This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
Operator
Everyone to applied opto electronics fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session to ask a question you may press star then one on a touch tone phone to withdraw your question please press star then to Please note this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Lindsay. So, Savari investor relations for a why miss Savari please. You may begin.
Lindsay
Thank you. I'm Lindsay severies investor relations for applied opto electronics. I'm pleased to welcome you to a why fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results conference call After the market closed today a why issued a press release announcing its fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results and provided its outlook for the first quarter of 2024 The release is also available on the company's website at a dash inc calm this call is being recorded and webcast live A link to the recording can be found on the investor relation section of the website and will be archived for one year. Joining us on today's call is Dr. Thompson Lynn a wise founder chairman and CEO and Dr. Stefan Murray a wise chief financial officer and chief strategy officer. Thompson will give an overview of a wise Q4 results and Stefan will provide financial details and outlook for the first quarter of 2024 a question and answer session will follow our prepared remarks. Before we begin, I would like to remind you to review a why safe harbor statement on today's call management will make for looking statements. Before looking statements involve risk 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 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 the leaves forecast anticipate estimate suggest intend predict. Expects plan may should could would will potential or think or by the negative of those terms or other similar expressions that convey uncertainty or future events or outcome. The company has based these forward looking statements on its current expectations assumptions estimates and projections. Well, the company believes these expectations assumptions estimates and projections are reasonable. That's forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risk and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's control. For looking statements also include statements regarding management 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 2024. 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 and the company's quarterly reports on form 10 Q. Also, all financial results and other financial measures discussed today are on a non gap basis, unless specifically noted otherwise non gap financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with gap. A reconciliation between our gap and non gap measures, as well as a discussion of why we present non gap financial measures are included in our earnings press release that is available on our website. I'd like to know the date of our first quarter 2024 earnings call is currently scheduled for May 9 2024. Now I would like to turn the call over to Dr Thompson Lynn applied opto electronics founder chairman and CEO Thompson.
Lindsay
Thank you, Lindsey and thank you for joining our call today. While our fourth quarter revenue came in below our expectations, our gross margin outperform our projections. Beating to non gap EPS at a high end of our expectations. We are pleased by the continued progress we have made in improving our gross margin, which combined with our expense measurement. Allow us to generate a small non gap income in the fourth quarter. For the first time in many years further we generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $4.8 million in Q4. During the fourth quarter, we deliver revenue of $60.5 million, which was below our guidance range of $63 to $67 million. Primary due to somewhat lower that expected bearer center revenue as we began to see some softness in demand led in the quarter. We deliver long gap gross margin of 36.4%, which is high quarterly gross margin that we have generated in the last five years and what's above our guidance range of .5% to 36%. Mainly driven by improved product mix and some contribution from non recurring engineering projects. We generated a small non gap income of $0.04 per share, which was at high end of our guidance range of a loss of $0.02 to earnings of $0.04. Total revenue for our data center products of $44.5 million more than double year over year, but was down 9% sequentially. Revenue for our 100G products more than double year over year and revenue for our 400G products increased more than eight times in the same period. Total revenue in our CATV segment was $12.6 million, which was down 67% year over year and up 22% sequentially. Largely driven by generally slow sales of DOSSE 3.1 equipment as the industry prepares for transition to DOSSE 4.0. With that, I would turn the call over to Stephen to review the details of our Q4 performance in Laodo Q1.
Lindsey
Thank you, Thompson. As Thompson mentioned, while our fourth quarter revenue came in below our expectations, our gross margin outperformed our projection, leading to a non gap EPS at the high end of our expectations. We're pleased by the continued progress we have made on improving our gross margin, which combined with our expense management allowed us to generate a small non gap net income in the fourth quarter for the first time in many years. Further, we generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $4.8 million in Q4. While we do see some softness in Q1 due to the combined effects of the Lunar New Year holiday in our Asian factories, along with some price reductions which are scheduled to take effect, we expect a strong recovery in Q2 and are currently anticipating a markedly improved second half of 2024. Despite the softness we are seeing in Q1, we have been experiencing significant traction with several new data center customers recently for both 400G and 800G products, and we expect one or more of these customers to begin to contribute meaningfully to revenue starting in Q2, which gives us a basis for the optimistic outlook despite the slow start to the year. While not likely to contribute meaningfully to revenue in 2024, we also are very optimistic about our 1.6 terabit products as we move into 2025. With the improvement we expect in the second half, we currently expect our first full year of non gap profitability since 2018. Turning to the quarter, our total revenue for the fourth quarter decreased by 2% year over year to $60.5 million, which was below our guidance range of $63 million to $67 million. As Thompson mentioned, this was largely due to somewhat lower than expected data center revenue as we began to see some softness in demand late in the quarter, which we attribute to timing of orders. During the fourth quarter, 74% of our revenue was from our data center products, 21% was from our CATV products, with the remaining 5% from FTTH, Telecom, and other. In line with our expectations, CATV revenue in the fourth quarter was $12.6 million, which was down 67% year over year and up 22% sequentially. We are encouraged by the sequential growth that we saw in our CATV business in Q4. Looking forward, we continue to expect that our near term CATV business will be down compared to the historic highs we saw in 2021 and 2022 as the MSO's transition to next generation architecture. We anticipate this transition will begin to take place sometime in mid 2024 and are optimistic about the second half of the year. We shipped initial test samples of our 1.8 gigahertz amplifier products to two major MSO's in Q4. While these are early samples, the feedback we received on their performance and pricing is extremely encouraging. We currently anticipate shipping final qualification units of various amplifier products between April and June this year and expect revenue to begin shortly after the sample qualification is complete. As we stated last quarter, we continue to carefully monitor MSO plans to upgrade to DOCSIS 4.0 networks, and we continue to believe AOI is a leader in technologies that will enable DOCSIS 4.0. Further, we are confident that our products are aptly designed for the deployment of amplifiers and other network elements required for DOCSIS 4.0. Turning to our data center business, our Q4 data center revenue came in at $44.5 million, which more than doubled year over year and was down 9% sequentially as noted above. In the fourth quarter, 56% of our data center revenue was from our 100G products, 36% was from our 200G and 400G products, and 4% was from our 40G transceiver products. As we had anticipated, revenue for our 100G products decreased 31% sequentially. Revenue for our 200G and 400G products increased 79% sequentially, which we believe is largely driven by AI demand for compute infrastructure. As a reminder, as we have discussed on our prior few earnings calls, we signed two agreements with Microsoft in 2023, including a development program to make next generation lasers for its data center, both for 400G and beyond, and for the development of its 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 Q3, and as we had discussed on our prior earnings call, we received requests from Microsoft to expedite our production ramp for these products, which I'm pleased to report we were able to accommodate. We began shipments during December and expect to continue to ship in Q1, although at a slower rate than we earlier expected as the data centers worked to install the optics we shipped in Q4. We expect demand to resume later in the quarter with additional capacity coming online then for Q2 and beyond. Another item to note, we 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. We shipped samples to three different data center customers in 2023 and have received initial positive feedback on our 800G products. We expect shipments of 800G to begin in Q3 this year. Now turning to our telecom segment. Revenue from our telecom products of $2.8 million was down 56% year over year and down 8% sequentially, largely driven by ongoing softness and 5G demand, particularly in China. Looking ahead, we expect telecom sales to fluctuate around current levels. For the fourth quarter, our top 10 customers represented 95% of revenue, up from 90% in Q4 of last year. We had two greater than 10% customers, one in the data center market and one in the CATV market, which contributed 51% and 28% of our total revenue respectively. In Q4, we generated non-GAAP gross margin of 36.4%, which was above our guidance range of .5% to 36% and was up from .5% in Q3 of 2023 and up from .4% in Q4 of 2022. The increase in gross margin was driven mainly by our favorable product mix shift, our transition to a direct sales model in our CATV business, and the impact of non-recurring engineering sales during the quarter. We remain committed to the long-term goal of returning gross margin to around 40% and believe that this goal is achievable. As a reminder, with the direct to MSO sales model we implemented late last year, we expect margins in our CATV business to be meaningfully higher than our historical average. Total non-GAAP operating expenses in the fourth quarter were $21.6 million, or .7% of revenue, which were in line with our expectations, and compared to $21 million, or .2% of revenue, in Q4 of the prior year. Looking ahead, we expect non-GAAP operating expenses to range from $22.5 to $24 million per quarter, reflecting some acceleration of R&D expenses to improve -to-market for our 800G and 1.6 terabit data center products. Non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter was $0.4 million, compared to an operating loss of $7.9 million in Q4 in the prior year. Gap net loss for Q4 was $13.9 million, or a loss of $0.38 per basic share, compared with a gap net loss of $20.3 million, or a loss of $0.71 per basic share in Q4 of 2022. On a non-GAAP basis, net income for Q4 was $1.6 million, or 4 cents per share, which was above our guidance range of a loss of $0.9 million, to a profit of $1.2 million, and at the high end of our guidance range of a loss per share in the range of 2 cents to earnings of 4 cents per basic share. This compares to a net loss of $5.4 million, or a loss of 19 cents per basic share in Q4 of the prior year. The fully diluted shares outstanding used for computing the earnings per share in Q4 were $44.8 million. Turning now to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with $55.1 million in total cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash. This compares with $31.2 million at the end of the third quarter of this year. We ended the quarter with total debt, excluding convertible debt, of $38.7 million, compared to $46.6 million at the end of last quarter. Notably, during the fourth quarter, we successfully issued $80.2 million of convertible senior notes due 2026. The notes will bear an interest rate of .25% per year. Concurrently with the offering, we exchanged or repurchased approximately all of our 2024 notes. As of December 31, we had $63.9 million in inventory, compared to $67.5 million at the end of Q3. We made a total of $8.7 million in capital investments in the fourth quarter, which was mainly used for production and R&D equipment. Moving now to our Q1 outlook. We expect Q1 revenue to be between $41 million and $46 million, and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 21% to 23%. Non-GAAP net loss is expected to be in the range of $10.9 million to $12.6 million, and non-GAAP loss per share between $0.28 per basic share and $0.33 per basic share, using a weighted average basic share count of approximately 38.4 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're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Our first question comes from Simon Leopold with Raymond James.
Simon Leopold
Please go ahead. Great. Thank you for taking the question. A couple things I wanted to unpack, one of which is you've given us, I think, some insight as to the total value of the opportunity from Microsoft and understand it's spread over years. Is there some sort of element you could offer to help folks understand or level set as to how that may ramp through 2024, how to size the expected contribution from the Microsoft project this calendar year?
spk10
Yeah, I mean, we
Lindsey
haven't really given out the details on that project. Obviously, a lot of it is customer sensitive. But at this point, it started to ramp, as I noted in our prepared remarks, we shipped product in December, which was ahead of schedule. The data center, the individual data centers where those are getting installed are taking a little bit longer than expected to actually deploy those transceivers in the data center. So there's a bit of a lull right now while that goes on. And then we expect the ramp to resume later in this quarter and ramp throughout the year. We'll probably have more to say in terms of longer term forecast after we start to see the results of this first tranche being adopted in the data centers.
Simon Leopold
Yeah, I guess what I'm trying to get at is I have the impression that there are some folks that have envisioned this is sort of 100 million this year, 100 million next year and 100 million the year after that. And I think what you're describing is something that gradually ramps to that kind of run rate, but we're not getting to 100 million in 2024. I want to verify that my understanding is reasonable.
Lindsey
What I have
Simon Leopold
said,
Lindsey
that's accurate. What I have said is that it will be, you know, I think we said this on the last call. It is the same thought process now that we think it will be ramping to exit the year on a run rate that would support that 100 million per year. But it's clearly not starting off the year. So, you know, it will not integrate out over four quarters of the year to be 100 million.
spk12
That's helpful. That's exactly what I was talking about.
Lindsey
Which would imply, of course, that in the out years it will be more than 100 million, you know, per year in those other years.
Simon Leopold
Yep, no, that's what I was trying to pull out there. And then in terms of what's going on in the overall industry and applications, it seems as if a lot of the AI related use cases are calling for 800 gig connections. And so I'm wondering, are you seeing your 400 gig products being used in back end AI use cases or are there other applications? And if so, what are they?
Lindsey
Yeah, it's supporting AI. And I'm not quite sure what you mean by back end use cases, but it's supporting AI in the connections between the GPU cluster and the switch primarily. Now, I mean, I think it's also likely being used in other non AI applications as well. I mean, there are other non AI compute applications out there. It's not clear to me precisely the extent to which it's being used in AI versus non AI applications that, you know, isn't really information that we're privy to. But certainly AI is what, you know, Microsoft and others, other large data center operators are primarily building the infrastructure around AI right now. So I would, you know, I think it would be reasonable to expect that the vast majority of it is being deployed in AI infrastructure.
Simon Leopold
Great. And then just this last maybe a little bit more color on how you see the cadence of your cable TV business in that this quarter was actually a bit better, a bit stronger than what we expected. But it seems as if you're suggesting or my interpretation of your suggestion is sort of a step function in the second half of the year. Anything you could do to give us some sort of bounds on what that implies?
spk10
Yeah,
Lindsey
I mean, I think you're you're
spk10
you're
Lindsey
more or less correct in what you're saying in terms of the step function in the middle of the year. What's going on right now is that we're continuing to sell, you know, DOCSIS 3.1 products, which are, you know, on their way out. They're not obsolete yet. It's what's currently deployed in the networks. But those products that are being shipped now are being used in, you know, new new new builds, you know, not upgrades, but just new areas that need to be built out or repairs, things like that. It's kind of a steady state business. What we expect to happen in the middle part of the year is that we'll layer on the new one point eight gigahertz products, which are going to be used in new network upgrades, which is which is really where the excitement is, frankly. And that's why we tried to call out some specific dates in our prepared remarks earlier that we expect to have those amplifiers in for qualification between April and June. There's several different models there, so they'll ship it various times within that time frame. And then we do expect revenue to begin pretty quickly thereafter, because I think the there are several MSOs that are really, you know, appear to be very interested in starting those upgrades quickly. As soon as the products become available.
spk04
Great. Thank you for taking my question.
Operator
The next question comes from Michael Genevieve with Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.
Michael Genevieve
Thanks a lot. So, you know, it sounds like I mean the narrative over the last quarter or so has been that that the cost that your big customer here asked you to hurry up and expedite the development of the product. And it seems like you executed extremely well to do that. And then sort of like a hurry up and now wait situation. Could you provide that kind of thing?
Lindsey
Sorry to interrupt that. That was the end of the question. Go ahead.
Michael Genevieve
I mean, yeah, so I guess I was going to also ask for more color on that. But also, you know, if that is in fact the case, you know, I hear you reiterating the $300 million number that hasn't changed. But what else can give us confidence that this is just a tiny delay and not not any other kind of fundamental change here?
Lindsey
Sure. So, first of all, I guess, you know, some commentary on, you know, the slower start to the year that we're seeing, specifically with the data center deployment that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, these things are difficult to predict. What happens is that the the product is is, you know, qualified and put into use data centers order an initial quantity of it to begin putting product in there. And then they start to deploy. And, you know, I'm sure you can probably understand, you know, just based on prudence that, you know, they don't always deploy the new technology as fast as they will once it's at scale. Right. They want to take it slow and make sure there's no issues. And I believe that's probably the most likely explanation for what's going on. And then, you know, once that once that initial phase of deployments proves that it's going well, then the order, you know, larger quantity to continue the deployment. As far as, you know, what we expect to see throughout the rest of the year. I mean, at the same time, by the way, we're still continuing to build manufacturing capability and capacity for for the ramp that we see through the rest of the year. So,
spk11
you
Lindsey
know, as far as what can give you the confidence there, I think probably the, you know, the only thing that I could really point to is the fact that we continue to invest pretty heavily in capex. If you look at our capex in the fourth quarter, it's ramped significantly from what it was earlier in the year. Clearly, not all of that investment, you know, came online and produced products in Q1. And so I think, you know, that along with our commentary about, you know, a markedly improved Q2 would hopefully give you guys some level of confidence that, you know, that this is a temporary condition. And
Lindsay
don't forget, you know, we have said we at the EBER, they had their G sample to three new hyperscale T-Rex and Cosme in the US. And we believe we the volume will start to run out by, I would say, Q2 or Q3. Same thing, I think we believe the Q2, the 480 may be very strong.
Michael Genevieve
Yeah, I'd like to follow up on that point because, I mean, you know, we hear you saying delivering sample, but then also expectation of revenue in, you know, Q2 accelerating to Q3. So kind of the missing step between those two is, you know, qualification, customer win. But given your confidence in Q2, Q3, it sounds like you must already be past that. You must have already passed that milestone. Is that a correct understanding?
Lindsey
Well, certainly for the opportunity that we were talking about earlier that we've been referring to on, you know, most of the questions, obviously that is, you know, past the qualification standpoint, you know, qualification point at this juncture. Other opportunities, I mean, we have various opportunities that are either, you know, past qualification or in qualification. We expect to finish up in time to be able to deliver revenue in Q2.
Michael Genevieve
Okay, great. And then finally for me, just to sort of help understand that the business mix a little bit better, could you give us a sense of data center right now, the revenue mix roughly between, you know, transceivers and lasers? And then if we look ahead to say the fourth quarter of this year, first quarter of next year, is that going to remain constant or will we see some kind of change in that mix?
Lindsey
So right now the revenue mix and the data centers almost entirely transceivers or active optical cables, probably 95% of it is transceivers and optical cables. I don't expect that to change too much. In fact, it'll probably get closer to 100% because the new opportunities that we're talking about are all for, you know, either transceivers or active optical cables. So I think the thing that might be giving you a little bit of, you know, that might be behind that question, if I can kind of read into it, is this question of, well, we had two different projects with Microsoft, one for lasers and one for active optical cables. Right. And that is true. But what I think you may be not completely understanding is that most of the lasers, in fact, right now all of the lasers are used in our own active optical cable. So the revenue, while we are, you know, making lasers and working on making lasers, the revenue will be for the active optical cables that ultimately utilize those lasers. Yes,
Michael Genevieve
that actually was my understanding, but I do get a lot of questions on that and I wanted to make sure that I understood it correctly. So thanks so much for the answers. I'm glad to be on the conference calls now and to be getting in here on a good time. Thank you.
spk18
We're excited to have you.
Operator
Thanks. The next question comes from Tim Savigo with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Tim Savigo
Hey, good afternoon. A couple of questions. First, on, I guess, some elements of guidance that you provided for the year. Okay. So I think you were talking or expecting to be profitable on a non-GAAP basis. I don't know if that's net income or operating profit or both, but I just want to confirm that for the year.
Lindsey
Yes, that would be net income, you know,
spk10
non-GAAP net income, profitable for the year. Yes. Okay. Well, and I guess you've given
Tim Savigo
us a range for OPEC, so I know you're starting the year pretty low from a gross margin perspective, but, you know, saying if you're able to get that, say, up to 30% for the year, which may or may not be reasonable. I mean, you know, we can take a revenue range out of that. It's, you know, solidly over $300 million. I mean, obviously weighted toward the back half of the year, but am I doing that math right?
spk10
Yes. Excellent.
Tim Savigo
Okay. And then I'm going to follow up on some details on the 400-gig category. And you saw that increase about $10 million in the quarter with, you know, pretty healthy declines on the 100-gig side. I assume that's where the weakness is from a demand standpoint, but I mean, is it fair to attribute most or all of that increase to the active optical cable shipments? And, you know, to the extent you expect it to turn back on, let's say in Q2,
spk18
is
Tim Savigo
that the type of order of magnitude we should be expecting as you move your way toward exiting the year, say, at a $25 million a quarter run rate?
Lindsey
So, let's see a couple questions embedded in there. The first one was, you know, is, was the active optical cables responsible for most of the increase in 400-g revenue? The answer to that is yes. The second part of that question was, I wasn't quite clear exactly how you were asking that. I said earlier that we would expect that to be, you know, kind of on a run rate of $100 million a year or $25 million a quarter by the end of the year. Are you just trying to confirm that or was there another question that I kind of
Tim Savigo
- No, another little question there and that is, to the extent you're expecting a bounce back or an improved Q2, which you referenced in the release, should we say, think that most or all of that improvement is returning to that Q4 level or above from
spk10
an AOSC perspective?
Lindsey
I'd have to, you know, I'd have to, probably close to it, I'd have to kind of do the math to answer that question precisely. We do expect, you know, some other new 400-g business to start ramping in Q2 as well. So, I'm a little, I'm a little hesitant to say that's absolutely the dominant factor, but most likely it would be close to that.
Tim Savigo
Okay, great. And then last one for me, I think at least, and you stepped through this before, but I want to make sure I understand. Last quarter, you talked about sampling 800-gig products to four customers, including three hyperscalers. I think I got that right. Is what you're saying when you expect 800-gig to be able to start to contribute mid-year, end of Q2 into Q3, is that one of those that you have sampled has turned into, you know, a production customer? And is there any update to the kind of customer engagement metrics, sampling, whatnot, on either 400 or 800-g in Q4 or Q3? Or, you know, Q4 and year to date 24?
spk18
Sure. So,
Lindsey
I mean, to be clear, we have not, you know, completed final qualification on any of those 800-g products at this point. So we did have three customers that we sampled last year at the end of the year. And in addition to that, you know, just within the last, I don't know, month or so, you know, we've had some significant new interest from other new customers besides the three that we shipped to last year. So, you know, without trying to tip our hat too much here, I think it's likely that one or more of either the customers we shipped to last year or one of these newer customers will be, you know, will be a customer generating revenue for us in the Q3 timeframe for 800-g. As far as, you know, the kind of the demand, I guess you could say, you know, the kind of the feeling that we have around demand, I would say that, you know, the need for 800-g right now, you know, it seems to be particularly acute. I think there's a lot of demand for that. And that typically means that qualification and revenue generation can go rather quickly. It's when, you know, it's when demand may be somewhat low that you start to see the qualification cycle stretch out and things like that. And we're definitely not in that situation in my estimation for 800-g at this point.
Tim Savigo
Well, got it. Let me sneak one more in here. Sorry about that. But, you know, along those lines, I guess we spent a fair bit of time over the last couple, three quarters sizing the active optical cable opportunity at Microsoft. But as you look at your 800-g pipeline and some of the customer engagements you have, I guess, how would you size that opportunity relative to what we've been talking about with Microsoft at 400-g?
Lindsey
I mean, the opportunity there is several times larger, you know, many times larger. You know, it remains to be seen how much of that market we can get. I don't want to, you know, create too much, you know, irrational exuberance at this point. But the market size, the market opportunity there is huge and it's being driven by AI. I mean, there's nothing that, you know, should be mysterious about the demand profile. Right. I mean, we heard Nvidia talking today, you know, on their or yesterday on their earnings call about, you know, the amount of computing infrastructure that's being built. So all of that needs to be interconnected and a lot of it is being interconnected at 800-g and frankly, we'll be probably moving to 1.6 terabits in some applications early next year. So the opportunity is huge. You know, I think we're well positioned for that. Like I mentioned earlier, we've seen a lot of new customer inbound interest just recently. And, you know, there's a lot of work to be done and I'm not predicting we're going to get, you know, what percentage of that market will ultimately be able to get. It's a little early to say, but the market opportunity there is huge.
spk09
Okay, thanks very much.
Operator
Again, if you have a question, please press star and then one. Our next question comes from Dave Kang with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.
Dave Kang
Thank you. Good afternoon. My first question is regarding your first quarter outlook. Can you just provide more color in terms of each product segments? How, you know, they're going to decline sequentially?
spk10
Well, we don't really give guidance by product segment,
Lindsey
but, you know, clearly the cable TV business, no matter what kind of what happens there, it's not big enough. It's not going to collapse to zero. So whatever happens there is not likely to account for the majority of the decline. So that's going to come primarily from the data center business. We noted in our prepared remarks earlier that, you know, it's a combination of factors there that the, you know, the lunar near a lot of these products are made in our China facility. And so the mix of those products shifted a little bit unexpectedly on us towards the end of last year, which resulted in, you know, having to make new products essentially that we hadn't necessarily planned for in advance. And that's why the lunar New Year caught us a little bit unprepared this year. In addition to that, we did have some pricing reductions. And, you know, again, most of that you can assume is in the data center side. It kicked in towards the end of last year. And both of those two factors account for the bulk of the decline.
Dave Kang
So on that second part about pricing reductions, was it mainly 100 gig also or involved 400 gig
spk15
as
Dave Kang
well?
Lindsey
No, it was mainly 100 gig. I don't believe we had any price reductions on 400 gig.
Dave Kang
Got it. And then when you talked about when you talk about second quarter snapback, are you just talked about 400 gig or will 100 gig recover as well?
Lindsey
We expect it will be mostly 400 gig. You know, there may be some recovery in 100 gig. It's a little bit unclear, but that technology is clearly, you know, in the waning phase of its life cycle. 400 gig is clearly going to be, you know, picking up more in the near future. And, you know, again, as we talked about earlier, later in the year 800 gig we expect to contribute as well.
Dave Kang
Right. And then on the Microsoft, do you have any kind of, you know, like backlog to speak of that gives us confidence that, you know, that they'll ramp throughout this year or is it still based on their forecast?
Lindsey
I mean, we have a small backlog like they always do, but it's consistent with what we've seen over the years. It's nothing, you know, it's nothing that would guarantee a ramp throughout the year.
Dave Kang
Got it. And my last question is, you talked about, you know, Microsoft to, you know, add another supplier. You know, what's the latest on that?
spk18
I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand your question. You said
Lindsey
Microsoft adding another supplier for the 40 gig? Yeah, did you say, yeah,
Dave Kang
that AOC, yeah, AOC, you know, possibly adding another supplier in addition to you? Any latest update on that?
Lindsey
Right. I mean, yeah, I get your question now. So, I mean, I'm not aware that there's any other supplier that's shipping at this point, but I really, you know, wouldn't really be able to share that information even if I were. But as a matter of fact, at this point, I'm not aware of it.
spk16
Got it. All right. Thank you.
spk00
You're
spk16
welcome.
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Thompson Lin for any closing remarks.
Lindsay
Again, thank you for joining our call today. As always, we want to extend a thank you to our investors, customers, and employees for your continuous support. We look forward to seeing many of you at OVC and to updating you
spk10
on our next learning call. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
spk01
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I will be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Applied Opto Electronics' fourth quarter and full year 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 a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Lindsay Savary, Investor Relations for AOI. Ms. Savary, please, you may begin.
Lindsay
Thank you. I'm Lindsay Savary, Investor Relations for Applied Opto Electronics. I am pleased to welcome you to AOI's fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results conference call. After the market closed today, AOI issued a press release announcing its fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results and provided its outlook for the first quarter of 2024. The release is also available on the company's website at -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. Stephen Murray, AOI's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. Thompson will give an overview of AOI's Q4 results, and Stephen will provide financial details and the outlook for the first quarter of 2024. 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 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 beliefs, forecasts, anticipates, estimates, suggests, intends, predicts, expects, plans, may, should, could, would, will, potential, or think, or by the negative of those terms, or other similar expressions that convey uncertainty or 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, 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 2024. 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 and the company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Also, all financial results and other financial measures discussed today are on a non-GAP basis unless specifically noted otherwise. Non-GAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAP. A reconciliation between our GAP and non-GAP measures, as well as a discussion of why we present non-GAP financial measures, are included in our earnings press release that is available on our website. I'd like to note the date of our first quarter 2024 earnings call is currently scheduled for May 9, 2024. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Dr. Thompson Lin, Applied Optoelectronics Founder, Chairman, and CEO. Thompson?
Lindsay
Thank you, Lindsay, and thank you for joining our call today. While our fourth quarter revenue came in below our expectations, our gross margin outperformed our projections, leading to non-GAP EPS at a high end of our expectations. We are pleased by the continued progress we have made in improving our gross margin, which, combined with our expense measurement, allow us to generate a small non-GAP net income in the fourth quarter for the fourth time in many years. Further, we generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $4.8 million in Q4. During the fourth quarter, we delivered revenue of $60.5 million, which was below our guidance range of $63 to $67 million, primarily due to somewhat lower than expected data center revenue. As we began to see some softness in demand led in the quarter, we delivered a non-GAP gross margin of 36.4%, which is the highest quarterly gross margin that we have generated in the last five years and was above our guidance range of .5% to 36%. Mainly driven by improved product mix and some contribution from non-recurring engineering projects, we generated a small non-GAP net income of $0.04 per share, which was at a high end of our guidance range of a loss of $0.02 to earnings of $0.04. Total revenue for our data center products of $44.5 million more than double year over year, but was down 9% sequentially. Revenue for our 100G products more than double year over year and revenue for our 400G products increased more than eight times in the same period. Total revenue in our CATV segment was $12.6 million, which was down 67% year over year and up 22% sequentially, largely driven by generally slow sales of DOSI 3.1 equipment as the industry prepares for transition to DOSI 4.0. With that, I will turn the call over to Stephen to review the details of our Q4 performance in Laodo Q1.
Lindsey
Thank you, Thompson. As Thompson mentioned, while our fourth quarter revenue came in below our expectations, our gross margin outperformed our projections, leading to a non-GAP EPS at the high end of our expectations. We are pleased by the continued progress we have made on improving our gross margin, which combined with our expense management allowed us to generate a small non-GAP net income in the fourth quarter for the first time in many years. Further, we generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $4.8 million in Q4. While we do see some softness in Q1 due to the combined effects of the Lunar New Year holiday in our Asian factories, along with some price reductions which are scheduled to take effect, we expect a strong recovery in Q2 and are currently anticipating a markedly improved second half of 2024. Despite the softness we are seeing in Q1, we have been experiencing significant traction with several new data center customers recently for both 400G and 800G products, and we expect one or more of these customers to begin to contribute meaningfully to revenue starting in Q2, which gives us a basis for the optimistic outlook despite the slow start to the year. While not likely to contribute meaningfully to revenue in 2024, we also are very optimistic about our 1.6 terabit products as we move into 2025. With the improvement we expect in the second half, we currently expect our first full year of non-GAP profitability since 2018. Turning to the quarter, our total revenue for the fourth quarter decreased by 2% -over-year to $60.5 million, which was below our guidance range of $63 million to $67 million. As Thompson mentioned, this was largely due to somewhat lower than expected data center revenue as we began to see some softness in demand late in the quarter which we attribute to timing of orders. During the fourth quarter, 74% of our revenue was from our data center products, 21% was from our CATV products, with the remaining 5% from FTTH, Telecom, and other. In line with our expectations, CATV revenue in the fourth quarter was $12.6 million, which was down 67% -over-year and up 22% sequentially. We are encouraged by the sequential growth that we saw in our CATV business in Q4. Looking forward, we continue to expect that our near-term CATV business will be down compared to the historic highs we saw in 2021 and 2022 as the MSO's transition to next-generation architecture. We anticipate this transition will begin to take place sometime in mid-2024 and are optimistic about the second half of the year. We shipped initial test samples of our 1.8 GHz amplifier products to two major MSO's in Q4. While these are early samples, the feedback we received on their performance and pricing is extremely encouraging. We currently anticipate shipping final qualification units of various amplifier products between April and June this year and expect revenue to begin shortly after the sample qualification is complete. As we stated last quarter, we continue to carefully monitor MSO plans to upgrade to DOCSIS 4.0 networks, and we continue to believe AOI is a leader in technologies that will enable DOCSIS 4.0. Further, we are confident that our products are aptly designed for the deployment of amplifiers and other network elements required for DOCSIS 4.0. Turning to our data center business, our Q4 data center revenue came in at $44.5 million, which more than doubled year over year and was down 9% sequentially as noted above. In the fourth quarter, 56% of our data center revenue was from our 100G products, 36% was from our 200G and 400G products, and 4% was from our 40G transceiver products. As we had anticipated, revenue for our 100G products decreased 31% sequentially. Revenue for our 200G and 400G products increased 79% sequentially, which we believe is largely driven by AI demand for compute infrastructure. As a reminder, as we have discussed on our prior few earnings calls, we signed two agreements with Microsoft in 2023, including a development program to make next generation lasers for its data center, both for 400G and beyond. And for the development of its 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 Q3, and as we had discussed on our prior earnings call, we received requests from Microsoft to expedite our production ramp for these products, which I'm pleased to report we were able to accommodate. We began shipments during December and expect to continue to ship in Q1, although at a slower rate than we earlier expected as the data centers worked to install the optics we shipped in Q4. We expect demand to resume later in the quarter with additional capacity coming online then for Q2 and beyond. Another item to note, we 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. We shipped samples to three different data center customers in 2023 and had received initial positive feedback on our 800G products. We expect shipments of 800G to begin in Q3 this year. Now turning to our telecom segment. Revenue from our telecom products of $2.8 million was down 56% year over year and down 8% sequentially, largely driven by ongoing softness and 5G demand, particularly in China. Looking ahead, we expect telecom sales to fluctuate around current levels. For the fourth quarter, our top 10 customers represented 95% of revenue, up from 90% in Q4 last year. We had two greater than 10% customers, one in the data center market and one in the CATV market, which contributed 51% and 28% of our total revenue respectively. In Q4, we generated non-GAAP gross margin of 36.4%, which was above our guidance range of .5% to 36% and was up from .5% in Q3 of 2023 and up from .4% in Q4 of 2022. The increase in gross margin was driven mainly by our favorable product mix shift, our transition to a direct sales model in our CATV business, and the impact of non-recurring engineering sales during the quarter. We remain committed to the long-term goal of returning gross margin to around 40% and believe that this goal is achievable. As a reminder, with the direct to MSO sales model we implemented late last year, we expect margins in our CATV business to be meaningfully higher than our historical average. Total non-GAAP operating expenses in the fourth quarter were $21.6 million, or .7% of revenue, which were in line with our expectations, and compared to $21 million, or .2% of revenue in Q4 of the prior year. Looking ahead, we expect non-GAAP operating expenses to range from $22.5 to $24 million per quarter, reflecting some acceleration of R&D expenses to improve time to market for our 800G and 1.6 terabit data center products. Non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter was $0.4 million, compared to an operating loss of $7.9 million in Q4 in the prior year. Gap net loss for Q4 was $13.9 million, or a loss of $0.38 per basic share, compared with a gap net loss of $20.3 million, or a loss of $0.71 per basic share in Q4 of 2022. On a non-GAAP basis, net income for Q4 was $1.6 million, or $0.04 per share, which was above our guidance range of a loss of $0.9 million, to a profit of $1.2 million, and at the high end of our guidance range of a loss per share in the range of $0.02 to earnings of $0.04 per basic share. This compares to a net loss of $5.4 million, or a loss of $0.19 per basic share in Q4 of the prior year. The fully diluted shares outstanding used for computing the earnings per share in Q4 were $44.8 million. Turning now to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with $55.1 million in total cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, and restricted cash. This compares with $31.2 million at the end of the third quarter of this year. We ended the quarter with total debt, excluding convertible debt, of $38.7 million, compared to $46.6 million at the end of last quarter. Notably, during the fourth quarter, we successfully issued $80.2 million of convertible senior notes due to 2026. The notes will bear an interest rate of .25% per year. Concurrently with the offering, we exchanged or repurchased approximately all of our 2024 notes. As of December 31, we had $63.9 million in inventory, compared to $67.5 million at the end of Q3. We made a total of $8.7 million in capital investments in the fourth quarter, which was mainly used for production and R&D equipment. Moving now to our Q1 outlook. We expect Q1 revenue to be between $41 million and $46 million, and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 21% to 23%.
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're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Our first question comes from Simon Leopold with Raymond James.
Simon Leopold
Please go ahead. Great. Thank you for taking the question. A couple things I wanted to unpack. One of which is you've given us, I think, some insight as to the total value of the opportunity from Microsoft and understand it's spread over years. Is there some sort of element you could offer to help folks understand or level set as to how that may ramp through 2024, how to size the expected contribution from the Microsoft project
spk10
this calendar year? Yeah, I mean, we
Lindsey
haven't really given out the details on that project. Obviously, a lot of it is customer sensitive. But at this point, it started to ramp, as I noted in our prepared remarks, we shipped product in December, which was ahead of schedule. The data center, the individual data centers where those are getting installed are taking a little bit longer than expected to actually deploy those transceivers in the data center. So there's a bit of a lull right now while that goes on. And then we expect the ramp to resume later in this quarter and ramp throughout the year. We'll probably have more to say in terms of longer term forecast after we start to see the results of this first tranche being adopted in the data centers.
Simon Leopold
Yeah, I guess what I'm trying to get at is, is I have the impression that there are some folks that have envisioned this is sort of 100 million this year, 100 million next year and 100 million the year after that. And I think what you're describing is something that gradually ramps to that kind of run rate, but we're not getting to 100 million in 2024. I want to verify that my understanding is reasonable. What I have said,
Lindsey
that's accurate. What I have said is that it will be, you know, I think we said this on the last earnings call, that is the same thought process now, that we think it will be ramping to exit the year on a run rate that would support that 100 million per year, but it's clearly not starting off the year. So, you know, it will not integrate out every four quarters of the year to be 100 million.
spk12
That's helpful. That's exactly what I was talking about. The
Lindsey
out years, it'll more. Yeah, it would imply, of course, that in the out years, it'll be more than 100 million, you know, per year in those other years.
Simon Leopold
Yep, no, that's what I was trying to pull out there. And then in terms of what's going on in the overall industry and applications, it seems as if a lot of the AI related use cases are calling for 800 gig connections. And so I'm wondering, are you seeing your 400 gig products being used in back end AI use cases or their other applications? And if so, what are they?
Lindsey
Yeah, it's supporting AI and I'm not quite sure what you mean by back end use cases, but it's supporting AI in the connections between the GPU cluster and the switch primarily. Now, I mean, I think it's also likely being used in other non AI applications as well. I mean, there are other non AI compute applications out there. It's not clear to me precisely the extent to which it's being used in AI versus non AI applications that, you know, isn't really information that we're privy to. But certainly AI is what, you know, Microsoft and others, other large data center operators are primarily building the infrastructure around AI right now. So I would, you know, I think it would be reasonable to expect that the vast majority of it is being deployed in AI infrastructure.
Simon Leopold
Great. And then just to last maybe a little bit more color on how you see the cadence of your cable TV business in that this quarter was actually a bit better, a bit stronger than what we expected. But it seems as if you're suggesting or my interpretation of your suggestion is sort of a step function in the second half of the year. Anything you could do to give us some sort of bounds on what that implies?
spk10
Yeah, I mean, I think
Lindsey
you're you're you're more or less correct in what you're saying in terms of the step function in the middle of the year. What's going on right now is that we're continuing to sell, you know, DOCSIS 3.1 products, which are, you know, on their way out. They're not obsolete yet. It's what's currently deployed in the networks. But those products that are being shipped now are being used in, you know, new new new builds, you know, not upgrades, but just new areas that need to be built out or repairs, things like that. It's kind of a steady state business. What we expect to happen in the middle part of the year is that we'll layer on the new one point eight gigahertz products, which are going to be used in new network upgrades, which is which is really where the excitement is, frankly. And that's why we tried to call out some specific dates in our prepared remarks earlier that we expect to have those amplifiers in for qualification between April and June. There's several different models there, so they'll ship at various times within that time frame. And then we do expect revenue to begin pretty quickly thereafter, because I think the there are several MSOs that are really, you know, appear to be very interested in starting those upgrades quickly as soon as the products become available.
Operator
Great. Thank you
spk04
for taking my question.
Operator
The next question comes from Michael Genevieve with Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.
Michael Genevieve
Thanks a lot. So, you know, it sounds like, I mean, the narrative over the last quarter or so has been that your big customers here asked you to hurry up and expedite the development of the product. And it seems like you executed extremely well to do that. And then sort of like a hurry up and now wait situation. So could you provide, I mean, is that kind of? Yeah, unfortunately,
Lindsey
I think that's probably, yeah. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt that. That was the end of the question. Go ahead, please.
Michael Genevieve
Oh, no, no. I mean, yeah. So, I mean, I guess I was just going to also, you know, ask for more color on that. But also, you know, if that is in fact the case, you know, I mean, I hear you reiterating the $300 million number. That hasn't changed. But what else can give us confidence that this is just a timing delay and not any other kind of fundamental change here?
Lindsey
Sure. So, first of all, I guess, you know, some commentary on, you know, the slower start to the year that we're seeing, specifically with the data center deployment that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, these things are difficult to predict. What happens is that the product is, you know, qualified and put into use. Data centers order an initial quantity of it to begin putting product in there and then they start to deploy. And, you know, I'm sure you can probably understand, you know, just based on prudence that, you know, they don't always deploy the new technology as fast as they will once it's at scale, right? They want to take it slow and make sure there's no issues. And I believe that's probably the most likely explanation for what's going on. And then, you know, once that initial phase of deployment proves, you know, that it's going well, then they'll order a larger quantity to continue the deployment. As far as, you know, what we expect to see throughout the rest of the year. I mean, at the same time, by the way, we're still continuing to build manufacturing capability and capacity for the ramp that we see through the rest of the year.
spk11
So,
Lindsey
you know, as far as what can give you the confidence there, I think probably the, you know, the only thing that I could really point to is the fact that we continue to invest pretty heavily in CAPEX. If you look at our CAPEX in the fourth quarter, it's ramped significantly from what it was earlier in the year. Clearly, not all of that investment, you know, came online and produced products in Q1. And so I think, you know, that along with our commentary about, you know, a markedly improved Q2 would hopefully give you guys some level of confidence that, you know, that this is a temporary condition. And
Lindsay
don't forget, you know, we have said we at the EBER, they have their G sample to three new hyperscale DRs and a cost me in US. And we believe we the body will start to run out by, I would say, and Q2 or Q3. Same thing, I think we believe the Q2, the 400-DMA will be very strong.
Michael Genevieve
Yeah, I'd like to follow up on that point because, I mean, you know, we hear you saying delivering sample, but then also expectation of revenue in, you know, Q2 accelerating to Q3. So kind of the missing step between those two is, you know, call it qualification, customer win. But given your confidence in Q2, Q3, it sounds like you're already, must already be past that. You must have already passed that milestone. Is that a correct understanding?
Lindsey
Well, certainly for the opportunity that we were talking about earlier that we've been referring to on most of the questions, obviously that is, you know, past the qualification standpoint, you know, qualification point at this juncture. Other opportunities, I mean, we have various opportunities that are either, you know, past qualification or in qualification. We expect to finish up in time to be able to go over revenue in Q2.
Michael Genevieve
Okay, great. And then just finally for me, just to sort of help understand that the business mix a little bit better, can you give us a sense of data center right now, the revenue mix roughly between, you know, transceivers and lasers? And then if we look ahead to say the fourth quarter of this year, first quarter of next year, is that going to remain constant or will we see some kind of change in that mix?
Lindsey
So right now the revenue mix in the data centers almost entirely transceivers or active optical cables, probably 95% of it is transceivers and optical cables. I don't expect that to change too much. In fact, it'll probably get closer to 100% because the new opportunities that we're talking about are all for, you know, either transceivers or active optical cables. So I think the thing that might be giving you a little bit of, you know, that might be behind that question, if I can kind of read into it, is this question of, well, we had two different projects with Microsoft, one for lasers and one for active optical cables. Right. And that is true. But what I think you may be not completely understanding is that most of the lasers, in fact, right now, all of the lasers are used in our own active optical cable. So the revenue, while we are, you know, making lasers and working on making lasers, the revenue will be for the active optical cables that ultimately utilize those lasers. Yes,
Michael Genevieve
that actually was my understanding. But I do get a lot of questions on that and I wanted to make sure that I understood it correctly. So thanks so much for the answers. I'm glad to be on the conference calls now and to be getting in here on a good time. Thank you.
spk18
We're excited to have you.
Operator
Thanks. The next question comes from Tim Savigo with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Tim Savigo
Hey, good afternoon. A couple of questions. First, on, I guess, some elements of guidance that you provided for the year. So I think you were talking or expecting to be profitable on a non-GAAP basis. I don't know if that's net income or operating profit or both, but I just want to confirm that for the year.
Lindsey
Yes, that would be net income, you know,
spk10
non-GAAP net income profitable for the year. Yes. Okay, well, and I guess you've
Tim Savigo
given us a range for OPEC. So I know you're starting the year pretty low from a gross margin perspective. But, you know, saying if you're able to get that, say, up to 30% for the year, which may or may not be reasonable. I mean, you know, we can take a revenue range out of that. It's, you know, solidly over $300 million. I mean, obviously weighted toward the back half of the year. But am I doing that math right?
spk10
Yes.
Tim Savigo
Excellent. Okay. And then I'm going to follow up on some details on the 400 gig category. And you saw that increase about $10 million in the quarter with, you know, pretty healthy declines on the 100 gig side. I assume that's where the weakness is from a demand standpoint. But, I mean, is it fair to attribute most or all of that increase to the active optical cable shipments? And, you know, to the extent you expect it to turn back on, let's say, in Q2,
spk18
is
Tim Savigo
that the type of order of magnitude we should be expecting as you move your way toward exiting the year, say, at a $25 million a quarter run rate?
Lindsey
So, let's see a couple of questions embedded in there. The first one was, you know, is, was the active optical cables responsible for most of the increase in 400G revenue? The answer to that is yes. The second part of that question was, I wasn't quite clear exactly how you were asking that. I said earlier that we would expect that to be, you know, kind of on a run rate of $100 million a year or $25 million a quarter by the end of the year. Are you just trying to confirm that or was there another question that I kind of… No.
Tim Savigo
Another little question there on that is to the extent you're expecting a bounce back or an improved Q2, which you referenced in the release, should we think that most or all of that improvement is returning to that Q4 level or above
spk10
from an AOSC perspective?
Lindsey
I'd have to, you know, I'd have to… probably close to it. I'd have to kind of do the math to answer that question precisely. We do expect, you know, some other new 400G business to start ramping in Q2 as well. So I'm a little hesitant to say that's absolutely the dominant factor, but most likely it would be close to that.
Tim Savigo
Okay, great. And then last one for me, I think at least. And you stepped through this before, but I want to make sure I understand. Last quarter, you talked about sampling 800G products to four customers, including three hyperscalers. I think I got that right. Is what you're saying when you expect 800G to be able to start to contribute mid-year end of Q2 into Q3, is that one of those that you have sampled has turned into, you know, a production customer? And is there any update to the kind of customer engagement metrics, sampling, whatnot on either 400 or 800G in Q4 or, you know, Q4 and year to date 24?
spk18
Sure. So,
Lindsey
I mean, to be clear, we have not completed final qualification on any of those 800G products at this point. So we did have three customers that we sampled last year at the end of the year. And in addition to that, you know, just within the last, I don't know, month or so, you know, we've had some significant new interest from other new customers besides the three that we shipped to last year. So, you know, without trying to tip our hat too much here, I think it's likely that one or more of either the customers we shipped to last year or one of these newer customers will be, you know, will be a customer generating revenue for us in the Q3 timeframe for 800G. As far as, you know, the kind of the demand, I guess you could say, you know, the kind of the feeling that we have around demand, I would say that, you know, the need for 800G right now, you know, it seems to be particularly acute. I think there's a lot of demand for that. And that typically means that qualification and revenue generation can go rather quickly. It's when, you know, it's when demand may be somewhat low that you start to see the qualification cycle stretch out and things like that. And we're definitely not in that situation in my estimation for 800G at this point.
Tim Savigo
Well, got it. Let me sneak one more in here. Sorry about that. But, you know, along those lines, I guess we spent a fair bit of time over the last couple, three quarters sizing the active optical cable opportunity at Microsoft. But as you look at your 800G pipeline and some of the customer engagements you have, I guess, how would you size that opportunity relative to what we've been talking about with Microsoft at 400G?
Lindsey
I mean, the opportunity there is several times larger, you know, many times larger. You know, it remains to be seen how much of that market we can get. I don't want to, you know, create too much, you know, irrational exuberance at this point. But the market size, the market opportunity there is huge and it's being driven by AI. I mean, there's nothing that, you know, should be mysterious about the demand profile. Right. I mean, we heard Nvidia talking today, you know, on their or yesterday on their earnings call about, you know, the amount of computer infrastructure that's being built. All of that needs to be interconnected. And a lot of it is being interconnected at 800G and frankly will be probably moving to 1.6 terabits in some applications early next year. So the opportunity is huge. You know, I think we're well positioned for that. Like I mentioned earlier, we've seen a lot of new customer inbound interest just recently. And, you know, there's a lot of work to be done and I'm not predicting we're going to get, you know, what percentage of that market will ultimately be able to get. It's a little early to say. But the market opportunity there is huge.
spk09
Okay, thanks very
spk10
much.
Operator
Again, if you have a question, please press star and then one. Our next question comes from Dave Kang with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.
Dave Kang
Thank you. Good afternoon. My first question is regarding your first quarter outlook. Can you just provide more color in terms of each product segment and what you're looking at? And how, you know, they're going to decline sequentially?
spk10
Well, we don't really give guidance by product segment,
Lindsey
but, you know, clearly the cable TV business, no matter what kind of what happens there, it's not big enough. It's not going to collapse to zero. So whatever happens there is not likely to account for the majority of the decline. So that's going to come primarily from the data center business. We noted in our prepared remarks earlier that, you know, it's a combination of factors there that the, you know, the lunar new year, a lot of these products are made in our China facility. And so the mix of those products shifted a little bit unexpectedly on us towards the end of last year, which resulted in, you know, having to make new products essentially that we hadn't necessarily planned for in advance. And that's why the lunar new year caught us a little bit unprepared this year. In addition to that, we did have some pricing reductions. And, you know, again, most of that you can assume is in the data center side, it kicked in towards the end of last year. And both of those two factors account for the bulk of the decline.
Dave Kang
So on that second part about pricing reductions, was it mainly 100 gig or involved 400 gig as
spk15
well?
Lindsey
No, it was mainly 100 gig. I don't believe we had any price reductions on 400 gig.
Dave Kang
Got it. And then when you talked about when you talk about second quarter snapback, are you just talked about 400 gig or will 100 gig recover as well?
Lindsey
We expect it'll be mostly 400 gig. You know, there may be some recovery in 100 gig. It's a little bit unclear. But that technology is clearly, you know, in the waning phase of its life cycle. 400 gig is clearly going to be picking up more in the near future. And again, as we talked about earlier, later in the year 800 gig we expect to contribute as well.
Dave Kang
Right. And then on the Microsoft, do you have any kind of, you know, like backlog to speak of that gives us confidence that, you know, that they'll ramp throughout this year or is it still based on their forecast?
Lindsey
I mean, we have a small backlog like they always do, but it's consistent with what we've seen over the years. It's nothing, you know, it's nothing that would guarantee a ramp throughout the year.
Dave Kang
Got it. And my last question is, you talked about, you know, Microsoft to add another supplier. You know, what's the latest on that?
spk18
I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand your question.
Lindsey
You said Microsoft adding another supplier for the... Yeah, did you say... ...or...
Dave Kang
Yeah, that AOC, you know, possibly adding another supplier in addition to you. Any latest update on that?
Lindsey
Right. I mean, yeah, I get your question now. So, I mean, I'm not aware that there's any other supplier that's shipping at this point, but I really, you know, wouldn't really be able to share that information even if I were. But as a matter of fact, at this point, I'm not aware of it.
spk16
Got it. All right. Thank you. You're welcome.
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Thompson Lin for any closing remarks.
Lindsay
Again, thank you for joining our call today. As always, we want to extend a thank you to our investors, customers, and employees. For your continued support, we look forward to seeing many of you at OVC and to updating you on our next
spk10
burning call. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer