Ichor Holdings

Multiple device types, our process tool customers are also witnessing the need for more etch and deposition steps to help create smooth patterns and reduce line width roughness. Additionally, expectations for WFE growth reflect a significant expansion in the industry's deployment of advanced packaging techniques, which have their own particular process challenges. These require better film stress management, improved defectivity, enhance uniformity, and increase material selectivity, all of which are enabled by more precise control of gas and fluid delivery. Outside of semiconductors, specifically for our IMG business, we are also driving cross-selling opportunities at our historical gas panel customers, as well as opportunities to offer I-Corps's various fluid delivery products and capabilities to IMG's customer base in medical, aerospace, and defense. As these new technologies and drivers evolve and proliferate, we see opportunities for I-Corps to expand our revenue potential and continue to add breadth and diversification to our customer base. All of these factors build a strong story for I-Corps revenue growth as the industry recovery accelerates. Furthermore, our business model and financial profile tend to generate significant operating leverage as revenues grow. Current expectations are for the Q4 industry spending levels to stay fairly consistent through the first half of 2024, followed by the beginning of a revenue ramp in the second half in advance of an expected strong recovery year in 2025. We expect to be able to deliver significant earnings growth as revenue volumes increase, which is why we continue to make critical investments in our business in support of our future growth. We are maintaining our focus on driving share gains for our proprietary products and making investments in new offerings that support our customers' long-term technology roadmaps. These periods of lowered demand provide both I-Corps and our customers the ability to work on new qualifications. We continue to make very good progress in our key focus areas. These include our next generation gas panel, qualifications of our proprietary machine components, and our silicon carbide gas panel. I'm very pleased with our progress in customer evaluations of our new gas panel. As a reminder, the new gas panel contains about 75% proprietary I-Corps content compared to just 10% today, which could drive significant expansion of our gross margin profile. We have completed the qualification of our gas panel for three process applications, And in the next two quarters, expect to ship gas panels that will support five additional systems for end-user customer tool evaluations. This is a major milestone for the program. Our best estimate of when production shipments will begin is late 2024, which is when we would expect the end-customer evaluations to be successfully completed. We continue to work with three additional customers that are evaluating our technology. In our I-Corps proprietary machine components, we continue to win new qualifications across our customer base. In Q3, we completed several new component qualifications and expect to begin initial shipments later this quarter. We also expect to integrate incremental proprietary components into our existing gas panels, but this will take some time as our customers continue to work through the existing inventory on hand. Similar to our next generation gas panel, all of these qualifications and new customer wins will be margin accretive. And lastly, we continue to ship production volume gas panels for the silicon carbide market and have now been qualified on the next generation systems as well. We estimate the silicon carbide SAM for gas delivery to be around $60 million in 2023, but a decent tailwind for our revenue growth as the overall industry rebounds in the latter half of 24 and 2025. In summary, I'll remind everyone here today that our revenues tend to recover more sharply when industry spending rebounds, and our business model enables earnings growth well in excess of revenue growth. In the meantime, we are managing through the lower demand environment by focusing on delivering solid financial results as the business recovers improving our operational capabilities, qualifying our internally developed products, and developing new products that align with our customers' needs for both technology and cost. With that, I'll turn it over to Greg to recap our Q3 results and provide further details around our Q4 outlook. Greg?

Thanks, Jeff. To begin, I would like to emphasize that the P&L metrics discussed today are non-GAAP measures. These measures exclude the impact of share-based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangible assets, non-recurring charges, and discrete tax items and adjustments. There is a useful financial supplement available on our investor section of our website that summarizes our GAAP and non-GAAP financial results, as well as summary balance sheet and cash flow information for the last several quarters. In the third quarter, our revenues were $197 million at the upper end of guidance and increased percent from the second quarter. Our Q3 gross margin was 13.1%, which was lower than our expectations, primarily due to the additional inventory provisions recorded during the quarter, as well as a less favorable product mix compared to our forecast. With close control of spending, Q3 operating expenses of $21.3 million declined from Q2 levels. The resulting operating margin for Q3 was 2.2%. Our net interest expense was $5 million and our non-GAAP net income tax benefit for the quarter exceeded our forecast at $2.9 million. Consequently, Our net earnings for the quarter came in at the midpoint of Q3 guidance at $0.07 per share. Now turning to the balance sheet. At the end of the quarter, our cash and equivalents totaled $76 million, a $9 million decrease from Q2, primarily due to our net debt reduction of $12 million. We generated $4 million in cash flow from operations and after deducting $2.4 million of capital expenditures, our free cash flow for the quarter was $1.6 million. This was below our expectations for free cash flow given the back-end loaded revenue profile of the quarter, which drove an $8 million increase in accounts receivable. Inventory remained flat at $267 million. Day sales outstanding increased by one day to 48, and inventory turnover stood at 2.6. We are continuing to reduce our net debt levels given the higher interest rate environment, and our net debt coverage ratio currently stands at 2.6 times. Now let's discuss our guidance for the fourth quarter. We anticipate revenues in the range of $190 to $205 million. we expect that our gross margins will improve to approximately 14% plus or minus 50 basis points. Our fourth quarter gross margin expectations reflect somewhat more favorable product mix, as well as some improvement in the level of inventory reserves forecasted. As we enter 2024, we expect to be solidly back on track with our 25% flow through at similar revenue levels when compared to our second quarter gross margin performance. We plan to carefully manage operating expenses to $21.4 million level, give or take $200,000, as we continue to prioritize our R&D investments for new product programs and maintain the essential infrastructure that will enable us to ramp revenues in response to more significant upticks in customer demand in the quarters ahead. Net interest expense is expected to be approximately $5 million. The non-GAAP income tax benefit we expect at the midpoint of Q4 guidance is approximately $1 million. For fiscal 2023, we expect to recognize a net tax benefit of approximately $7 million which is higher than our previous forecast. Looking ahead to 2024, we anticipate incurring a nominal non-GAAP tax expense each quarter. And for modeling purposes, you should assume a 5% to 10% non-GAAP effective tax rate. Operator, we are ready to take questions. Please open the line.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Charles Shee with Needham. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Good afternoon, Jeff. I want to start the first question in terms of the first half 24. I heard you talk about the first half 24, maybe that's an industry comment. You're expecting consistent level, I mean consistent with the Q4 level for the first half 24. I wonder, What do you see at iQOO business going into 24? And I think it's tied to this question that how much inventory do you think your customers are still holding at this point of your products and whether they have depleted or soon to be depleted, which actually could lead to slightly higher, steadier growth for iQOO business going into 24, first half 24? Thanks.

All right, Charles, thanks for the questions. And if I miss any piece of it, just remind me. I think what we see looking into 2024 are very similar levels of revenue, kind of bouncing along the bottom here. I think in outlook for WFE, I would say in general, I think that kind of mirrors what most people are expecting, I think, in the market with an inflection beginning in the second half. In general, it's going to have to inflect sometimes near to the fourth quarter unless the 2025 outlook changes materially, but I think most people are looking at a very strong 2025 similar. Now, your question around inventory, how much? We don't know. We don't have that visibility, but we can tell from the order patterns that we're still at, I'll call it muted levels. versus where we would have expected to be through this quarter and probably will last and be a bit of a headwind as we go even into next year. And the reason we can stay relatively flat, I think, over the next couple of quarters is we are bringing in some incremental share gains to offset some of that. Did I miss any other pieces?

No. Yeah. Thanks very much, Jeff. That was a very good answer. So maybe the next question, I wanna ask a little bit more about the gross margin performance over the last quarter, because you did highlight, right? If I heard you correctly, there are two items there. One is the, well, maybe the product mix was not as favorable, but you actually pointed out, pointed to the rebound of gas panel business, somewhat of rebound. But the other thing, is about inventory reserve. I just want to ask, what was that inventory reserve that you took in Q3? Why was it a little bit higher? Sounds like it's a little bit higher than you previously expected. Why did you take that action, and what's behind that? Thanks.

Can I start with the product mix? And I'll let Greg answer the reserve level. With the product mix, I would say as we entered the quarter, In our machining side of the business, we expected some relatively decent growth, not super, but it just stayed relatively the same and actually declined slightly. So this is what leads us to believe that we still have inventory in the channel that has to get burned off before we start to see an inflection. And that's primarily where you saw the mix. We offset that, obviously, with the gas panel integration business, which comes in at lower margins versus our machining margins. And then I'll let Greg talk a little bit about inventory reserves. It's a complex subject. I'll leave it at that.

Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Hey, Charles. Regarding the inventory reserves in Q3, we saw some headwinds in our various business units of inventory using our normal E&O inventory reserve process. And as we do our look backs, we had some inventory roll off from prior quarters that we had to take some additional reserves for. That was predominantly the driver for Q3. And we do expect to see some benefit in Q4 as we work down some of that inventory that we had reserved. But we do expect it to return back to some level of normality. as we exit the year for 23.

Maybe a quick follow-up, Greg. I know that's a complex subject, but how should we think about what's normality? Is there anything quantitatively you can point out?

No, I think, Charles, that's a bit more complex. you know, we have a very complex model that we look at and use, you know, various things to look at demand and historical activities. So there isn't a normal number that we could point to. But as, as we manage that inventory and we start turning it, then we should see the reserves come back to what we would expect to be normal, not some predetermined amount, but what we expect it to be from a, ongoing run rate standpoint. I'm not sure I answered that, but it is a complex model, and there isn't really a normal number that we could point you to.

Thanks, Greg. That's all my questions. Thanks.

Thanks, Charles.

Next question, Craig Ellis with B Reilly Securities. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking the questions, guys. I'll just follow up on a little bit of Charles' line of inquiry. Can you help us understand the relative magnitude of the mix and the inventory reserve items that impacted the calendar third quarter's gross margin and somewhat relatedly, am I interpreting your comments correctly, Greg, in inferring that the the reserving issue should exhaust itself by the end of the fourth quarter? Could some of that carry into calendar 24?

So, hi, Craig. So the excursion we saw from what we had guided to, about half of the MIS was tied to the inventory reserve that we took. And then the rest of it is really product mix and some other some minor changes in the factory. But half of the MIS that we guided to was driven by the reserves. And as I said earlier, we don't expect it to be at that same level of reserve in Q4, so we do expect it to pop back as we manage through that bubble of the inventory.

Yeah, and I think, Craig and Shep, just to follow on, I think that's why we Dave Kuntz, We offered some color on even in a similar quarter and Q1 that we think we would be back to that flow through a 25% so in Q1 it should. Dave Kuntz, More normalized I should say it's never it always has some flexibility or variability in it, but I think we can get back and if you do the flow through based on Q2 you'll see it be kind of in the low 15s again.

Dave Kuntz, got it that's really helped one i've missed that comment on one Q so thanks for clarifying that Jeff. And then, Jeff, I wanted to follow up on a comment that you made in the early part of the Q&A when you talked about some share gain potential that you had coming into the model that would be beneficial in calendar 24. Can you talk a little bit more about that and, you know, when do we expect it to start? How material could it be through the year, et cetera? Thank you.

Dave Kuntz, yeah if you look into 2024 it's i'd say it's difficult to size but it's. Dave Kuntz, Like i'll size it in the 10s of millions and it kind of in a full run rate there's a couple of things that I can point to obviously we've been working to add machine content. Dave Kuntz, we're getting a qualified but between our inventories and other in the channel, we have to work through that before they go in. Dave Kuntz, I think you'll start to see some of that margin accretion, which is why we talked about. the 25% flow through going into Q1. We get a full year of the silicon carbide gas delivery systems that we're delivering to our initial customer in that space that are going to actually get the full year where, in fact, we had about half a year. So it's going to more than double, and you'll start to see that runway increase a little bit. And those are some areas where we're seeing some new ones in weldments, but we're still working off some of the inventory in the channel.

Nice to see that. Thanks so much, Jeff. Thanks, Craig.

Thanks, Craig. Next question, Krish Sankar with TD Cow, and please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question. First one, Jeff, I just wanted to ask you a question. I understand demand weakness. It's kind of well understood, so, you know, that's kind of a negative thing. You know, if you look at your customers, all the Semicap OEM customers are shipping a lot to China, and obviously they can charge a higher ASP, even though it's mature nodes. Do you get any benefit from that or is it neutral or is it even negative for iCore because it's mature notes so the gas boxes are smaller if it's a lower ASP product you're selling? I'm just trying to get your thoughts on how China impacts you because it's clearly a huge benefit for your customers but doesn't seem like it's impacting you as much.

Well, I think if it's a new tool that ships Into China, at 300 millimeter, we benefit just like any other tool that goes into China. Where we don't benefit is we don't sell anything directly to any China OEMs, process tool manufacturers like Inara or anything like that. We don't participate in that level. I would say our participation at the 200 millimeter level is a little bit lower than it is at 300 millimeter. Some of that is still done in-house. And so I don't know that it's a huge headwind for us, but it's obviously not a, we benefit as though our customers do. Anything that they ship into China at 300 millimeter, we'll get a piece of, if that's market share that we're a part of.

Got it, got it. And then I have two other quick questions. Number one, you kind of mentioned your revenues hanging around these levels in the first half of next year. Do you really need to see a NAND inflection for these revenues to grow, or are you banking on anything?

Well, that is a great question, Krish. A NAND inflection would be fantastic. I mean, obviously, I think, as you know, our customer base, well, NAND for us is a reflection of what our customers are seeing, and NAND is down as much as 75%, so any inflection there is uh tremendously helpful and would drive kind of the memory span i would say you know this year we're going to be 75 boundary logic so obviously it would definitely help i would say we don't see that inflection in the next uh two quarters in the first half of 2024 we don't see any indication of that yet god and then the final just a clarification on the silicon carbide side

Do you still have only one customer, or do you have more than one?

We have one customer in that space. We haven't said who it is. But we're on multiple platforms there now, and as they continue to iterate, we call it the tool of record there. We talked about the market being $60 million, and I would say that This one customer has got a reasonably good share of that market, but there's still three or four other players that can address this market over time. We see this market is kind of doubling in the next four or five years, so it's an area of focus for us. And this is what I would say. These are deposition tools.

Thanks a lot, Jeff.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Chin with Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Hi there. Good afternoon. Thanks for letting us ask a few questions. Maybe, Jeff, first question. With EV litho delivery sort of flattening out plus or minus next year, have you already seen an adjustment from your customer? And are there any inventory headwinds to consider moving forward?

I don't think there's any inventory headwinds with our EUV customer. I think that what I've said in the past, they're very transparent. We don't really see a deviation from what they're telling the external world. The only thing I would remind you of is we deliver about five months before they can deliver a tool. So anything in the first half of the year, we've already addressed in our back half of the year shipment for them. and they're remaining relatively flat. I think, as you know, that customer is expected to grasp 10% of our revenue this year.

Okay, thank you.

And you gave a bit of an update in terms of the evaluations and qualifications of some of the new gas panels with significant content, I-Corps content, and it sounds like And can you, I didn't catch all of the discussion, but it seems like there's additional evals going out in the field. And so maybe, you know, more activity than you might have imagined in sort of, you know, first revenue kind of steered towards the latter stages of next year. Is that the right way to characterize it? Can you also maybe, if you didn't already go over sort of like the number of customers, maybe the number of platforms again that you're involved with?

Yeah. So the first three qualifications are, um, Again, they're all deposition applications, three different applications. We haven't said how many customers and specifics we're working on, but it's three or four that are pretty active right now. This initial wave of evaluation units, most of those Customer evaluation. So we've delivered gas panels that might go in their application lab, get tested, get qualified, and then they go out with their new products and platforms with our gas panels on them. And then the next five months or so, we're going to have about five full tools go out that we would expect to be a customer evaluation. So at the device manufacturers, those take six to nine months. And so that's how the first wave would be, kind of the back half of 2024. And we're working with several other customers along the way, but they have not yet finished their internal qualifications. It's hard to set a timeline, but probably qualifications complete at some point for some of those in 2024, and then 2025 would be the production tool rollout.

Got it. Maybe one last one. maybe for Greg and tying some of this together, but thinking about some of those hopefully successful qualifications, thinking about some of the content that you're designing into existing gas panels. And I understand it'll stage in some of that revenue at parts of last year, but maybe 2024 into 2025. Does it start to make sense that you could have gross margin flow through somewhere north of 25% when you think about sort of the accretion some of those revenue opportunities provide?

Hi, Brian. Yes, in regards to that, you know, as those gas boxes and those new contents start to move their way through the revenue stream, we do expect that we should benefit in our margin. and that those specific margin profiles should see a better than 25% flow through. And as that takes more percentage of the revenue, we should see a better benefit on the overall margin going into 25.

Yeah, I mean, Brian, I think we've talked about this in the past. We need this level of content to get us into the 20% kind of corporate-wide gross margins. You don't need like $100 million of this given the fact that the margins are much more like our machining margins with the ship from kind of 90% procured to 75% internally manufactured. So it's part of our roadmap to getting the 20% gross margin in our business model.

Great, thank you.

There are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to Jeff Andreessen for closing comments.

Thank you for joining us on our call this quarter. I'd like to thank our employees, suppliers, and customers for their ongoing dedication and support as we continue to navigate this highly dynamic business environment. Our upcoming investor activities include the New York City Summit on December 12th and the Needham Growth Conference in January. We also look forward to our Q4 conference call scheduled for early February. Operator, that concludes our call.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.