by the continuous strong growth we saw for our 100G and 400G products in our data center business during Q3. The combination of revenue growth and improving growth margin allow us to generate $3 million in adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. During the third quarter, we delivered revenue of $62.5 million, which was within our guidance range of $60 million to $66 million. We delivered non-GAAP gross margin of 32.5% above our guidance range of 29.5% to 31%. by our favorable product mix shift and contribution from revenue recognized as part of our non-recurring revenue from Microsoft. All non-GAAP loss per share was $0.05, which was within our guidance range of a loss of $0.06 to earning of $0.01. Total revenue in our CATB segment was $10.3 million, down 67% year-over-year and up 10% sequentially, in line with our expectations. Total revenue for all data center products of $48.8 million, more than doubled year-over-year and increased 77% sequentially, largely due to increased demand for our 100G and 400G products. As we continue to see the run-up of our 400G products, revenue for our 100G products nearly tripled year over year, while revenue for our 400G products increased more than 10 times in the same period. With that, I will turn the call over to Stephen to review the details of our Q3 performance and outlook for Q4. Stephen.
Lindsay
Thank you, Thompson. As Thompson mentioned, our third quarter revenue and non-GAAP EPS were in line with our expectations, while our non-GAAP gross margin was better than our expectations. We're pleased by the continued progress we have made on improving our gross margin and by the continued strong demand we saw for our 100G and 400G products in our data center business during Q3. The combination of revenue growth and improving gross margin allowed us to generate $3 million in adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. Before turning to discuss our detailed results and outlook, I want to provide an update on the sale of our manufacturing facilities located in the People's Republic of China and certain assets related to our transceiver business and multi-channel optical sub-assembly products for the Internet Data Center, fiber-to-the-home, and telecom markets. On September 12, 2023, we announced the termination of our purchase agreement with Yuhan Opto-Electronic Technology. This decision was based on Yvonne's failure to meet agreed-upon deadlines and we lost confidence in their ability to complete the transaction. We were exploring additional options with new potential buyers. Turning to the quarter, our total revenue for the third quarter increased 10% year-over-year to $62.5 million, which was in line with our guidance range of $60 million to $66 million. As Thompson mentioned, the increase in revenue was largely due to growth of our 100G and 400G data center business. During the third quarter, 78% of our revenue was from our data center products, 16% was from our CATV products, with the remaining 6% from FTTH, telecom, and others. In line with our expectations, CATV revenue in the third quarter was $10.3 million, which was down 67% year-over-year and up 10% sequentially. We were encouraged by the sequential growth that we saw in our CATV business in Q3. Looking forward, we continue to expect that our near-term CAP business will be down compared to the historic highs we saw in 2021 and 2022 as the MSOs transition to next-generation architecture. We anticipate this transition will begin to take place in 2024. Looking further ahead, we continue to carefully monitor MSO plans to move to DOCSIS 4.0 networks, and we continue to believe AOI is a leader in technologies that will enable DOCSIS 4.0 and that our products are well-suited for when the push to install amplifiers and other network elements for DOCSIS 4.0 begins. In line with our new strategy of directly selling to the MSOs, we have continued to expand our product portfolio. Just last month, we announced the launch of QuantumLink, the latest solution within our quantum bandwidth line of products, designed to provide remote management and monitoring of cable amplifiers that we believe will reshape the cable broadband market. Operators using QuantumLink will now have the ability to remotely manage cable broadband amplifiers, ushering in a new era of efficiency, convenience, and enhanced service quality for our customers. Last month, we attended the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineering Expo, or SCTE, where we demonstrated our complete line of quantum bandwidth products, including various amplifiers and the QuantumLink control solution I mentioned above. We've received very positive reactions from many of our customers. They are particularly interested in our QuantumLink solution, which several customers have asked to become a standard for the CATV industry. We are pursuing this standardization with CableLabs and anticipate that this technology may be chosen by MSOs as their preferred control architecture for their upcoming deployments. Lastly, and in line with our new strategy, we are pleased to have secured a distribution relationship with Digicom, a stocking distributor. Digicom will be an exclusive go-to-market supplier of our Quantum 12 high-gain balanced triple and high-gain dual system amplifiers and line extenders. This relationship enables customers to receive the latest network equipment with the same quality and performance they expect while providing the industry's best product delivery lead times. Turning to our data center business, our Q3 data center revenue came in at $48.8 million, which more than doubled year over year and was up 77% sequentially, largely due to increased demand for our 100G and 400G products, as our customers continued to purchase our existing products. In the third quarter, 74% of our data center revenue was from our 100G products, 13% was from our 200G and 400G transceiver products, and 7% was from our 40G transceiver products. Notably, revenue for our 100G products increased 75% sequentially, while revenue for our 400G products increased 74% sequentially and accounted for just under 11% of our total data center revenue in Q3. Looking ahead, we're encouraged by the strong demand we have been seeing, and we expect Q4 to be similar to Q3. As a reminder, as we have discussed on our prior couple of Arnie's calls, we signed two agreements with Microsoft earlier this year, including a development program to make next-generation lasers for its data center, both for 400G and beyond, and for the development of their 400G and next-generation active optical cables. While not guaranteed, we continue to believe that the revenue opportunity for our 400G and 800G products could be greater and a longer duration than the revenue contribution we saw from this customer during the peak of the 40G product cycle, which suggests that revenue from these products may exceed $300 million over the several years of these build-outs. During the quarter, we received requests from Microsoft to expedite our production ramp for these products, which we are attempting to accommodate. Based on these expedite requests, we believe demand for these products remains strong, and our production teams are working very hard to add capacity for this production, which we now expect will allow us to begin shipments later this month rather than in late December as originally planned. Notably, the revenue increase we saw from Microsoft this quarter is for mostly existing products. As I just mentioned, we still expect to begin shipping initial quantities of the products related to these new agreements to Microsoft by the end of this month for their testing, and believe that production will begin to bring up in December. We also believe that the value proposition that we offer to Microsoft is just as strong with other data center operators, and we are working with several of them to evaluate our technology and qualify our products. This includes our 800G products. During the quarter, we shipped samples of our 800G data center products to two different customers. By the end of the year, we expect to ship samples of 800G products to two additional data center customers. This would bring our total to four different data center customers who would be evaluating our 800G products by year end. Now turning to our telecom segment. Revenue from our telecom products of $3 million was down 55% year-over-year and down 27% sequentially, largely driven by softness in 5G demand, particularly in China. Looking ahead, we expect telecom sales to fluctuate around current levels. For the third quarter, our top 10 customers represented 96% of revenue, up from 86% in Q3 of last year. We had two greater than 10% customers, one in the data center market and one in the CATV market, which contributed 64% and 12% of our total revenue, respectively. In Q3, we generated non-GAAP gross margin of 32.5%, which was above our guidance range of 29.5% to 31%, and was up from 24.8% in Q2 of 2023 and up from 18% in Q3 of 2022. The increase in gross margin was driven mainly by our favorable product mix shift and contribution from revenue recognized as part of our non-recurring revenue from Microsoft. We remain committed to the long-term goal of returning gross margin to around 40% and believe that this goal is achievable. Total non-GAAP operating expenses in the third quarter were $21.4 million, or 34.2% of revenue, which compared to 19.4, or 34.3% of revenue in Q3 of the prior year, largely driven by increasing legal costs, increased shipping costs commensurate with our increased revenue, and increased marketing spend to promote our CATV products. Looking ahead, we expect non-GAAP operating expenses to range from $21 to $23 million per quarter. Non-GAAP operating loss in the third quarter was $1 million compared to an operating loss of $9.3 million in Q3 in the prior year. GAAP net loss for Q3 was $9 million or a loss of $0.27 per basic share compared with the GAAP net loss of $15.6 million or a loss of $0.56 per basic share in Q3 of 2022. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for Q3 was $1.7 million or a loss of $0.05 per basic share, which was in line with our guidance range of a loss of $1.9 million to a profit of $0.2 million, or a loss per share in the range of $0.06 to earnings of $0.01 per basic share, and compares to a net loss of $7.1 million, or a loss of $0.26 per basic share in Q3 of the prior year. The basic shares outstanding used for computing the net loss in Q3 were $32.8 million. Turning now to the ballot sheet. We ended the third quarter with $31.2 million in total cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash. This compares with $28.6 million at the end of the second quarter of this year. We ended the quarter with total debt, excluding convertible debt, of $46.6 million, down slightly from $46.9 million at the end of the last quarter. As of September 30, we had $67.5 million in inventory, compared to $66.3 million at the end of Q2. We made a total of $2.1 million in capital investments in the third quarter, which was mainly used for production and R&D equipment. As we disclosed in March, we initiated a new at-the-market offering. To date, we have raised $43.1 million net of commissions and fees under this new program, including $22 million raised in Q3 and $11.2 million raised after the end of the quarter. Moving now to our Q4 outlook. We expect Q4 revenue to be between $63 million and $67 million, and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 34.5% to 36%. Non-GAAP net income is expected to be in the range of a loss of $0.9 million to income of $1.2 million, and non-GAAP income between a loss of 2 cents per basic share and income of 4 cents per basic share using a weighted average basic share count of approximately 35.1 million shares. With that, I will turn it back over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator?
Operator
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 are 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. The first question comes from Jeff Coach with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Jeff Coach
Yeah, thanks, guys. In for Simon. Just really quickly on the Microsoft income that's not recurring, can you talk about maybe quantify it for the quarter and like what's built in for guidance and how we should think about that relative to the ramp?
Lindsay
helpful thank you yeah well I can't comment on the exact amount of non-returning engineering costs that would be covered under our non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft so it was not the primary contributor to the increase in gross margin okay great and then maybe you just give some color on
Jeff Coach
the segments, like kind of how you're thinking about some of the other segments going into December? Yeah, just start there.
Lindsay
Sure, yeah. So as we noted, we're pretty excited about the progress that we're making on the data center business. As we mentioned, Microsoft is accelerating their demand for the new products that we've been discussing. based on the new contracts that we have, and that's really positive for us. I mean, there's a limit to how fast we can speed up the production, of course, so it's not going to dramatically change our revenue picture in the fourth quarter, but we're encouraged by the increase in demand that we're seeing. We're also really encouraged by the progress that we've made on 800G. As we noted, we've sampled that already to several customers, and we expect to sample it to several more customers before year-end, so we're We're really excited about both of those, you know, the progress that we're making on that front. On the cable TV side of things, we did have, you know, as you've seen from the other companies that have reported already, you know, the situation in cable right now across the board is muted compared to where it was a year or two ago for sure. But we're encouraged by the, you know, sequential uptick in revenue there. And the progress that we've made in terms of our new model of selling directly to the MSOs and the acceptance that the MSOs have had of our new technologies like QuantumLink, which we talked about in the prepared remarks earlier, has been really phenomenal. And we're really, really excited about the progress that we've made there as well. So those two segments, I think, obviously account for the vast majority of our business. The telecom market will be somewhat muted, as we noted earlier. The 5G business in China has been relatively slow, and I don't necessarily see a recovery of that, in the short term at least. But certainly the two business segments that account for the vast majority of our revenue are both heading in the right direction.
Jeff Coach
So could you see cable TV sequentially into December, or do you think that... we continue to see sequential growth. And then is it, when do you see an inflection there from, like you were saying, is that for DOCSIS 4.0, is that more?
Lindsay
Right, so you were cutting in and out there a little bit, but I think I understood your question to be on cable TV, do we expect to see some sequential growth into Q4? I think you can tell from the guide, we don't expect dramatic growth in cable, but there's probably some opportunity for some growth there. As we discussed, the cable market will recover, or we expect the cable market to recover substantially during the DOCSIS 4.0 introduction, which will happen in the middle part of next year. In the meantime, we are seeing some customers that are finally starting to burn through their inventory of DOCSIS 3.1 products, the 1.2 gigahertz. So I expect to see some sort of modest improvement there, but the dramatic uptake that we expect to see will be with DOCSIS 4.0 in the middle part of next year.
Lindsay Savarese
Yeah, so basically, this is Thompson. We believe CRTB, we can see very, very strong growth in next year from, I would say, the end of Q2 or sometime in Q3 next year. And more important, the close margin will be much better. That's the key. It's not enrollment. It's close margin improvement.
spk01
Terrific. Appreciate the time. Thanks.
Operator
Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question comes from Tim Savago with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Tim Savago
Hey, good afternoon and congrats on the results and the positive EBITDA in particular. I have a question about the kind of pull-in that we're seeing from Microsoft in terms of, you know, 400 gig AOC type demands. And I guess one would be, you know, to what extent is that a factor in your guidance for Q4? And You know, given you're ramping up production this month and through December, that looks like, you know, to set you up for a full quarter of production perhaps in Q1. And I'd love it if you can give us a sense of what that looks like for you guys from a revenue standpoint or what might that look like. Thanks. Sure.
Lindsay
So your question about Q4 I think is – The answer to that is that we're just beginning the production in Q4, so we don't expect it to meaningfully contribute to revenue in Q4. The reason for the commentary that we've been giving is just to illustrate the fact that the demand is still very strong for Microsoft. And, in fact, I believe from other data center operators as well, as we talked about. However, our ability to increase the production capacity, We're doing the best that we can, but it's going to take us a little bit of time to get there. So we're not going to be fully ramped right at the beginning of Q1 either. There will be some continued ramp during Q1. And, in fact, based on the production targets that they've asked us to meet, there will be some increasing production capacity pretty much throughout next year. It's not going to be done in a month or even a quarter. So there will be some improvement throughout the year in terms of our capacity there. The encouraging thing for us really is, again, that Microsoft is really looking for us to make these products in greater quantities faster, and that's an exciting thing for us. With respect to exactly how much will be in Q1, we haven't given guidance for Q1 yet. A lot will depend on the progress that we make over the next month or two, but certainly we believe this is incrementally positive in terms of timing and our overall production rate into Q1, and we're excited about that.
spk13
Great.
Tim Savago
I wanted to follow up on the 800 gig front where you noticed some progress in terms of customer samples and realizing you're probably in pretty early stages, but are you at a point or when do you think pending customer evaluation of these products, is this something that could start to ship in calendar 24? Yes. Okay, that was pretty clear, and then I'll try again then, which is, or further, which is, you know, any sense of timing on that within calendar 24? That, I think, is a little too early to say right now.
Lindsay
As you pointed out, I mean, you know, we're in early stages on it. I would say the demand picture for 800G looks pretty strong, and we're certainly having very constructive discussions with the customers, but you know, how long it will take and the qualification process and that is a little too early to say, but I do expect it to be in 2024.
Lindsay Savarese
Yeah, so maybe sometime in Q2 or Q3 next year. Usually, by vacation, it will take easily, you know, four to six months or longer. But the other thing that I want to emphasize is we are working very close with several big customers, about 1.6T with 200 E per lambda. And I believe we are the technology leader. And I think the demand will be very strong, too. Maybe it's from Q3, Q4 next year. So it's only 800G. There's a lot of things going on for the data center, especially the high-speed transceiver technology, because of AI. The AI demand is really, really strong. So we are jumping right now, not only from the 100G to 400G in volume and with we stay 100, we can do the volume sometime next year, Q2, Q3, but even 1.60, we will start to see some volume during Q4 next year.
Tim Savago
Got it. And let's stay on this topic for a second. And, Stephan, you described four customers evaluating the products. Can you give us any indications of the type of customers those might be, large cloud operators, networking OEMs, you know, what have you?
Lindsay
Mostly large cloud operators with at least one OEM that supplies some of the large cloud operators. So it's all cloud, it's all hyperscale cloud related, whether it's directly or through an OEM that was supplied.
Lindsay Savarese
And one big AI company. You know what I'm talking about. So I don't know how you define it. It's not cooperative, but it's really, maybe they will become the number one
spk13
customer in the world for the data center transceiver. Okay, great.
Tim Savago
And last one for me, and maybe kind of related to that, I mean, can you give us a sense of kind of, I don't know whether it's unit volumes or revenue dollars, but how do you assess the kind of total opportunity for AI-related, we call it transceivers or AOCs, and how has that assessment of market opportunity evolved for you guys over the past quarter or so?
Lindsay Savarese
The number sounds crazy. What we heard is for A&G, I think we are talking about maybe a minimum of six to eight million who is a very good ASP, more than $600 or $700.
spk13
So you can see opportunity next year. Thanks very much.
Lindsay Savarese
So it's at $4 billion per hour next year. And some people even come up with even higher price. That's what I see. I'll be very happy if that's true. That's why we are putting our resources. into AIG and 1.60 business. 400G, I think, were very competent. This is very existing. The volume is coming up for sure. But really, the big charm is AIG and 1.60 for AI-related business.
spk13
And that's all we heard from the customers. Great. Thanks very much.
Operator
The next question is from Dave Kang with B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.
Dave Kang
Thank you. Good afternoon. First question is on cable TV. So you said by middle of next year, we should be expecting pretty strong recovery. So are we talking about like a you know, prior peak of, like, say, $30 million or so per quarter, is that what we should be expecting or not quite there yet?
Lindsay
I mean, without putting a specific quarter on it, yeah, certainly the expectation is that we can exceed the prior peak levels because at that point we weren't really in even an upgrade cycle, right? It was just a sort of business-as-usual case. As we move into an upgrade cycle, which is what we think will happen, that portends, you know, the growth in DOCSIS 4.0, I would say the opportunity there is significantly larger than, you know, than the previous peak for sure. Not to mention the fact that because of the business model change, you know, our ASPs are going to be higher because we're not selling through, you know, a middleman essentially. And so, you know, not only will it have higher unit demand, but ASPs will be higher as well.
Lindsay Savarese
Let me say, I would say by Q4 next year, our CATV business should be, I would say, more than $40 million in Q4 next year, which is a very good gross margin. I would say around 40%.
spk11
Okay.
Dave Kang
And then just on the data center, you know, 100 gig... little surprised why that was so strong because, uh, others are saying it's really, um, 800 gig that's, uh, enjoying strong demand. Whereas, uh, a hundred gig, uh, which is not really considered to be part of, um, AI, um, you know, a hundred gig is weak, weak. So are you just like gaining market share and how should we think about, you know, uh, you know, going forward, should we be expecting a hundred gig to be flat and eventually, uh, you know, decay? Can you just talk about the next, uh, what to expect over the next couple of years?
Lindsay
Sure. So I think in 100 gig, we're, we're, we're taking market share. Um, you know, I think there's been some increase in, in, in purchasing with maybe a couple of customers, but I think we're gaining market share there. Um, you know, we've talked about some of the dynamic, for example, that, um, being a U S based manufacturer, you know, gives us some, some advantages there in terms of being able to, uh, attract, I would say, more interest maybe than in the past relative to some of our competition in China. And that's helpful for us in gaining this market share. As far as how that plays out in the future, I mean, I think, look, what we saw at 40 gig is that the older technology has a very long tail. I mean, it lasts a long time. And that's what I expect with 100 gig as well. I mean, I think that So eventually 100 gig will decline as 400 gig begins to grow, but I don't think it's going to be a dramatic. I mean, I kind of feel like we tell the same story every time there's a technology transition, right? Wall Street tends to think, well, one technology comes on and the other one goes away immediately, and we always try to caution that, no, that's not what happens, right? It's a gradual shift. The new technology tends to come on relatively quickly, but the old one tends to last a long time because there's already a number of Switches, for example, that are out there that haven't been fully populated yet, they're going to fill out those ports and those switches. And that portends a long period of, I would say, relatively flattish, maybe down slightly, but relatively flattish demand. So I would caution not to remove 100 gig from the picture as quickly as you might be tempted to.
Dave Kang
Got it. And just wanted to clarify, did you say that regarding fourth quarter, expect similar revenue mix with third quarter? Did I hear that right?
Lindsay
We're just saying that the data center portion will be consistent with Q3, right?
Lindsay Savarese
No, but we can see some growth, but the mix will be different because we can see much more energy than 100G.
spk08
Okay.
Lindsay Savarese
Okay. I actually, yeah, that's what I was after. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.
Dave Kang
And, uh, and my last question is, uh, regarding that, that, uh, termination, um, that the fee of $3 million, um, uh, who's responsible for that?
Lindsay
Uh, we believe that UConn is responsible for the breakup fee. We're pursuing them for the payment of that.
spk09
Okay, got it. Thank you.
Operator
Next, we have a follow-up question from Jeff Coach with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Jeff Coach
Yeah, just really quickly, just want to talk about your thoughts on data center going into March. Is it ridiculous to think that, you know, you could be up sequentially again? I know historically that's not the strongest seasonally.
Lindsay
I mean, I think it's not ridiculous to think because, again, the 400-gig business that we're talking about, the new programs with Microsoft, will be ramping during the quarter. So you're correct historically that ordinarily Q1 is sort of a challenging quarter just seasonally. A large part of that is because historically most of our data center products have been made in China, and we do have – Chinese New Year, both in China and Taiwan. In this case, we're producing more of these products in Taiwan and even in the U.S., and so the impact of Lunar New Year should be less for us. That, in combination with the fact that the 400 gig will be ramping in terms of production capacity, paints a pretty good picture in the March quarter for us, I think.
spk13
Great. Thank you so much.
Operator
You're welcome. At this time, we have no further questions. And I will turn the call over to Dr. Thompson Lin, AOI's founder, chairman, and CEO, for closing remarks.
Lindsay Savarese
Okay. Thank you for joining us today. As always, we want to extend a thank you to our investors, customers, and employees. We will continue to support. We look forward to updating you on our next earning call.
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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