Analog Devices, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to the Analog Devices Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call, which is being audio webcast via telephone and over the web. I'd like to now introduce your host for today's call, Mr. Michael Luccarelli, Vice President of Investor Relations and FP&A. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining our Second Quarter Fiscal 2023 Conference Call. With me on the call today are ADI CEO and Chair Vincent Roche and ADI CFO Prashanth Mahendra Rajah. For anyone who missed the release, you can find it in relating financial statements and schedules at investor.analog.com. On to the disclosures. The information we're about to discuss includes forward-looking statements, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as further described in earnings release and other periodic reports and other materials filed with the SEC. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and these statements reflect our expectations only as the date of this call. We undertake no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. Our comments today will also include non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude special items. When comparing our results to our historical performance, special items are also excluded from prior periods. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures and additional information about our non-GAAP measures are included in today's earnings release. And with that, I'll turn it over to ADI CO. Chair, Vince.

Thanks, Mike, and good morning to you all. Well, I'm very pleased to share that ADI continued to execute well in the second quarter. We delivered our 13th consecutive quarter of revenue growth and record earnings per share. Notably, revenue was $3.26 billion, growing 10% year over year. And once again, this was driven by record results in our industrial and automotive sectors. Gross margin was nearly 74%, and operating margin surpassed 51%, reflecting the innovation premium our portfolio commands. and our strong financial discipline. And EPS increased an impressive 18% year over year. Now I'd like to spend a moment on the current business conditions. We previously shared that our business was at an inflection point due to uncertain economic and the geopolitical backdrop. After three years of steady growth, customers are beginning to adjust their forecasts and rebalance their inventories. This is most pronounced in Asia, while North America and Europe demand is moderating. But at a more measured pace, we expect this normalization of revenue will persist through the second half of 2023. Importantly, given our customer conversations and proactive decisions to improve lead times and right size or backlog, we're in a position to deliver on our goal of delivering a soft landing. Stepping back, we've successfully navigated macro challenges many, many times before. Today, ADI has an even more durable franchise defined by an unmatched diversity of products, customers, and applications, a hybrid manufacturing model that better adapts to demand fluctuations, and of course, a fortified balance sheet. These characteristics instill a resiliency that helps ADI mitigate market weakness and invest throughout economic cycles in critical areas that will define our future. Notably, unlike previous economic cycles, we have numerous concurrent secular growth drivers across all of our markets that drive more semi-content per dollar of CapEx. And we have exposure to sectors that will transcend the macro uncertainty, including areas like digital healthcare, aerospace, defense, and the electrification ecosystem. So to that end, I want to highlight our digital healthcare business, which resides in our industrial end market. Healthcare is a market that is ripe for innovation and is one that requires the highest levels of performance. Now, currently, the United States leads the world in healthcare spending with more than $4 trillion spent in 2022 alone, approaching 20% of GDP. This amount has steadily increased over several decades and unfortunately does not correlate to world leading health outcomes. Both the US along with most international healthcare systems are still reliant on serving the majority of patients with critical or chronic conditions in large centralized acute care hospitals where specialized expertise and equipment reside. The pandemic highlighted the fragility of this system underscoring the urgent need for remote physician consultation and distributed clinical-grade patient care. This vision of a decentralized system to improve the accessibility, affordability, and efficacy of global healthcare can only be realized through the proliferation of edge-based diagnostic and therapeutic technologies. ADI saw this promising opportunity early and made digital healthcare a strategic focus area over a decade ago. Over that time, our R&D investments have expanded our portfolio from core signal processing, sensing, and power technologies to more highly integrated application-specific products to now full system-level solutions. The results? Our healthcare franchise has delivered seven straight record revenue years, generating $900 million annually And we're on track to achieve a new high watermark in 23, despite the macro backdrop. Importantly, ADI has become an industry leader in three primary areas. The first is medical imaging, where our highly integrated products perform critical functions. This includes enhancing image quality, minimizing radiation dosage, improving system assembly, and simplifying field maintenance. Today, we've strong share positions in areas like CT scanners, digital x-ray, and ultrasound. Next is automation and instrumentation. For example, our broad portfolio enables us to create the optimized signal chains required in applications, such as infusion pumps, ventilators, and defibrillators. Third is personal health monitoring. Here, our highest performance products are used throughout the operating room and the ICU, while more compact versions with lower power are designed into wearable devices performing both clinical and consumer wellness monitoring functions. Now, let me share some of the examples of how we're seeing ADI solutions shape the future of healthcare. The ultrasound industry is migrating from large cart-based equipment to more compact mobile systems. Recently, ADI won the design at a market leader for their compact ultrasound system. Our solution leverages our complete portfolio, including high-speed signal chain and high-voltage power technologies, to deliver the highest quality images at the lowest power in a smaller footprint. We're also developing an echo to bits technology to untether the ultrasound modality from the hospital and enable hospital grade care in even the most remote locations. Our solution uses proprietary ultra low power analog technology that performs both the data acquisition and beam forming functions at extremely low power levels with embedded software algorithms. This allows the user to get CART-based performance in a handheld form without compromising image quality, resolution, or functionality. Now turning for a moment to robotic surgery, currently only about 15% of the world's surgical procedures use robotic technology despite the many benefits. These include greater precision, flexibility, and control during surgery. and shorter hospital stays, fewer complications, and lower levels of pain for patients. We're already designed in at the largest robotic surgical suppliers with our suite of precision motor control, signal processing, power management, and sensing solutions. And with content per system in the thousands of dollars and performance demands increasing exponentially, This application is poised to deliver significant growth in the years ahead. In the area of personal health monitoring, clinical-grade vital signs monitors are converging with consumer wellness wearables. Now, this is an emerging market for our comprehensive suite of technologies, including our sensor AFEs, microcontrollers, and ultra-low-power technologies, which has been strengthened by the integration of Maxens. For example, in diabetes management, ADI has long been a leading supplier of blood glucose monitoring technology. Now we're working with key customers in the next generation of continuous glucose monitoring. Our solution increases the level of robustness, accuracy, and power efficiency of the glucose sensor, thereby extending its life from days to weeks. And there's much, much more to come. We're extending our reach into innovative medical products that connect our hardware with cloud-based connectivity, analytics, and service. I'm delighted to share with you that our first non-invasive chronic disease management device is undergoing marketing clearance with the FDA. And I look forward to sharing more as this new market has the potential to significantly expand our healthcare side. So big picture. We're shaping the digital revolution in healthcare. ADI's ability to go from component to system supplier underscores our deep domain expertise and unrelenting focus on innovation, setting us apart from the pack, not only in healthcare, but in all of our markets. So while there's near-term uncertainty, we're excited about the long-term opportunities that lie ahead. The center of gravity for data processing is shifting from the cloud to the edge. And ADI, where data is born, is at the center of this evolution, enabling the next waves of innovation for our customers. Now, before I hand over to Prashanth, I want to address our announcement that he will be leaving ADI at the end of the fiscal year. I want to recognize Prashanth for his many contributions and for his partnership. over these past six years. He's played an important role during a period of extraordinary growth and value creation for ADI, including help build a robust finance function and fostering strong investor community engagement. Please know that Prashanth will be remaining in his full capacity and continuing to engage with all of you while we identify our next CFO through a search process that is now underway. And with that, I'll hand it over to Prashant.

Thank you, Vince. It has been an honor to serve as the CFO of this phenomenal company and lead this world-class finance organization. As Vince mentioned, I am fully committed to ensuring a smooth transition, and I look forward to engaging with all of you during the coming quarters. I do want to express my deep appreciation to Vince, both as a coach and a mentor, but also for introducing me to this magical world of semiconductors. As my boss often says, we truly are the bedrock upon which the global technology industry is built. Now, turning to our second quarter results. As usual, my comments today, with the exception of revenue, will be on an adjusted basis, which excludes special items outlined in today's press release. We delivered another very strong quarter. Record revenue of $3.26 billion exceeded the midpoint of guidance and represented ADI's 13th consecutive quarter of sequential growth. On a year-over-year basis, we grew 10%, led once again by all-time highs in industrial and automotive. Breaking it down by market, industrial, our most diverse and profitable business, represented 53% of revenue and finished up 3% sequentially. year-over-year growth of 16% was broad-based, notable gains in sustainable energy, aerospace, and defense. These markets, in addition to healthcare, which Vince just highlighted, are much better positioned to withstand cyclical slowdowns, and together they represent roughly 40% of industrial revenue. Automotive, which represented 24% of revenue, once again exhibited broad-based strength, growing 10% sequentially and 24% year-over-year. Secular tailwinds fueling content growth continue to drive ADI's leading battery management and in-cabin connectivity solutions, which combined increased nearly 40% year-over-year. Communications, which represented 14% of revenue, decreased both sequentially and year-over-year due to the ongoing inventory corrections across this end market. And lastly, consumer at 9% of revenue was down more than 20% sequentially and year-over-year. After several quarters of softness, consumer revenue is close to its COVID low, suggesting that the correction is nearly complete. Moving on to the P&L, gross margin of 73.7% was up slightly sequentially due to favorable product mix. OpEx at 733 million was in line with last quarter, and op margins of 51.2%, up roughly 100 basis points year-over-year, set a new record. Non-op expenses were $48 million, and our tax rate was 11.4%. Remember that Q2 is typically our lowest rate. All told, EPS came in at $2.83, up an impressive 18% year-over-year. Moving to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with approximately $1.2 billion of cash and a net leverage ratio of 0.8. We've discussed many times our decision to hold more finished goods inventory versus restocking the channel. Thus, our days of inventory increased to 168, and channel inventory weeks were basically unchanged. As we outlined a quarter ago, we expect inventory dollars will decline in the second half. as we balance the replenishment of Dibank and moderate external purchases. Moving to cash flow, CapEx was $284 million in the quarter and $930 million over the trailing 12 months, representing 7% of revenue. As a reminder, we outlined at our investor day that we expect CapEx to be high single digits as a percentage of sales in 2023 and then decline in subsequent years to our longer-term target of mid-single digits. These investments will support our long-term growth plans and enable strategic swing capacity between our fabs and our foundry partners. The flexibility of our hybrid model across different geographies enhances our resiliency, it offers our customers additional optionality, and it provides an important financial shock absorber during times of volatility. Of note, our CapEx spend to date does not include the benefits of both the U.S. and the European tax credits and grant funds that we anticipate from both the U.S. and European CHPSACs. Over the trailing 12 months, we generated $4 billion of free cash flow, or 31% of revenue. We've returned $5.1 billion to shareholders, $3.5 in buybacks and $1.6 via dividends. We remain committed to our shareholder-friendly policy of returning 100% free cash flow over the long term. Now, before moving to the outlook, I do want to provide some additional details on the evolving business conditions. As Vince shared in his remarks, customers are adjusting forecasts and rebalancing inventory. At the same time, our lead times continue to improve, with over 70% of our portfolio now shipping in under 13 weeks. This gives customers high confidence into the timeliness of our supply. The result, book-to-bill, as we outlined last quarter, remains below parity in all markets, and our backlog, due in the current quarter, has returned to its typical coverage range. As a result, total backlog continues to decline, but at just under a year of revenue, it's still 2x regular levels. And lastly, After a strong start to the second quarter, demand quickly deteriorated in Asia, impacting channel sell-through. As a result, we plan to reduce channel inventory in this region. And in the third quarter, we are planning for sell-in to be below sell-through for the total company. Given these dynamics, we are guiding third quarter revenue to be 3.1 billion plus or minus 100 million. At the midpoint of our outlook, we expect industrial and auto to be down low to mid single digit sequentially, communications down around 10% sequentially, while consumer will increase sequentially. Op margin is expected to be 48.5% plus or minus 70 bps. The decline in op margin relates to our annual merit increases, changing product mix, and a reduction of manufacturing utilizations given the softer environment. Our tax rate, again, between 11 and 13%. And based on these inputs, adjusted EPS is expected to be $2.52 plus or minus 10 cents. While the near-term operating environment is a difficult one, our diversification and exposure to key secular trends is expected to help mitigate the revenue impact. In addition, we have key levers to help us minimize margin volatility. This includes our flexible hybrid manufacturing model, which allows us to quickly reduce spend on external wafers and moderate the impact on internal utilizations. Our variable compensation program, which has a true accordion-like function, allowing us to reduce spend while still investing in key long-term areas. As a result, we expect a durable earning stream and solid free cash flow generation, enabling us to take advantage of any share price dislocations. Before handing off to Mike, I want to remind folks that in June we will be doing a deep dive on the burgeoning opportunity for ADI in the construction of gigafactories. And with that, let me pass it to Mike for Q&A.

Thanks, Prashanth. I want to echo Vince's comments and thank you for the partnership over the past six years, but I will warn you it's not done yet. We have a couple more earnings calls together. So with that, let's get to the Q&A session. We ask that you limit yourself to one question in order to allow for additional participants on the call this morning. If you have a follow-up question, please re-queue, and we'll take your question if time allows. With that, we have our first question, please.

For those participating by telephone dial-in, if you have a question, please press star 1-1 on your phone to enter the queue. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 1-1 again. If you're listening on a smartphone, please pick up the handset when asking your question. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Vivek Arya with Bank of America Securities.

Thanks for the question, and thanks and best wishes to Prashant. So my question really is I'm trying to understand where is the incremental weakness? Is it limited to Asia and within Asia? Is it industrial or automotive or both? And what about a non-Asia demand? How has that changed versus what you thought three months ago?

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Vivek. It's been a pleasure to work with you, and we still have a few quarters together. Everyone is focused on the quarter over quarter, but before I get to your answer, I do want to take a step back and look at the year over year, because I do think that tells the story of share gains and the increasing content per dollar of CapEx, which is what we believe delivers that long-term shareholder value. If you look at our industrial and auto business, they are up year over year at the midpoint of guidance. industrial, call it roughly mid-single digits, and auto mid-teens year over year. And this comes at a time when PMIs are below 50 and auto SAR is relatively modest. So while the economics and the cycle dictate the number of units our customers sell, which will impact our business, our share gains and our increasing content per dollar of CapEx is what we expect to help us outperform, which means we're going to decline less in bad times and accelerate in good times. To your specific question, China definitely was the piece of new information that has developed over the more recent period. We've had three quarters of decline in China, and we're expecting a fourth. We did see an uptick following the resumption or the return to office after Chinese New Year, but that did fade quickly. The result was we've got inventory a little higher in the channel there than we expected. Very confident that this is not a share issue. This is a reflection of what's going on in those markets, and it's broad-based across both industrial and auto. Outside of China, I'd say that industrial and auto is holding up relatively well, especially North America, Europe, and Japan. not as strong as it was prior quarter, but it's not falling rapidly. And I would characterize it more as a measured slowdown. Comms and consumer, we've been talking about those, you know, in all those geographies, those remain weak. Thank you. Thanks, Vivek.

Our next question comes from the line of Torres Vonberg with Stiefel.

Yes, thank you. Prashant, it's been great working with you. Wish you all the best. I know we're together for a few more months, but anyway, wish you all the best. My question is on utilization and inventory levels. So could you give us a sense for where utilization is today? What's your plan for the second half? You did talk about inventory in dollar terms coming down in the second half, but if you could give us any color on the extent of that, we'd really appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Tori. It's been great working with you. So as we think about inventory, inventory is going to remain higher than normal because we're keeping the channel lean. This is something we started two or three quarters ago. From a dollar basis, inventory has peaked in second quarter, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks. And you should see dollars start to trend down from here, given the actions that we're taking, which is both reducing our external wafer bills, which is an opportunity that we have because of our swing capacity and our hybrid manufacturing model. And that also allows us to balance out the die bank building in our internal factories with softer demand and tap the brakes on internal utilizations. Utilizations, I would say, still are at elevated levels, so we expect them to start getting closer to what we would consider normal levels in our fiscal fourth quarter.

To just give a little context, in the outlook, we gave about 48.5% operating margins. That assumes gross margins come down from where they are today. That's mixed, and also it is utilization, as Prashant mentioned. And then op-ex goes up a little bit in the third quarter based on merit increase offset sum by the variable compensation. So that's kind of the math around that. And then, as you say, as you look out, utilization probably don't go higher in 4Q after 3Q. Just to kind of give you a feel for the back half of the year. Great, thank you. Thanks for the question. We'll go to the next one.

Our next question comes from the line of Ambrish Srivastava with BMO Capital Markets.

Hi. Hi, Ambrish.

We hear you.

Hi. Sorry. Sorry. I lost you for a sec. Thanks. Thank you, Prashant. Pleasure working with you as well. I just wanted to come back to the backlog. And you just went through this comment a little bit too quick for me. So the backlog, as you said, 2x regular levels, but book-to-bill below, and it is where the typical coverage ranges at this point, so I was a little unsure what that means. More importantly, book-to-bill should then be trending lower as we go over the next couple of quarters. Is that the right conclusion I should take away from those comments?

What I would, I guess, let me, let's do this in two pieces. First, let's talk about our view on this correction. Obviously, no correction is the same. But if you look over at history, Amrish, most of these sort of downturns last for somewhere between two to four quarters. And it's our view that we're going to have a weakness for the second half. But a couple points around that. First, we are really seeing this as a rolling correction across the market because Obviously, no market is fully immune, but I do think that we're better positioned. Comms and consumer, I think you would agree with us, the worst is largely behind us. We've seen those correct over the last couple quarters, and we're actually being a little bit more optimistic about consumer as we go forward. Industrial and auto, we're starting to see some softness, but that's probably not going to just last a quarter. It's important to point out that we do have some areas of strength in industrial. We mentioned that in the prepared remarks. And auto really is going to continue to be a function of the SAR activity. From a bookings and backlog standpoint, the takeaways you want is bookings overall continue to decrease, but they're basically sitting at about a year of revenue, the total backlog. What that means is that the backlog for the current quarter is now to normal levels, which means that we're back to a point where we will be relying on some book and chip to hit the guide, and that's back to normal pre-COVID levels. And on a book-to-bill, we're below parity, which we had said for a couple quarters now that this was coming, and that's pretty broad-based. It's sort of all markets, industrial and auto are a little bit better, but all markets, all geographies. I did call out in, I think, Tori's question that China is certainly the weakest of that.

Got it. Thank you. I'll cue back for another follow-up. Next question.

Our next question comes from a line of Joseph Moore with Morgan Stanley.

Great. Hi. Let me add my congratulations to Prasant. Can you talk about the backlog being out over a year when 70% of lead times are below 13 weeks? I know you've been pretty aggressive scrubbing that backlog. How confident are you that that reflects And then, you know, can you sort of describe, it seems like you're still getting a pretty decent amount of bookings, considering that people have booked out 52 weeks and can get product within 13. Are people still placing orders beyond lead time to try to assure continuity? Thank you.

Yeah, great question, Joe. Thank you. So first, yes, you're exactly right. When we talk about backlog being out kind of roughly a year in value, that's phased over several quarters. So we have delivery dates from customers that are in future quarters, which sort of gives us confidence to what the future looks like. And now we're sort of back to that stage that we've always operated in pre-COVID levels, where there is a percentage of the current quarter's revenues that comes from turns business. So we're back to that state of normalcy. With the lead times down as they've improved with our manufacturing capacity additions, now there's no incentive for customers to keep giving us orders out with significant advance notice. They can get most of what they need pretty quickly. And that's the transition that you're seeing being reflected in the book-to-bill rate. Again, as I mentioned, we are expecting, and Vince has talked for a couple quarters now, that we were expecting the macro impact to hit us, but we remain very confident that the content story we have is going to help mute the impact relative to others. And given our end market exposure, as I mentioned, it's sort of going to be rolling through us. Consumer and comms are largely behind us. We will see auto pressure on units. for a couple of quarters, sorry, industrial pressure on units for a couple of quarters. And auto, we can't give you a good sense of except to say we know we have a phenomenal content story growth there, and it really will depend on consumer purchases.

Yeah, I think, Joe, at the margins, I think our customers have changed their behavior. You know, it used to be that the world expected to be able to operate on a very rapid turn cycle. Now, I think that will persist. But what will also persist is the change in behavior around customers aligning their longer-term demands with supply. And those are conversations that we're having continuously. So I think the behavior has changed somewhat, and perhaps we've got a new normal.

Thanks, Joe. Go to the next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Dainley with Citi.

Thanks, guys. I'll add my congrats to Prashant. I wish I was retiring, too. I just had, I guess, a question or some more color on the correction. What do you think triggered it? Do you think it was just a function of the shortages going away and, you know, people always had a little bit of inventory out there and now they can they can start to cancel orders and then how bad do you think it could get? I mean, your, your auto businesses tripled in your industrial businesses doubled in the last, you know, two years and change. So what, what, what should we be thinking for like the October quarter and beyond?

Yeah. Uh, Chris, I don't know that I would call it a trigger per se. I think that, uh, as I mentioned, we've been sort of rolling through this. It is just that there's been enough growth in sub parts of our market that have overshadowed the pressure we've seen on comms and consumer. Now, industrial, which is really the flagship, is starting to feel a little bit of the impact from the higher interest rate environment, so that's coming through. But again, I would call out that we've got a pretty sizable portion of that industrial market that is very recession-resistant. That's the healthcare business, which Vince talked about, the aerospace and defense, as well as our energy business. I think what I mentioned, I think, to Ambrish's question is, The piece that perhaps was most surprising to us is we were expecting a stronger bounce in China as they reopened from COVID and they got on the other side of Chinese New Year. And that recovery has not happened. And again, as I mentioned, we know that it's not a share issue. It is a macro issue to that market. What was the second part of your question?

Just how bad do you think it could get? Any color on that?

I'm going to turn to the 40-year veteran of this business who has seen multiple cycles and let Vince take that.

Yeah, Chris, I think first and foremost what we're seeing now in our business is that the troughs are not as deep and the peaks are steeper than they used to be. There's more and more content in every one of the market segments that we participate in. So, you know, I think that's the way to look at it. They're probably going to be shallower. You know, also, we've been very careful at managing our factories and making sure that we don't unnecessarily build inventory and ship product that perhaps isn't needed. So, you know, my sense is we've set ourselves up for a softer lending, just given how we've managed through the cycle. and try to match demand of our customers as tightly as we can with the supply system. So, you know, I think perhaps just given where PMIs are at, we would see at least a couple of quarters here of muted demand. And, you know, my sense is, you know, when the sentiment begins to turn, it will turn quickly.

Yeah, Chris, out of muted demand for the couple quarters here, it's good to think, like, We've grown 13 quarters in a row, so I think investors and sell-side people forget that. You do have down quarters sometimes. And we're kind of going back to what I call a bit more normal. And a more normal 4Q, you see industrial kind of flat to down from 3Q. Auto's about flat. Comms are not much activity happening right now in that market. And consumers are usually up a little bit. And if you look at our 1Q, a normal 1Q for us, the B2B markets, which is industrial, auto, and comms, are down, kind of low, mid-single digits. and consumers down a bit more due to holiday bills. And then you get a 2Q pickup. Now, that's not an outlook. That's just kind of what the normal shape was pre-COVID.

Yeah, I can tell you as well, Chris, you know, from conversations with our industrial and automotive customers, their sentiment is quite strong. You know, I met the CEO of one of the largest industrial automation companies very, very recently. And, you know, they see tremendous impact secular growth drivers. There's a rebound in demand from the pandemic stage where a lot of factories, the CapEx to improve factories, efficiencies and so on, was not spent. So that continues. The whole sustainability challenge is on everybody's mind. So there are many reasons to believe that we're going through a short-term period here of reconciliation, normalization of demand and supply But my sense is things will recover in the industrial market pretty rapidly. And in automotive, it's a case of we're getting more and more share in the areas that count with our connectivity products, the electric vehicle portfolio that we've got. And there's still reasonable demand, I would say, for mid to high-end automobiles. So we see this as a relatively short-term reset Thanks, guys. Thanks for the color.

Our next question comes from the line of Ross Seymour with Deutsche Bank.

Hi, guys. Just wanted to echo the congrats for Prashanth. A quick clarification, then a question. The clarification is when you talk about the second half being a little bit weaker, is that fiscal year or calendar year? And then the true question is on the automotive side of things. You've mentioned a couple times that it's kind of SAR dependent, but the bigger trend in automotive over the last few years has been mainly content, and you guys have benefited from that as well. I think you're one of the first companies in the SEMI side to guide that down, albeit minimally, on a sequential basis. Has something changed there that you're seeing that others aren't? Is it inventory? Is it demand? Just any more color on that would be helpful.

Yeah, I'll go to the first part, Ross. I mean, I gave a little bit of comments around kind of what I thought would be our fiscal 4Q and fiscal 1Q. I'll look based on kind of normalization. So you can kind of take from that and parse that with your question about is it fiscal second half or calendar second half and put it along that. It's both. With that, I'll pass it to the, on the auto side.

I'll take it. All right, yeah, so... Look, we've grown 10 quarters in a row, and the growth for the last quarter was very broad-based, again, across all applications. As we think about the outlook, we are beginning to see some softening, though the underlying content growth continue, and our top line should still prove to be a strong multiple of SAR. There is some decline that relates to our strong position in China EV. So when you ask about what's different for ADI, Ross, I think that the share position we have in China EV is probably one of those differentiating factors. And that is going through an adjustment as well. While China EVs are still expected to grow, it's not going to be growing as fast as we had originally thought. And so as this market comes back, it's going to provide the tailwinds we need for our automotive businesses because we have very high share. Again, take a step back. We remain very confident that this is a business with the strong stock portfolio we have, battery management, in-cabin connectivity with GMSL, A2B, and functional safe power. These represent about half of our business, and in a flat-sour environment, we are still going to be able to do double-digit growth. Thank you.

Thanks, Ross. And Liz, can we go to our last question, please?

This question comes from the line of William Stein with Truist Securities.

Thank you for taking my questions. Two quick ones, if I can squeeze them in. First, I wonder, you know, you've been very optimistic or relatively optimistic about pricing in the past few discussions we've had, essentially highlighting that foundries are either still raising or certainly not lowering, and you're having no problems passing that on. I'd like you to comment if there's any update in that regard. And then second, The other is just to try to get a maybe linger a moment and get a better understanding for what happened in China, because earlier in the quarter, you know, I think you've you've met with us and some other investors and discussed how business there was recovering. What how can you explain how quickly this seems to have changed from improving in China to suddenly getting even worse? Thank you very much.

I'm going to do the China one first, so Vince can address the pricing one. The China one is pretty straightforward. As most of the industry, we were watching the recovery coming out of the multi-quarter shutdown in China, as well as the Chinese New Year activity, looking to see business begin to return to normal levels, given that we had had a couple of down quarters. We saw a pop in activity and order activity as we came out of Chinese New Year. Based on that, we made supply available to the channel. That supply did not move as things kind of quickly got softer, or didn't move as much, I should say, didn't move as much. And therefore, that's why we've now said for the current quarter, we're going to ship in less than we sell through to help readjust that level primarily in Asia. With that, I'll hand off to Vince to take the pricing question.

Yeah, thanks, Prashant. Yeah, well, I think that the headline of pricing is that it is very, very resilient, and I expect that to persist. In general, we're passing more value to our customers. We're giving more value to our customers. And, in fact, the core ASP of our product portfolio has been increasing, not including, incidentally, the inflationary cost that we pass to our customers. So, you know, I think one thing we can say for sure about our franchise is our products are very, very sticky. Our products persist for many, many decades, for example, in the industrial sector. And we're in the post Moore's law era where the economic conditions have changed fundamentally. So I expect the pricing arena to be very steady across the industry in general in the years ahead. And we will look for opportunities to pass on inflation, which is going to be persistent in the industry, I believe, in the coming years.

Thank you. Thanks, Will. I thank everyone for joining us this morning. A couple of items before I let you go on your way. First, we are planning to combine our general ledger ERP systems this quarter. This represents one of our final steps for the maximum integration. Given our typically fast reporting cycle, we're giving ourselves an extra week to ensure everything runs smoothly. As such, we plan for our earnings call to be held the third week of August versus the second. Also, I wanted to flag that during these more uncertain times and consistent with our commitment for transparency for our owners, we plan on being even more available for investors. Midsom and Prashant will be in New York, Boston, the Bay Area, and London in the next quarter. Please reach out to our team if you'd be notified when we are in your neighborhood. And with that, a cognitive transcript will be available on the website. Thanks again for joining us and your continued interest in analog devices. Have a good day.

This concludes today's Analog Devices Conference call. You may now disconnect.