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Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Axelis Technology call to discuss the company's results for the first quarter. My name is Liwei, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mary Puma, President and CEO of Access Technologies. Please proceed, ma'am.
Liwei
Thank you, Liyue. With me today is Kevin Brewer, Executive Vice President and CFO, Russell Lowe, Executive Vice President of Global Customer and Engineering Operations, and Doug Lawson, Executive Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Strategy. If you have not seen a copy of our press release issued yesterday, it is available on our website. Playback service will also be available on our website as described in our press release. Please note that comments made today about our expectations for future revenues, profits, and other results are forward-looking statements under the SEC's Safe Harbor provision. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to the risks inherent in our business. These risks are described in detail in our Form 10-K Annual Report and other SEC filings, which we urge you to review. Our actual results may differ materially from our current expectations. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Good morning and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2023 earnings call. In March, we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the founding of Excellus. As we pass this milestone and as I pass the leadership baton to Russell, I'm happy to report that Excellus is in a great place. We have a solid balance sheet, the strongest product portfolio in our 45-year history, and an excellent team of employees, suppliers, and customers. We are well positioned for future growth and profitability. Exiting the first quarter of 2023, demand for the Purion product family remains extremely strong. especially in the high-growth silicon carbide power segment. Revenue for the first quarter was $254 million, with earnings per share of $1.43. Backlog set a record at $1.27 billion, with quarterly bookings of $298 million, driven by period demand and strength in the power market. For the second quarter of 2023, we expect revenue between $255 and $260 million, gross margin of roughly 42%, operating profit of around $55 million, and earnings per share of $1.44 to $1.48. At the beginning of this year, we expected 2023 revenue to exceed $1 billion. We are now forecasting to beat that estimate by $30 million, exceeding $1.03 billion. This represents revenue growth of approximately 12% in a year in which overall wafer fab equipment is expected to decrease by over 20%. In the second half, in addition to stronger revenues, we expect significant margin expansion driven by mix and improved costs. The mature process technology market continues to be an area of strength for Excellus, with 89% of first quarter system shipments going to mature foundry logic customers and 11% to memory customers composed entirely of DRAM. The geographic mix of our system shipments continues to be distributed globally and representative of spending patterns in each geography. In the first quarter, China accounted for 45%, the U.S. 17%, Korea 14%, Taiwan 4%, Europe 2%, and the rest of the world 18%. The power device market continues to drive our growth during this industry downturn. We are actively engaged with all customers in this high-growth market segment. winning business from new customers and expanding our footprint at existing customers. We expect over 55% of our system revenue in 2023 to come from this segment, with greater than 50% of total power device system revenue coming from silicon carbide applications. In addition to significant pull for our Purion M silicon carbide tool, we also see increasing adoption of Purion H200 silicon carbide and Purion XE silicon carbide systems. As a result, we expect revenue from silicon carbide customers to be spread relatively evenly across the Purion Power Series product family. Purion Power Series products for silicon carbide have been designed to support the technical challenges facing our customers as they ramp to high volume in support of their automotive customers. Excellus is the only ion implant company that can deliver complete recipe coverage for all power device applications. The full Purion Power Series family of products allows customers to optimize their fabs for high volume manufacturing and to continuously improve their power device performance. Excellus is considered by power device customers to be the technology leader and supplier of choice providing the best product family and manufacturing capabilities. This means that using Excellus tools provides the lowest risk path to high volume manufacturing required to support aggressive fab ramp plans. Excellus places significant value on enabling our customers to succeed in this exciting market by providing differentiated product performance and a high level of customer satisfaction. Although our memory and advanced logic customers are experiencing a downturn, Excellus continues to stay close to them to support their install bases and understand their technology and manufacturing needs. It is during downturns that there is an increased ability to collaborate with our customers to expand opportunities for Excellus during the next upturn. We have multiple evaluation systems in the field and many customer engagements designed to increase our footprint in these market segments. As the industry exits this downturn, Excellus will experience significant growth as these traditional semiconductor segments recover. This, combined with continued strength in the power and mature markets, will drive Excellus to our $1.3 billion model and beyond. Now I'd like to turn it over to Kevin.
Liyue
Thank you, Mary, and good morning. We are pleased with our first quarter 2023 financial results and are excited about our full year revenue, which is now expected to exceed $1.03 billion, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 12%. Looking at our first quarter, revenue finished well above guidance due to solid execution and continuing strong demand for period. We won revenue with $254 million, with systems revenue at 195.2 million and CS&I at 58.8. From bookings and quoting activity for systems in the power segment continued in the quarter, which supports our expectation that greater than 55% of revenue will come from this market in 2023. CS&I revenue will fluctuate quarter to quarter, but should be modeled at approximately $245 million for 2023 and $300 million in our $1.3 billion revenue model. Q1 gross margin finished at 40.9%, slightly lower than guidance due to CS&I being a lower percent of total revenue. We expect margins to improve to approximately 42% in Q2, but still remain under pressure caused by higher material costs and mix. We are forecasting significant gross margin improvement in the second half of the year as costs improve and we move to a more favorable product mix. This should allow us to achieve our full year gross margin target of approximately 44%. We remain laser focused on margin improvement and have numerous initiatives underway to lower the cost of goods and drive higher sales of period and product extensions. This allows us to target gross margin at greater than 45% in the $1.3 billion model. Turning to operating expenses, the first quarter ended at 20.7% of revenue and better than our guidance. We expect OPEX to be relatively flat in the second quarter at approximately 21%. As always, we will continue to tightly control spending while investing in areas of the business that support business growth solidify our technology advantage in the specialty market, and increase our footprint in memory and advanced logic markets. Additionally, we will continue to invest in our employees and the infrastructure required to achieve our financial models. One example of infrastructure investment is our new state-of-the-art logistics center in Beverly, Mass., located just a short walk from our headquarters. The facility is scheduled to open this summer, and provides centralized logistics and flex manufacturing capacity. We also plan to further ramp our Beverly and Korean operations as capacity needs grow. We are comfortable at this point that we have the initiatives underway that support a $1.3 billion model. We ended Q1 with $445 million of cash, cash equivalent in short-term investments. and generated $34.6 million of cash from operations. In a quarter, we repurchased $12.5 million of stock, and it returned over $145 million of cash to our shareholders while curtailing share account growth. Excellus has the rare opportunity to grow revenue and profitability during a significant industry downturn. This is a result of the strong product positioning in the power device market and continued strong execution in a challenging environment. We also look forward to continued growth in memory and advanced logic as the overall semiconductor market recovers. Once again, I want to thank the entire Excellus team for their continued outstanding performance. I also want to thank our supply chain partners for their hard work supporting Excellus and our customers for their confidence in Excellus to deliver. I will now turn the call back to Mary for closing comments.
Liwei
Thank you, Kevin. As I did last time, I will end this call by outlining the Excellus Business Thesis, which supports over $1.03 billion in revenues in 2023 and $1.3 billion over the next few years. It is based on the following five key points. The implant TAM has more than doubled in the last few years, with mature market segments representing greater than 60% of the total TAM. Second, power devices and image sensors are highly implant intensive, and the general mature nodes have increasing implant intensity peaking at 28 nanometers. Third, high-value Purion product extensions were designed to optimize power and image sensor device manufacturing. uniquely positioning Excellus to benefit from high growth in the mature process technology markets. Fourth, Purion product differentiation has propelled Excellus to implant leadership in these high growth specialty device market segments. And fifth, we have strong long-term customer relationships and a fundamental cultural desire to win by making our customers successful. I have worked closely with Russell and the rest of the executive team to develop and execute the strategy I just outlined. Excellus will continue to execute this strategy as Russell and I transition into our new roles. I have great confidence that Excellus will continue to be a leading capital equipment supplier to the semiconductor industry. I want to thank our employees, suppliers, customers, and investors for your past support And I hope that you will continue that support into the future. With that, I'd like to open it up for questions.
Operator
Thank you so much, presenters. And ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one and one on your touchstone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to withdraw your question, press star one one again. Please press star one one to begin.
spk08
And our first question comes from the line of Tom Diffley. Your line is now open.
Tom Diffley
Materials today, are they back to kind of pre-COVID or pre-inflationary levels, or are we at a consistently higher rate than we were, say, two years ago?
Liyue
I only got half of that question. I don't know if Doug or Mary, did you get the whole thing?
Tom
No. No, Tom, can you repeat it?
Liyue
Is that better? Yeah, yeah. I missed the first part.
Tom Diffley
Okay, yeah, my part. So just on the gross margin front, when you're getting into new contracts and looking at the materials on a go-forward basis, Are prices back to kind of pre-COVID or levels they were a couple years ago, or are we at a permanently higher level that's just a fact of business today?
Liyue
So that's a good question. So they're certainly getting better. I think getting back to pre-pandemic levels is going to be difficult in some areas, but While there's others where we have more opportunity to change suppliers, for example, and some of the commodity level things, there's a little more opportunity to get the cost out. But we are, I guess the good news right now, Tom, is we are starting to see favorable costs coming in on material, which should start hitting us in the back end of the year in Q3, Q4, which is why we feel comfortable taking the margins back up on a full year basis to about 44%. You know, as you know, that suggests we've got to get 300 to 400 basis points better in margins in those last two quarters. And based on mix and based on what we're seeing with current supply chain costs and using up some of the high-cost inventory that we've had, which has been the other problem, you know, we feel comfortable with getting back, you know, and hitting our full year gross margin. So I guess, you know, a quick summary is some things are probably never going to go back to where they were. but there's opportunities through supply chain rationalization to get costs back down and maybe even better on some pieces of it.
Tom Diffley
Okay. And then following up on that, when you look at your logistics center that you're opening this summer, will there be a material impact on the model as far as increased cost structure goes before that? And ultimately, do you expect that to decrease the cost going forward or just It's more just to increase the efficiency of, you know, making sure things get where they go on time.
Liyue
Yeah, so, I mean, we have the cost of that in the model. So, when we talk about the full-year gross margins and full-year operating expense, that's approximately 20.5% that's in there, Tom. But the reality of it is we have a lot of random buildings all over the place who are restoring material right now, which has a lease cost with it. So when we initially open, we're going to have some duplication, but over about a six-month period to maybe as far as nine months, these other locations, the leases run out. So the net impact of it is going to be favorable, both from an efficiency point of view and from the ability to have everything in one location. So we're going to have a lot of duplication. robotics and very sophisticated material handling in this new facility. And again, we're gonna exit several buildings that are scattered around the Beverly campus and surrounding communities right now once this thing is up and running.
Tom Diffley
Sounds like it'd be a good place for an analyst meeting.
Liyue
It will. We can give you a ride on it.
Tom Diffley
Last question from Mary. When you look at The non-mature markets and non-power markets, you know, memory and high-end logic. Can you just talk a little bit about how you're positioned to take advantage of the recovery in the industry when it happens over the next couple of years?
Liwei
Sure. So as I mentioned in the script, we're working very closely with our memory customers right now to qualify both new Purion tools and additional recipes. Obviously, things are slow right now, but as things do improve, we expect to be able to leverage the work that we're doing right now to actually increase our business at our existing customers and make some additional headway even with some customers where we haven't been particularly strong in the past. In terms of advanced logic, we've talked about this at length. We continue to work with all the major advanced logic customers to find opportunities, particularly where Purion is differentiated, where we can bring that differentiation to improve their cost of ownership and their device performance. That is ongoing, and we also have talked about how we have recently placed a Purion Dragon into an advanced logic customer. It's an evaluation system that is going extremely well. And we expect that to result in more business. And we've also recently closed on an evaluation for Purion H for advanced logic. And we expect that to grow into additional business in the future as well. So nothing really has changed, Tom, in terms of what we're focused on. We're focused on just meeting our customers' requirements, not only in terms of their install base, but also in terms of their emerging technology and manufacturing challenges.
Tom
And, Tom, one other thing just to note is, so the things Mary's talking about are the things that will drive us to that $1.3 billion model. So as memory recovers, as we continue to make deeper penetrations into advanced logic, that combined with continued growth in mature markets and power are what drive us to the $1.3 billion model. Great. Thanks, Tom.
Tom Diffley
Thank you, three. Appreciate it. Yep. Thanks, Tom.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you so much. And your next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis of B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.
Craig Ellis
Yeah, thanks for taking the questions this morning. And Mary, I just want to start by congratulating you on the transition. You've had a remarkable career and really transitioning at a spectacular place in terms of where Excellus is over that arc. So with that said, let me just start with the first question. So as I was talking with investors through the quarter, but especially through March and April, there was a lot of concern about some of the things they were seeing in the automotive market. It seems like a lot of your prepared commentary really addressed the company's momentum, but can you just talk about whether you did see any order movement as you went through March and April or even very early May to date and and any signals that may be coming out of automotive related to potentially slowing EV uptake or anything else.
Liwei
Yeah, thank you very much, Craig. It's been a pleasure working with you. We have not seen any significant changes at all, particularly in the mature process technology area related to power devices. I mean, there are always minor shifts here and there depending on FAB. readiness, but we haven't seen anything move out. And in fact, if anything, our customers are basically, in some cases, asking for more. They're asking for more, and they're asking for it more quickly. So I think that that's a very positive sign. Russell and I had dinner last night with a major player, a customer who produces power devices, and that was really the gist of the conversation that things are going extremely well. They're looking for additional capacity. There are all sorts of things going on with new fabs that are currently being announced and built. So we do not have any data points right now that indicate that there's an issue. And I know people in particular sometimes worry about China, but China is very strong right now, particularly in the power device area. That is definitely a growing area, you know, for investment for those customers. So right now, everything seems fine. We haven't seen any significant changes.
Craig Ellis
That's really helpful, Keller. Thank you. The next question is really related to the new $1.03 billion plus view for calendar 23. So thanks for providing that update. The question is this. If I incorporate the first quarter result and 2Q's guide, it could imply flattish sequential trends in the back half. And that seems to fit with some of the larger companies that we've heard from this reporting season to date. I'm just wondering, without providing guidance, could you just provide some qualitative color on how you see the back half of the year?
Liyue
Well, I'll take that, Craig. Thanks, Kevin. So I guess I'll start by saying we did say we expect to exceed 1.03.
Craig
Right.
Liyue
Doesn't mean there couldn't be more there. But right now, that's a 12% year-over-year growth, as we said. Mary just talked about this continued strong demand. I'll also say our collective bill in the quarter came back up to 1.5, and I think last quarter it was 0.99, so it was one, roughly. So, you know, things are still on a positive side for us, correct? So, you know, it doesn't mean there can't be more there, but at this point, this is what we're comfortable with. But, you know, with the record backlog that we have, right now and customers clamoring to want to pull things in. We'll do our best to try to exceed that 1.03.
Craig Ellis
Great. And then I'll just finish up with a question that's related to that, Kevin, but it goes back to some of the prepared comments on gross margins. So acknowledging that the back half means a 300 to 400 basis point rise from here. But with some of the issues working out prior higher-cost inventory, it would seem to suggest that more of the step-up would be in the fourth quarter than the third, just given the underlying cost dynamics that are at play. Is that a reasonable way to look at things?
Liyue
Yeah. Yeah. We're going to say incremental improvement. We obviously have to come up quite a bit in Q3, but it will be incremental improvement. as it comes through in the back half. And again, based on everything I see right now with the mix and the cost profiles we have, we should get very close to that 44%, but considering kind of the whole we dug ourselves starting out, you know, full year will be good. And I think that's the other point I'll make too. You know, I always tell, and you know this as well, I always tell people, look at Excellus' gross margins on a full year basis because so much can move quarter to quarter, but I honestly look at always look at full year. And everything we do with programs to make things better, we're looking at a full year average. So, yeah, so I would, you know, you're going to have to step it up a little bit in Q3, though, to get there. But it will be incremental. And then, you know, back to your prior question, you know, any revenue growth would probably be the same way. You know, it would be incremental, you know, as the quarters come on, if things grow beyond the number we put out there.
Craig Ellis
Got it. Kevin, Mary, thank you very much for the help and congratulations on the very strong execution. Thanks, Craig.
Operator
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab of Craig Holland. Your line is now open.
Craig
Hey, guys. Congrats on another solid quarter. Mary, as we're looking at China, we've heard from applied materials and and Lam and others talk about the significant investment that's going on in the mature nodes. A lot of that, obviously, power and, you know, kind of the strategic gift to align production with domestic demand, which looks to be maybe a three to four year endeavor, at least. So are you guys
Liwei
very optimistic about that type of market or are you just happy with the strength today and watching it closely so we are very happy with what we're seeing right now in the mature process technology area and you know we've talked many times about how we have leadership in implant in the mature process technology area and we've talked about power devices and we've talked about image sensors and that holds true we we believe that this strength will continue on into the future right now there are still new fabs being announced there's a lot of new construction there's a capacity expansion and we expect that to continue on what I actually expected you to ask me about is if we had you know seen any change in some of the export control regulations, and we have not seen anything there. Things continue to flow for us from a licensing and export control standpoint, and we continue to monitor that extremely closely, and at this point, you know, believe that that situation will continue, that things will continue to be positive. So we're very bullish about China right now.
Tom
Hey, Christian, this is Doug. The other comment I'd like to make is that China represents one of the largest opportunities for electric vehicles. Government incentive programs and so forth have pushed that country to, last year it was over 30% of new cars sold were EVs. So there's a lot of activity in the supply chain, which is where we play with the silicon carbide devices. So we are very optimistic over the next few years for that to continue.
Craig
Yeah, and every day I read about somebody else getting more funding from somebody in China to add to their capacity. So extremely strong target market. On that is a great segue, not only in China, but listening to the large automobile manufacturers who are getting more and more ambitious goals about the number of shipments that they expect to ship. uh or cars delivered if you will um is the every three years doubling of silicon carbide um wafers you know what are the puts and takes of that where that you know three years from now we could look at that or two years from now and say that that was probably too conservative
Tom
Well, we're still, you know, that's the data that we've got right now. We'll be re-looking at that. There's certainly lots of people in one-on-ones that we're being conservative there, but the numbers vary all over. There's a lot of variables depending on EV adoption rate, depending on the types of devices that are built, depending on the yields, depending on the ramp of of 200 millimeter versus 150. So there's a lot of variables, Christian, that go into the equation. So we're very comfortable with the doubling every three years. And we'll revisit that probably over the next six months.
Craig
That's great. All right. Great. No other questions. Thank you. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you so much. And your next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton of Meadham. Your line is now open.
Quinn
for Quinn and congrats on the continued success. So for my first question, as more power devices and autos shift to silicon carbide, what do you expect the impact to be on the traditional silicon power device market over the coming years? Will it still be a growth segment for some time or do you see an inflection point where that market will decline? Thanks.
Tom
So Quinn, I'll take that one. We expect the silicon market to continue to grow. Solid state power applications do continue to grow, and there's lots of places where the silicon is better than IGBT, and a lot of places where it can carve up, and there's lots of places where . So there's three viable technologies that really depend on the application. What we expect to see is silicon carbide will probably dominate the auto industry over time, although there will be applications for silicon in auto. And then silicon carbide will start to make some growth in other areas, in energy, for example, as cost comes down as a result of volume driven by the automotive side. And then, you know, silicon has a lot, you know, just silicon is always going to be a less expensive substrate. You know, there's lots and lots of silicon. And so that's always going to be a consideration. So we expect growth in both. If you look at the trends that we've got in our presentation, you can see silicon carbide is currently overtaking in terms of the amount of implant tools. But silicon continues to be very, very strong.
Quinn
Thanks, very helpful. And so for my second question, could you provide any color into the CMOS image sensor market? Is the ongoing weakness mostly driven by the consumer inventory corrections? And I guess through your conversations with customers, are you seeing any signs of a demand recovery in this segment?
Tom
Yeah, let me take the first part of that anyway. The slowdown in image sensors certainly is driven by the consumer market, so primarily by phones. And so as that turns around, we would expect that that business as a whole turns around. The thing that's going on right now is we've got the Xe Max out there in evaluation. We've got one system that's already in production. The customers are are prepping for the turnaround and they're more advanced devices for the next phase. The other piece that's big for image sensors is all the ADAS stuff, and that continues to be strong. When you look at the folks that have announced in the last week or so, auto continues to be strong. and image sensors are a piece of that. So, we would expect that image sensors turn around pretty strong as the consumer market turns around.
Quinn
Thank you. And one more quick one, if I may. So, how much of the margin improvement in the second half is a function of a mixed shift to high energy versus the alleviation of some cost headwinds?
Liyue
any additional color there would be helpful yeah i mean i'm i'm not really uh going to break that out but what i would tell you is that um you know supply chain has been a a constant problem for us um you know for the last you know year year and a half so um assuming that that's a good chunk of it it's probably not not bad um but you know as you know from our investor presentation, high energy does carry better margins than high current. So I think in Q1, when we did the guidance, we talked about a bigger mix of high current, for example. So that is part of it. The other thing that's in there as well is on the freight side of things, we are seeing improvements with freight as the supply chain has continued to recover. It's allowed us to, you know, not be doing overnight shipments or air shipments and getting back into containers and getting stuff brought in at much lower cost methods. And then even container shipments from, you know, coming from Asia, for example. They're probably, I don't think the fact that we were pre-pandemic, but they, you know, they were up four or five X, they're probably up two X right now. So there's a lot of pieces coming. starting to come through. And the last thing really was, we had mentioned on the last call too, that we had quite a bit of higher priced inventory. So that's burning through and starting to be replaced with, you know, newer inventory. So that'll give me a percentage. Those are all.
Quinn
Yeah, no worries. No worries. I appreciate the color.
Liyue
Yeah, no problem. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you so much. And your next question comes from the line of David Dooley. Your line is now open.
David Dooley
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Mary, I just wanted to echo Craig's comments. Congrats on a great run, and we're all very happy shareholders. First question from me is, Kevin, I guess the math works out. You're kind of guiding the first half gross margins at 41.5%. To get to 44%, you're going to have to average 46.5% in the back half of the year. That's just the way the math works out. Now, my question there is, would that be the starting point for gross margins in calendar 2024? Is there any reason to think that we would have a dip back down in gross margins?
Liyue
Well, I mean, we have our $1.3 billion model out there, and you know, if you look at kind of the pieces of gross margin, we always say CS&I is very accretive, right? So as we grow to 1.3 billion, you know, CS&I will not grow as fast. Systems will grow faster, which, you know, in reality, if those margins aren't as good as CS&I, that puts a little pressure. So I don't think I, I'm prepared as anything, Dave, beyond that. We have a $1.3 billion model that suggests at least 45% gross margins. As you know, we've made a lot of improvements on gross margins over the years. It continues to be, as I always say, an area we're laser-focused on. I think you know I've got deep hands into the business, too, when it comes to margins. I'm constantly looking for ways with the team to find, you know, how we can make things better. So if we can do better, we'll do better. But for now, you know, we're trying to get back to that 44%. And it's hard for me to say even in Q1, right? I don't know what the mix is going to do necessarily, right? So that's why we say look at the full year. Don't hold me quarter to quarter, but on a full year basis, we're going to get you to where we say we're going to get.
David Dooley
Okay, and then kind of as a follow-up to an earlier question, you know, either on the 12% revenue growth that you have this year or the 39% revenue growth you had last year, how much of that comes from units increasing and how much of that comes from ASP increases?
Liyue
Well, it's mostly all units. We haven't – I mean, as you know, we have – I guess if you're asking, I mean, the product extensions have higher ASPs. which helps our margins, but, you know, we're, it's not like we're out getting a lot, we're not getting price increases on products we've been selling, for example, right? So it's really, it's units. We're shipping more systems, we're shipping more CS&I, and yeah, so that's a simple answer.
Tom
Okay. I mean, we announced that we had shipped the 500th Purian system earlier in the year. And so system shipments have certainly increased dramatically.
David Dooley
Okay. And then as far as the backlog goes, actually, not the backlog, there was a big increase in deferred revenue, both sequentially and I think year over year, it's up like two and a half times. But what's the reason behind that?
Liyue
The simple answer is we are getting a lot of prepayments. And we've got $445 million of cash at the end of the quarter, with short-term investments included. We have what I will call a meaningful amount of prepayment. So probably the biggest thing moving that, Dave, is the fact that that prepayment balance continues to increase. on system and the other piece of it is as you know we're shipping more tools and there is a piece of the revenue that gets hung up until the install is complete so that's growing but i would say the most significant reason why we popped over the last few quarters is it's coming through on a prepay and then it's getting hung up in deferred revenue
David Dooley
And just so I understand the accounting of this, are they giving you the full cost of the system? Is it a deposit? Or are customers trying to secure future capacity? Just the nature of these payments.
Liyue
Yeah, so with certain customers, we're requiring money down. It's typically not the full payment, but in some cases it could be the value of the material that goes in the tool and know if I look at the cost of my tools 85% of its material the rest is labor and all the other stuff so you know so we want to make sure that if somebody decides they don't want don't want the order we're not we're not left hanging with materials so so it's you know sizable chunk of money in some cases and again this isn't that this is not what all customers this is with Maybe customers where we don't have a strong relationship. There may be newer customers. There may be in a particular region where we want to ask for that. And we haven't had any problems with people kind of ponying up and putting money down. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Dave.
Liwei
Thanks, Dave.
Operator
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of Mark Miller. From the Benchmark Company, your line is now open.
Mark Miller
Let me also add my congratulations on the continued exceptional performance and very good luck on your new position. I just wanted to follow through. You mentioned you closed a Purian H eval during the quarter. Do you expect to close any other evals by the end of the year? And do you expect these evals to lead to additional orders?
Liwei
So we have six evals out in the field right now. And if you take a look at where they are and the types of equipment, I think about half of them, Mark, will close in 2023. And then the other three will bleed into 2024. And a lot of that is just based on the timing of when they were shipped and also the development that we're doing with the customers out in the field. Basically, evals can either close prior to a 12-month period, which is the exception rather than the rule, and then they can bleed even a little bit over a year depending on the work that we're doing with that customer. The answer is yes. We expect the evals to turn into additional business. We have a Purion M right now under evaluation for a DRAM application at a customer that has multiple. Purion types and we do expect that to turn into additional business. We have an Xe Max out at a customer right now. It's a new customer and that should also turn into new business. Two Purion Hs are out there. One is a new customer and one is a new high current customer. They have other types of Purions. And then the Purion Xe that's out in the field is also for a general Mature type of application, but it it's a new high energy penetration that customer has other types of Purion tools and then finally the dragon the Purion dragon which I mentioned earlier Is that for evaluation at for advanced logic and that's at a customer that has multiple types of Purion So some of these customers are new but most of them are actually customers that are just adding additional types of Purion products to their portfolio, all of them are, I mean, we really wouldn't put the evaluation unit out there if we didn't expect it to be successful and to turn into future repeat business.
Mark Miller
Thank you for all the color. Taxes came down and tax rate came down this quarter. What should we think about for taxes for the remainder of the year?
Liyue
I'm glad you asked that, Mark, because I'm going to get asked by a lot of people. What I would tell you is I continue to model things at 15%, but I'm gonna help you out in Q2 and tell you that I'm modeling at 13 to 14%. But I always kind of leave it at 15. The biggest reason why we're not paying the corporate tax rate of, what is it, 21, 22, 21, I guess, is because a lot of our shipments go offshore, so there's a 50 deduction. I think we pay 13% on shipments that go offshore. So that's why I always kind of build at 15, but you know, there's R&D tax credits coming in There's there's things with stock comp expense and that impact it from quarter to quarter. So use use 13 or 14 in q2 probably going to need to get to the numbers and You know all this as the year goes on is is I feel comfortable, you know Maybe I'll take it down, but I'll tell you personally in my models. I just leave it at 15% in the Q3, Q4 right now.
Craig
Thank you.
Liyue
Yep.
Operator
Thanks, Mark. Thank you so much. And sir, ma'am, you have a question at this time. And again, to ask a question, please press star one, one. the Q&A portion of the call. I will now turn the call back over to Mary Puma, who will make a few closing remarks.
Liwei
Thank you, Liyue. So I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. We have a busy investor calendar in the coming months. In May, we will be at the B. Reilly 23rd Annual Institutional Investor Conference in Los Angeles and the Craig Hallam 20th Annual Institutional Investor Conference in Minneapolis. We will attend four conferences in June, the TD Cowen's 51st Annual TDT Conference in New York City, the Stiefel Cross-Sector Insight Conference in Boston, the Needham Virtual Automotive Tech Conference, and the William Blair 43rd Annual Growth Stock Conference in Chicago. In July, we will be attending the CEO Summit in San Francisco and conducting additional investor meetings at Semicon West. We hope to see you at one of these events. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you, presenters, and this concludes the presentation. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.
Disclaimer