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spk09: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Lattice Semiconductor's fourth quarter and full year 2021 conference call. 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 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Rick Mache, Lattice's Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. With me today are Jim Anderson, Lattice's President and CEO, and Sherry Luther, Lattice's CFO. We'll provide a financial and business review of the fourth quarter of 2021 and the business outlook for the first quarter of 2022. If you have not obtained a copy of our earnings press release, it can be found on our company website in the investor relations section at lettucefemi.com. I would like to remind everyone that during our conference call today, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution you that such statements are predictions based on information that is currently available and actually results may differ materially. We refer you to documents that the company files with the SEC, including our 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and 8-Ks. These documents contain and identify important risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements. This call includes and constitutes the company's official guidance for the first quarter of 2022. If at any time after this call we communicate any material changes to this guidance, we intend that such updates will be done using a publicly announced conference call. We refer primarily to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. By disclosing certain non-GAAP information, management intends to provide investors with additional information to permit further analysis of the company's performance and underlying trends. For historical periods, we provide reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures that can be found on the investor relations section of our website at latissemi.com. Let me now turn the call over to Jim Anderson, our CEO.
spk04: Thank you, Rick, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on our call today. 2021 was a pivotal year for Lattice as we entered a new growth phase for the company, driven by our leadership product portfolio and strong customer momentum. Annual revenue grew by 26%, with double-digit growth in each of our three market segments. Non-GAAP gross margin expanded by 220 basis points year over year to a record 63.2%. And we delivered record non-GAAP net income, which grew 54% year over year in 2021. We also continued to expand our product portfolio with multiple hardware and software product launches. In addition, we had a very strong finish to the year. For the fourth quarter of 2021, we grew revenue 32% year over year, with double-digit year-over-year growth in each of our three market segments. We expanded non-GAAP gross margin by 350 basis points year-over-year to a record 65% as we continue to execute on our gross margin expansion strategy. We drove a 65% year-over-year increase in non-GAAP net income, and we further expanded our software portfolio with the acquisition of Mirametrics. Let me now provide an overview of our business buy-in market for Q4 of 2021. In the communications and computing market, revenue increased 8% sequentially and 31% on a year-over-year basis. We continue to have multiple growth drivers in this segment, including data center servers, client computing, and 5G infrastructure. In servers, as we've discussed in previous calls, our attach rate is now over 1x. Revenue growth continues to be driven by expansion of both the tax rates and ASPs as we continue to drive an increase in Lattice's dollars of content per server. In client computing, we have multiple programs ramping and multiple opportunities for delivering new innovation to our customers. For example, Lenovo and Lattice recently announced a new partnership where our Nexus platform and our software solutions will be used in the Lenovo ThinkPad product line to deliver advanced user experiences, including immersive engagement and collaboration. Lastly, in 5G infrastructure, we're benefiting from ongoing global 5G deployments with revenue higher both sequentially and year-over-year. Turning now to the industrial and automotive market, revenue increased 2% sequentially and was up 32% on a year-over-year basis. Our business grew across multiple applications, such as industrial automation and robotics, where Lattice solutions provide a significant competitive advantage to our customers. Over the past few years, the industrial segment has been a key growth driver for the company, and our product portfolio is well-positioned to drive sustained long-term growth. We are also pleased with our strong year-over-year growth in automotive, which remains a long-term growth driver for us in applications such as ADAS and infotainment. Turning out to consumer, revenue is up 3% sequentially and was up 18% year-over-year, with growth driven primarily by new applications that leverage our FPGA portfolio. I'll now provide some product roadmap highlights. Since the introduction of Lattice Nexus, we've launched four device families based on the platform. I'm pleased to announce that Mach NX entered production in Q4. We now have three device families in production and ramping with customers, Crosslink NX, Certus NX, and Mach NX. The fourth device family, Certus Pro NX, was launched last June and remains on track to generate revenue in the first half of this year. We continue to be pleased with the broad adoption of our Nexus platform across all our market segments, where the power efficiency and faster performance are helping our customers differentiate their applications and systems. We look forward to significant product portfolio expansion this year with our new Lattice Avant platform, which remains on track for launch in the second half of this year. Avant will double our addressable market and will allow us to address the mid-range FPGA applications. Customer engagement and momentum is very healthy and continues to grow. Avon will create an additional new revenue stream for Lattice as it ramps into production in future quarters. Turning now to our software strategy. As we've discussed over the past few years, we've been increasing investments in our software portfolio. These investments are focused on making it easier for our customers to adopt Lattice products and get to market quickly. We were very pleased to announce our acquisition of Mirametrix in November, which is an extension of our organic software strategy and adds complementary AI and computer vision capability to our existing solution stack portfolio. This provides us with an end-to-end AI and computer vision solution spanning from the hardware to the application layer and will make it even easier for our customers to adopt Lattice products. Mirrormetrics software has already been deployed on over 20 million end user systems. We've been successfully working with the Mirrormetrics team for nearly two years and we know them very well. We're very pleased to now have them formally part of the Lattice family. In summary, we're excited to have entered a new growth phase for the company in 2021 and to achieve new record levels of gross margin and profitability. Our results in 2021 are a testament to the strategy that we first outlined at our investor day in 2019 and the incredible hard work and dedication of the Lattice team. I want to thank the Lattice team as well as our partners and customers for their collaboration, support, and superb execution in 2021. Looking forward, we expect 2022 to be another year of strong growth for the company as we continue to execute our long-term strategy. Momentum and engagement across our customer base has never been better. We're bringing new market-leading products to our customers, and we're very excited about the path in front of us over the coming years. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Sherry Luther.
spk02: Thank you, Jim. We are very pleased with our full year 2021 results as we continue to execute to our financial targets. We drove strong double-digit year-over-year revenue growth gross margin expansion, and record profitability, while continuing to invest in the long-term product roadmap. We grew profit at two times the rate of our revenue growth in 2021, and we generated a record level of cash from operations while increasing the cash return to shareholders through share buybacks. Let me now provide a summary of our results. Fourth quarter revenue was $141.8 million, up 7.5% sequentially from the third quarter and up 32% year over year. Full year 2021 revenue was $515.3 million, up 26% from 2020. The double-digit revenue growth for the full year 2021 was driven by strong growth in all of our market segments. Our non-GAAP gross margin increased 150 basis points to a record 65.1% in Q4 compared to the prior quarter and was up 350 basis points compared to the year-ago quarter. Both the sequential and year-over-year increases in gross margin continue to be driven by our gross margin expansion strategy. We also benefited from higher IP revenue. Our non-GAAP gross margin for the full year 2021 was 63.2%, up 220 basis points from 2020. Q4 non-GAAP operating expenses were $45.8 million compared to $43.8 million in the prior quarter and $37.5 million in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the full year 2021 increased to $170 million from $146.2 million, primarily driven by increased investment in our hardware and software portfolio. Operating expenses remained below our 35% target. Our non-GAAP operating margin increased 250 basis points to a record 32.9% in Q4 compared to the prior quarter and was up 630 basis points compared to the year-ago quarter. We continue to balance operating margin growth with investments in the long-term revenue growth and expansion of our business. Our non-GAAP operating margin for the full year 2021 was 30.2%, up 500 basis points from 2020. Q4 non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was 32 cents compared to 19 cents in the year-ago quarter, which represents 65% year-over-year growth. Non-GAAP diluted EPS for the full year 2021 was $1.06 compared to 69 cents for the full year 2020. This represents 54% year-over-year growth. We continue to focus on driving strong cash flow. For the full year 2021, we generated a record $168 million in cash from operations. This represents an increase of 83% compared to the cash generated from operations in 2020. We also repurchased 1.3 million shares or $70 million in stock under our stock buyback program, exiting the year with 132 million in cash. Let me take a moment to recap our acquisition of Mirametrics, which closed on November 12th, 2021. We acquired Mirametrics common shares for $68.5 million and an all cash transaction. Mirametrics was immediately accretive in Q4 to gross margin and earnings per share. We're excited about the software capabilities Mirametrics will bring in AI and computer vision applications, which will further expand our software portfolio. Let me now review our outlook for the first quarter. Revenue for the first quarter of 2022 is expected to be between $141 million and $151 million. Gross margin is expected to be 66% plus or minus 1% on a non-GAAP basis. Total operating expenses for the first quarter are expected to be between 46 million and 48 million on a non-GAAP basis. In 2021, we drilled strong revenue growth, significant gross margin expansion, and our profitability grew at two times the rate of our revenue growth. As we begin 2022, we remain focused on continuing to drive sustained revenue growth and profit expansion. Operator, that concludes my formal comments. We can now open the call for questions.
spk09: As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Again, that is star 1. To withdraw a question, press the pound key. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Ramsey of Cowan.
spk07: Yes, thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Congrats, Jim, Sherry, on an amazing 2021. Jim, my first question, I noticed the growth has been accelerating. So if you just look on a year-over-year basis, I think you were 19% in Q1, then to 25, to 28, and then delivered a looks like 32% growth on a year-over-year basis in the fourth quarter. Maybe you could walk us through the drivers of that growth acceleration that's happened the last several quarters and maybe try to level set us about what we should think on a go forward basis for growth. Thanks.
spk04: Yeah, thanks, Matt. So, yeah, we're certainly pleased with overall growth for last year. But as you said, it was accelerating throughout the year with growth. exiting 32 percent uh year-over-year growth in q4 it's really coming from our two primary strategic segments which are comms and computing and industrial and automotive if you look at those two segments both of those segments grew over 30 percent year-over-year in q4 so we're quite pleased with the progress there and there's a number of different growth drivers that are underneath each one of those two segments and actually If you think back to 2019, when we first talked about the new company strategy that we were putting in place, we talked about the fact that we expected the company to enter a new growth phase in the 2021 timeframe and for that growth to primarily be driven by comms and computing and industrial and auto industry. And so we're really pleased to have delivered on that. First of all, the new growth phase starting in 2021 and accelerated growth, but also the growth coming from exactly where we thought comes computing and industrial auto. And underneath there, we're seeing growth in things like servers where we continue to expand the dollars of content per server. For lattice client computing, which is a new greenfield growth area for us that grew really well last year. 5g wireless infrastructure again grew very healthy on a year of your basis and then great growth across industrial automation applications robotics applications. And automotive electronics, too. So a lot of good, strong growth drivers underneath those two segments. And that's really where we expect the growth to continue in 2022 and further out in years beyond 22 as well. It's really those two primary segments. And then just as a reminder. We have new product cycles now starting to in 21 that was the first our first full year of revenue contribution from nexus we started shipping nexus based products at the very end of 2020 and so 21 was the first full year of. of nexus contribution to our revenue so that that we expect nexus to continue to to ramp over the coming years so that's a growth contributor and then of course we have avant ahead of us as well as we launch a bond in the second half of this year and ramp it into production in in outer quarters uh that's a growth contributor too so a number of different growth factors underneath that thank you for all the color there jim um you mentioned um
spk07: client computing. And this has been something that's been, I think, going on behind the scenes for a while. But now that you've sort of announced the relationship with Lenovo on Nexus, maybe you could step back and give us a little bit, I guess, a bigger picture of how you think about growth opportunities for you in the client and the notebook market for the company overall. What portions of the notebook, Tam, do you think are applicable to your products, what kind of ASPs might we be looking for, what kind of penetration rates or engagements, just any kind of color of, I mean, the PC market's huge. So we're just trying to get a calibration of the expectations of growth into that space. Thanks.
spk04: Yeah, the client computing market, we're pretty excited about that market. You're absolutely right. It's a huge market. It's a huge device and device TAM in terms of units. If you look at PCs, well over 300 million units per year. So it's a tremendous greenfield growth opportunity for us. And there's a number of different capabilities that we can bring to that market, platform hardware security, video aggregation, also artificial intelligence processing for all sorts of enhanced user experiences, some of which we talked about in the Lenovo announcement that Lattice and Lenovo had around the ThinkPad. So we're pretty excited about the long-term opportunity here. You know, we had a couple we had a couple of platforms, customer platforms that started ramping in 2020 and that helped drive really good growth in 2021 and continue into 2022. The Lenovo announcement. These are new additional platforms that will drive further revenue growth. And then we're also working with other OEMs to bring new platforms to market as well. So we've got a number of new design wins in the pipeline that are yet to ramp into revenue. So we feel like we've got a good, healthy pipeline as well. But yeah, when we look at... You know, for instance, the server market, where we've, over the past years, done a great job, I think, of expanding our attach rates, raising our ASPs, bringing more content to server. And then when we look at client, that market being 20 times plus the size of the server market, actually more than 20 times, we're pretty excited about the growth opportunities over the long term for us in client. So yeah, we do see it as a good growth opportunity long term. Thank you very much, Jim.
spk07: Congrats again. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks, man.
spk09: Your next question comes from Derek Soderberg of Collier Securities.
spk06: Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Great progress on gross margins. So Sherry wanted to start with you. Clearly a very strong Q1 gross margin guide. Can you just give us some color on what's driving that? Then I have a follow-up.
spk02: Sure. Thanks, Derek, for the question. So if you recall back in 2019 when we laid out our gross margin expansion strategy, we talked about how we were going to grow our gross margin over the long term. And in fact, each and every year since then, we've grown our gross margin by an order of magnitude of a couple hundred basis points each year. And for a total, if you take it to our most recent quarter, Q4 of 65.1%, it's been a total improvement there of 790 basis points. really pleased with the progress there. But this is something that we have been working on since 2019. And so while we generated improvements in Q4 of 150 basis points sequentially and 350 basis points year over year, this is something, gross margin expansion is something that we've been executing on that strategy for multiple years now. And so when you look at sort of what it's made up of, it's made up of many factors, including pricing optimization, product cost efficiencies, higher gross margin on our new products. And so when you look at our Q1 guide and at the midpoint there of 66%, it's just really a reflection of our continued gross margin expansion of our strategy, continuing improvements in gross margin from that strategy as we look ahead.
spk06: Got it. And then, Jim, you know, sort of beyond growth drivers, just building up the earlier question, I'm curious what the limiting factors are to growth this year. You know, I think consensus is expecting, you know, low teens for the year. You guys are targeting double digit growth. Now, Lattice is sort of universally accepted as a low power leader. You know, so are you guys sort of just waiting for new product generations to come to market? You know, is it supply? Just wondering what are some of the limiting factors to You know, you guys maintaining the growth rate you experienced in 2021 for this year. Thanks.
spk04: Thanks, Derek. Yeah, we expect 2022, as I said in my prepared remarks, to be another strong year of growth for the company. I think, first of all, across our big market segments of comms and computing industrial automotive, as I mentioned earlier, number of good application drivers that we have underneath that. But also, as I mentioned, new product cycles, right? So, for instance, with Nexus going now into its second full year of RAMP, we expect that to be a good growth contributor this year and in coming years. And then Avant further out in time, as well as even the pre-Nexus products, we're seeing really good healthy growth from pre-Nexus products. Last year, we expect that to continue this year as well. So we're seeing healthy demand. We're expecting our supply to be higher in 2022 than we saw in 21. We were able to grow our supply in 21. We expect to grow again supply in 2022. So, again, we expect 22 to be a very good year, good growth year for the company. Got it. Thank you.
spk09: Your next question comes from Tristan Guerra of Baird.
spk10: Hi, good afternoon. Just a follow-up on your gross margin commentary for Q1. Are there any one-time items that are benefiting that Q1 gross margin outlook? You've mentioned IP revenue benefiting Q4. Is that a factor for Q1? Is Miramatrix also contributing? And I guess the point of the question is to see whether we should expect further gross margin expansion through the rest of the year as you continue to execute on pricing or other non-recurring factors benefiting your gross margin in Q1.
spk02: Yeah, so thank you, Tristan. So when you look at our guide for Q1, 66% at the midpoint, a few things there. You'd ask if there's any one-time items. In fact, IP being a little bit higher in Q4. Typically, we expect IP to be in sort of that 3 to 5 million range. So probably wouldn't expect it to be as high as Q4 was. Q4 is a little bit outside of the range that it typically is. It can fluctuate on a quarterly basis. So that would... be something where you'd actually expect it to come down in Q1. The other thing I'll just highlight as well, in Q4, mirror metrics was not a full quarter. It was less than a full quarter. And so when you look at Q1, it will be a full quarter of mirror metrics revenue. And then just to calibrate, because we don't break out mirror metrics, but just to calibrate, when we announced the acquisition of mirror metrics, we said that their FY21 fiscal year revenue was $9 million. for their full year. So just to calibrate you guys on how big that is. And then when you look out beyond, we don't guide beyond Q1, but I'll just say that the gross margin expansion strategy that we laid out in 2019, we're continuing to execute on that. The pricing optimization, product cost efficiencies, and a higher margin on our newer products are all elements of that strategy that we'll continue to execute on.
spk10: Great. And then for my follow-up, could you elaborate on what makes you win in PECs? I know that this was not really a traditional market for FPGAs and now you're getting really an acceleration of your design win momentum. Are you displacing some of the sockets? You know, is that something that ultimately can get integrated with the processor? And what are, you know, customers really appreciating from the solutions you offer that is resulting in design wins?
spk04: Thanks, Tristan. I would characterize it as we're really helping bring new capabilities to the PC. I think if you look at, for instance, the recent announcement from Lenovo and Lattice about the new capabilities that we'll be bringing to the ThinkPad, product line together. That's really about bringing new capabilities that haven't existed in the past. And so it's green-filled really in the sense that it's new revenue growth for us, but also green-filled in the sense that it's new capabilities that we're helping bring to the industry. And we've got a roadmap of those capabilities. So it's not just a single set of capabilities, but it's a roadmap over time of additional capabilities that we expect to bring over the coming years. And we're partnering with multiple different OEMs across the industry to bring those capabilities. And we're pretty excited about the value that we can bring in terms of enhanced user experiences. I would also point out that It's more than just bringing the piece of silicon. It's really a full solution. It's the silicon. It's the solution stacks that we've been organically investing in over the past three years. And mirror metrics is part of that solution as well. So it's the ability to bring not just the hardware device, but a full solution all the way from the hardware up through the application layer, which I think is pretty unique. for Lattice. And so, yeah, we're pretty excited about some of the growth potential that we see ahead of us.
spk10: Great. Thank you very much.
spk04: Thanks, Tristan.
spk09: Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question is from Mark Lippases of Jefferies.
spk01: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First one, if I may, Jim, can you help us understand right now, and maybe this is a follow-up to your last answer, when you talk about software, to what extent is the sales process at your customers today, is it chip-led versus software-led? And maybe another way to say that is, are your customers looking at the software first and then the chip gets dragged along with it, or is it the other way around? And maybe as part of that, could you talk about the growth that you've seen over the last four quarters? Is there a separate software and line item that you can quantify? And then I had a follow-up. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks, Mark. Yeah, in terms of the chip versus software-led, I would say it depends a little bit on the customer, but I think about it more as it's a solution-led, right, where it's the combination of the chip and the software together that allows us to bring a full solution to the customer. And along with that software, to allow the customer to switch to Lattice devices easily, quickly, to switch from competitor devices to our devices, to make that transition. very easy, and then to get to market quickly. And of course, it creates stickiness for us long-term as well. Now, certainly the software investments that we've made, I think, have helped open new doors for us at new customers. I think at existing customers, it's helped us expand our share of wallet, but also open new doors to new customers. But I still think it's really about the total solution. And when you look at that revenue, we really view it as revenue from the combined hardware software solution. So we're we at this point, we we premier metrics, we don't have a separate software monetization revenue stream, for instance. But with the acquisition of Mere Metrics, Mere Metrics does bring with it an existing software revenue stream. And over time, I think there is opportunity for us to not just grow the Mere Metrics revenue stream, but use that as a basis to look for how do we drive greater monetization of the full Lattice software portfolio over time. Gotcha.
spk01: That's very helpful. Okay. And then the follow-up, if I may, when we talk about moving into the mid-range with Avant this year, can you talk about the competitive dynamics there? And now that the AMD Xilinx acquisition has been approved, assuming that it closes, does that Does that mean that, do you view that as a positive for the competitive dynamics and into the area you're trying to get into with Avant, or do you think it increases the competitive dynamics? And that's all I had. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks, Mark. The short answer on the last part of your question is we don't believe it changes the competitive dynamic, the acquisition of Xilinx by AMD. We believe the competitive landscape really remains the same. We do think that the competitive landscape in mid-range is favorable right now, and that's based on what our customers have told us. And You know, it was back in 2019 when we were introducing our Nexus product line to our customers. And Nexus is, of course, focused on the small FPGA part of the market. As we were introducing Nexus to our customers, we got great feedback on Nexus. Great feedback on the power efficiency of the architecture. Well, one of the other things the customers asked us for is, hey, can you extend your power-efficient architecture up into mid-range? Because we don't see a lot of innovation happening in mid-range FPGAs. Lattice is clearly innovating in small FPGAs. Can you extend your innovation into mid-range as well? Because we love the power-efficient architecture. And so we had enough customers ask us about that, that we took a serious look at that and began investing back in 2019 in Avant. And those customers have helped guide us in terms of the product definition and capabilities. So, yeah, we see a good market opportunity in mid-range FPGA based on the customer feedback, as well as our own customers. view of the competitive landscape there. And we're really excited to bring Avant to market. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we plan to launch Avant in the second half of this year. As we've said before, we have over 100 customers engaged in Avant, and we think it's going to be a really exciting product. And our customers are definitely anxiously awaiting it, and we're pretty excited about it. Great. Thank you so much.
spk01: Thanks, Mark.
spk09: Your next question comes from David Williams of Benchmark.
spk05: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for letting me ask the question, and congrats on the solid progress. First, I wanted to ask just maybe about the industrial and automotive segment. It's been strong, and it seems like this quarter maybe sequentially it didn't grow as much as we had thought. Just wondering if there were anything particular there, if this was maybe supply constraints or timing or anything in particular about that market that maybe constrained the growth this quarter.
spk04: Yeah, thanks, David. I don't think there was anything in particular that was constraining the growth this quarter. We've seen really good solid growth from that segment. If I look on a full-year basis in 2021, Industrial auto grew 32% year over year, and that follows a strong year of growth in 2020. So even though in 2020, the industrial auto segment was relatively weak for the industry overall, we grew double digits in 2020 in that segment. And so we've had two good years overall. very strong growth so I wouldn't read too much into the you know quarter to quarter sequential progress we feel pretty good about the growth that we've seen over the last couple years in this segment we feel very good about the design wind pipeline that we have in front of us and the ability to continue to to grow and expand in this segment lattice devices are just a great fit for industrial automation and robotics applications as well as automotive applications in ADAS and infotainment. So we expect this to continue to be a growth driver for us in 2022 and beyond.
spk05: Okay, great. And then maybe just from a revenue split geographically, it seemed like the Americas was up quite a bit. Is this just more maybe a product ramping, or is that something that you think is more of a trend over time? Are you developing, I guess, new relationships in the Americas that would maybe change that geographic diversification?
spk04: Yeah, definitely. Great question, David. Yes, we actually made some significant investments in our sales and application engineering team in North America in particular in 2019. We believed that we were very underpenetrated in the North America geography and that there was a lot of growth, untapped growth potential. So we made some significant investments in our sales leadership and sales development kind of feet on the street, both in terms of account management as well as, very importantly, application engineering resources. And what you're seeing is now the payoff on that investment, right? So you're seeing growth accelerate significantly in North America. We're really pleased with that. That's a direct result of those investments that we made back in 2019. I think it's also a testament to the great product lineup that we have today and the roadmap moving forward. You know, if I look at the product portfolio today, I think it's the strongest product portfolio that the company's ever had in its history. If you look at both hardware and software together, and then a very strong roadmap in front of us, not just in small FPGA, but as we were mentioning earlier, with the new Avant platform, which will launch second half of this year, moving us into mid-range FPGA. you know, our North America customers, as well as all of our worldwide customers, see that strong roadmap ahead, see us investing in really innovative competitive products. And I think that's generating a lot of engagement and momentum in our customer base, certainly in North America, but also in our European theater and APAC as well.
spk05: Thanks so much. Appreciate the time. Thanks, David.
spk09: As a reminder, in order to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question comes from Christopher Rowland of Susquehanna.
spk03: Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Around gross margin, I believe your long-term guidance was maybe 65%. And, you know, 1Q guide is now beyond that. And I know you don't guide more than one quarter, but I guess I was wondering, first of all, when we might get an update on that number. And then secondly, you know, hypothetically, why couldn't this number be 70% given you have this mix with Avant launching, you have continued revenue growth here, you know, a general mix-up in products? Thanks.
spk02: Thank you, Chris, for the question. So in terms of our long-term model, you know, when we put that out at our investor day in May of last year, it was really a multi-year long-term model. So a model that we want to achieve over multi-years. And so that's the way that we're looking at it. Of course, we always want to meet and exceed the model. That's the way that we're looking at that. And then in terms of our results and why can't it be greater than 70% or significantly higher, while we're really pleased with the results that we've achieved to date, and we talked about those a little earlier in the call, 790 basis points since the end of 2018. But our plan is just to continue to execute on our gross margin expansion strategy of pricing optimization, product cost efficiencies, and also you know, newer products bringing a higher margin to the table. So that's what we're going to continue to do and, you know, evaluate the long-term model as we move forward, but that's how we're thinking about it.
spk03: Okay, great. Secondly, a bunch of your FPGA competitors, although they may be more in the mid-range, just have astronomical lead times and They've started to affect other businesses as well, like networking, for example. I guess for Jim, what kind of effect is this having on your business here? Is this driving share gains or the two products that's not really fungible or replaceable? And then maybe just talk about the overall rising tide from missing parts and using FPGAs to replace those. What are these kind of benefits on your business?
spk04: Thanks, Chris. On the first part, I would say that we have definitely seen, especially over the last six months, an acceleration in customer shifting from our competitor devices, FPGA devices, to Lattice devices. I think that's a combination of two factors. I think it's partially our strong product portfolio. I think our customers see us investing in a strong portfolio, both from a hardware and a software perspective, and a strong roadmap moving forward. So I think that gives them confidence that we're there with them today, we'll be there for them tomorrow. in the future. And then I do think some of the supply chain constraints have accelerated customers move towards us. And we're seeing that across a number of different markets, I would say, especially in the industrial segment in particular. And so, yeah, I think we are benefiting benefiting from that. And I think that is sticky customer business that I think will retain a long term. And then in the second part of your question, which I think was more about I think you were getting more at FPGAs replacing other types of devices, for instance, like microcontrollers. I would say there again, yes, we continue to see a good number of customers shifting from microcontroller designs to to our lattice FPGAs. And again, there's technical reasons for that because, you know, as a lot of our customers add things like artificial intelligence capability, inference capability to their edge devices, the lattice FPGAs are naturally a good match for that. They have higher performance performance. per watt than for instance a microcontroller and we have a tremendous amount of software to offer our customers to make that transition easy and I think that the benefits of the Lattice product lineup, as well as some of the constraints that our customers have seen in supply, those two factors combined have helped push customers to Lattice maybe even faster than what they originally anticipated. So yeah, I think we're quite pleased with the customer momentum right now. I would say the level of momentum and engagement is the highest it's ever been in the company's history, and we're very pleased about that.
spk03: Thanks, Jim. I'll get back to Mark.
spk04: Thanks, Chris.
spk09: Your last question comes from the line of Ruben Roy of West Park Capital.
spk08: Thank you. Hey, Jim. I just had a quick follow-up on the mirror metrics and the discussion around monetization of software and mirror metrics specifically. I was wondering if you could just spend a minute on that and try to understand mirror metrics sounds like at least initially, certainly plays into some of your consumer-facing end markets, client computing, probably other consumer devices. And just wondering, in terms of monetization, are you leading with a sale of mirror metric software in those types of cases, like a Lenovo? Or in some cases, does mirror metrics pull FPGAs in, and that would be how you monetize the software? Just wanted to maybe understand that sales process a little bit better.
spk04: Yeah, good question, Ruben. And I would say the answer is yes to both, right? In some cases, Mirror Metrics kind of leads the sale and pulls the silicon through. And in other cases, our existing position across multiple different applications and industries helps pull Mirror Metrics into new accounts. You know, we have over 9,000 customers. We have many, many more customers than Mirror Metrics, which was a relatively small company. And so we're able to introduce Mirror Metrics now to an incredibly wide range of customers. Certainly, client computing devices is a place where Mirror Metrics has already done well, but we see applications beyond that. You mentioned in consumer devices, but I would also mention industrial automation applications and robotics, automotive electronics. MirrorMetrics' kind of core capability is not just artificial intelligence, but computer vision technology in particular. And we see applications for computer vision across multiple different fields. markets that we serve. So I think there's, again, it's kind of yes to both of your questions. I think mirror metrics will pull silicon through, but we'll be able to introduce mirror metrics to accounts that they've never had access to before. And in terms of monetization, I think, you know, Mirror Metrics already brings its existing revenue stream with it. And Sherry calibrated you earlier on just kind of the size of that, at least last year. Our intention, of course, is to grow that Mirror Metrics revenue stream and then to drive some of the revenue synergies that I just talked about beyond that.
spk08: Okay. That's very helpful. And Sherry was asked just now on the gross margin, I guess that's part of it. But I guess, Sherry, I understand what you're saying, you know, 65% target that you gave us less than a year ago is a multi-year sort of target, and it may be ebbs and flows, you know, depending on, you know, other considerations. But in terms of your answer to an earlier question just around some of your expansion strategies, I thought I heard you say that, you know, there are still – there's still some room left, I guess, is the way to frame – You know, those expansion strategies, whether they're cost efficiencies or pricing optimization for the rest of this year, which sounds like it will keep the gross margins perhaps a little bit above that target, you know, in the near term. Is that the way you were trying to frame that answer?
spk04: And maybe Ruben maybe i'll add a little bit of additional color on this is, I would say we're you know we're very committed to continuing to expand our gross margin over time. I think you can you can see that commitment over the last three years right 2019 2020 and 2021 all three of those years we delivered about 200 basis points. of expansion on an annual basis in each one of those three years. So I think we've demonstrated not only a commitment, but a track record of gross margin expansion. Certainly our intention to continue to drive margin expansion where we can, and a number of different initiatives to go do that, right? So I guess that would be the additional color I'd provide on gross margin.
spk08: Good enough. And yeah, congrats, team, on that. So thanks very much. Thanks, Ruben.
spk09: This concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand the call back to Lattice's CEO, Jim Anderson, for closing remarks.
spk04: All right. Thank you, Operator. And thanks again, everybody, for joining us on today's call. You know, we're very pleased to have delivered, you know, strong revenue growth, gross margin expansion, and record profitability in 2021. I think Lattice really entered a new growth phase, a new accelerated growth phase in 2021. We're really excited about the year ahead of us, especially given the strong momentum we have across the customer base and the continued expansion of the product portfolio. So thank you for joining us again today, and we look forward to providing you with more updates in the future. Operator, that concludes today's call.
spk09: This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect.
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