GlobalFoundries Inc.

Hello, and welcome to the conference call to review Global Foundry's first quarter of fiscal 2025 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations, Sam Franklin.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Global Foundry's first quarter 2025 earnings call. On the call with me today are Tim Breen, CEO, Neil Zanderskoff, President and Chief Operating Officer, and John Hollister, CFO. A short while ago, we released GF's first quarter 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 will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. The most directly comparable IFRS measures and reconciliations for non-IFRS measures are available in today's press release and accompanying slides. Please note 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 make 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 sections under the caption Risk Factors in our annual reports on Form 20F and in any current reports on Form 6K filed with the SEC. In terms of upcoming events, please note that we will be participating in fireside chats at the JP Morgan Global Technology Media and Communications Conference in Boston on May 13th and at the Bank of America Global Technology Conference in San Francisco on June 3rd. We will begin today's call with Tim providing a summary update on the current business environment and technologies. Niels will then discuss our recent design wins, highlights and expectations across the end markets, following which John will provide details on our first quarter results and also provide second quarter 2025 guidance. We will then open the call for questions with Tim, John, and Niels. We request that you please limit your questions to one with one follow-up. I'll now turn the call over to Tim for his prepared remarks.

Thank you, Sam, and welcome everyone to our first quarter 2025 earnings call. As our industry seeks to navigate the backdrop of geopolitical tension and trade uncertainties impacting the global economy, I'm proud to announce that in the first quarter, our 13,000 dedicated employees helped to deliver solid financial results at the high end of our guidance ranges across revenue, gross margin, and EPS. First quarter revenue in our automotive, CID, and IoT end markets grew on a year-over-year basis as we executed towards our long-term plan and partnered with our customers to maintain healthy design wind momentum from recent quarters. Furthermore, GS track record of generating meaningful free cash flow continued in the first quarter, with consistent operational excellence across our global footprint, delivering 165 million of non-IR4S adjusted free cash flow. This represents a free cash margin of approximately 10%. With investments in place to grow revenue in a very capital efficient manner, we will continue to focus on free cash flow generation as an important objective. In the meantime, our industry is not immune from the ongoing trade and tariff disputes dominating the headlines. And although GF is uniquely positioned to support our customers across our geographically diversified footprint in the US, Europe, and Asia, we do expect uncertainties associated with the global supply chain and end market demand dynamics to continue into the second half of 2025. Although it is too soon to quantify the precise impacts to the demand and the supply chain dynamics We are monitoring the changing landscape closely, and where possible, we have diversified our sourcing strategies to mitigate potential impacts on our cost base. As you have heard from some of our customers, it is likely that certain costs across the semiconductor supply chain will rise as a result of the tariff-related activities. Where this is the case, we will continue to work closely with our customers towards a mutually agreeable outcome. What is clear at this stage is that geographic resilience in wafer manufacturing supply chains is an increasing priority for GF's customers, and given GF's unique global footprint, we are able to support our customers both globally and locally, further validating GF's strategy and differentiated market position. Achieving manufacturing scale and technology diversity across our footprint has been a multi-year strategy to invest in capacity with differentiated features. To that end, we have deployed over $7 billion into our U.S., Germany, and Singapore facilities since 2021. Customers have been at the core of this strategy, and this will continue to be the case as we consider how best to meet their increasing demand while navigating the growing needs for security of supply. Despite these uncertainties, the secular tailwind supporting long-term demand for essential chip technologies remain firmly intact. and we anticipate that our serviceable addressable market will grow at approximately 10% per annum through the end of the decade. In key end markets, we believe that GF is well-placed to grow at or faster than the overall market growth rates, given our differentiated technologies and geographically advanced footprint. As the foundry of choice to many of our customers, evidenced by nearly 90% sole source design wins over the last four quarters, we continue to gain share in critical end markets such as automotive and communications infrastructure and data center, as the range of applications features and performance drives the need for increased semiconductor content. To that end, we have seen exciting traction with customers in applications aligned to the long-term secular growth trends in the end markets we serve. In optical networking, GF is not only at forefront of innovation with co-packaged optics, but we are also serving the large and growing pluggables market with our 45 SPCLO solution. In STATCOM, GF content in both the base station and in orbit is enabling the rapid deployment of commercial satellites on our 22 FTX, 12 LP, 130 NSX, and 45 RF SOI platforms. In generative AI, GF's proven 14 nanometer technology is playing an important role, especially in inference workloads for large language models. And finally, automotive continue to deliver year-on-year growth as we ramp opportunities and close new design wins on our 130 BCD and 40 ESF3 AutoPro platforms to support the increasing value of semiconductor content in this end market. Putting aside the short-term uncertainty impacting our industry, GS Financial Profile remains robust with strong balance sheet and cash flow fundamentals, declining leverage, $4.7 billion of liquidity, and continued strong free cash flow generation. John will cover these metrics in more detail, and they leave GF well positioned to grow towards our long-term financial objectives, both organically or inorganically, should the right opportunities fit with our long-term strategic goals. In conclusion, thanks to the effort of our teams around the world, We believe GF's long-term future remains as bright as ever, as we partner with our customers with our differentiated technology, drive strong operational execution, and ensure disciplined cost management. With that, over to you, Niels.

Thank you, Tim, and welcome to everyone on the call. As Tim mentioned, we continue to make good progress across commercial partnership and design wins with our customers, of which almost 90% were sole-sourced past four quarters. Our differentiated and diversified technology portfolio continues to drive design and momentum across all the end markets we serve. With that, let me walk you through the key highlights for the quarter by end market. In automotive, we built upon our strong momentum with customers, captured market share, and won new designs, all of which supports our expectations for meaningful year-over-year revenue growth in 2025. Despite soft end market demand, our automotive end market continue to deliver meaningful year-over-year revenue growth in Q1, as the increasing silicon content in vehicles help to offset short-term unit sales. Our broad and growing portfolio of differentiated solutions positions us to benefit from the proliferation of ADAS, safety, and sensing applications, electrical vehicles, and software-defined vehicles. The best additional strength has been in automotive processing, where we are the sole source foundry to the supplier of the number one auto microcontroller platform. On top of that, we are winning in new applications across all geographies we serve. In Q1, we achieved design wins across MCUs, battery management systems, motor control devices, and laser drivers for LiDAR and our 130 BCD and 40 SF3 AutoPro platforms. DF and Indy Semiconductor also announced a strategic partnership to introduce high-performance radar systems on chip solutions using DF's automotive-qualified 22FTX platform. These solutions will target 77 gigahertz and 120 gigahertz radar applications to enable safety-critical advanced driver assistance systems with low cost, smaller footprint, and efficient power consumption. Similarly, in March, 3D chip and cadence announced they will use DF's ultra-low-power 22-FTX platform for ADAS and processing applications, citing the reliability and performance benefits of our integrated RF and analog technology solution. Looking further ahead, we expect DF to benefit from long-term growth in smart centers for radar, vehicle access, camera, and networking, as well as general-purpose analog for automotive. Turning now to smart mobile devices. Revenue in Q1 declined year-over-year due to reduction in underutilization payments from our customers consistent with our expectations. While certain customers continue the inventory burn down, we see good commercial traction and continue to win new designs across a broad range of applications as we seek to capture content opportunities within the handsets such as audio, haptics, display, and imaging. With our latest generation RF SOI platforms, we are not only maintaining our leadership position in RF front-end, but growing market share. In Q1, we secured multiple new design wins in RF front-end with several top industry players. Our RF solutions allow GF to expand share, including strong traction with customers in the US, Europe, and Asia. Traditional strength in our front end, we continue to broaden our portfolio and make designs in important display and imaging applications. Notwithstanding the broader tariff uncertainties, we are seeing design momentum with customers to expand GF's offering in OLED Android smartphones. We also continue to penetrate the growing market for smart glasses with a Q1 design win for micro LED display backplanes using our 22FDX platform. This win was the result of our partnership with one of the largest players in the micro-display industry that has solutions in most commercial smart glasses today. Lastly, we saw continued adoption of our 55 BCD Lite platform for audio and haptics in premier tier smartphones. Our second generation 55 BCD Lite is under development to further strengthen our differentiated offerings, and this new technology will enable customers' audit solutions to be smaller and more efficient, which is critical for the latest designs. In IoT, Q1 revenue returned to year-over-year growth. However, we remain somewhat cautious on the outlook for the second half of the year. As the uncertainty brought about by tariffs is likely to impact the demand levels for consumer-centric and industrial applications. Longer term, we're seeing adoption of GF technology in AI-enabled edge devices, especially in our ultra-low power and RF-optimized platforms that are well-positioned for these applications. We're excited about the long-term opportunities in general-purpose microcontrollers, image signal processors, and audio signal processors that serve home, industrial, and medical applications. In Q1, we also secured design wins across Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, cellular IoT, medical consumer devices, as well as consumer power management applications. Our FinFET platform is increasingly optimized for low leakage and high performance. It's also enabling the exciting new features of next generation Wi-Fi 7, namely increased data speed, lower latency, improved reliability, and enhanced security for stronger encryption. This solution being adopted by the market will ramp in production in the second half of this year. We also secured first revenue from a design win for Broadmark Wireless MCU, used for IoT connectivity across consumer, smart home, and industrial applications, built on our 22 FTX platform This product includes embedded non-volatile memory, a key differentiator for GF. Lastly, we see continued traction in low-power connected medical applications such as continuous glucose monitors and hearing aids. And in Q1, we want to design for an AI-enabled audio DSP on 22FDX. GF technology is well-positioned for this segment, and we're seeing a solid pipeline of connected consumer medical device opportunities for multiple vendors. Finally, our communication infrastructure and data center end market grew year-over-year in the first quarter, and we continue to expect meaningful revenue growth in 2025. With our diversified portfolio of differentiated offerings, we are developing a path for long-term growth from communication infrastructure and data center tied to multiple secular drivers. First, commercial satellite operations continue to expand rapidly as subscriptions increase and launches ramp. the world's foremost satellite communication companies, and in Q1, we secured an additional design win for SATCOM ground terminals on our 45 RF SOI platform. Second, optical communication technologies in the data center are now seeing meaningful near-term revenue growth, and our technology platforms are focused on enabling the data centers to get to the next level of performance to support the rising bandwidth and power requirements. Accordingly, we expect growing demand for optical transceivers that connect GPUs and AI accelerators to train next-generation AI models. Not only is GEF currently serving the pluggable market, momentum is building for co-packaged optics. At the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in April, multiple companies demonstrated viable co-packaged optics solutions built on GEF silicon. GF's unique silicon photonic platforms offer seamless integration of photonic components with high-performance CMOS logic into a single die, allowing for production-ready design that can support both scale-out and scale-up applications for AI workloads. Overall, we are encouraged with the progress GF is making on commercial engagement and design needs in this space as we begin to capitalize on the exciting multi-year growth opportunities. I'll now pass the call over to John for a deeper dive on first quarter 2025 financials.

Thank you, Nils. For the remainder of the call, including guidance, other than revenue, cash flow, CapEx, and net interest income, I will reference non-IFRS metrics, which are included in today's press release and accompanying slides. As Tim noted, our first quarter results came in at the high end of the guidance ranges we provided in our last quarterly update. We delivered first quarter revenue of $1.585 billion, which represented a 13% decrease over the prior quarter, but an increase of 2% year-over-year. We shipped approximately 543,300-millimeter equivalent wafers in the quarter, down 9% sequentially and up 17% from the prior year period. ASP, or average selling price per wafer, was down modestly year-over-year due in part to the product mix shipped as well as a significant year-over-year reduction in underutilization payments. Waiver revenue from our end markets accounted for approximately 88% of total revenue. Non-waiver revenue, which includes revenue from reticles, non-recurring engineering, expedite fees, and other items, accounted for approximately 12% of total revenue for the first quarter. Let me now provide an update on our revenues by end markets. Smart mobile devices represented approximately quarter's total revenue. First quarter revenue decreased approximately 21% sequentially and approximately 14% from the prior year period. In the first quarter, revenue for the home and industrial IoT markets represented approximately 21% of the quarter's total revenue. First quarter revenue decreased approximately 8% sequentially and increased approximately 6% from the prior year period. Automotive remained a key growth segment for us and represented approximately 19% of the quarter's total revenue. First quarter revenue decreased approximately 25% sequentially and increased approximately 16% from the prior year period. And finally, our communications infrastructure and data center and market represented approximately 11% of the quarter's total revenue. First quarter revenue increased approximately 2% sequentially and increased approximately 45% over the prior year period as we see new opportunities ramp in this end market. For the first quarter, we delivered gross profit of $379 million, which was at the high end of our guided range and translates into approximately 23.9% gross margin. Operating expenses for the quarter represented approximately 10% of total revenue. R&D for the quarter was $114 million, and SG&A expenses were $52 million. Total operating expenses declined sequentially to $166 million in the quarter. We delivered operating profit of $213 million for the quarter at an operating margin of 13.4%, which is at the high end of our guided range and 130 basis points above the prior year period. First quarter net interest income was $14 million, other expense was $7 million, and we incurred income tax expense of $31 million for the quarter. We reported first quarter net income of $189 million, an increase of $15 million from the year-ago period. As a result, based on a fully diluted share count of approximately 557 million shares, we reported diluted earnings of $0.34 per share for the first quarter, which was at the high end of our guidance range. Let me now provide some key balance sheet and cash flow metrics. Cash flow from operations for the first quarter was $331 million. CapEx for the quarter was $166 million, or roughly 10% of revenue. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter, which we define as net cash provided by operating activities, plus the proceeds from government grants related to capital expenditure, less purchases of property, plants, and equipment, and intangible assets, as set out on the statement of cash flows, was $165 million. At the end of the first quarter, our combined total of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities stood at approximately $3.7 billion. We prepaid $664 million on our extending Term Loan A facility balance, lowering our total debt to $1.1 billion. We also have a $1 billion revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn. let me provide you with our outlook for the second quarter of 2025. We expect total GF revenue to be $1.675 billion, plus or minus $25 million. Of this, we expect non-waiver revenue to be approximately 10% of total revenue. We expect gross margin to be in the range of 25%, plus or minus 100 basis points. Excluding share-based compensation, we expect total operating expenses to be $185 million, plus or minus $10 million. We expect operating margin to be in the range of 14% plus or minus 180 basis points. At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect share-based compensation to be approximately $52 million, of which roughly $15 million is related to cost of goods sold. We expect net interest and other income for the quarter to be between $3 million and $11 million, and income tax expense to be between $33 million and $47 million. For 2025, we expect GF's non-IFRS effective tax rate for the year to be in the high teens percentage range. Based on the multiple jurisdictions where we do business and the dynamic tax policy environment, we expect this indication to be consistent with our normalized tax run rate for the remainder of 2025. Based on a fully diluted share count of approximately 560 million shares, we expect diluted earnings per share for the second quarter to be 36 cents plus or minus 5 cents. GF has a consistent track record of prudent financial management, which continues to be critically important in an uncertain macro environment. We retain flexibility in our capital expenditure plans and will nimbly adapt to changes in the outlook trajectory. We remain highly focused on controlling costs while balancing the investments needed for our exciting long-term growth opportunities, as highlighted by Tim and Niels. For the full year 2025, we continue to expect OPEX to be roughly in line with that of 2024, Similarly, our CACBOX expectations for the full year 2025 have not changed since our last earnings call. In summary, the hard work and dedication of our employees around the world drove solid financial performance in the quarter, and we made good progress on our key strategic priorities. From our strong design wind pipeline to our diversified product portfolio to our cost discipline and adjusted free cash generation, GF is well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. I'll now pass it back to Tim for closing remarks before we move to Q&A.

Thanks, John. To recap, I would like to reiterate how strongly GF is committed and how uniquely GF is positioned to being a trusted partner for our customers. Our differentiated essential chip technologies offer customers a diverse portfolio of solutions to win in the end markets that they compete in. Our global footprint offers customers supply flexibility and security where they need us both globally and locally. Our responsible manufacturing helps customers achieve their sustainability priorities, as indicated by recent announcements featuring our collaboration with Infineon and Apple. In conclusion, the direct and indirect impacts of trade policy and the broader economic climate that this results in still remain to be seen. However, our first quarter results demonstrate consistent execution and financial resilience. We will monitor the situation closely and take actions within our control to navigate the uncertain macro environment. However, our long-term growth opportunities and financial foundations remain strong. We will continue to leverage our unique and diversified global footprint to support customers and meet them where they need us. From ADAS to AI to SATCOM to optical networking, we continue to build design with momentum across end markets that will be critical enablers to the long-term megatrends in our industry. For that, I want to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication to our long-term objectives. With that, let's open the call for Q&A. Operator?

Certainly. 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. One moment, please. And our first question comes from the line of Mark Lepakis with Evercore ISI.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Tim, I believe you touched on the tariff issue on the cost side. I was wondering if you could give us a framework for thinking about tariffs on the revenue side and perhaps maybe remind us what percentage of your revenues can you manufacture in multiple geographies? And to what extent does the current tariff discussions out there give you better visibility into demand or enable you to take share from either your direct foundry competitors or from internal manufacturing groups at your own customers. It'd be great if you could provide any color on this side of the tariff dynamics.

Yeah, thank you, Mark, and obviously a very timely question. Just to be consistent with what we said already and what you're hearing from others in the industry, We haven't seen in the short term significant impacts from tariffs, neither pushing out or pulling in of orders, and for sure for Q1 and Q2, that's the situation that we've been in. Important to reiterate that for the second half and into 2026, it remains to be seen what the broader environment impact is from tariffs based on consumer demand and industrial demand. So that we remain obviously watching very closely and remain focused on. However, I think you're touching on something very important for us, which is how our manufacturing footprint provides optionality for customers in this difficult time. And I think what is interesting and has been picking up significantly is the inbound interest in specific sourcing choices. And let me zoom on the U.S. as obviously the most relevant case in point here, where a number of our customers have been talking about further increasing U.S. content, either for existing roadmap products or for porting existing designs from either our competitors or from other geographies into the U.S. And that's been actually across sector. We've seen that in areas like automotive, aerospace, and defense, those that you'd think were traditionally very focused on domestic supply here in the U.S. But what's been interesting is how that has now grown into sectors like the data center, like communications infrastructure. And then even on the more consumer-facing sectors like mobile devices and the IoT, we also see what was previously, let's say, a balanced preference to becoming much more of a strong preference for U.S. sourcing. You touched on something else I think very relevant. We've been investing over the past period in making our manufacturing footprint as flexible as we can, with the majority of technologies qualified in at least two fabs, in some cases even three fabs, which allows us to also address different requirements of that customer base. So net-net, while the situation in the medium term is a little bit difficult to predict, I think long-term we definitely see this as a tailwind for GF.

That's very helpful, and a follow-up, if I may, maybe for John. The ASPs, it looks like they came down. How should we think about ASPs for the rest of the year, and what levers are you pulling to offset the ASP declines to maintain the gross margins? Thank you.

Yeah, Mark, certainly. So, you know, looking back at the kind of the framework for our ASP calculation, underutilization payments are a component of wafer revenue. And as you can see from year to year, as we mentioned in our prepared comments, that amount is down year over year from 2021 to 2024 to 2025. So that's contributing significantly to the decline in average selling prices. That's one point. Second, putting that aside and looking for the year, we do expect ASPs to decline roughly mid-single digits, broadly speaking, for the company for the year. And what's comprising that is primarily mixed. That's the main factor at work there. And let me explain that. Where we can have a product that has many more mask layers versus another product, that change in the mask count, if you will, can drive a differential on the ASP calculation from a mixed perspective. So that's really the primary effect mark that you're seeing. As far as gross margin, as you indicated, that is really the ultimate measure of how we're addressing that. And we see, you know, continue to have levers around gross profit margin to drive our performance, including better utilization, the roll-off of our depreciation costs, structural cost improvements. And as I mentioned, product mix can also be positive from a gross margin perspective, even if you may see ASP impacts from the mix dynamics.

And maybe, Mark, if I can just add a comment from my side there. You know, we've said before the overall pricing environment for our differentiated technologies is constructive. And the reason we still believe that to be the case is when we compete on these technologies, we're competing on features, the ability for us to add value to our customers, for them to win in their markets, and actually also on time to market, which is a critical factor. And so those are difficult to do and therefore scarce in terms of availability. And we remain competitive. Price is always a factor, but it's definitely not the primary or even secondary factor in those awards. And I think as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, 90% approximately of our design wins over the last four quarters have been on that sole sourced basis. There will always be a portion of our business, a smaller portion that is dual sourced, and there'll be times in the market where we seek to increase our share of that dual sourced you know, part for certain parts of our capacity. And that might mean an ASP trade-off where we get more revenue at lower pricing, but we'll do that very deliberately, you know, to optimize our utilization and improve our profitability. So that dynamic also plays out. But as John said, ASP is not necessarily a good indicator for future profitability. A number of other factors mentioned are at work there.

Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of CJ Muse with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I was hoping to focus on your comms infrared data center business. Obviously, 2024 was a correction year, but your commentary on the call definitely sounds you know, much more upbeat, both in terms of design wins and the growth trajectory for 2025. I know you've always been very strong in silicon photonics, but your commentary on transceivers, you've got Grok, you know, more kind of newer players like Iyer Labs and Light Matter, and you also talked about SATCOM. So I believe you were thinking growth kind of in the high single digits before. How should we think about that now for 2025? And then perhaps more importantly, how should we be thinking about the growth within that segment beyond 2025?

Yeah, thank you, CJ. I'll give an overview and then I'll perhaps ask Niels to add a bit more color on our photonics in particular, since I know that's of interest. So as you note, we had significant year-on-year growth in communication infrastructure and data center in the first quarter. And we're looking to a high teens growth for the full year for that market, which obviously is strong growth for that segment. And the reasons are very clear. Number one, obviously we're seeing substantial investments more broadly in the data center. And the work that we've been doing over the past now multiple years to position GF technologies for those data center requirements is starting to really pay off. And that's for a very clear reason. Today's data center uses a lot more data, more storage, more transmission of data for the applications and workloads in question, and it does so with a significant increased power. And so we've been very much focused on positioning GS technologies to serve those requirements, and that underpins that growth. And as you also note, we don't just have one solution in that space. We have solutions on our silicon germanium platform in things like TIA and drivers, but also pluggable silicon photonics. And now, as you start to note, the transition to co-packaged optics. So again, I think not just a short-term story, but a long-term story for growth as well. Niels, anything to add?

Yeah, I can go a little bit deeper on the silicon photonics, but maybe also just highlight strong growth on the satellite communication side. where we're winning across the board in satellite communications. Large space arrays and antennas, strong design momentum there. SATCOM satellite wins on our 45i BSOI platform. In addition to that, and of course, 22FDX and 12LP and 130NSX in the previously announced SATCOM platform. strong growth there as well that plays into the CID. But maybe going a little bit deeper on silicon photonics, it is our fastest growing battleground. It's an area we've been investing in for a long time, and we built a very strong technology versus competition where we actually have the silicon photonics optical integrated with the high-performance CMOS as, I believe, the only supplier in the industry. So this is allowing us to have very strong performance in the pluggable segment that is taken off and is being used within data centers between the servers, between data centers, and then now, you know, good momentum building on the co-package designs, which really is targeting the communication between the GPUs and CPUs in the data centers. So we just came from the optical fiber conference. There were several customers, both larger and smaller ones, demonstrating co-packed technology solutions based on DF technologies. And as we speak here, in deep execution with multiple of the major players on co-packed silicon photonics here under, actually having tape outs happening both within this quarter and the next few quarters. So feeling quite confident about the growth in silicon photonics and very excited about the co-packed optic solutions.

Very helpful color. As a follow-up, I was hoping perhaps you could drill down into some of the other end markets. You know, our auto kind of took a pause here in March. How are you thinking about the rate of recovery through the year? And do you see all kind of segments growing in calendar 25? Or perhaps could we be, you know, perhaps more conservative on the smart mobile side? Any color there would be very helpful. Thanks so much.

Yeah, of course. Let me maybe start with smart mobile devices. I think the base case remains largely consistent. So we're expecting a flattish market in 2025. IoT specifically. Last time I mentioned that inventory was starting to come down and we're expecting to see growth from some of the core IoT players. And that's exactly what you saw in the latest announcements from some of those players. We grew, GF grew IoT year-on-year in Q1. However, due to the uncertainty on the consumer spend, we expect the year to be more of a flattish kind of IoT. Longer term though, very well positioned with our RF power and CMOS portfolio, and we have solid design momentum in areas like medical, audio, industrial power, connectivity, tracking, identification, and security. So pretty much across all the segments, solid design and growth. And proof points from Q1 in IoT, you know, design wins in Wi-Fi 7 with our FinFET portfolio. And I want to remind people our FinFET portfolio is getting more and more optimized for low power and thereby an IF performance and thereby have a great fit for Wi-Fi 7. MCU and audio DSPs, so connected MCUs and AI-enabled audio DSPs and 22FTX. And then medical power and cell IoT on a broader space on 130 and 55 BCD light. So pretty good design momentum in IoT and expecting after 25 to drive some growth. And then let me wrap it up on automotive. We continue to be bullish in automotive. You remember that we have consistently delivered share gains since our IPO. And you probably also remember that last year we delivered about 15% year-on-year automotive growth in 24. So Revit today, really a result of design wins over the last several years. But what I'm excited about is we have stepped it up in terms of automotive qualifications. We mentioned earlier that all our fabs are now automotive qualified. But in addition to that, all our major technologies are automotive qualified, and several of them are automotive pro-qualified. A couple of hero technologies I'd like to call out is 40ESF3, obviously, you know, big momentum there with the leading MCU, automotive MCU provider in the industry. 130BCD, you know, very strong in battery management systems. And then now 22FDX, you know, being seen very, very strong traction across all sense applications, specifically in radar. So the future, you know, looking as strong as what we have in the past, and we really feel we're in a position to continue to take share in the automotive space.

Hey, CJ, this is John. I just want to add one point of clarification. So our view on smart mobile devices for the year on being flattish is net of the underutilization payment delta from year to year, which is about $100 million. Thanks, John.

I should have mentioned that. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Vivek Ariya with Bank of America.

Thanks for taking my question. For the first one, is exiting 2025 at 30% gross margin still the target? And if yes, is that consistent with growing Q3 and Q4 kind of at this mid-single-digit rate sequentially, or has anything changed in that framework versus how you thought about it on the last earnings call?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Vivek. And so maybe I'll give a bit of color of our overall trajectory to margin expansion, and then John gives some color on 2025 itself. And so, you know, there are really three factors that give us a lot of confidence in our ability to grow margins in line with our long-term target of 40%. And, you know, we've talked about some of them on the call already. The first one is the ramp of differentiated technologies. And so all these design ways we've mentioned, where we're competing on performance, where we're competing on ability to add value to our customers, the vast majority come in significantly above our corporate averages and our corporate goals in terms of those those price outcomes. And that gives us confidence in the ability to ramp as those grow as part of our business. I think the second factor is the depth we have with customers, but also the opportunity to do more. As you can imagine, I've been on the road in the last couple of months spending a lot of time with customers. And I would say with no exceptions, the appetite to do more in existing areas, but also in new areas is very strong. And even for some customers where we have relatively low share today, the opportunity to do more is very much there. And Some of that is the differentiated technologies, but also some of it is back to the footprint discussion that we had earlier. So there's appetite to significantly increase. But the third factor that's really structural is that we have a significant manufacturing footprint. As you heard in the prepared remarks, we've invested over $7 billion since 2021 to build that footprint, both scale and diversification. And that allows us to serve anywhere between $9 and $10 billion of revenue, depending on the mix. without significant capex spending and definitely without significant increase in fixed cost. And that allows us to basically have a lot of accretive flow through from top-line growth, both as those design wins and customer depth ramps, but also as the broader market comes back. And so that gives me long-term confidence in our model. Perhaps, John, you can comment about 2025 itself.

Yeah, sure, Vivek. So, you know, clearly, you know, the tariff concern is lingering out there, as Tim and Nils have both indicated, and potentially impacting the more consumer-oriented end markets that we have in S&D and some portions of our IoT market. So we just have to acknowledge that. Putting that aside, under the base case of growth this year, we do expect utilization to increase. Our utilization level in Q1 was around 80% in our factories. So it starts with that. That's a key element to absorbing our fixed costs and improving our gross profit margin. The second factor is the improvement in our depreciation cost, as we've been able to operate in a more CapEx-lite manner for the last couple of years here at around 10%, even less, as a function of our revenue on CapEx and leveraging the substantial amount of investment in our factories that have been made over the years, as Tim indicated in his prepared commentary. And we remain... confident that that improvement would be on the order of about $250 million in fiscal 2025, vast majority of which does affect gross profit margins. So that's another key factor at work here. Third is an improving product mix where some of the exciting new highly differentiated product lines that Niels was talking about that are ramping are actually coming in at above corporate average gross profit margins. So that helps us as well. And finally, we have ongoing efforts in terms of structural cost improvement to help improve our efficiency. So putting that all together, Vivek, we do continue to have the view that with the base case assumptions, we have the possibility to exit 2025 at 30% gross margin.

And that's very helpful. And for my follow-up, You know, maybe I'm kind of nitpicking here, but you mentioned that wafer ASPs could come down sort of in the mid single digit range. When we look at commentary from a lot of the diversified automotive, industrial, IoT customers, you know, they're indicating their pricing would only go down, you know, kind of low single digit. And I don't know whether I'm reading too much into this, but conceptually, you know, should your pricing, you know, come down at the same pace? Why would it be? different and then I've also had a point of clarification there what was the apples to apples wafer price decline because on a reported basis it is down 13 percent but if I remove the 82 million I think you had in termination fees in q1 last year it's down eight percent so I just wanted to kind of clarify that numerically and then why should there be a difference between how your customers are planning their pricing versus how you are thinking about your wafer pricing thank you

Yeah, Vivek, so certainly the kind of three factors that work here are the underutilization payment dynamic. I think you understand that. And then looking beyond that, it's really a combination of primarily mixed changes. So I mentioned that earlier in the earlier responses where, you know, different types of products can carry different ASPs. And, you know, some products with lower ASPs actually have higher gross profit margins. So that's not really a great indicator on profitability from that dynamic. And then finally, it's the point that Tim was mentioning, where in some few cases, we have chosen to take market share with modest price allowance in some markets where there's a dual source dynamic. But that's not the major driver. The major driver are the first two factors that I mentioned.

Yeah, if I may, you know, maybe just explaining, you know, why lower ESPs is not necessarily equivalent to lower margin. You look at the process nodes that we are positioning into the market space and where we have very good differentiation and good margin on. Some of those process nodes have only what we call 25 mask layers versus other process nodes, you know, that already in production are sitting maybe at 50, 60 mask layers. So you can you can very quickly understand that the cost difference between two technologies like that is quite big, and thereby you can, at a lower wafer ASP, you can end up with much better margins. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ross Seymour with Deutsche Bank.

Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Lots of good stuff on the year as a whole. I want to just get a little shorter term with my first question. For the second quarter guide, buy-in markets versus the roughly up 6% overall, which markets are growing above that or below that? Or if you want to talk kind of in absolute terms, what's the reasons behind those drivers? Buy-in market, please.

John, you want to comment, and then I'll add some comments?

Yeah, sure. I mean, we generally see a fairly consistent pattern there, Ross, of improvement in the second quarter. And we mentioned the first quarter being the low point in the smart mobile device category. But it's fairly well distributed.

OK. Thanks for that. And I guess a bigger picture question, Tim, in your preamble, you talked about confidence in the company's ability to grow over time for a number of different organic reasons, but you also mentioned inorganic. I don't expect you to comment on any specific deals or opportunities, but just wondered what is the general strategy around what you would look for in those inorganic opportunities?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Ross. So, you know, for us, the way we think about M&A as a growth lever is really very much aligned with our strategy. And so as we've laid out in the past, you know, going deeper on a differentiated essential chip portfolio, meeting our customers where they need us and adding capabilities that meet their requirements. And then obviously, you know, our footprint itself. And I'd say, you know, if you'd have to think about where we'd be most focused in an organic, it's really on the first of those pillars and potentially slightly on the second. And so we'll look for areas where we can add value to our existing offerings And that could be on the technology side, like the acquisition we made last year with Tagore Technologies, but similar areas where we can bring value to the platform. There's nothing critical needed to execute our strategy, but we'll definitely be opportunistic about opportunities that can help us accelerate based on that differentiation.

Thank you. Ross, if I could just quickly add, in terms of our firepower, in terms of inorganic activity, we're very well positioned. We ended the quarter with $3.7 billion in cash and investments and another billion dollars in capacity on our revolver. That's undrawn. So that puts us in a good position. And I also want to emphasize that we continue to view free cash flow generation as a major goal for this year and have the goal of exceeding a billion dollars in free cash flow again in 2025 as we did in 2024. Great.

Thank you, John. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Chris Caso with Wolf Research.

Yes, thank you. The first question, it's just a clarification of the underutilization charge payments. Do you expect with the Elimination of the payments that happened last quarter, are we pretty much done with that headwind? Is there any potential future headwind, anything left to roll off? And can you quantify in, you know, getting to this target goal of 30% gross margins for the year, you know, what's the headwind from the absence of underutilization payments on a year-on-year basis?

Yeah, Chris, this is John. The first part of your question is yes, we do expect that to be largely behind us, if you will. You may have some modest amount of this from time to time, but largely behind us. And it's several points of gross profit margin that we are overcoming here. And related to that, if you wish to think of it that way, I mean, really the way to The way I think of it more is that this has allowed us the ability to absorb a downturn in the industry, and we had the framework in place to allow us to be partially compensated for that. So I actually think it was positive, very positive from that aspect, but I do understand the angle of how you're asking.

Okay, thank you. Also, in your paired remarks, you talked a bit about the tariff impact, and I guess I'm focused here on the direct impact such as, you know, additional costs that you may have to encounter on that. I guess one is, you know, have you done any work with being able to identify what the magnitude of that may be? And then secondly, you know, what's your ability to pass it on to customers?

Yeah, Chris, this is John again. So we have analyzed that, and, you know, clearly a good portion of the semiconductor inputs landscape is exempt from tariff, but not 100% of it. So, looking at the balance of input cost that is not exempt from tariff, we have roughly estimated that at about a $20 million annualized impact on us with a very minimal portion of that affecting second quarter. That is comprehensive in our guidance, by the way. So, that's the rough framing. We definitely need to keep an eye on this and monitor it, which we are doing. And yes, as we continue to assess the materiality of tariffs overall, we will look at how we can pass this through in terms of our ASPs and commercially.

Yeah, I think, Chris, just to add from my side, I mean, the reason that impact is so low is is based on the fact that we've got a very diversified supply chain on a global basis, and all of our fabs have, you know, broad sets of suppliers that we can tap into if we see dynamics like this. And so we're able to keep that to a bare minimum relative to some other companies.

Yeah, and just, John, a final point. I mean, bear in mind, our solar global footprint, where, you know, a good portion of our manufacturing is outside the United States. So two of our three 300-millimeter fabs are not in the United States as well.

Thank you. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company.

Hey, John, just wanted to ask on the second quarter gross margin, looks like the guidance for 25% implies a fairly low or maybe on the low side incremental fall through on the second quarter. Just wondering if there are any specific puts or takes on second quarter gross margin at 25%.

Quinn, you know, it's really mix from that perspective. But, yeah, it's really looking at mix, primarily driving that.

Great. And then maybe a longer-term question. You guys talked about several design wins and tape outs imminent on the CPO side. But, you know, based on your discussions with customers, when do you see the volume ramp? Is that something you think ramps in 26? Does it take longer to get, especially on the scale-up network side?

You know, I think maybe I'll just give a bit of color on that trajectory and then ask Niels for what we're hearing in the industry more broadly. You know, the industry's gone through an evolution of its view about the ramp of photonics, and I think it's very clear that this has moved from an if to a when statement, both on, you know, use of photonics more broadly, but definitely on CPO. And there were announcements at OS, Niels mentioned, but even before OSC, including industry leaders like NVIDIA that talked about co-packaged optics for scale-out applications in their case. So I think there's no more debate about about whether or not CPO, obviously rate and pace of transition is always a little bit uncertain. Maybe Niels, share a bit your perspective on that.

Yeah, maybe the best way to think about it is what co-package optics does within the data center between the GPUs is it enables a pretty substantial performance improvement as well as a pretty substantial power reduction and So when you think about the next generation data centers, this is just becoming even more urgent now that you can see what you can actually achieve. And that is what really have heightened the urgency from the major players in getting this to market as fast as they can. So we're excited about it. We got the technology well positioned and ready. We have our teams maniacally focused on flawless execution as we work through it. And we expect to be to be ramping with these players, you know, among the earliest of the optical silicon photonics players.

Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Chris Sankar with TD Cowan.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I told them on the first one on the smart mobile side, I think, John, you mentioned there was some inventory reduction. Was it concentrated at one customer? Was it more broad-based? And also within mobile, you seem like you're getting more traction in out-of-front end products. How do you think about those gross margins versus the 2255 nanometer mobile products? I'm going to add a quick follow-up.

So maybe, Niels, you can comment on the markets.

Yeah, I would say, you know, maybe less of an inventory, but more of an underutilization charge, you know, that happened year-on-year and thereby the change. You know, when you take that out of the picture or exclude that out of the picture, you know, basically, you know, flattish. But I think what's really exciting for us in the smart mobile device space is that not only do we have strength and solid design wins on the eye front lens, like you mentioned, but we actually also are starting to see very good solid momentum on display, imaging, as well as haptics and audio in the S&D space, and not to mention smart glasses, where we got our first major design win here in first quarter for micro LED displays. So there's a lot more going on than just the eye front, and in general, I would say the margins are I created to our business the margin to be a winning end. I created to our business to answer your specific question.

Got it, got it. Very helpful. And then just a quick follow-up on autos. And thanks for all the color that you gave on tariffs. I understand there's so many moving parts there. But given that on the end market for autos, like obviously tariff has an impact, China versus U.S. auto, there's a difference in their growth. I'm kind of curious, factoring all of that, So you still expect double-digit growth in autos for your auto segment this year?

Yeah, and I think maybe a general view, and I'll add to it, Niels, as well, this is very much a story of GF share gain relative to others versus increase in sales at the forecourt increasing. Obviously, that environment is relatively weak. But GF share gain story is relatively strong, and that's based on number one, us winning with our customers, but also our customers, and Niels gave some specific examples, winning in their markets and taking shares. So we remain very confident based on those shared dynamics.

And the share gains comes from, of course, the original play, you know, in automotive MCU, where we have the design wins with the fastest growing players. But it's also very exciting what we're seeing. I mentioned earlier what we're seeing on our power technologies for battery management system, as well as the body the body power controls within the car, and then, of course, all the sensors and specifically radar where 22FDX has really become an industry standard. So the share gains come from our original position and then, in addition, adding new market areas where we are growing from almost nothing to more meaningful revenue.

Thanks a lot, Tim Nielsen, John.

Thanks, Chris. Andrew, we'll take one last question.

And our final question comes from the line of Mehdi Husseini with SIG.

Hi. Thanks, John. So my question is on home and IoT. I'm filling in for Mehdi. It's Bastian. You saw two quarters of year-on-year growth. I was wondering if you could give us some color on how much of that 6% is being driven by volume versus pricing. And is it improving your visibility really to, you know, the end of inventory digestion that has been a little bit hard to, you know, to call? And I have a follow-up.

Yeah, Neil, do you want to comment on the market?

Yeah, I can comment on that. You know, as mentioned earlier on, the inventory has certainly come down and are now at more, you know, what we say, normal levels. Also mentioned earlier on, you see the players that are strictly IoT players, you actually see them having very strong growth here in Q1. I'm sure you saw some of those announcements. And that's really what we believe that we're seeing as well. Again, as I mentioned earlier on, we are cautious here because of consumer sentiment. But I can mention maybe a couple of major wins that we had in Q1. We have Wi-Fi 7 on our FinFET technology. connected MCUs, AI-enabled audio DSPs, medical, you know, block and close monitoring, power in general, and then cell IoT. So these are all assignments we had in first quarter that bodes well for, you know, where IoT is going for GF in the future.

Bastian, did you have a quick follow-up?

Oh, yeah. In terms of smartphone, well, I think the revenue was a little bit lower than we expected. Any particular category on the high end or mid end smartphone that you saw, driving that decline in revenue and related to consumer demand? You know, is that decline more of a, you know, building, you know, customers building more inventory than expected? Or is that more of a consumer demand? Or If you could just share a little bit of light on this particular dynamic in this market.

Sure. Sure, this, John. You bet. This, John, really points to two factors. One, as Niels mentioned several times, it's the roll-off of the underutilization payments from one year ago to first quarter 25. And then secondly is just the seasonality of this being a seasonally low period. We expect SMD to continue to ramp throughout the year.

Thanks, Bhatian, and thank you, Andrew, for emceeing the call. I appreciate everyone and the questions raised today. I look forward to seeing and speaking to many of you over the next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.