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spk11: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the conference call to review fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sam Franklin, Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Global Foundry's fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 earnings call. On the call with me today are Dr. Thomas Caulfield, CEO, and David Reeder, CFO. A short while ago, we released GF's fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results, which are available on our website at investors.gf.com, along with today's accompanying slide presentation. This call is being recorded and a replay will be made available on our investor relations webpage. During this call, we'll present both IFRS and adjusted non-IFRS financial measures. The most comparable IFRS measures and reconciliations for adjusted non-IFRS measures are available in today's press release and accompanying slides. I'd remind you that these financial results are unaudited and subject to change. Certain statements on today's call may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Such statements can be identified by terms such as believe, expect, intend, anticipate, and may, or by the use of the future tense. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we made today. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today, as well as risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings, including in the sections under the caption, Risk Factors, in our annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 31, 2022, and on our current reports on Form 6K filed with the SEC. We'll begin today's call with Tom providing a summary update on the current business environment and technologies, following which Dave will provide details on our end markets and fourth quarter and full year 2022 results, and also provide first quarter 2023 guidance. We'll then open the call for questions. We request that you please limit your questions to one with one follow-up. I'll now turn the call over to Tom for his prepared remarks.
spk18: Thank you, Sam, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter earnings call. I would like to start by reflecting on our first full year as a public company. October 28, 2022 marked the one-year anniversary of our listing on the NASDAQ, and by any measure, it's been a strong year for GF. I'm immensely proud of our team across the globe for their commitment and dedication in helping GF take significant steps towards delivering our long-term strategic objectives that we set out prior to our IPO. GF continues to position itself as a crucial enabler of the semiconductor supply chain, and we remain deeply committed to working with our customers in providing feature-rich, differentiated, and innovative technology solutions to meet the long-term demand trends across each of the end markets that we serve. Simply put, We build capacity for our differentiated offerings our customers want, where they want it, and in partnership engagement that creates this capacity with the best economics for both partners. We've continued to implement a long-term partnership-driven model with our industry, which is driving improved visibility for our business through this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. In 2022, we added 10 additional customers under long-term agreement and secured more than $5 billion of incremental lifetime revenue. Going forward, we continue to see strong alignment between our customers' needs for certainty and security of supply and our capacity to provide long-term, dedicated foundry services. We are proud to have participated in the development and passage of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. This is the most important piece of legislation for our industry in recent times and we expect to continue playing a key role in delivering targeted capacity critical to the reshoring of supply within the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem. Finally, we continue the expansion of our global footprint to align with our customers' committed demands, and in 2022, we successfully delivered incremental capacity at our facilities in Singapore and Dresden, Germany. As we look to 2023 and beyond, we remain steadfast with our principles and agile as an organization by focusing on incremental capacity to meet our customers' needs. Let me now touch on our results. We exceeded the high end of our November provided guidance for both top line and profitability as our teams continue to deliver our strategic and financial priorities, helping us bring our first year as a public company to a very successful close. In the fourth quarter, GF revenue grew 14% year over year, driven by richer mix and average selling prices, as well as higher non-waiver revenue. This revenue growth, coupled with strong operational execution, resulted in improvement to adjusted gross margin to 30.1% in the quarter, which is an 8.6-point improvement from the year-ago period. As a result, we delivered adjusted earnings per share of $1.44, which was the high end of our guidance range and includes the proceeds from the sale of our East Fishkill FAB to OnSemi. Dave will provide more color on our financials in his section. Let me now move to providing a brief update on the current business environment. Despite our record output in 2022, we remain cautious regarding the macroeconomic headwinds facing our industry in the first half of 2023. Our business is not immune from these headwinds. As we communicated in our third quarter update, We took the decision to proactively put in place a restructuring plan, including a number of cost containment initiatives, which we began to implement during the fourth quarter. These initiatives are aimed at all aspects of our business, and as we head into 2023, we will continue to focus on ways that we can improve our productivity, reduce input costs, and position GF to emerge even stronger from the current macroeconomic environment. Longer term, GF's growth drivers remain firmly intact, and we continue to see opportunities to gain share in our larger end markets, such as premium tier smart mobile devices, as well as in critical growth segments such as automotive and industrial IoT. In automotive, we are excited to be playing an important role on the development and expansion of the market for autonomous, connected, and electrified vehicles. We continue to grow our differentiated offerings to our customers across automotive applications such as processing, sensing, safety, infotainment, and battery management. As you may have seen last week, we are extremely pleased to report that General Motors has entered into a long-term agreement with GF to secure a capacity corridor in our advanced fab in upstate New York for GM's U.S. supply chain. This first-of-its-kind multi-year agreement for GF brings a critical manufacturing process to the U.S. and supports GM's strategy to reduce the number of unique chips needed to power increasingly complex and tech-laden vehicles through the end of the decade. With this strategy, we expect to produce chips in higher volumes with better quality, predictability, and the best economics. In aggregate, our LTAs have increased from the prior quarter as the number of customers under LTA has grown from 38 to 40 and the total value of these LTAs now at approximately $27.5 billion. Additionally, the amount of committed prepayment and capacity reservation fees have increased 34% from a quarter ago to approximately $5 billion. Our LTAs continue to serve as a solid foundation for working with our customers during times of demand uncertainty. Due to the widely reported inventory correction, in some cases, we have entered into negotiation with our customers to manage their short-term demand needs while working to preserve the intended economics and long-term value under these contracts. As we reported in our third quarter earnings call, we expect this can be accomplished through adjustments to the contract, including duration, ASPs, mix, delivery profiles, and in some cases, underutilization payments. I will now provide a brief update on our recent technology achievements. In the fourth quarter, we completed six technology qualifications, bringing our total for the year to 27. On our 45 nanometer silicon photonics platform, we added nine additional features in the quarter. Additionally, we had five more customer tape outs on 45 CLO, bringing our total for 2022 to 16. This clearly demonstrates the aggressive adoption of this differentiated technology solution. And finally, in November, GF and Purdue University announced a strategic partnership to strengthen and expand collaboration on semiconductor research and education with a joint focus on R&D. This relationship with Purdue exemplifies our growing network of R&D collaborations as part of our broader GF Labs initiative that we launched in 2022. To summarize, We successfully closed out Q4 with a delivery of record financial performance in 2022, our first full year as a public company. Despite the current economic challenges, we are well positioned to achieve our long-term strategic model and continue to work with our customers to develop and manufacture innovative, differentiated solutions. With that, let me turn it over to Dave.
spk09: Thank you, Tom, and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. For the remainder of the call, including guidance, I will reference adjusted metrics which exclude stock-based compensation and restructuring charges. Our fourth quarter results exceeded the guidance we provided in our last quarterly update. Fourth quarter revenue was approximately $2.1 billion, an increase of 14% year-over-year. We shipped approximately 580,000 300-millimeter equivalent wafers in the quarter, and ASP, average selling price per wafer, increased approximately 20% year-over-year, driven by ramping long-term customer agreements, with better pricing, as well as continued improvement in product mix. Wafer revenue from our end markets accounted for approximately 88% of total revenue. Non-wafer revenue, which includes revenue from our reticles, non-recurring engineering, expedite fees, and other items, accounted for approximately 12% of total revenue for the fourth quarter, consistent with our expectations. For the full year, I am pleased to report that 2022 was a record year for GlobalFoundries. Revenue came in at approximately $8.1 billion, up 23% year over year, and an increase of approximately $1.5 billion from the previous year. We shipped approximately 2.5 million 300-millimeter equivalent wafers, a 4% increase from 2021, and ASP per wafer increased 17% year over year. Let me now provide an update on our revenue buy-in markets. For the fourth quarter, and as expected, smart mobile devices represented approximately 39% of the quarter's total revenue. Smart mobile devices' fourth quarter revenue declined 7% from the prior year period, principally driven by reduced volumes in the low- to mid-tier smartphone segments. This decline was partially offset by higher ASPs, premium-tier mix growth, and continued content growth in our RF transceiver, audio, and specialty power products. Full year 2022 revenue for smart mobile devices grew 11% year over year, driven by higher ASPs and better premium tier mix, as we continued to execute our strategy to grow content in the premium handset market. Our long-term customer agreements helped us navigate the challenging demand environment by reducing volatility and improving certainty. a trend we expect to continue. Our growth compared favorably to the broader 2022 handset market, which declined 8% year over year with respect to handset shipments. Looking ahead to 2023, we expect the first quarter to represent the low point for smart mobile device demand, with the well-publicized inventory burn expected to conclude towards the end of the first half, followed by sequential growth in the second half of 2023. Continued growth in the 5G handset market is expected to be a tailwind in 2023, and we expect to maintain our market-leading positions in RF front-end performance and premium-tier smartphone features. Moving on to home and industrial IoT. In the fourth quarter, revenue for the home and industrial IoT market grew approximately 64% year-over-year, representing approximately 20% of the quarter's total revenue. Strong year-over-year growth in this end market was driven mainly by higher ASPs from our LTAs and meaningfully higher volumes from target growth in key applications, such as smart cards for digital payments and wireless connectivity. Full-year home and industrial IoT revenues grew 68% year-over-year, which can be attributed to approximately 30% volume growth, with remainder driven by ASP and MIX. Home and industrial IoT was the fastest-growing end market for GF in 2022. Looking ahead to 2023, we expect growth to continue for smart card applications, along with rising customer demands for next-generation analog and mixed-signal technologies within our aerospace and defense end markets. Moving now to automotive, which, as Tom outlined, has been a key growth segment for us. Fourth quarter revenue grew about 24% year over year, representing approximately 5% of the quarter's total revenue. Growth was driven by a strong ramp across our automotive processing, sensing, and vehicle infrastructure technologies. Full year automotive revenue grew about 30% year over year in 2022, and we expect continued growth in 2023. Based on our current design wins and ramp profile, we now expect almost $1 billion of automotive revenue in 2023. Next, our communications infrastructure and data center end market, where fourth quarter revenue grew approximately 27% year-over-year and comprised approximately 18% of the quarter's total revenue, driven by a combination of better ASPs and mix, as well as higher volume. Growth in the quarter was primarily driven by increased network infrastructure and data center processing demand. For the full year 2022, revenue grew 43% year over year, driven by increased edge to data center communication traffic, 4G and 5G deployment, as well as overall increased demand for data center capacity. Like most other end markets, we expect data center demand to decline in the first half of 2023. Finally, our personal compute end market was flat year over year in the fourth quarter and comprised approximately 5% of the quarter's total revenue. For fiscal year 2022, year over year revenue declined approximately 38%. We expect this end market to continue to decline in 2023. As communicated in our third quarter update, we recognize the need to undertake a proactive assessment of our cost base in response to the industry's inventory correction as well as macroeconomic and inflationary headwinds. During the fourth quarter, we implemented several initiatives aimed at achieving greater efficiencies, productivity gains, and structural cost savings. These initiatives are projected to deliver approximately $110 million of savings in 2023. Additional savings initiatives are expected to be implemented throughout the year. Also in the fourth quarter, approximately $94 million of restructuring charges were incurred as part of the implemented cost savings initiatives. The financial results for the fourth quarter are presented on an adjusted basis, which exclude these charges. For the fourth quarter, we delivered adjusted gross profit of $633 million, which translates into approximately 30.1% adjusted gross margins. The 8.6 point year over year improvement was driven by higher ASPs and a richer mix, which more than offset the inflationary headwinds in 2022. For the full year, we delivered adjusted gross profit of 2.3 billion and gross margin of 28.4%, equating to a 12.2 point uplift from 2021. Operating expenses for the fourth quarter represented approximately 10% of total revenue. R&D for the quarter was down sequentially to approximately 103 million, and SG&A also declined to approximately 105 million. Total operating expenses were $208 million. We delivered operating profit of 425 million for the quarter, which translates into an approximately 20.2% adjusted operating margin, roughly 12.5 points better than the year-ago period and above the high end of our guided range. For the full year, GF delivered operating profit of $1.4 billion, which translates into a 17.8% operating margin and improvement of roughly 15 points year over year. Fourth quarter net interest and other expenses was $15 million, and we incurred a tax expense of $13 million in the quarter. We delivered fourth quarter adjusted net income of approximately $800 million, an increase of approximately $702 million from the year-ago period. At the end of the fourth quarter, we closed the sale of our East Fishkill facility to ON Semiconductor and recorded a gain of sale of $403 million just above the upper end of the guided range. As a result, we reported adjusted diluted earnings of $1.44 per share for the fourth quarter. On a full year basis, GF delivered adjusted net income of approximately $1.72 billion and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.11. We delivered record fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of approximately $821 million with a margin of 39.1%. Adjusted EBITDA grew $237 million year over year on $254 million of incremental revenue growth representing approximately 93% fall through. Full year adjusted EBITDA was $3.1 billion with an EBITDA margin of 38.1% and improvement of about 10 points over the previous year. Let me now provide some key balance sheet and cash flow metrics. Cash flow from operations for the fourth quarter was $491 million, For the full year, cash flow from operations was $2.6 billion. Gross capex for the quarter was roughly $991 million or roughly 47% of revenue. Full year capex for 2022 was approximately $3.1 billion or 38% of revenue. At the end of the fourth quarter, our combined total of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities stood at approximately $3.3 billion We also have a $1 billion revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn. Next, let me provide you with our outlook for the first quarter. We expect total GF revenue to be between $1.81 and $1.85 billion. Of this, we expect non-waiver revenue to be approximately 12% of total revenue. We expect adjusted gross profit to be between $498 million and $527 million. We expect adjusted operating profit to be between $283 million and $322 million. Excluding share based compensation for the quarter, we expect total OPEX to be between $205 million and $215 million. At the midpoint of our First quarter guidance, we expect share-based compensation to be approximately $45 million, of which roughly $16 million is related to cost of goods sold, and approximately $29 million is related to OPEX. We expect the tax expense, net interest, and other expense for the quarter to be between $25 million and $30 million. We expect adjusted net income to be between $252 million and $297 million. On a fully diluted share count of approximately 555 million shares, we expect adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter to be between 45 and 53 cents. For the first quarter, we expect depreciation and amortization to be roughly $400 million, of which approximately 90% is related to the cost of goods sold. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $667 million and $722 million. For the full year 2023, we expect CapEx to be approximately $2.25 billion, which aligns with our disciplined and demand-driven philosophy. We expect the CapEx profile to be more heavily weighted towards the first half of the year. And on a full year basis, we expect to be free cash flow positive. To summarize the quarter and the year, strong operational execution enabled us to not only deliver fourth quarter results that were better than our guidance, but also deliver a record year of financial performance for the company. We are continuing to execute the strategic plan we outlined to our stakeholders at our IPO and remain well positioned to achieve our long-term model. With that, let's open the call for Q&A. Operator?
spk11: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
spk13: Our first question comes from Mark Lipicis with Jefferies.
spk11: Your line is now open.
spk23: Hi. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the nice results. First question maybe for Tom. Can you talk qualitatively about activity around your long-term agreements? It seems on the one hand some of your customers are getting negatively impacted by the cycle. But on the other hand, you know, secular trends on capacity and consolidation, the geopolitical environment might be driving more customers to you. So I'm wondering if you could describe how those two are netting out as you engage with your customers in the medium term. And I guess what I'm getting at, it seems like the LTAs pick up every quarter. Do you expect that to continue through the year? And is there a type of customer, either by vertical market or geography, that seems to have a higher motivation? to sign up for the LTAs?
spk18: Well, there's lots on fact there, Mark. Good morning. So let me first start with a little context around these LTAs. We think of them as contracts that were signed in 2021, and that's where their life began. Actually, this is a five-year journey. When we pivoted the company in 2018, decided to become a single-source differentiated type of semiconductor manufacturer, We had to do a couple of things with our customers. We had to convince them in our execution. We had to convince them that we had the financial wherewithal to be around for them for the long term and develop those partnerships. And so as they started to get more confidence in GS and relied on us for single sourcing key products for them, that created a balanced relationship where we needed each other. Our customers needed security supply. We wanted security of knowing that If we're going to invest for capacity, that we would have the ability to use that capacity to service our customers. And so what you're seeing now is the natural consequence of this journey we've been on as customers signing out and looking longer term, securing their future with GF. Now, you can imagine in a moment that we're in now where there's the softening that you hear about the inventory correction, that customers are going to be a little bit more cautious as they go forward to plan exactly when they want. you know, new capacity, extending LTAs. Those discussions go on all the time. And as you can see, in the fourth quarter, we signed additional long-term agreements. We just announced a really important one with GAF in segments that, you know, clearly see their strength in the near-term and the long-term. So I think the LTAs are doing exactly, exactly what we talked about in our roadshow over a year ago, N3 2022. They're creating security for both businesses
spk14: to have long-term supply and to work through cycles like this in partnership mode. That's very helpful.
spk23: Thank you for that. And Tommy, you also had described about some of the dynamics around customers asking for relief or some modifications on these. Is there a case study that you can describe that characterizes a classic way you are dealing with that scenario as your customers who have signed up with the LTAs are coming to you and asking you for help on that. Thank you.
spk18: Yeah, I think the classic is, protecting the names of the innocent here, is that one of the customers, it was like the complete range of levers we had. One, there was some remixing going on, softness on one particular technology node and features we provided. where they had more opportunity than others, so we were able to shift some of their volumes from one platform to another. They remixed a little bit later in time and created a duration, and then there was a part of that was, hey, we have some near-term underutilization. Let's just give you an underutilization fee for that. The key is that the economic intent of these contracts are always getting fulfilled And we use these levers to go create that opportunity to work in partnership with our customers.
spk14: Very helpful. Thank you.
spk13: Please stand by for our next question.
spk11: Our next question comes from Joseph Moore with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
spk02: Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the GM deal and just in general what those conversations are like. I know you've had other OEM deals with autos as well. I feel like two or three years ago, they probably didn't know who the foundry suppliers were. So how directly do you think they're driving their semiconductor suppliers to use Western foundries? And just maybe some insight into how those conversations came about and how pervasive they could be.
spk18: Good morning, Joe. I wouldn't put it as just driving the Western foundry. I think if you take a step back, the auto industry is looking forward and looking at the capacity that's been put in place over the last two decades in the areas where we play and clearly see that investment needs to be made. There isn't enough of this capacity. Again, we play for 12 nanometer and above and getting ahead of that curve and saying, okay, how do we go create that capacity because new investment is going to be needed. And as they start to understand more and more about the economics of this, it's better to create that capacity in partnership with the foundry and then direct their supply chain to use that capacity. So for the automaker, let's first decide what are the important platforms to create this capacity on that have legs over the next decade. Decide how much you want, where you want it, and then create this partnership mode to make sure it happens at the best economics. That's the model. We called it a first of a kind with General Motors. It's not last of a kind. I think this is a winning model because it creates the opportunity to minimize inefficiencies of the economics of a very steep or broad ecosystem where costs get passed through and marked up without value being added, investment costs, that is. So we think this is a winning model. We think we'll see more of this coming along. I hope that helps, Joe.
spk02: Yeah, that does. Thank you. And then I guess as you look at your capacity in the next couple of quarters, you're obviously seeing some capacity free up from smartphone-oriented technologies. Would you still say you're sold out on the specialty process technologies that supply the auto industry? And are you limited in your ability to serve that near term?
spk18: Specifically the auto, all of our capacity is what we call fungible, able to address all the demand we have on auto. So for every wafer we could make to our auto business, we can sell. And that's where we're constantly looking and putting pressure on our manufacturing teams to figure out how they can make more of them.
spk09: And Joe, I think I would add on to that is if you listen to the prepared commentary, you would have heard us say that instead of saying that we would exit 2022, or 2023, excuse me, at an automotive revenue run rate of a billion dollars, we actually said in this quarter's prepared commentary that we would be about a billion dollars of automotive revenue in 2023. So that remixing that Tom just highlighted and that you kind of alluded to in your question, that is ongoing as we speak.
spk12: Great.
spk09: Thank you very much.
spk18: I want just to pile on that, Joe, and that revenue year on year 23 to 22 be, you know, greater than 2x growth.
spk14: Great. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Harlan Sir with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
spk17: Yeah. Good morning and congratulations on the solid execution. Your manufacturing lead times are quite long, right? You guys have to start way first, about a quarter ahead of target shipment. So I believe the team has pretty good visibility already into Q2. You gave us the puts and takes in the various segments, which is consistent, right, with your customer's demand profile. So if you put it all together, does the team still think a trough in total revenues this quarter or first half of the year is the most likely scenario? And does the team still believe that they can go revenues this calendar year?
spk09: Good morning, Harlan. Maybe I'll start that one, Tom, and then if you have anything to add on, you can build at the end. And look, we do believe that first half is the trough from a revenue perspective. We think it's most likely first quarter, but certainly from a first half perspective, we believe that that is the bottom. Based upon what our customers are telling us, based upon Our LTAs, and based upon I think what you all are seeing broadly in the industry, most of the industry is currently forecasting a recovery in the second half of this year. We've mentioned previously, and we still stick with that guidance, that we believe ASPs will be up modestly on a year-over-year basis. So really, if you're looking at growth for the year, it's really predicated upon that volume, and it's predicated upon a second-half recovery. which right now is what we're currently expecting. Tom, is there anything you'd add to that?
spk18: No, I would just reinforce that we're no smarter than everybody else. It's what our customers are telling us, what we're seeing in the industry, and that's what we're planning on.
spk17: Great. Thank you for that. And, you know, obviously it's a tough and it's an uncertain environment, but for the things that the team can control, right, process development, innovation, stronger customer engagement, manufacturing optimization. Is there a strategy in place to try and emerge from this downturn in a much stronger position and try to accelerate the move to or exceed your 40% gross margin target?
spk09: There is, Harlan. We outlined, I would like to think, a pretty comprehensive bridge both during the IPO roadshow as well as capital markets day. that bridge to how we get to our long-term financial model, which includes 40% gross margin. You know, I would actually say that kind of like to date, we've been ahead of that model, slightly ahead of that model where we expect it to be. We feel like we've made great progress and strides against it. We feel like we still have line of sight to achieve that model. To be able to achieve that model, you know, we've been adding capacity. So in 2020, we said we had about 2 million wafers of capacity. 2021, we built that up to about 2.4 million wafers. In 2022, about 2.6 million wafers of capacity. On the CAPEX that we're deploying this year, we'll have about 2.8 million wafers of capacity and still on track, even with reduced CAPEX, still on track to more than 3 million wafers of capacity in 2024. So as the industry works its way through a little bit of macroeconomic uncertainty and a little bit of inventory burn here in the first half of the year, and we start to get that utilization and absorption up, we feel like we're on a very good path towards those gross margin numbers that we've outlined in some pretty clear detail.
spk17: Oh, perfect. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
spk21: Thanks for taking my question. First one on gross margins. So the Q1 outlook, 28%, about 150 basis points above their expectations were. I was wondering, Dave, if you could give us some of the puts and takes. And from what you're describing, seems Q2 you know, revenue could be, you know, kind of at least a flattish. And if that is a scenario, then can gross margins continue to go up? Or is there anything on the utilization side or anything else that we should keep in mind to think of a gross margin trajectory for this year?
spk09: Sure. Good morning, Vivek. You know, I think when you think about gross margin, you obviously think about, you know, two big elements. One is ASP. which as we mentioned, we believe 23 will have modest ASP growth over 2022. And then the second element is really what you touched upon, which is utilization. So in the fourth quarter, utilization was in the mid-90s. For first quarter, we believe utilization is going to be, call it the mid-ish 80s to perhaps the high 80s from a utilization perspective. And we previously talked about how about every five points utilization was about two points of gross margin from a mathematical perspective. That's without necessarily taking a lot of actions. So I think sequentially what you're seeing is you're seeing us move from about 30% gross margin in the fourth quarter, moving to a midpoint in the first quarter of about 28%. And so what you're seeing from us is you're seeing us actually make progress towards that gross margin bridge, but obviously it's being offset a little bit based upon the utilization. So as utilizations improve throughout the year, and as we mentioned, we think first half is the bottom, then we believe that that will be the driver for increased gross margin will be that utilization figure and that absorption. Did you have a follow-up?
spk21: Yes, thanks. Second question is, just in the premium smartphone segment, What's your view of how much of your customer's component inventory is in the premium smartphone segment? Do you think Q1 is where it kind of clears out, or do you think there could be a little bit that persists into Q2, and then there is a seasonal back half assumption? Just curious, specifically in the premium smartphone segment, do you think we get to a supply-demand balance exiting Q1, or it could take until Q2 for that to happen?
spk09: I think if you were to maybe be a little bit more granular and look at it perhaps a bit on a monthly basis, we think some of that inventory starts to get cleared out towards the end of first quarter, so call it in the Marches period, and maybe it rolls over a little bit into the second quarter, maybe April, perhaps even May, specifically for the high end of smartphones. Ultimately, it depends on what's the sellout or the sell-through demand, but we do believe that that inventory starts to clear out of the channel in a more meaningful way towards the end of the first quarter and perhaps rolling over into the second quarter.
spk11: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Ross Seymour with DB. Your line is now open.
spk06: Hi, guys. Congrats on the solid results, and thanks for letting me ask a question. I just wanted to go back to something, Tom, you said earlier about the prepayments rose, I think, 34% sequentially. How do I reconcile those with the end-demand caution? Is this something where people are just having to pay up front for pushing out the duration? Because I otherwise would have expected kind of the urge to prepay or the need to kind of wane as some of the caution from your customers enters the equation. So any color there would be helpful.
spk18: Yeah, look, for me, it's pretty simple. This is single source business by and large. Customers are looking to secure their supply. In some cases, it requires investment. The only way the investment can be made and make economic sense for both parties is we both put our balance sheets in there. So the rated pace of some of these LTAs where they're talking about adding capacity will always get a little bit softer in the period we're in now just because of the uncertainty of when customers will want that growth. But that's what we're going through right now. And you can see even the fourth quarter of last year we were able to to ink some long-term agreements where customers had visibility, especially in the auto side of things, of what they wanted longer term.
spk09: And if I could build on that, I think when you think about that increase in the fourth quarter, Ross, call it 1.2, maybe it rounds to $1.3 billion, 34%, as you mentioned, to $5 billion of customer-committed funding. The LPAs that are being signed today are not for really capacity-based in kind of 23 and 24. It's really for capacity that's being added for ramps and really 25, 26, and 27. And so those committed customer funds, those are being deployed in the areas of capacity increases as well as process technology qualifications for the design wins associated with those LTAs. So the customers are looking through this kind of near-term demand perturbation They're looking through this near-term period. They're looking out into time, and they're saying, we believe that the industry will still be structurally short of capacity, especially in the technologies and the geographies where we would like to have it. And they're making the investments now to ensure that that supply chain is there in the future.
spk07: Thanks for that, Colin. I guess this is my...
spk06: Yeah, if I can. I just wanted to go into the CHIPS Act and the investment tax credit side of things. I think the CapEx numbers you gave are all on the growth side of things. I know you guys have been very committed to those programs, and Tom, you highlighted that earlier. But mechanically, how should we think about that starting to flow through and kind of timing and magnitude?
spk18: Well, let me tell you how we're going to put that funding to good use, and then I'll let David talk about how it flows through. Most importantly, the capital investment and free cash flow, and then maybe on top of that, a little bit of the P&L. We are in the process of bringing in a three-part proposal to leverage the TIPS funding for capacity expansion. One phase is in our 200-millimeter facility in Vermont, where we're remixing that technology more towards wide bandgap types of devices. and also to do some modernization of that facility to keep it strong going forward. We have a phase one expansion plan in our Fab 8 facility where we'll use the investment to fill out the existing floor space with additional tools for capacity. That's more or less where the GM capacity will be solutioned from. And then the last part of our proposal will be a new brick-and-mortar investment, modular expansion, in that very same Fab 8 facility in Malta, New York, to add somewhere between 350,000 to 500,000 wafers of capacity to meet much longer-term needs. That's the play for GF in this first phase of CHIPS funding. Dave, I'll hand it over to you to talk about the implications on free cash flow and P&L.
spk09: Yeah, so touching on the two elements, I think Tom covered CHIPS in some detail there, where we think for any funding or any CapEx in investment in the U.S., where we can get kind of 30% to 40%, we think, of a project refunded via the CHIPS Act. There's also the ITC. So the investment tax credit enables companies that deploy CapEx in the U.S., to claim back essentially 25% of the value of that CapEx. The way that it would flow through the P&L is that you would essentially in call it late first quarter, early second quarter of the subsequent year, you would file that ITC. You would get that credit back from the government. That would then go on the balance sheet, and it would net against that gross CapEx number. And so you would have then a net capex number that then depreciates over whatever your depreciable period is. So that's how it would flow through the P&L. As we make additional investments in the U.S. for some of those projects that Tom mentioned, we will be able to claim not only the CHIPS Act funding, but also the ITC as well. One thing that I would touch on just briefly, because... It is a similar type of program that we actually are just seeing the benefit of. So we won a case recently. You may have seen a few details about it, but we're essentially getting a $152 million tax refund here in the first quarter. That $152 million will essentially be offset against the purchase of the equipment that we made in kind of that 2014-2015 period. As it's netted against that equipment, some of it will flow through as a gain. Some of it will just flow through as a net to that equipment through the depreciation. And I think the treatment of that refund will look very similar to the ITC.
spk11: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Chris Caso with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
spk13: Chris, are you there? Hi, sorry, long view.
spk03: Good morning. Good morning. So the first question here is on CapEx for the year, and you've given some indications of what you expected for this year. It seems like it's responding to some of the industry conditions, and it slows in the second half of the year. Can you talk about is that more of a push out into 2024? You know, it sounds like the customers still need the capacity, so what you're not spending from the original plan in 23, does that start to accelerate as you get into 2024?
spk09: Yeah. So think about the rate and pace of our CapEx as really being aligned with the rate and pace of our customers' needs, as well as the productivity that we're actually able to drive. So we're actually becoming more CapEx efficient. And so the way I would think about it is I would think about some of this CapEx is indeed a push out from 23 to 24. And I would say there's a portion of it, I'm going to round and use a really rough and tough number here and say kind of maybe 10 to as much as 20% of it, where we've actually just become more capital efficient. And so those savings will be banked to the P&L. And again, as I kind of mentioned earlier on the call, we are still very much on track to delivering the capacity that we've been speaking about for some time. And that's 2.8 million wafers of capacity this year, and then more than 3 million wafers of capacity in 2024. We are still very much on track, even with some reduced CapEx and some timing of CapEx being slightly delayed. We are very much on track towards those numbers. Did you have a follow-up, Chris?
spk03: I do. And so with the answer there, I mean, it sounds like it's a similar way for capacity at lower CapEx, which is obviously good. As you go forward, could you give us some word granularity on where you're spending that CapEx? And, you know, there's a lot of different businesses and a lot of these processes are not fungible. So, you know, give us a sense of where that capacity is being targeted to.
spk09: Sure. The single biggest portion of that CapEx is actually still going towards Singapore and the ramp in Singapore. That's our new fab there on our existing campus. And so that's the lion's share of the CapEx. That said, know we are continuing to invest in in all the regions uh with additional capex so we still have some additional capex going into uh into germany to kind of complete that uh that footprint we still have some capex coming here into the us as as tom mentioned uh you know we do have some customers that are desiring some some capacity on u.s soil and so we'll be making some of those investments as well yeah let me just add to that you said
spk18: Some of this capacity is not fungible. Some of the capital efficiency David's talking about is to make sure there's more fungibility between our technology platforms and corridors so that we can respond to demand where it is at any given time. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Maddy Hosini with SIG. Your line is now open.
spk10: Yes, thanks for taking my question. Going back to the ASP, wafer ASP, can you help me understand how the mix is impacting and how is that compared to ASP like-for-like? And I have a follow-up.
spk09: Sure. So from an ASP perspective, you know, we've been not only mixing up our business amongst in markets or between in markets, but we're also mixing up our business even within those specific in markets. And so, you know, when I look across our in-market landscape and I see our ASP, you know, sitting north of $3,000 away for in the fourth quarter, you know, there's within the segments of The single biggest differentiator with regards to ASP is how much GF technology do they use, as well as is it single source revenue business? And so when you look at those two factors, you know, about two thirds of our revenue in 2022 was single source revenue. In fact, fourth quarter was our highest quarter of single source revenue in 2022. And about 90% of our design wins. in 2022 are single source. And so as we have customers increasingly being single sourced at GF on GF technology, that deep customer partnership where they're using more of our technology in their products to help them win in their market, then that obviously helps us with value capture. Did you have a follow-up, Mehdi?
spk10: Yes. If I heard you correctly, auto will account for about I'm sorry, $1 billion of revenue this year, right?
spk09: Did I hear you correctly? That's correct. It'll be approaching $1 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2023. Okay.
spk10: So that's like almost two to three times higher compared to 2022. Is that, majority of that, is that driven by single source, being single source family partner, or is that the technology mix that is also impacting the two to three times increase?
spk08: The majority of that business is single sourced at GF. Okay.
spk00: Thank you. Michelle, we'll probably take one more question.
spk11: Please stand by for our last question. Our last question comes from Raj Vindra Gill with Needham. Your line is now open.
spk15: Yes, thank you, and congratulations on great results. Just a big-picture question, Tom. You mentioned, obviously, the trend towards reshoring of supply. You guys were instrumental in the CHIPS Act. When you're discussing contracts with customers and trying to win share, are you seeing kind of an overarching trend among fabulous semiconductor companies to start to kind of reshore here in the U.S. with you versus other foundries in Taiwan or elsewhere? Are you actually seeing that kind of tangible trend as we kind of look out for the next, you know, several years?
spk18: I think we're starting to see the beginning of that, and I'll put a context around it. Maybe because it was the end of the year, it was holidays, the NDAA National Defense Authorization Act was passed, I think it was last week of December, if not, it was the second to last week of December, And specifically in there, it highlighted that the U.S. government, you know, over the next five years will want to not have any supply in anything they buy that has chips from SMEC. And so that's relatively new event that our customers are starting to comprehend what does that mean. What I see is it's very difficult for them to want to go and take an existing part number and re-qualify it and resource it, but rather looking forward saying, how do they take their new product lines or their new spins of designs and then create a different footprint for that type of sourcing? And I think this is the year, 23, 24, we'll start to see some of that business come our way in response to these types of legislation moves. And just in general, to get a more balanced supply chain across the globe and leveraging on our footprint. There will never be a look back and doing rework over again in a design that already exists, but it's about the future designs. I hope that helps.
spk15: Yeah, that's super helpful. And just my follow-up, Dave, if you look at the free cash flow projections potentially for this year, given kind of the reduction of the CapEx and you know, the cash flow from operations growing this year, depending on kind of assumptions. It looks like, you know, free cash flow is going to move up significantly into positive territory. So how are you thinking about usage of cash, you know, going from, you know, 2023 and beyond as you get more scale in the model and you generate significant more free cash flow? Thank you.
spk09: Sure. No, you're right. Based on our cash from operations and our ability to generate cash, as well as our reduced CapEx, and really kind of an envelope of CapEx going forward, where we're essentially at our long-term model or close to our long-term model of roughly 20% of revenue being in CapEx. Obviously, you have the ability to generate increasing and significant free cash flow over time with that model. So as we look at it right now, we're very pleased with our cash position. We're in a net cash position minus our debt. We're in a position where we can be free cash flow positive this year, which I stated in my prepared commentary. And then as we look to the future, as we go through the first half of this year, look at the demand in the second half and then the subsequent demand in 2024, We'll start to formulate those CapEx decisions for the future. And as we do that, I think you'll see us come out with some type of capital structure and perhaps some type of capital program that we would release to shareholders. At this time, you know, I'm not willing to go out publicly at this stage and state, you know, what our policy will be other than, you know, we feel like we're at our long-term model or very close to our long-term model. from a capital intensity perspective that will enable us to start to generate some meaningful free cash flow. And stay tuned for a capital deployment strategy.
spk15: Great.
spk09: Thank you, Dave.
spk11: I would now like to turn the conference back to Sam Franklin for closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you, Michelle. And thank you very much, everyone, for joining us today. Appreciate the questions. And we look forward to seeing many of you on the upcoming conference circuit. Thanks again.
spk11: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.
spk13: You may now disconnect. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. you
spk11: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the conference call to review fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sam Franklin, Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Global Foundry's fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 earnings call. On the call with me today are Dr. Thomas Caulfield, CEO, and David Reeder, CFO. A short while ago, we released GF's fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results, which are available on our website at investors.gf.com, along with today's accompanying slide presentation. This call is being recorded and a replay will be made available on our investor relations webpage. During this call, we'll present both IFRS and adjusted non-IFRS financial measures. The most comparable IFRS measures and reconciliations for adjusted non-IFRS measures are available in today's press release and accompanying slides. I'd remind you that these financial results are unaudited and subject to change. Certain statements on today's call may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Such statements can be identified by terms such as believe, expect, intend, anticipate, and may, or by the use of the future tense. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we made today. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today, as well as risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings including in the sections under the caption Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 31, 2022, and on our current reports on Form 6K filed with the SEC. We'll begin today's call with Tom providing a summary update on the current business environment and technologies, following which Dave will provide details on our end markets and fourth quarter and full year 2022 results, and also provide first quarter 2023 guidance. We'll then open the call for questions. We request that you please limit your questions to one with one follow-up. I'll now turn the call over to Tom for his prepared remarks.
spk18: Thank you, Sam. And welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter earnings call. I would like to start by reflecting on our first full year as a public company. October 28, 2022 marked the one-year anniversary of our listing on the NASDAQ, and by any measure, it's been a strong year for GF. I'm immensely proud of our team across the globe for their commitment and dedication in helping GF take significant steps towards delivering our long-term strategic objectives that we set out prior to our IPO. GF continues to position itself as a crucial enabler of the semiconductor supply chain, and we remain deeply committed to working with our customers in providing feature-rich, differentiated, and innovative technology solutions to meet the long-term demand trends across each of the end markets that we serve. Simply put, we build capacity for our differentiated offerings our customers want, where they want it, and in partnership engagement that creates this capacity with the best economics for both partners. We've continued to implement a long-term partnership-driven model with our industry, which is driving improved visibility for our business through this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. In 2022, we added 10 additional customers under long-term agreement and secured more than $5 billion of incremental lifetime revenue. Going forward, we continue to see strong alignment between our customers' needs for certainty and security of supply and our capacity to provide long-term dedicated foundry services. We are proud to have participated in the development and passage of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. This is the most important piece of legislation for our industry in recent times, and we expect to continue playing a key role in delivering targeted capacity critical to the reshoring of supply within the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem. Finally, we continued the expansion of our global footprint to align with our customers' committed demands, and in 2022, we successfully delivered incremental capacity at our facilities in Singapore and Dresden, Germany. As we look to 2023 and beyond, we remain steadfast with our principles and agile as an organization by focusing on incremental capacity to meet our customers' needs. Let me now touch on our results. We exceeded the high end of our November provided guidance for both top line and profitability as our teams continue to deliver our strategic and financial priorities, helping us bring our first year as a public company to a very successful close. In the fourth quarter, GF revenue grew 14% year-over-year, driven by richer mix and average selling prices, as well as higher non-waiver revenue. This revenue growth, coupled with strong operational execution, resulted in improvement to adjusted gross margin to 30.1% in the quarter, which is an 8.6-point improvement from the year-ago period. As a result, we delivered adjusted earnings per share of $1.44, which was the high end of our guidance range and includes the proceeds from the sale of our East Fishkill FAB to OnSemi. Dave will provide more color on our financials in his section. Let me now move to providing a brief update on the current business environment. Despite our record output in 2022, We remain cautious regarding the macroeconomic headwinds facing our industry in the first half of 2023. Our business is not immune from these headwinds. As we communicated in our third quarter update, we took the decision to proactively put in place a restructuring plan, including a number of cost containment initiatives, which we began to implement during the fourth quarter. These initiatives are aimed at all aspects of our business, and as we head into 2023, we will continue to focus on ways that we can improve our productivity, reduce input costs, and position GF to emerge even stronger from the current macroeconomic environment. Longer term, GF's growth drivers remain firmly intact, and we continue to see opportunities to gain share in our larger end markets, such as premium tier smart mobile devices, as well as in critical growth segments such as automotive and industrial IoT. In automotive, We are excited to be playing an important role on the development and expansion of the market for autonomous, connected, and electrified vehicles. We continue to grow our differentiated offerings to our customers across automotive applications such as processing, sensing, safety, infotainment, and battery management. As you may have seen last week, we are extremely pleased to report that General Motors has entered into a long-term agreement with GF to secure a capacity corridor in our advanced fab in upstate New York for GM's U.S. supply chain. This first-of-its-kind multiyear agreement for GF brings a critical manufacturing process to the U.S. and supports GM's strategy to reduce the number of unique chips needed to power increasingly complex and tech-laden vehicles through the end of the decade. With this strategy, we expect to produce chips in higher volumes with better quality predictability, and the best economics. In aggregate, our LTAs have increased from the prior quarter as the number of customers under LTA has grown from 38 to 40, and the total value of these LTAs now at approximately $27.5 billion. Additionally, the amount of committed prepayment and capacity reservation fees have increased 34% from a quarter ago to approximately $5 billion. Our LTAs continue to serve as a solid foundation for working with our customers during times of demand uncertainty. Due to the widely reported inventory correction, in some cases, we have entered into negotiation with our customers to manage their short-term demand needs while working to preserve the intended economics and long-term value under these contracts. As we reported in our third quarter earnings call, We expect this can be accomplished through adjustments to the contract, including duration, ASPs, mix, delivery profiles, and in some cases, underutilization payments. I will now provide a brief update on our recent technology achievements. In the fourth quarter, we completed six technology qualifications, bringing our total for the year to 27. On our 45 nanometer silicon photonics platform, we added nine additional features in the quarter. Additionally, we had five more customer tape outs on 45 CLO, bringing our total for 2022 to 16. This clearly demonstrates the aggressive adoption of this differentiated technology solution. And finally, in November, GF and Purdue University announced a strategic partnership to strengthen and expand collaboration on semiconductor research and education with a joint focus on R&D. This relationship with Purdue exemplifies our growing network of R&D collaborations as part of our broader GF Labs initiative that we launched in 2022. To summarize, we successfully closed out Q4 with a delivery of record financial performance in 2022, our first full year as a public company. Despite the current economic challenges, we are well positioned to achieve our long-term strategic model and continue to work with our customers to develop and manufacture innovative, differentiated solutions. With that, let me turn it over to Dave.
spk09: Thank you, Tom, and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. For the remainder of the call, including guidance, I will reference adjusted metrics which exclude stock-based compensation and restructuring charges. Our fourth quarter results exceeded the guidance we provided in our last quarterly update. Fourth quarter revenue was approximately $2.1 billion, an increase of 14% year-over-year. We shipped approximately 580,000 300-millimeter equivalent wafers in the quarter, and ASP, average selling price per wafer, increased approximately 20% year-over-year, driven by ramping long-term customer agreements with better pricing as well as continued improvement in product mix. Wafer revenue from our end markets accounted for approximately 88% of total revenue. Non-waiver revenue, which includes revenue from our reticles, non-recurring engineering, expedite fees, and other items, accounted for approximately 12% of total revenue for the fourth quarter, consistent with our expectations. For the full year, I am pleased to report that 2022 was a record year for Global Foundries. Revenue came in at approximately $8.1 billion, up 23% year-over-year, and an increase of approximately $1.5 billion from the previous year. We shipped approximately 2.5 million 300 millimeter equivalent wafers, a 4% increase from 2021, and ASP per wafer increased 17% year over year. Let me now provide an update on our revenue buy-in markets. For the fourth quarter, and as expected, smart mobile devices represented approximately 39% of the quarter's total revenue. Smart mobile devices' fourth quarter revenue declined 7% from the prior year period principally driven by reduced volumes in the low to mid-tier smartphone segments. This decline was partially offset by higher ASPs, premium tier mix growth, and continued content growth in our RF transceiver, audio, and specialty power products. Full-year 2022 revenue for smart mobile devices grew 11% year-over-year, driven by higher ASPs and better premium tier mix, as we continue to execute our strategy to grow content in the premium handset market. Our long-term customer agreements helped us navigate the challenging demand environment by reducing volatility and improving certainty, a trend we expect to continue. Our growth compared favorably to the broader 2022 handset market, which declined 8% year over year with respect to handset shipments. Looking ahead to 2023, we expect the first quarter to represent the low point for smart mobile device demand, with the well-publicized inventory burn expected to conclude towards the end of the first half, followed by sequential growth in the second half of 2023. Continued growth in the 5G handset market is expected to be a tailwind in 2023, and we expect to maintain our market-leading positions in RF front-end performance and premium tier smartphone features. Moving on to home and industrial IoT. In the fourth quarter, revenue for the home and industrial IoT market grew approximately 64% year-over-year, representing approximately 20% of the quarter's total revenue. Strong year-over-year growth in this end market was driven mainly by higher ASPs from our LTAs and meaningfully higher volumes from target growth and key applications such as smart cards for digital payments and wireless connectivity. Full year home and industrial IoT revenues grew 68% year over year, which can be attributed to approximately 30% volume growth with remainder driven by ASP and MIX. Home and industrial IoT was the fastest growing in market for GF in 2022. Looking ahead to 2023, we expect growth to continue for smart card applications along with rising customer demands for next generation analog and mixed signal technologies within our aerospace and defense end markets. Moving now to automotive, which as Tom outlined, has been a key growth segment for us. Fourth quarter revenue grew about 24% year over year, representing approximately 5% of the quarter's total revenue. Growth was driven by a strong ramp across our automotive processing, sensing, and vehicle infrastructure technologies. Full year automotive revenue grew about 30% year over year in 2022, and we expect continued growth in 2023. Based on our current design wins and ramp profile, we now expect almost $1 billion of automotive revenue in 2023. Next, our communications infrastructure and data center end market, where fourth quarter revenue grew approximately 27% year over year and comprised approximately 18% of the quarter's total revenue driven by a combination of better ASPs and mix, as well as higher volume. Growth in the quarter was primarily driven by increased network infrastructure and data center processing demand. For the full year 2022, revenue grew 43% year-over-year, driven by increased edge-to-data center communication traffic, 4G and 5G deployment, as well as overall increased demand for data center capacity. Like most other end markets, we expect data center demand to decline in the first half of 2023. Finally, our personal compute end market was flat year-over-year in the fourth quarter and comprised approximately 5% of the quarter's total revenue. For fiscal year 2022, year-over-year revenue declined approximately 38%. We expect this end market to continue to decline in 2023. As communicated in our third quarter update, We recognize the need to undertake a proactive assessment of our cost base in response to the industry's inventory correction, as well as macroeconomic and inflationary headwinds. During the fourth quarter, we implemented several initiatives aimed at achieving greater efficiencies, productivity gains, and structural cost savings. These initiatives are projected to deliver approximately $110 million of savings in 2023. Additional savings initiatives are expected to be implemented throughout the year. Also in the fourth quarter, approximately $94 million of restructuring charges were incurred as part of the implemented cost savings initiatives. The financial results for the fourth quarter are presented on an adjusted basis, which exclude these charges. For the fourth quarter, we delivered adjusted gross profit of $633 million, which translates into approximately 30.1% adjusted gross margin. The 8.6 point year-over-year improvement was driven by higher ASPs and a richer mix, which more than offset the inflationary headwinds in 2022. For the full year, we delivered adjusted gross profit of $2.3 billion and gross margin of 28.4%. equating to a 12.2 point uplift from 2021. Operating expenses for the fourth quarter represented approximately 10% of total revenue. R&D for the quarter was down sequentially to approximately 103 million, and SG&A also declined to approximately 105 million. Total operating expenses were $208 million. We delivered operating profit of 425 million for the quarter, which translates into an approximately 20.2% adjusted operating margin, roughly 12.5 points better than the year-ago period, and above the high end of our guided range. For the full year, GF delivered operating profit of $1.4 billion, which translates into a 17.8% operating margin, an improvement of roughly 15 points year over year. Fourth quarter net interest and other expenses was $15 million, and we incurred a tax expense of $13 million in the quarter. We delivered fourth quarter adjusted net income of approximately $800 million, an increase of approximately $702 million from the year-ago period. At the end of the fourth quarter, we closed the sale of our East Fishkill facility to ON Semiconductor and recorded a gain of sale of $403 million just above the upper end of the guided range. As a result, we reported adjusted diluted earnings of $1.44 per share for the fourth quarter. On a full year basis, GF delivered adjusted net income of approximately $1.72 billion and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.11. We delivered record fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of approximately $821 million with a margin of 39.1 percent. Adjusted EBITDA grew $237 million year-over-year on $254 million of incremental revenue growth, representing approximately 93 percent fall-through. Full-year adjusted EBITDA was $3.1 billion, with an EBITDA margin of 38.1 percent and improvement of about 10 points over the previous year. Let me now provide some key balance sheet and cash flow metrics. Cash flow from operations for the fourth quarter was $491 million. For the full year, cash flow from operations was $2.6 billion. Gross capex for the quarter was roughly $991 million, or roughly 47% of revenue. Full year capex for 2022 was approximately $3.1 billion, or 38% of revenue. At the end of the fourth quarter, our combined total of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities stood at approximately $3.3 billion. We also have a $1 billion revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn. Next, let me provide you with our outlook for the first quarter. We expect total GF revenue to be between $1.81 and $1.85 billion. Of this, we expect non-waiver revenue to be approximately 12% of total revenue. We expect adjusted gross profit to be between $498 million and $527 million. We expect adjusted operating profit to be between $283 million and $322 million. Excluding share-based compensation for the quarter, we expect total OPEX to be between $205 million and $215 million. At the midpoint of our first quarter guidance, we expect share-based compensation to be approximately $45 million, of which roughly $16 million is related to cost of goods sold and approximately $29 million is related to OPEX. We expect the tax expense, net interest, and other expense for the quarter to be between $25 million and $30 million. We expect adjusted net income to be between $252 million and $297 million. On a fully diluted share count of approximately 555 million shares, we expect adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter to be between 45 and 53 cents. For the first quarter, we expect depreciation and amortization to be roughly $400 million, of which approximately 90% is related to the cost of goods sold. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $667 million and $722 million. For the full year 2023, we expect CapEx to be approximately $2.25 billion, which aligns with our disciplined and demand-driven philosophy. We expect the CapEx profile to be more heavily weighted towards the first half of the year. And on a full year basis, we expect to be free cash flow positive. To summarize the quarter and the year, strong operational execution enabled us to not only deliver fourth quarter results that were better than our guidance, but also deliver a record year of financial performance for the company. We are continuing to execute the strategic plan we outlined to our stakeholders at our IPO and remain well positioned to achieve our long-term model. With that, let's open the call for Q&A. Operator?
spk11: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Mark Lippicis with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
spk23: Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the nice results. First question, maybe for Tom, can you talk qualitatively about activity around your long-term agreements? It seems on the one hand, some of your customers are getting negatively impacted by the cycle. But on the other hand, you know, secular trends on capacity and consolidation, the geopolitical environment might be driving more customers to you. So I'm wondering if you could describe how those two are netting out as you engage with your customers. In the, in the medium term, and I guess what I'm getting at, it seems like the take up every quarter. Do you expect that to continue through the year? And is there a type of customer either by vertical market or geography that seems to have a higher motivation to sign up for that?
spk18: Well, there's lots on back there, Mark. Good morning. So, let me, let me 1st, start with a little context. Around these, we think of them as contracts that were signed in 2021 and that's where their life began. Actually. This is a five-year journey. When we pivoted the company in 2018, decided to become single-source differentiated type of semiconductor manufacturer, we had to do a couple of things with our customers. We had to convince them in our execution. We had to convince them that we had the financial wherewithal to be around for them for the long term and develop those partnerships. And so as they started to get more confidence in GS and relied on us for single-sourcing key products for them, That created a balanced relationship where we needed each other. Our customers needed security supply. We wanted security of knowing that if we're going to invest for capacity, that we would have the ability to use that capacity to service our customers. And so what you're seeing now is the natural consequence of this journey we've been on as customers signing out and looking longer term, securing their future with GF. Now, you can imagine in a moment that we're in now where there's the softening that you hear about the inventory correction, that customers are going to be a little bit more cautious as they go forward to plan exactly when they want new capacity, extending LTAs. Those discussions go on all the time. And as you can see, in the fourth quarter, we signed additional long-term agreements. We just announced a really important one with GAF in segments that clearly see their strengths in the near term and the long term. So I think the LTAs are doing exactly, exactly what we talked about in our roadshow over a year ago, N3 2022. They're creating security for both businesses to have long-term supply and to work through cycles like this in partnership mode.
spk23: That's very helpful. Thank you for that. And Tommy, you also had described about some of the dynamics around customers asking for relief or some modifications on these. Is there a case study that you can describe that characterizes a classic way you are dealing with that scenario as your customers who have signed up with the LTAs are coming to you and asking you for help on that? Thank you.
spk18: Yeah, I think the classic is, you're protecting the names of the innocent here, is that one of the customers, it was like the complete range of levers we had. One, there was some remixing going on, softness on one particular technology node and features we provided where they had more opportunity than others, so we were able to shift some of their volumes from one platform to another. They remixed a little bit later in time and created a duration, and then there was a part of that was hey, we have some near-term underutilization. Let's just give you an underutilization fee for that. The key is that the economic intent of these contracts are always getting fulfilled, and we use these levers to go create that opportunity to work in partnership with our customers.
spk14: Very helpful. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Joseph Moore with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
spk02: Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the GM deal and just in general what those conversations are like. I know you've had other OEM deals with autos as well. I feel like two or three years ago they probably didn't know who the directly do you think they're driving their semiconductor suppliers to use Western foundries? And just maybe some insight into how those conversations came about and how pervasive they could be.
spk18: Good morning, Joe. I wouldn't put it as just driving the Western foundry. I think if you take a step back, the auto industry is looking forward and looking at the capacity that's been put in place over the last two decades in the areas where we play. and clearly see that investment needs to be made. There isn't enough of this capacity. Again, we play for 12 nanometer and above, and getting ahead of that curve and saying, okay, how do we go create that capacity because new investment is going to be needed? And as they start to understand more and more about the economics of this, it's better to create that capacity in partnership with the foundry and then direct their supply chain to use that capacity. So for the automaker, it's, Let's first decide what are the important platforms to create this capacity on that have legs over the next decade. Decide how much you want, where you want it, and then create this partnership mode to make sure it happens at the best economics. That's the model. We called it a first of a kind with General Motors. It's not last of a kind. I think this is a winning model because it creates the opportunity to minimize inefficiencies of the economics of a very steep or broad ecosystem. where costs get passed through and marked up without value being added, investment cost, that is. So we think this is a winning model. We think we'll see more of this coming along. I hope that helps, Joe.
spk02: Yeah, that does. Thank you. And then I guess as you look at your capacity in the next couple of quarters, you're obviously seeing some capacity free up from smartphone-oriented technologies. Would you still say you're sold out on the specialty technologies? process technologies that supply the auto industry, and are you limited in your ability to serve that near term?
spk18: Specifically to auto, all of our capacity is what we call fungible, able to address all the demand we have on auto. So for every wafer we can make to our auto business, we can sell. And that's where we're constantly looking and putting pressure on our manufacturing teams to figure out how they can make more of that.
spk09: And Joe, I think I would add on to that is if you listen to the prepared commentary, you would have heard us say that instead of saying that we would exit 2022 or 2023, excuse me, at an automotive revenue run rate of a billion dollars, we actually said in this quarter's prepared commentary that we would be about a billion dollars of automotive revenue in 2023. So that remixing that Tom just highlighted and that you kind of alluded to in your question, That is ongoing as we speak.
spk12: Great.
spk09: Thank you very much.
spk18: I want just to pile on that, Joe, and that revenue year on year 23 to 22 be, you know, greater than 2X growth.
spk14: Great. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Harlan Sir with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
spk17: Yeah, good morning and congratulations on the solid execution. Your manufacturing lead times are quite long, right? You guys have to start way first, about a quarter ahead of target shipment. So I believe the team has pretty good visibility already into Q2. You gave us the puts and takes in the various segments, which is consistent, right, with your customer's demand profile. So if you put it all together, does the team still think a trough in total revenues this quarter or first half of the year is the most likely scenario? And Does the team still believe that they can go revenues this calendar year?
spk09: Yeah, good morning, Harlan. Maybe I'll start that one, Tom. And then if you have anything to add on, you can build at the end. And look, we do believe that first half is the trough. From a revenue perspective, we think it's most likely first quarter. But certainly from a first half perspective, we believe that that is the bottom half. based upon what our customers are telling us, based upon our LTAs, and based upon, I think, what you all are seeing broadly in the industry. Most of the industry is currently forecasting a recovery in the second half of this year. We've mentioned previously, and we still stick with that guidance, that we believe ASPs will be up modestly on a year-over-year basis. So really, if you're looking at, you know, growth for the year, it's really predicated upon that volume and it's predicated upon a second half recovery, which right now is what we're currently expecting. Tom, is there anything you'd add to that?
spk18: No, I would just reinforce that we're no smarter than everybody else. It's what our customers are telling us, what we're seeing in the industry, and that's what we're planning on.
spk17: Great. Thank you for that. And, you know, obviously it's a tough and it's an uncertain environment, but for the things that the team can control, right, process development, innovation, stronger customer engagement, manufacturing optimization, is there a strategy in place to try and emerge from this downturn in a much stronger position and try to, you know, accelerate the move to or exceed your 40% gross margin target?
spk09: There is, Harlan. You know, we outlined, I would like to think, a pretty comprehensive bridge both during the IPO roadshow as well as, you know, capital markets day, that bridge to how we get to our long-term financial model, which includes 40% gross margin. You know, I would actually say that kind of like to date, we've been ahead of that model, slightly ahead of that model where we expect it to be. We feel like we've made great progress and strides against it. We feel like we still have line of sight to achieve that model. To be able to achieve that model, you know, we've been adding capacity, right? So in 2020, we said we had about 2 million wafers of capacity. 2021, we built that up to about 2.4 million wafers. In 2022, about 2.6 million wafers of capacity. On the CapEx that we're deploying this year, we'll have about 2.8 million wafers of capacity and still on track, even with reduced CapEx, still on track to more than 3 million wafers of capacity in 2024. So as the industry works its way through a little bit of macroeconomic uncertainty and a little bit of inventory burn here in the first half of the year, we start to get that utilization and absorption up. we feel like we're on a very good path towards those gross margin numbers that we've outlined in some pretty clear detail.
spk17: Oh, perfect. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
spk21: Thanks for taking my question. First one on gross margins. So the Q1 outlook, 28%, about 150 basis points above their expectations. I was wondering, David, if you could give us some of the puts and takes. And from what you're describing, seems Q2 revenue could be kind of at least a flattish. And if that is the scenario, then can gross margins continue to go up? Or is there anything on the utilization side or anything else that we should keep in mind to think of a gross margin trajectory for this year?
spk09: Sure. Good morning, Vivek. You know, I think when you think about gross margin, you obviously think about, you know, two big elements. One is ASP, which as we mentioned, we believe 23 will have modest ASP growth over 2022. And then the second element is really what you touched upon, which is utilization. So in the fourth quarter, utilization was in the mid-90s. For first quarter, we believe utilization is going to be, call it the mid-ish 80s to perhaps the high 80s from a utilization perspective. And we previously talked about how about every five points utilization was about two points of gross margin from a mathematical perspective. That's without necessarily taking a lot of actions. So I think sequentially what you're saying is you're seeing us move from about 30% gross margin in the fourth quarter, moving to a midpoint in the first quarter of about 28%. And so what you're seeing from us is you're seeing us actually make progress towards that gross margin bridge, but obviously it's being offset a little bit based upon the utilization. So as utilizations improve throughout the year, and as we mentioned, we think first half is the bottom, then we believe that that will be the driver for increased gross margin will be that utilization figure and that absorption. Did you have a follow-up?
spk21: Yes, thanks. Second question is, just in the premium smartphone segment, what's your view of how much of your customer's component inventory is in the premium smartphone segment? Do you think Q1 is where it kind of clears out, or do you think There could be a little bit that persists into Q2, and then there is a seasonal back half assumption. Just curious, specifically in the premium smartphone segment, do you think we get to a supply-demand balance exiting Q1, or it could take until Q2 for that to happen?
spk09: You know, I think if you were to maybe be a little bit more granular and look at it perhaps a bit on a, you know, a monthly basis, We think some of that inventory starts to get cleared out towards the end of first quarter, so call it in the Marches period. And maybe it rolls over a little bit into the second quarter, maybe April, perhaps even May, specifically for the high end of smartphones. So ultimately, it depends on what's the sell out or the sell through demand. But we do believe that that inventory starts to clear out of the channel in a more meaningful way. towards the end of the first quarter and perhaps rolling over into the second quarter.
spk11: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Ross Seymour with DB. Your line is now open.
spk06: Hi, guys. Congrats on the solid results, and thanks for letting me ask a question. I just wanted to go back to something, Tom, you said earlier about the prepayments rose, I think, 34% sequentially. How do I reconcile those with the end demand caution? Is this something where people are just having to pay up front for pushing out the duration? Because I otherwise would have expected kind of the urge to prepay or the need to kind of wane as some of the caution from your customers enters the equation. So any color there would be helpful.
spk18: Yeah, look, for me, it's pretty simple. This is single source business by and large. Customers are looking to secure their supply. In some cases, it requires investment. The only way the investment can be made and make economic sense for both parties is we both put our balance sheets in there. So the rated pace of some of these LTAs where they're talking about adding capacity will always get a little bit softer in the period we're in now just because of the uncertainty of when customers will want that growth. But that's what we're going through right now. And you can see, even the fourth quarter of last year, we were able to ink some long-term agreements where customers had visibility, especially in the auto side of things, of what they wanted longer term.
spk09: And if I could build on that, I think when you think about that increase in the fourth quarter, Ross, call it 1.2, maybe it rounds to $1.3 billion, 34%, as you mentioned, to $5 billion of customer-committed funding. The LTAs that are being signed today are not for really capacity in kind of 23 and 24. It's really for capacity that's being added for ramps in really 25, 26, and 27. And so those committed customer funds Those are being deployed in the areas of capacity increases as well as process technology qualifications for the design wins associated with those LTAs. So the customers are looking through this kind of near-term demand perturbation. They're looking through this near-term period. They're looking out into time. And they're saying we believe that the industry will still be structurally short of capacity, especially in the technologies and the geographies where we would like to have it. And they're making the investments now to ensure that that supply chain is there in the future.
spk07: Thanks for that, Colin.
spk06: Yeah, if I can. I just wanted to go into the CHIPS Act and the investment tax credit side of things. I think the CapEx numbers you gave are all on the growth side of things. I know you guys have been very committed to those programs, and Tom, you highlighted that earlier, but mechanically, how should we think about that starting to flow through and kind of timing and magnitude?
spk18: Well, let me tell you how we're going to put that funding to good use, and then I'll let David talk about how it flows through. Most importantly, the capital investment and free cash flow, and then maybe on top of that, a little bit of the P&L. We are in the process of bringing in a three-part proposal to leverage the CHPS funding for capacity expansion. One phase is in our 200-millimeter facility in Vermont, where we're remixing that technology more towards wide bandgap types of devices, and also to do some modernization of that facility to keep it strong going forward. We have a phase one expansion plan in our Fab 8 facility where We'll use the investment to fill out the existing floor space with additional tools for capacity. That's more or less where the GM capacity will be solutioned from. And then the last part of our proposal will be a new brick and mortar investment, modular expansion, and that's the very same Fab 8 facility in Malta, New York, to add somewhere between 350,000 to 500,000 wafers of of capacity to meet much longer-term needs. That's the play for GF in this first phase of CHIPS funding. Dave, I'll hand it over to you to talk about the implications on free cash flow and P&L.
spk09: Yeah, so touching on the two elements, I think Tom covered CHIPS in some detail there, where we think for any funding or any capex and investment in the U.S., where we can get kind of 30% to 40%, we think, of a project refunded via the CHIPS Act. There's also the ITC. So the investment tax credit enables companies that deploy CapEx in the U.S. to claim back essentially 25% of the value of that CapEx. The way that it would flow through the P&L is that you would essentially, and call it late first quarter, early second quarter, of the subsequent year, you would file that ITC. You would get that credit back from the government. That would then go on the balance sheet, and it would net against that gross capex number. And so you would have then a net capex number that then depreciates over whatever your depreciable period is. So that's how it would flow through the P&L as we make additional investments in the U.S. for some of those projects that Tom mentioned. we will be able to claim not only the CHIPS Act funding, but also the ITC as well. One thing that I would touch on just briefly, because it is a similar type of program that we actually are just seeing the benefit of. So we won a case recently. You may have seen a few details about it, but we're essentially getting a $152 million grant Tax refund here in the first quarter, that $152 million will essentially be offset against the purchase of the equipment that we made in kind of that 2014-2015 period. As it's netted against that equipment, some of it will flow through as a gain. Some of it will just flow through as a net to that equipment through the depreciation. And I think the treatment of that refund will look very similar to the ITC.
spk08: Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Chris Caso with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
spk14: Chris, are you there?
spk03: Hi.
spk14: Sorry, long mute.
spk03: Good morning. Good morning. So the first question here is on CapEx for the year, and you've given some indications what you expected for this year. It seems like it's responding to some of the industry conditions and it slows in the second half of the year. Can you talk about, is that more of a push out into 2024? You know, it sounds like the customers still need the capacity. So what you're not spending from the original plan in 23, does that start to accelerate as you get into 2024?
spk09: Yeah, so think about the rate and pace of our CapEx as really being aligned with the rate and pace of our customers' needs, as well as the productivity that we're actually able to drive. So we're actually becoming more CapEx efficient. And so the way I would think about it is I would think about some of this CapEx is indeed a push out from 23 to 24. And I would say there's a portion of it, I'm going to round and use a really rough and tough number here and say kind of maybe 10 to as much as 20% of it, where we've actually just become more capital efficient. And so those savings will be banked to the P&L. And again, as I kind of mentioned earlier on the call, we are still very much on track to delivering the capacity that we've been speaking about for some time. And that's 2.8 million wafers of capacity this year, and then more than 3 million wafers of capacity in 2024. We are still very much on track, even with some reduced CapEx and some timing of CapEx being slightly delayed. We are very much on track towards those numbers. Did you have a follow-up, Chris?
spk03: I do. And so with the answer there, I mean, it sounds like it's a similar way for capacity at lower CapEx, which is obviously good. As you go forward, could you give us some word granularity on where you're spending that CapEx? And, you know, there's a lot of different businesses and a lot of these processes are not fungible. So, you know, give us a sense of where that capacity is being targeted to.
spk09: Sure. The single biggest portion of that CapEx is actually still going towards Singapore and the ramp in Singapore. That's our new fab there on our existing campus. And so that's the lion's share of the CapEx. That said, you know, we are continuing to invest in all the regions with additional CapEx. So we still have some additional CapEx going into Germany to kind of complete that footprint. We still have some CapEx coming here into the U.S. As Tom mentioned, you know, we do have some customers that are desiring some capacity on U.S. soil, and so we'll be making some of those investments as well.
spk18: Let me just add to that. You said Some of this capacity is not fungible. Some of the capital efficiency David's talking about is to make sure there's more fungibility between our technology platforms and corridors so that we can respond to the demand where it is at any given time. Got it. Thank you.
spk11: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Maddy Hosini with SIG. Your line is now open.
spk10: Yes, thanks for taking my question. Going back to the ASP, wait for ASP, can you help me understand how the mix is impacting and how is that compared to ASP like for like? And I have a follow up.
spk09: Sure. So from an ASP perspective, you know, we've been not only mixing up our business amongst in markets or between in markets, But we're also mixing up our business even within those specific end markets. And so, you know, when I look across our end market landscape and I see our ASP, you know, sitting north of $3,000 away in the fourth quarter, you know, there's within the segments that the single biggest differentiator with regards to ASP is how much GF technology do they use? as well as is it single source revenue business and so when you look at those two factors you know about two-thirds of our revenue in 2022 with single source revenue in fact fourth quarter was our highest quarter of single source revenue in 2022 and about 90 percent of our design wins in 2022 are single source and so as we have customers increasingly being single sourced at GF on GF technology, that deep customer partnership where they're using more of our technology in their products to help them win in their market, then that obviously helps us with value capture. Did you have a follow-up, Mehdi?
spk10: Yes. If I heard you correctly, ADO will account for about three, I'm sorry, one billion of revenue this year, right? Did I hear you correctly?
spk09: That's correct. It'll be approaching a billion dollars of revenue in fiscal year 2023. Okay.
spk10: So that's like almost two to three times higher compared to 22. Is that majority of that, is that driven by single source, being single source foundry partner, or is that the technology mix that is also impacting the two to three times increase?
spk08: The majority of that business is single source at GF. Okay.
spk00: Thank you. Michelle, we'll probably take one more question.
spk11: Please stand by for our last question. Our last question comes from Raj Vindra Gill with Needham. Your line is now open.
spk15: Yes, thank you, and congratulations on great results. Just a big-picture question, Tom. You mentioned, obviously, the trend towards reshoring of supply. You guys were instrumental in the CHIPS Act. When you're discussing contracts with customers and trying to win share, are you seeing kind of an overarching trend among fabless semiconductor companies to start to kind of reshore here in the U.S. with you versus other foundries in Taiwan or elsewhere? Are you actually seeing that kind of tangible trend as we kind of look out for the next several years?
spk18: I think we're starting to see the beginning of that, and I'll put a context around it. Maybe because it was the end of the year and it was holidays, the NDAA National Defense Authorization Act was passed, I think it was the last week of December. If not, it was the second to last week of December. And specifically in there, it highlighted that the U.S. government, you know, over the next five years will want to not have any supply in anything they buy that has chips from SMIC. And so that's a relatively new event that our customers are starting to comprehend what does that mean. What I see is it's very difficult for them to want to go and take an existing part number and re-qualify it and resource it, but rather looking forward saying how do they take their new product lines or their new spins of designs and then create you know, a different footprint for that type of sourcing. And I think this is the year, 23, 24, we'll start to see some of that business come our way in response to these types of legislation moves. And just in general, to get a more balanced supply chain across the globe and leveraging our footprint. And it'll never be a look back and doing rework over again in a design that already exists. I think it's about the future designs. I hope that helps.
spk15: Yeah, that's super helpful. And just my follow-up, Dave, if you look at the free cash flow projections potentially for this year, given kind of the reduction of the CapEx and, you know, the cash flow from operations growing this year, depending on kind of assumptions, it looks like, you know, free cash flow is going to move up significantly into positive territory. So how are you thinking about usage of cash, you know, going from, you as you get more scale in the model and you generate significant more free cash flow. Thank you.
spk09: Sure. No, you're right. Based on our cash from operations and our ability to generate cash, as well as our reduced CapEx, and really kind of an envelope of CapEx going forward, where we're essentially at our long-term model or close to our long-term model of roughly 20% of revenue being in CapEx, Obviously, you have the ability to generate increasing and significant free cash flow over time with that model. So as we look at it right now, we're very pleased with our cash position. We're in a net cash position minus our debt. We're in a position where we can be free cash flow positive this year, which I stated in my prepared commentary. And then as we look to the future, As we go through the first half of this year, look at the demand in the second half and then the subsequent demand in 2024, we'll start to formulate those CapEx decisions for the future. And as we do that, I think you'll see us come out with some type of capital structure and perhaps some type of capital program that we would release to shareholders. At this time, I'm not willing to go out publicly at this stage in state. you know, what our policy will be other than, you know, we feel like we're at our long-term model or very close to our long-term model from a capital intensity perspective that will enable us to start to generate some meaningful free cash flow and stay tuned for a capital deployment strategy.
spk15: Great. Thank you, Dave.
spk11: I would now like to turn the conference back to Sam Franklin for closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you, Michelle, and thank you very much, everyone, for joining us today. Appreciate the questions, and we look forward to seeing many of you on the upcoming conference circuit. Thanks again.
spk11: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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