Monolithic Power Systems, Inc.

Welcome, everyone, to the MPS third quarter 2021 earnings webinar. Please note that this webinar is being recorded and will be archived for one year on our investor relations page at www.monolithicpower.com. My name is Genevieve Cunningham, and I will be the moderator for this webinar. Joining me today are Michael Singh, CEO and founder of MPS, and Bernie Blagan, VP and CFO. During this webinar, we will discuss our Q3 2021 financial results and guidance for Q4 2021, followed by a Q&A session. Analysts, you are currently muted. If you wish to ask a question during the Q&A session, please click on the Participants icon on the menu bar and then click the Raise Hand button. In the course of today's webinar, we will make forward-looking statements and projections that involve risk and uncertainty, which could cause results to differ materially from management's current views and expectations. Please refer to the Safe Harbor Statement contained in the earnings release published today. Risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ are identified in the Safe Harbor Statements contained in the Q3 2021 earnings release and in our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K filed on March 1, 2021, and our Form 10-Q filed on August 9, 2021, which are accessible through our website, www.monolithicpower.com. MPS assumes no obligation to update the information provided on today's call. We will be discussing gross margin, operating expense, R&D and SG&A expense, operating income, interest and other income, net income, and earnings on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with GAAP and should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to measures of the financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A table that outlines the reconciliation between the non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures is included in our earnings release, which we have filed with the SEC. I would refer investors to the Q3 2020, Q2 2021, and Q3 2021 releases, as well as to the reconciling tables that are posted on our website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Bernie Blagan.

Thanks, Jen. MPS achieved record third quarter revenue of $323.5 million, 10.3% higher than revenue in the second quarter of 2021, and 24.7% higher than the comparable quarter in 2020. Looking at our revenue by market, third quarter 2021 industrial revenue of $52.2 million increased 20.5% from the second quarter of 2021, due primarily to increased revenue for industrial meters and power sources. Industrial revenue represented 16.1% of our total third quarter 2021 revenue. Third quarter 2021 communications revenue of $44.7 million was up 19.3% from the second quarter of 2021, primarily due to increased infrastructure demand. Communication sales represented 13.8% of our total third quarter 2021 revenue. In our computing and storage market, third quarter revenue of $98.6 million increased $10.9 million or 12.4% from the second quarter of 2021. The sequential quarterly revenue growth primarily reflected sales gains in storage applications. Computing and storage revenue represented 30.5% of MPS's third quarter 2021 revenue. Third quarter automotive revenue of $54.4 million grew $5.7 million, or 11.7%, over the second quarter of 2021. This improvement reflects continued gains in applications for infotainment, lighting, and ADAS. Automotive revenue was 16.8% of MPS's total third quarter 2021 revenue. In our consumer markets, third quarter 2021 revenue of $73.6 million fell 3.3% from revenue reported in the second quarter of 2021. This decrease in consumer revenue reflected lower handset sales. Consumer revenue represented 22.8% of our third quarter 2021 revenue. Third quarter 2021 gap gross margin was 57.6%, which was 160 basis points higher than the second quarter of 2021 and 245 basis points higher than the third quarter of 2020. Non-GAAP gross margin for the third quarter of 2021 was 57.8%, 148 basis points higher than the gross margin percentage reported from the second quarter of 2021 and 231 basis points higher than the third quarter from a year ago. Third quarter 2021 gross margin on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis included a $4 million litigation settlement Excluding this one-time benefit, non-GAAP gross margin would have been 56.6%, essentially flat with the second quarter of 2021 and 110 basis points higher than the third quarter of 2020. Our GAAP operating income was $77.1 million compared to $60.6 million reported in the second quarter of 2021 and and $60.0 million reported in the third quarter of 2020. Our third quarter 2021 non-GAAP operating income was $108.4 million compared to $94.9 million reported in the prior quarter and $84.9 million reported in the third quarter of 2020. Let's review our operating expenses. Our GAAP operating expenses were $109.2 million in the third quarter of 2021, compared with $103.6 million in the second quarter of 2021 and $83.1 million in the third quarter of 2020. Our non-GAAP Third quarter 2021 operating expenses were $78.7 million, up from the $70.3 million we spent in the second quarter of 2021 and up from the $59.1 million reported in the third quarter of 2020. The sequential increase in Q3 non-GAAP operating expenses primarily reflected in increased spending in R&D for qualifying parts for production and securing foundry capacity. The differences between non-GAAP operating expenses and GAAP operating expenses for the quarters discussed here are primarily stock compensation expense and an income or loss on an unfunded deferred compensation plan. For the third quarter of 2021, total stock compensation expense, including approximately $922,000 charged cost of goods sold, was $31.6 million, compared with $32.1 million recorded in the second quarter of 2021. Switching to the bottom line, third quarter... 2021 GAAP net income was $68.8 million, or $1.44 per fully diluted share, compared with $55.2 million, or $1.16 per share in the second quarter of 2021, and $55.6 million, or $1.18 per share in the third quarter of 2020. Q3 non-GAAP net income was $98.6 million, or $2.06 per fully diluted share, compared with $86.5 million, or $1.81 per share in the second quarter of 2021, and $79.4 million, or $1.69 per share in the third quarter of 2020. Fully diluted shares outstanding at the end of Q3 2021 were $47.9 million. Now let's look at the balance sheet. Cash equivalents and investments were $744.5 million at the end of the third quarter of 2021 compared to $672.9 million at the end of the second quarter of 2021. For the quarter, MPS generated operating cash flow of about $117.8 million, compared with Q2 2021 operating cash flow of $96.9 million. Third quarter, 2021 capital spending totaled $18.6 million. Accounts receivable ended the third quarter of 2021 at $79.9 million, representing 22 days of sales outstanding, which was two days lower than the 24 days reported at the end of the second quarter of 2021 and 11 days lower than the 33 days at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our internal inventories at the end of the third quarter of 2021 were $208.1 million. Up $30.8 million from the $177.3 million reported at the end of the second quarter of 2021. Inventory at the end of the third quarter of 2021 represented 134 days, which were nine days higher than at the end of the second quarter of 2021. Historically, we have calculated days of inventory on hand as a function of the current quarter revenue. We believe comparing current inventory levels with the following quarter's revenue provides a better economic match. On this basis, you can see inventory at the end of the third quarter of 2021 represented 135 days, 18 days higher than the 117 days at the end of the second quarter of 2021, and six days higher than the 129 days at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Currently, our inventory levels remain lean. We are working very hard to return inventory to the 180 to 200-day level necessary to support our future growth. I would now like to turn to our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2021. We are forecasting Q4 revenue in the range of $314 to $326 million. We also expect the following. Gap gross margin in the range of 56.0 to 56.6%. Non-gap gross margin in the range of 56.3 to 56.9%. Total stock-based compensation expense of $30.8 million to $32.8 million, including approximately $950,000 that would be charged to Cost of Goods Sold. GAAP R&D and SG&A expenses should be between $107.8 million and $111.8 million. Non-GAAP R&D and SG&A expenses to be in the range of $77.9 million to $79.9 million. Litigation expenses expected to be in the range of $3.5 million to $3.9 million. Interest income is expected to range from $1.0 million to $1.4 million, fully diluted shares to be in the range of 47.9 to 48.9 million shares. In conclusion, we are continuing to execute our strategy. I will now open the webinar up for questions.

Thank you, Bernie. Analysts, I would now like to begin our Q&A session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the participants icon on the menu bar and then click the raise hand button. Our first question comes from Tori Svanberg of Stiefel. Tori, your line is now open.

Yes, thank you and congratulations on these continuous fellow results. First question, and not to sort of pick on segments here, but your consumer segment was down sequentially, and you talked about cell phone. I wasn't aware, but I don't think Power had that much exposure to cell phone. Is this mainly on the charter side or, you know, anything else there that we should be aware of?

Sorry, yeah, I mean... It is on the charger side. And we do these fast chargings, and we picked up some revenues in the last few years. Those cell phone companies, they thought that they can have more adoption in the market. in the market, so they have some inventories, but these are unusual way of charging a phone, so it's still not very popular.

Great. Thanks for clarifying that. And as my follow-up, you have a luxury problem now. You have about three-quarters of a billion in cash on your balance sheet. I know you're out there trying to secure more capacity. So, first of all, could you update us on where you are on securing capacity, especially for the next few years? And related to that, will you start to use some of that cash more aggressively now? to, you know, potentially buying more equipment, you know, as you continue to obviously show very strong growth. Thank you.

All right. Let me answer the first part first. It is the expansion still on track, okay, and fab issues we don't have, we have less fab issues. And we are on the way to expand our capacity in the sometimes middle of the next years to over two billion dollars, supporting two billion dollar sales. But the same times, we do have to buy more equipment for testing, for qualifications, And also we need to hire more people. And as you know, to qualify each part, it takes time. And the revenues there, opportunities there, it's just a matter of time. And so the second part is buying more equipment. On the other hand, our shareholders, the investors, and are very critical about criticizing in the past our spending. We are slightly out of our model now. We spend money, we want to be a lot more careful. But the opportunity is there, but we do more sensibly.

I think if I could just add to Michael's comment there is that as far as the model that we've always pursued, it was to have our FAB partners and our assembly house partners absorb much of the capital required in order to build up capacity. And that remains our being as a fabless company. So nothing has changed in our model. We're just adapting it to this rate of growth that we're enjoying right now.

Great. Thanks again. I'll go back in line.

Okay.

Our next question is from Matt Ramsey of Cohen. Matt, your line is now open.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. For my first question, Michael, I wanted to ask about a couple of the different computing markets that you guys have products to support. The first one, I think you could, I don't know, from my perspective, you could kind of drive a bus through what different PC expectations are for next year. And I wonder if you might touch on what – Rough percentage, Bernie, of revenue might come from the notebook market and what your underlying planning assumptions are on the PC market for next year. And I guess in contrast to that, Intel is launching Sapphire Rapids. AMD is launching Genoa next year. What kind of a tailwind from a content perspective could those upgrades in the server market be? And then I have a follow-up. Thanks, guys.

Okay. For the notebook size, obviously, we gained some market shares in the high-end notebook. And this is after the pandemic. Okay. Well, still the tail end of a pandemic. And we increased quite a bit of market shares. But the story there is not just we're gaining – That's all we can get. As we increase our new generation of technologies that are in place, and we will further reduce the cost, and we will address the high end of our consumer side. And I don't know if I addressed that to answer your questions. Okay. And on the server side, we are still very, very small players. There's a lot more room for NPS to gain.

Yeah, and I don't think that we've ever specifically broken out what percent of the group's revenue is tied to any one of the categories that we track. but I think we have been clear that in each of the last two years that the growth in notebooks has outpaced the rest of the sectors, including server and storage. Now, having said that, one of the things that we're benefiting from is the diversification of how we're positioned in this group. As Michael indicated, we are a relatively – small player when it comes to core power management for servers. And we believe that with both the next generation of Intel and AMD processor releases, that we stand to benefit from market share gains. And in the more near-term element, as we called out in Q3, we're actually seeing a nice increase in storage sales, which is usually a precursor to ongoing infrastructure spending within the data centers. So I think that we're having as great a difficulty as anybody in understanding when work from home or work from work as it relates to notebooks begins or ends. But I think that – we're well positioned because of our diversification to enjoy continued growth in this category for a number of years.

Thank you. Let me go back to the notebooks side. I think that part of the question I didn't answer. We're still facing shortages and still a lot of demand in the notebook side. We don't see... we see revenues from in the middle of next year.

Got it. Thank you very much for all that commentary, guys. Just a quick couple of things on gross margin. One, Bernie, the one-timer that was in Q3, any particular reason you didn't pull that out of the non-GAAP number? And secondly, with the pricing environment that we're feeling today, how do you guys think about price increases going forward relative to input costs and what that could mean to margins. Thank you very much.

I'll take the first half of that question real quickly, and then Michael will give comments on the second. As far as how we try to manage GAAP and non-GAAP reporting is really to be a reflection of what is cash. And in this case, we highlighted that there was a settlement, and that was a cash payment that we received. And so that's the thinking behind not adjusting it as a non-GAAP item. Conversely so, if we have something that works to our detriment and it also has cash implications, we wouldn't non-gap that out either. So the two areas that we stay pretty closely to, or three I should say, are only stock comp, gain and loss from a deferred comp plan, and if we have any intangible acquisition amortizations.

Okay, the second part is how it affected our gross margins on the current supply shortages. As I said, all these new, well, let me say this. Yes, we do see the cost increase, and fortunately, And all the products that we release, again, the market shares, as you know, all these Greenfield products, we started, again, momentum a couple of years ago. And these all have higher margins. And our customers give us a very long-term forecast commitment, and we honor those. we can absorb some of the costs because these products have a much higher margins. So during this time, we value the customer relationship and we don't gouge price.

All right, our next question is from Ross Seymour of Deutsche Bank. Ross, your line is now open.

Thanks for letting me ask a question. Congrats on continued strong reports and guides. One question on an end market, the communications side, Bernie or Michael, you guys said that that was up because of infrastructure. That's been a really choppy market for you guys between the infrastructure side going on and off and then kind of the access side. Can you just talk a little bit more about what you meant by the infrastructure side, and is that the start of something – That's going to continue, or should you expect that segment to continue to be lumpy going forward?

Well, Ross, you know, we're transitioning from these Wi-Fi routers and those to more real instruments. uh infrastructures and like i mean uh in the uh data centers uh oh that would be the communication between the data centers and uh uh and the switchers and uh and uh even towers and again um So, you know, the last years, our customers are pulling a lot of revenues in this time. And then we see all the other things going like 5G and including commercial Wi-Fi systems and so on. and we're playing a critical role in these areas. And we see the expansions, and we will continue to expand in the next few quarters.

I think we remain very optimistic about our long-term positioning within the communications sector and in particular infrastructure as it relates to 5G. But I think that right now we have not hit a constant investment cadence on the part of the carriers in either Europe or North America. So we think that as that starts to gain momentum and gets more predictable, we're very well positioned to participate in that.

Thanks for that, Culler. I guess as my follow-up, seasonality versus kind of cyclicality and or supply-driven moves. Obviously, your fourth quarter is guided a bit better than your traditional seasonality, kind of flattish this year. But how are you thinking about that as we go into next year and beyond? Is it mainly going to be driven by the product cycles you have and short supply and aggregate, so those would be big tailwinds, or do you believe seasonality is going to become a framework that's something that investors should consider as we go into 2022?

Well, Ross, you see this market is an exceptionally strong market. A lot of demand is everywhere. Also constrained by the supply. We do have a delinquency, but the But we're facing delinquency for many, for many quarters. And for, for, I think we still have the, my, my, my opinion is that we still have the, some kind of a season, season already. And fourth quarters, and because all these holidays, all these, and, and, and, It will kind of affect us. And so we see, as I said earlier, we see the demands feel very strong. And we're just cautious on our guidance.

And just to add to that is that right now what we are continuing to do is investing in expanding our capacity because we do believe that this robust demand that we're experiencing will continue, and we want to be able to participate, optimize to the best of our ability this growth opportunity.

Let me clarify the shortages. What I mean by shortages is that we have a few thousand products and always have some mixed issues. And we don't have a serious, we don't have fat capacity issues. But all these are mixed and And for particular products, we have a few products that are facing shortages now. And as we transfer to a different lab, it just takes time to qualify those. Got it. Thanks, guys. Okay.

Our next question is from Alex Vecchi of William Blair. Alex, your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Congratulations on that strong result. Maybe just to piggyback on Rob's question a little bit with seasonality. Bernie, can you give a little color on how we should think about the sequential growth site and market for Q4 in terms of maybe strongest and market to weakest?

Sure. So when you look at Q4, I think that the two primary drivers are going to be computing and in continuation of automotive. And then you would normally expect and we expect to see a slight downturn in consumer. So I think many of the trend lines that we're familiar with are continuing and ongoing, but the amplitude might be a little up or down from what the traditional seasonality has been.

Great, that's helpful. And then similarly, I think on the communications line as well, over the last couple quarters, I believe you guys have pointed to ramp-ups at Tier 2 5G OEMs. How should we be thinking about the opportunity eventually, maybe next year, to crack into a Tier 1, or just generally how to think about how you're positioned there geographically?

We are designing in all tier ones now, and we are so small still in this big growing market segment. As you know, we don't have anything in 4G, and we expect that there will be significant players in there.

Okay, that's helpful. With that, I'll go back in queue.

Okay.

Our next question is from Quinn Bolton of Needham. Quinn, your line is now open.

Hi, guys. Let me offer my congratulations. Michael or Bernie, I guess I wanted to... I know there have been a lot of disruptions in Southeast Asia, more on the package and test side. Wondering if you could just say whether or not you have any exposure to Malaysia subcons and whether that affected your ability to ship or receive products here in the third quarter or in the fourth quarter looking forward.

Yeah, um, it's not so much, um, and affected that maybe, uh, maybe some, uh, some products and not getting in, uh, um, because we can choose a lot of our, the new product, we control our own package technologies. And, uh, so we always qualify in a different, uh, uh, uh, different locations. And, uh, um, so we came in a, in a, uh, this process, the Asia problems, and okay, we can give us a rule. We didn't have that much of issues. Correct.

And into Q3 or outlook for Q4. Yeah.

Got it. My second question just on the supply chain is, it sounds like, you know, from your comments, you're not seeing some of the FAB constraints that you'd seen earlier and inventory increased by 30 million sequentially. I guess my question is, as that capacity comes online, as you ramp inventory on hand, do you think that that could lead to an acceleration in your ability to meet, you know, former delinquencies and see revenue growth rate potentially accelerate as you meet some of those delinquencies? Or does it really all come down to that product mix of, you know, what customers are demanding versus what you have in inventory that you see that mismatch potentially, you know, continuing for several quarters?

Yeah, to answer your question, today, absolutely. And we have a lawnmower we can chew off now. And the shortages that go on, all the new product adoptions, and all the greenfield products that we rent much, much faster than we expected. And And we have a lot more out-of-forecast orders that we cannot fulfill. And these ones, our customers understand that. And so now, as of today, we have a blue sky. But that doesn't mean that we're not ready to do this. I can't forecast.

Just to add, it's a balancing act, as you can appreciate, because for some of the more mature products that we have, they already have developed markets and a fairly predictable, you know, growth in the current markets. But what we're trying to do is make sure that these new product introductions can be successful because that is going to be the future growth opportunity for the company. So we're trying to satisfy sort of the run rate business in this heightened demand, period of heightened demand, and at the same time have very successful new product launches with new customers.

Can I squeeze one last point in? Do you guys have any meaningful exposure to Chromebooks and, you know, is that a sure thing, opportunities to look into 2022? Thank you.

Yes, we have it. And if we have a local product, might as well go design everything everywhere.

Yeah, Chromebooks are unique because while they're considered a We tend to go after high-value notebooks, and Chromebooks are known to be lower priced, but they depend on access to the cloud and good processing power. So the power management, our power management solution is very key. It's high value for the Chromebooks.

Yeah, as I said earlier, as our technologies bring online and become more mature, why not just attacking all these other markets that we're not in?

Yeah, thank you.

Our next question is from William Stein of Truist. William, your line is now open.

Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the great results and outlook. I want to ask one question about supply chain stuff and one about long-term growth. First, on the supply chain, it seems certainly if we look not just at your business but across semis that customers have been in sort of freak out expedite mode for quite some time. I wonder if you could give us a sense as to whether that abated at all. Did the level or breadth of expedite requests change meaningfully in the quarter? Is it getting hotter or colder in any end market with regard to this sort of urgency of expedites and pull-ins and upsides and all that activity we've heard about? And then again, I have a long-term growth question.

Yeah, okay. The answer is, okay, I wish they calmed down a little bit and that they're exactly the same as the last quarter in the and a quarter before. Yeah, okay.

Okay, so the long-term growth question, Michael, I think we've discussed this many times, but we're aware that there's this long-term potential to transition to more of a solutions provider with modules relative to your traditional semi-device business. Can you talk about the trajectory of growth of the modules business and update on perhaps percent of revenues today relative to a quarter ago and where you think that could go over time? Thank you.

Yeah. Our homegrown modules, well, all the strategy, there's an MPS involved, there's a lot of technicals in terms of delivering the modules the end product okay if using there's not end product as a net product as uh a few well okay um so our our strategy is to move up to uh food camps and uh since we we put the uh we have the knowledge and uh in the um uh why we are not captured all of our other all them all the values okay and uh For currently our module growth, it's much faster than all the semiconductors growth setting chips. But the volume overall is still very small compared to the entire revenues. we, we try the different ways and like a launch, okay. Um, launch our, our websites and like a NPS analysis. And then they also, uh, uh, using an e-commerce. Okay. These are, um, these are doing well. And, uh, but, Now I'm thinking about it, why we just start buying companies? And we know that we need to gain knowledge, gain the sales channels, and have those companies and adopting NPS technology, we can provide them with better tools. And I think the first few attempts in a very, very very encouraging. Obviously, I can't talk in detail now. I think that's our strategy.

And if I can just remind you, Will, that we talked about this, touched on it last quarter. and we indicated that what we're trying to do is source different technologies through either IP acquisitions or talent acquisitions that are complementary to our business, and that will accelerate our ability to be a solutions provider for our customers in the next, you know, seven, eight years.

Yeah. I just don't like it. I just don't like it. We have so much knowledge to put it into, and in the end, we sell a piece of a – silicon averages well below a dollar. We should sell solutions much more than a dollar, five, six, ten dollars, those type of things. And those customers will really appreciate it. They don't have to design from scratch.

That's helpful insight. Thank you both.

Our next question is from Rick Schaefer of Oppenheimer. Rick, your line is now open.

Hi, good afternoon. This is Waymok on the call for Rick Schaefer. Just wanted to echo out congrats on the results. So for my first question, it's in regards to auto. So it's pretty much well known that the market is supply constrained. So you guys are still growing nearly 90% this year. With industry reports showing vehicle unit production improving in 2022, how should we think about your auto business as we look into 2022?

Well, at this time, we see everything's very rosy now. But on the other hand, we're so small. There's no reason we would not grow it. Even the downturns, and as we have a look at the addressable market, this is like over $6 billion. That's conservatively numbers. Those are conservative numbers. And as we introduce more product, especially in ADAS and the EV proportion size, and, okay, we're developing products, and all of these, and, okay, we can address the future growth really well, so, okay, I mean, there is a 2022, so, okay, there's no reason not, if it's a, I would not say there's a lack of, to a lack of last year, so, okay, also, you know, although industry just stopped, okay, I mean, and If it's in normal times, then there's no reason for us not to grow.

And I think to just follow on to the previous question, when we look at automotive, we actually have system-level design wins in ADAS, regenerative braking systems, and in external lighting. And all of these solutions, have much higher dollar content for us, you know, $60 to $100 per vehicle. So I think this is a very exciting example of how the solution strategy could play out in different end markets for us as well.

Got it. Great. Thanks for that. As for my second question, it's regards to the console. You guys highlighted consumer being down in 4Q. So is this more of a reflection of normal seasonality, or are you seeing any supply constraints impacting consoles? Thanks.

Well, Q3 in a consumer side, it should be the highest. And I think that our customer size, they have too much inventory for the cell phones. And that affects us. And the cell phones, especially, that's in China. I mean, when the U.S. had an embargo on one of our companies, but the other ones, they thought they can gain the market share. And I mean... actually they didn't. So they stuck with the image.

And I think that what we tried to do in our prepared comments is really make that dip more narrowly defined. It is really the fast charger in the handsets as opposed to anything that is more broad or pervasive in the rest of the consumer.

Thanks for that.

Yeah, we didn't have much of an exposure in the handsets, and that wasn't my favorite either. Anyway, so we've got these products in the last year, and why not? But now, we thought it would be good.

Well, the technology has actually been very well positively received. It's just the imbalance as far as the demand that was expected has trailed those expectations. And so we believe that they have excess inventory, and so we're seeing a slowdown for that particular individual category.

Our next question is from Kevin Gerrigan of Rosenblatt. Kevin, your line is now open.

Hey, this is Hans for Kevin. Hey, guys, congrats. A couple of questions. Along the lines of inventory, I think AMD, Micron on the PC side of things and Texas Instruments on a broader basis are indicating that customers are changing their behavior a bit in terms of how they take in components in a supply-constrained environment. So rather than just take everything they can get, they're being more selective. Is that something you guys are seeing? Is that unusual if you are seeing that? Thanks.

We are too small, but we are very small, much smaller players compared to the Texas Instruments or the other guys. We don't... we don't have a luxury of picking market segments. We only focus on the long-term focus or not focus. We don't do short-term business anyway.

Yeah, to answer your question very succinctly, we haven't seen any change in ordering patterns or our delivery schedule and really don't have an opinion on what the broader market or other market participants are experiencing.

Fair enough. And so, just the last question. Your visibility in terms of when you can capture or get back to that 180 to 200 days of inventory, has that changed? And what is that timeline? Is it the end of next year? Is it 2023?

I think the end of next year would be a good number. Yeah, that's what we... If the market goes... continue to go this strong, and hopefully we can catch up by the end of next year.

And is that a push-out or is that a pull-in from last quarter?

Well, again, you said I talked about last quarter pulling a push-out, and as I said earlier, we we still have a delinquency. We have more delinquency than our customers push out. Let's say that. Okay.

I think the important thing is that even with the demands that are placed upon us, and Michael's correct that we saw no change in Q3 from what we experienced in Q1 or Q2, we were able to increase demand inventory in a meaningful way this quarter. So again, I refer back to an earlier answer. We said the balancing act that we're trying to do between satisfy more run rate business at the same time as we're meeting demand for our new products, as well as building inventory that gives us more flexibility.

Great. Thank you. Okay.

Next question is from Tori Stromberg of Stiefel. Tori, your line is now open.

Yes, thank you. I just had a few follow-ups. First of all, Bernie, the gross margin guidance for Q4, that does not include any more litigation impact, right?

That is correct.

Okay, great. The other question is a lot of your competitors are discrete companies, and, you know, they're probably allocating their products all over the place right now, which I assume means you're gaining share. Can you just talk a little bit to the stickiness of that? I mean, I assume once we go with an integrated solution there, they're not going to go back.

That's very true. And when it takes a simple, easy solution, it's difficult. And for these... a little bit of high-end market. That's what we focus on. Customers pay for it. And they deviate from the way their behavior, how they design products. And I think that's a huge benefit to us. And other customers, the more in the low-end consumer business, we don't care. Yeah.

Got it. Just one last question. Michael, in the past, you've talked about, especially in servers and automotive, kind of just getting the side dishes, but, you know, eventually you'll get the main course. You know, should we expect those two segments to see some main course revenue in 2022? Yes. Yes. Yes.

We keep eating the crumbs. We eat a lot of crumbs, like whales. Well, not whales. We're small fish trying to eat a lot of crumbs. And now the fish, we grow ourselves a little bit. We can eat the real meals. And As we keep saying, we have the reference design in Intel, and then the real OEMs pick up one of these, two of these, and four of these projects. But these are the real beasts, but a little bit small. I think in the next years, we will grow much bigger. and so-called VR14s and VR13.5, we benefit a lot. And other than the pointer loads and the E-fuse and that kind of growth, okay, and now we really have a core power, have a meeting for revenue coming up next year. And not talking about VR14 yet, okay. And the other thing that I wanted to mention about... There's a lot of 48-volt process, as we said earlier. And by this year, and we forecast about this year and the next year, the cross point has happened. And we're waiting. We were waiting about three, four years ago. And we said that until we're not – When the power keeps increasing and the heat generation, heat dissipations, they cannot handle it anymore. They have to use the 48-volt solutions. And this year's happened. And start from AR. And next year, we see many data centers adopting 48-volt solutions. will have a benefit of a large layout.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

If there are any follow up questions, please click the raise hand button. As there are no further questions, I would like to turn the webinar back over to Bernie.

I'd like to thank you all for joining us for this conference call, and we look forward to talking to you again during the fourth quarter conference call, which will likely be in early February. With that, thank you, and have a nice day.

Okay.

Goodbye.