3/4/2021

speaker
Operator
Operator

Welcome to Broadcom Inc.' 's first quarter fiscal year 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to G.U., Director of Investor Relations of Broadcom Inc. Please go ahead, ma'am.

speaker
G.U. Yu
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on today's call are Hock Tan, President and CEO of Kirsten Spears, Chief Financial Officer, Tom Krause, President, Infrastructure Software Group, and Charlie Kawas, Chief Operating Officer. Broadcom also distributed press release and financial tables after the market closed, describing our financial performance for the first quarter of fiscal year 21. If you did not receive a copy, you may obtain the information from the Advisor section of Broadcom's website at broadcom.com. This conference call is being webcast live and the recording will be available via telephone playback for one week. It will also be archived in the investor section of our website at broadcom.com. During the prepared comments, Hawk and Kirsten will be providing details of our first quarter fiscal year 21 results, guidance for our second quarter, as well as commentary regarding the business environment. We'll take questions after the end of our prepared comments. Please refer to our press release today and our recent filings with the SEC for information on the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made on this call. In addition to US GAAP reporting, Broadcom reports certain financial measures on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures is included in the tables attached to today's press release. Comments made during today's call will primarily refer to our non-GAAP financial results. I'll now turn the call over to Hawk.

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Thank you, Gee, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Well, we delivered net revenue of $6.7 billion, up 14% year-on-year. Semiconductor solutions revenue was $4.9 billion, increasing 17% year-on-year. Infrastructure software revenue was $1.7 billion, up 5% year-on-year. Let me turn first to semiconductor solutions, but before I get into the numbers, perhaps it would be very constructive for me to give you my perspective on the situation today, and in fact, what has actually evolved over the past nine months. You may recall in our earnings call Q2 fiscal 20, around middle of last year, that we highlighted supply chain challenges. Since then, we have started extending lead times across our product portfolio. We stretch these lead times further over the past nine months as we saw demand within end markets continue to increase. So fast forward to today, we see customers accelerating their bookings for early deliveries and attempting to build buffers and creating the demand supply imbalance You all here out there, in anticipation of this phenomenon, we put in place in mid-2020 a very rigorous discipline process of carefully reviewing our backlog, identifying real end-user demand, and aligning our supply chain to more closely match end-user consumption. Of course, not all end markets are behaving the same way, but we believe we have done a very good job of balancing demand and supply in our end markets, and what I'm reporting today does reasonably reflect what's been consumed by our end users. With that, let me get into the numbers. In semiconductors, we grew 17% year-on-year organically. Starting with wireless, we hit the seasonal peak in Q1 where wireless was up 52% year-on-year and reached 40% of semiconductor revenue makes. This sharp increase was in large part due to a higher content FR content was up and we shipped in high volume Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, the next generation of Wi-Fi 6. As expected, Q2 wireless revenue will now show a typical seasonal decline sequentially, even as anticipated revenues will be up 30 to 40% year-on-year. And as we look into the second half of the year, we are planning for typical revenue rent in this space and structuring our in-house at BASFAP capacity appropriately. This should result in sustaining the year-on-year growth trend we now see in Q2 through the second half of the year. Moving on, networking represented approximately 29% of our semiconductor solution revenue in the quarter and grew 15% year-on-year. Demand is strong, driven largely by data center spend in the cloud and global telcos who continue to upgrade their infrastructure and network. Sustainability of this strength is evidenced by bookings as they jump 80% year-on-year and 62% sequentially. Demand for switch and routing platforms, both of the current and as well as next generation, is robust. But as anticipated, our AITPU business was seasonally down this quarter. Moving on to Q2, we expect networking to be up sequentially and continue the trend of being up year on year, driven by continuous strength we see in cloud and telcos offset partially by continued weakness in enterprise. Turning to broadband, which represented approximately 15% of semiconductor solutions. Revenue was up 8% year-on-year, driven by the work-from-home environment. Multiple telcos in Europe and the U.S. continued to roll out pond and cable docks. Embedded in these wireline gateways are our next generation Wi-Fi 6 access points. Softness in enterprise was more than offset by this strong demand from retail home routers, even as telcos continue to span. Looking at Q2, we are enabling the launch of new Wi-Fi 6 enabled platforms with higher value content for North American and European telcos. As a result, we do see demand accelerating, consumption increasing, and we expect to generate double-digit year-on-year revenue growth in broadband. Server storage connectivity represented approximately 12% of Q1 semiconductor revenue. This segment is largely driven by enterprise demand, as we know, and not surprisingly, server storage revenue was down 22% year-on-year, reflecting continuous softness in end-user demand, as well as OEMs, original equipment manufacturers, depleting their inventory in this space. While bookings have improved, These are largely for demand in the second half. And accordingly, we expect revenue in Q2 to continue to be down year over year by double digit percentage. However, we do expect some recovering based on our bookings received in the second half. And finally, industrial represented approximately 4% of Q1 semiconductor solution revenue. Resales grew 13% year over year in Q1, driven by a recovery of multiple economic sectors in China. Turning to Q2, we expect resales to grow at roughly the same level as we see recovering now occurring as well in Japan and Europe. Inventory in the channel for us continues to deplete, and we may have to increase shipments and revenues to replenish channel inventory this quarter. So in summary, semiconductor solution revenue, segment revenue was up 17% year-on-year in Q1. We expect this year-over-year percentage revenue to continue around a similar amount in spite of a seasonal decline in wireless. The way it looks now, this relatively strong trend appears to be sustaining through most of 2021. However, in our view, this very high and unusual secular growth rate merely highlight an accelerated adoption of our connectivity platforms during this pandemic. Turning to our other segment, software, Q1 2021 was our first quarter that on a year-on-year basis provides an organic comparison following the Symantec acquisition. In Q1, infrastructure software revenue growth was 5% year on year. In dollar terms, bookings averaged 122% over expiring contracts, while core accounts averaged 137%. Now, over 90% of these bookings represented recurring subscription and maintenance. Our strategy of focusing on core accounts continues to perform well as we cross-sell our portfolio of software tools. In other words, our software portfolio continues to perform as we had planned and continues to be on track with our long-term financial model for organic software revenue growth of around mid-single-digit percentage year-over-year. And that's something we expect to continue to see in Q2. So in summary, our Q1 consolidated net revenue grew 14% year-on-year. We expect a similar growth trajectory in Q2, which could bring revenue to $6.5 billion or a 13% year-on-year growth. So with that, I'll now turn the call over to Kirsten.

speaker
Kirsten Spears
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Hawk. Let me now provide additional detail on our financial performance. Net revenue was a record $6.7 billion for the quarter, up 14% from a year ago. Gross margins were 73% of revenue in the quarter and up approximately 30 basis points year-on-year. Operating expenses were $1.1 billion, down 8% year on year, reflective of the full benefit of the completed Symantec integration. Operating income from continuing operations for the quarter was $3.8 billion and is up 23% from a year ago. Operating margin was 57% of revenue, up 420 basis points year on year. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.9 billion, or 59% of revenue, This figure excludes $138 million of depreciation. Now a review of the P&L for our two segments. Revenue for semiconductor solutions was $4.9 billion and represented 74 percent of total revenue in the quarter. This was up 17 percent year-on-year. Gross margins for semiconductor solutions were approximately 67 percent in the quarter up to 20 basis points year-on-year, notwithstanding the higher mix of lower margin wireless revenue. Operating expenses were $750 million in Q1, down 3% year-on-year as we invested in R&D and streamlined SG&A. Because of this, operating margins increased to 52% in Q1, up 350 basis points year-on-year. So while semiconductor revenue was up 17%, Operating profit grew 25%, all organic. Moving to the P&L for our infrastructure software segment. Revenue for infrastructure software was $1.7 billion and represented 26% of revenue. This was up 5% year on year. Gross margins for infrastructure software were 90% in the quarter, up 190 basis points year over year. Operating expenses were $346 million in the quarter, down 18% year-on-year as we've completed the integration of Symantec. Operating profit was up 17% year-on-year on top-line growth of 5%. Operating margins was 70% in Q1, up 740 basis points year-over-year. Moving to cash flow. Pre-cash flow in the first quarter was approximately $3 billion, representing 45% of revenue. This is up 35% year-over-year as we carefully manage working capital. Day sales outstanding were 35 days in the first quarter compared to 57 days a year ago. We ended the quarter with inventory of $952 million, a decrease of $51 million or 5% from the end of the prior quarter. We should also note in Q1 we spent $114 million on capital expenditures. On the financing front, we extended our weighted average debt maturity to approximately nine years from six by issuing new notes that we used to refinance and redeem existing debt. Our weighted average coupon increased about 23 basis points to 3.8%. We ended the quarter with $9.6 billion of cash and $41.9 billion of debt, of which $843 million is short term. Turning to capital allocation, in the quarter we paid our common stockholders $1.5 billion of cash dividends. We also paid $225 million in withholding taxes due on vesting of employee equity, resulting in the elimination of approximately 521,000 ABGO shares. We ended the quarter with $408 million outstanding common shares and $450 million diluted shares. Note that we expect the diluted share count to be $450 million in Q2. Based on current business trends and conditions, our guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 21 is for consolidated net revenues of $6.5 billion and adjusted EBITDA of approximately 59% of projected revenue. That concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, please open up the call for questions.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from Ross Seymour with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ross Seymour
Deutsche Bank

Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Hawk, some good color on the supply side of the equation and a little bit about your lead times extending. I wanted to dive a little bit into that. Last quarter you talked about a backlog. I think the number was $14 billion. Can you talk a little bit about the composition of your backlog today, how it is on an absolute level, and the sustainability of it as investors are wondering if this demand is just too good to be sustainable, and what does it mean to excess bookings, double ordering, that sort of inventory digestion that will inevitably follow thereafter?

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Well, that's a very interesting question, a very, very appropriate question at this time. And as I said, we have had, as I indicated, we started this process almost nine months ago of seeing demand that are quite strong, and we started a process of thinking how we best ensure very, very good use of our supply chain capacity. And basically, as I said, we went through this process rigorously scrubbing our backlog. And by the way, our entire backlog, virtually our entire backlog, follow a set of terms, a key set of terms we mentioned before, which is non-cancellable for any of the customers who booked us. And they still apply, more so than ever. So double bookings, from our point of view, it's never been an issue. And as we stretch out lead times, we are seeing customers, obviously, booked for delivery dates, for customer request dates that are further out. So that makes sense, too. And that's why it makes the process of being able to match customer consumption as close as we could do it against what we supply to be something that makes sense. And we've done that, and I think we are fairly, we could always do better, but we feel pretty good that we have a reasonable process in place that ensures that our customers get their products. And maybe just in time, but they do get their products when they need it. And we believe we have managed this process of supply, demand, and imbalance very, very well as I indicated. And in fact, as I meant to repeat the point I highlighted, our revenue year on year in Q1 was up 17%, but as I also indicated, our bookings was up 63%. That by itself proves there is a lot of demand, and people are booking out very far. We are virtually 90% booked for 2021. And if you laid out what they need, and we believe This is real, because they can't cancel it. And obviously in order to reach that point, to one of your points, has our backlog as we begin Q2 increased from when we began Q1? Yes, it has. It has, and quite significantly. As we start to see lead times even stretch out more. And the strength, we believe, of our products not only products that are incumbent and used today, but what is coming down the pipe as next generation products, which have already released, but await launching, is proven by the fact that we have customers, many of them, and reflecting our backlog, who are willing to book out for delivery of those products out through the rest of 2021.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Harland Sir with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

speaker
Harland Sir
JP Morgan

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Hawk, you know, the biggest concern by investors right now is your ability to drive growth in the seasonally stronger second half of your fiscal year, your July and October quarters. when you start to ramp into your flagship smartphone customers. If I just apply normal seasonal trends in wireless combined with, let's say, sustained networking strength and, as you mentioned, recovery and storage, that would get me revenues in the second half in that sort of $6.7 billion range. And now I'm not asking you to endorse those numbers, but I guess the question is, from a supply chain perspective, has the team secured enough capacity to drive higher revenues in July and October quarter if your backlog supported that profile?

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

You are really asking me to guide you, don't you? And I'm not guiding you. But I do understand your question, and you have seen in my prepared remarks just earlier of where we see ourselves planning are the trend to go. I've also specifically mentioned where we are manufacturing like FBAR in-house, which is a big part of what is the upcycle in the seasonal upcycle in the back half on wireless side that we have put in place, the capacity to handle it. The simple answer to your question is Yes, we have done a decent job, as I said, over the last six months, and we continue to do a decent job of being able to meet the critical needs of all our customers.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Vivek Arya with Bank of America Securities. Go ahead, please.

speaker
Vivek Arya
Bank of America Securities

Thanks for taking my question. Hawk, you mentioned you expected this 30%, 40% kind of year-on-year growth rates in wireless to sustain in the back half. I was hoping if you could give us some color on what kind of content growth you are expecting this year. And then looking forward, how much does Broadcom benefit from all these C-band spectrum auctions that were conducted recently? I assume that's more of an out-of-year benefit.

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

On the latter part, yes, it's an alpha, yes. These things don't get implemented so fast. And on the former part of your question, I can answer that. I'm sorry for obvious reasons. It's too early. We'll tell you about it when the time is appropriate. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from John Pitzer with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

speaker
John Pitzer
Credit Suisse

Yeah, thanks for letting me ask the question. Hawk, I just want to get back to the supply-demand imbalance. You did a really good job kind of explaining how you guys are trying to cull your backlog. I'm kind of curious, as you look out over the next couple of quarters, when do you think supply will catch up to demand enough, such as your customers don't feel obligated to have to build that cushion?

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Another way of answering that question, John, I think is When you see lead time to reduce, maybe to reduce and perhaps normalize, that's probably the other way of looking at that equation. And right now, I don't know the answer to that. What we do know is we have extended lead time today in place, and we've been extending the lead time over the past several months, as I indicated. And we have a fairly extended lead time today. And we're getting the bookings from the customer. And when the bookings disappear is probably when you know you're headed to a situation of demand starting to disappear. We have not reached that point yet. Far from it at this point.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Stacy Rescon with Bernstein Research. Please go ahead.

speaker
Stacy Rescon
Bernstein Research

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So, Hawk, you're saying that you're stretching out lead times. I get it, but I think before you told us the lead times were six months. So if you're stretching them out, where are they actually sitting today, and how does that maybe vary by end mark? And I guess to that end, you said you're kind of convinced that what you're shipping now sort of represents end-user consumptions. How do you actually have any visibility into that? And do you think the users, I mean, are the products actually going into end products? How do you know the users aren't stockpiling them and ordering them while they can? How do you have any visibility into what they're doing with them?

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

That's a hell of a good question, by the way. And it cuts to the core of the work we've been doing. We've never been working harder simply because, number one, it's Don't forget, we do supply, I mean we supply a range of products and we do supply to a bunch of customers. But keep in mind, if I could remind you of the business model we have built up, the structure we have built up. We provide technology leadership products in multiple verticals, mostly connectivity, into the IT space. And where we are, we're the leader. Where we play, we tend to be leader. And we play with leading customers worldwide. We know who those guys are. We know their level of consumption. And in many areas where we go, and we're talking end user demand. We're not talking about middlemen like distributors for sure. We indicated we don't, for our leading customers, we don't go to distributors. And for OEMs, we track that because who they sell that end demand, that goes for our products to OEMs. is where it counts at the end of the day. And in many cases, in one segment in particular, server storage, but it also applies to some extent and part of our networking business and to a much lesser extent in our broadband business, for sure. We actually see the difference in terms of whether it's just inventory depletion at original equipment manufacturers or even buffer inventories sitting in end users versus actually using the products in the same quarter we ship them the products. We track that. And that's really, and for us, it's not that complex when you think about our revenues. In semiconductors, 75% of our revenues really goes to just over 100 customers worldwide. We can track that.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

speaker
Craig Hettenbach
Morgan Stanley

Yes, appreciate the color on the software bookings relative to revenue. Now that you have Symantec for a year and CA for a couple years, can you just talk about the confidence of the growth rates on a longer-term basis that you're talking about? I know you touched on the 90% recurring, but just really how the global logic counts or how that transition is playing out.

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Yes. As I indicated in my prepared remarks on some of the key metrics we go by, we feel very, very good about those two. We feel very good that things are moving along, tracking along where we, both the business and financial model, where we expect them to go, which is about focusing on core customers and truly uplifting capacity, entitlements, products, to those core customers across our portfolio. And you've seen the metrics we indicated, the increase. And on non-core, what I said previously is we do see a level of attrition manageable, but it won't. And as the attrition is offset by improvement in core, we expect to be able to reach a stabilization, as I said, around mid-single digits on a very consistent basis. And we have seen that two years now, that we have gone through over two years now, and we've seen that happen. We have seen eight quarters, nine quarters to be exact, of that level of performance, and it's a great line of sight. The other thing I might add that is also interesting, and I know stating the obvious to some extent is, most of all our customers, if not all of them, are enterprises, even in this environment. You heard what I thought about enterprise in semiconductors and how the different approach, the different characteristics and behavior enterprises have in terms of demand requirements in this environment of a pandemic work from home compared to telcos, broadband, and public cloud. We don't see that in software, in the infrastructure software we have, simply because these are mission-critical products, tools, embedded in the business process of these largest enterprises in the world who, if anything else during this environment, consume more of those products rather than less.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Timothy Arcuri with UBS. Please go ahead.

speaker
Timothy Arcuri
UBS

Hi, thanks a lot. I guess I also had a question on the supply-demand. Hawk, you know, orders obviously were up quite a bit in fiscal Q1, you know, Q1Q, given that revenue was up and backlog, I think you said, was up significantly. So as you look into fiscal Q2, wireless orders are obviously going to come down a lot. So I'm wondering if orders in the other parts of the business are going to be strong enough such that total orders will be up in fiscal Q2.

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Again, thanks. Tim, when you say orders, and I hear you say orders, let me say the orders as we ramp up to this current generation of phones, for large North American customer as we ramp it up for this current generation. Bookings started ramping up as early as Q3, really shot up in Q4, and started declining late Q4 and Q1. So bookings was already declining. And when I indicated Q1 bookings, year-on-year improvement of 80%, And what I'm also saying is that is netting out a decline in bookings of our wireless in a fairly substantial manner, as you would expect seasonally. So the answer is yes. What we are seeing, what I'm reflecting out to you guys, the extent I show those bookings of revenue is the bookings that we're showing in Q1 which is fairly strong, reflects declining bookings in wireless as we all fully expect seasonally during that timeframe.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Toshia Hari with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

speaker
Toshia Hari
Goldman Sachs

Thanks so much for taking the question. Hawk, I wanted to ask about capital allocation. You know, the dividend component is pretty predictable, but outside of the dividend, how are you thinking about, you know, paying down debt, buying back stock, and M&A and software? You know, the markets are clearly, you know, very volatile right now, but how are you thinking about those three buckets on a relative basis? Thank you.

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

That's a very interesting question. I was wondering when one of you guys will get to that, and sure enough, you're right. We are accumulating cash, and you heard Kirsten say, Mention it. We are generating cash. In Q1, we generated $3 billion of cash. And Q1 or so is the time we pay out bonuses to all our employees. So if I normalize that, we're generating at $3.5 billion a quarter. It's a free cash flow. So half of it goes to dividends, or almost half of it, as you correctly said, so that we determine. And the other half, for now, we are putting into an increasing cash portfolio. And you're right. We endowed business model and strategy, as you know, long-term is to acquire and add on to our portfolio, add on to our earning stream for our shareholders. and we take that very seriously, and we continue to look at it very seriously. And this takes time, and we continue to look at it, and we will take an approach, my point, that we would be somewhat flexible to, that as we accumulate cash, and by end of this fiscal year, we haven't done an acquisition, Well, obviously, take a hard look at our two other choices. One is pay down debt, and that may even happen before then, pay down debt. But interest rates are very low, and money is very available, and we're still very investment-grade. And the other alternative is buyback shares. And all of these are open.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Blaine Curtis with Barclays. Please go ahead.

speaker
Blaine Curtis
Barclays

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Hawk, I was just curious a little bit more on the wireless. We don't have the right compares year over year. So maybe if you just give us a little color as to what you're expecting. I just don't know what that 30% to 40% year over year really kind of compares to. So maybe just some color as to what you're seeing for that wireless channel versus normal seasonal patterns that would help us kind of dial in as to what you're really saying for April.

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Well, I ain't saying... indicated in my prepared remarks when it comes to wireless. This is for 2021. Don't forget there is some timing adjustment by quarter to blame in the sense that what used to be a peak quarter in our wireless seasonality of a fiscal Q4 in In this recent generation, the peak quarter, as I indicated, became Q1 of 21. So obviously, things roll down perhaps somewhat slower. And because we're also assuming, as it rolls down slower in the course of fiscal 21, that we have to assume, for lack of knowing no better, that we might be back to a normal seasonal cadence of a wireless launch of new phones and assume that you will be back to that normal cadence. So 21 might look kind of compressed, don't you think? So in terms of revenue, in terms of availability of a market for us to address. And then couple that with a content increase between 20 and 21, you therefore could understand why I indicated that for the rest of 21, begin to look like a fairly significant 30 to 40% increase on a year-on-year basis as we run through the remaining quarters of 21.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from CJ Muse with Evercore. Please go ahead.

speaker
CJ Muse
Evercore

Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. I guess wanted to dig a little into your EBITDA margin guide. And, you know, it would suggest that, you know, either gross margins are flat, which would not seem likely given the fall off in wireless or OpEx is moving higher. Can you kind of walk through the moving parts there? And, you know, as part of that, can you help us understand how to model gross margins and outbacks through the remainder of the fiscal year.

speaker
Kirsten Spears
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you. So in Q1, we said that from year over year, gross margins were up 30 basis points. And that's largely because of wireless. So when you look at Q2, we'll have less wireless revenues in the margin mix. And so therefore, look back at Q4, how I would model Q2. And then as you look at margins for the rest of the year, it would be similar. to Q2. Look back at Q4 and then consider the fact that we'll have, you know, probably more normal seasonality on wireless towards the second half.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

speaker
Harsh Kumar
Piper Sandler

Yeah. Hey, thank you. Hey, guys. Congratulations. Solid numbers. I've got a question for you. I'm trying to wrap my head around some stunning numbers you threw out for networking. 80% increase in bookings, some 62% odd sequential increase. I appreciate the process of identifying real demand. So with that, is there something going on in bookings that is specific to your end markets or your product set that is driving it? Could you just highlight what is going on there?

speaker
Hock Tan
President and CEO

Yeah, great question. And I've been dancing around saying it in nice words. Let me call it directly. People need our products. Each of our products, in particular, whether it's broadband or networking, our customers, our end-user customers, truly need the products. I mean, they're in the business. They're in the business of launching more broadband, improving their networks. The cloud guys have to scale out data centers because there's more demand for hosting and demand from public cloud in this work-from-home environment of social media and also online retail and everything else. So they need to buy those products of ours, whether it's the current generation which we have that works or soon to be the next generation. So if we stretch our lead time to an extended basis, the thinking in their mind is these are non-cancellable orders. Do I still need it? six months, nine months from now. If they need it, they place an order. Otherwise, they have a gap in being able to scale out capacity or scale out launches. They'll do that. It's a real test of how strong our product franchises and how mission critical it is to our end users. And so as we stretch our lead time, whether it goes from three months to six months to eight months, they just book what they need eight months out, or first three months out first, then six months out, then eight months out. And you only do that if you truly believe you need that product to enable your business. And what I'm trying to say is, If nothing more fundamental than why we are seeing as we stretch out lead time because we match it against our ability to get those products out is a great way to indicate whether our products are needed. They don't need it now as much as people might seem to indicate. They may need it three, six months from now, but they're willing to lock in and say they need it so that we can manage our supply chain to get them those products, which is why I'm also saying the management of a supply chain to match demand is not that extreme an example as may be made out there that you hear around. It's all about being able to tell your customers and get your customers to behave in a rational manner and for us to manage it in a rational manner. I mean, if I should have my entire backlog today, assuming I can even do that, of course they'll take it because they're all in the pending mode. But if on the other side they know they can get it when they need it six months from now, they're happy to wait until then. Meanwhile, they book it ahead of time because that's what I need to reserve my capacity. And that's the perspective I want to give to you guys. It is what it is. This is not a panic mode. This is a very structured and reasonable process which we believe at the end of it all still shows real underlying demand and the way we want to report it.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ms. Yu for closing remarks.

speaker
G.U. Yu
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Operator. In closing, please note that Broadcom and Morgan Stanley will be hosting a presentation on our broadband business on Monday, April 12th after market close. Hawk will be joined by Rich Nelson and Greg Fisher, general managers of our broadband businesses. That will conclude our earnings call today. Thank you all for joining. Operator, you may end the call.

speaker
Operator
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

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