6/26/2024

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Micron Technologies post-earnings analyst call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 1-1 again. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to hand the program over to Satya Kumar in best of relations.

speaker
Satya Kumar
Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you and welcome to Micron Technologies Fiscal Third Quarter 2024 Post-Earnings Analyst Call. On the call with me today are Sumit Sadana, Micron's Chief Business Officer, Manish Bhatia, EVP of Global Operations, and Mark Murphy, our CFO. As a reminder, the matters we're discussing today include forward-looking statements regarding market demand and supply, market trends and drivers, and our expected results and guidance in other matters. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today. We refer you to documents we have filed with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Q and upcoming 10-Q discussion of risks that may affect our results. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, and achievements. We are under no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements to conform these statements to actual results. We can now open the call up for Q&A.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Certainly. One moment for our first question. And our first question comes from the line of CJ Muse from Cancer Fitzgerald. Your question, please.

speaker
CJ Muse
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Your first question, you're ramping CapEx significantly here in fiscal 25, but it certainly sounds like Greenfield is only coming fiscal 27 at the earliest. So I guess, how do we think about you getting to your DRAM market share for HBM in 25. Is that all just conversions from DDR5? And then I guess with DDR5 supply, it would appear that that will be significantly undersupplied by you guys if that's kind of the plan into 25 for you guys.

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

I see Jay, it's Manish. I'll take that and then Mark can add some comments. But Yes, the new U.S. projects both will provide DRAM bit growth only towards the latter half of the decade. We said Idaho starting in meaningful supply in 27 and New York 28 or later. So our bit growth in the near term in DRAM is going to come from the technology transitions that we have in both Taiwan and Japan. And, you know, we're still ramping our one beta, which is the industry's best node right now. And we expect to begin production ramp of our one gamma and actually implement that both in Taiwan and then eventually in Japan as well. We announced last year that we're going to be enabling EUV in Japan so that we can ramp the one gamma node there as well. So our big growth in the sort of intervening period before we get to the The new, you know, the new U.S. manufacturing sites will be driven by technology transitions in our existing footprint. And we have space and everything, you know, lined up to be able to do that.

speaker
Mark Murphy
Chief Financial Officer

And, CJ, I would only add that, you know, we did say that, you know, through 25, and we would expect that to continue into 26, that we would, you know, we would be at, you know, approaching our target levels of inventory by end of 25. We'll be leaning on inventories as we see it in 26. We are already sort of prioritizing bits to higher value markets now, which, you know, is driving, you know, interesting customers for longer-term agreement discussions earlier than they typically would and behavior like that.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

And...

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

And I think this goes without saying, but we always say, I mean, our goal is to maintain our market share, to grow our HBM share, and sometime in calendar year 25, we'll get our HBM share to match our DRAM overall bid share and then maintain our market share from there on.

speaker
CJ Muse
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Very helpful. Just a quick follow-up on HBM3E, obviously not a mature product from a yield perspective. I guess when you're setting out pricing early, in a yield ramp, how does that work? Do you set higher pricing knowing that you're going to have worse yields and as that improves, you share that benefit with your customers or is that something that you hold yourselves? How should we think about that?

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, so this is Sumit here. We have these pricing agreements done for 2024 as well as most of 2025 pricing is also all done. We are sold out for 25 from a volume perspective pricing almost done for all of 2025 as well. And the pricing is set at a level where, you know, we expect the overall gross margin to be at robust levels consistent with the value this product provides to our customers and the end customers. And it is obviously the most complex product that the industry has ever done. So the pricing also contemplates that. And of course, the pricing is done in a fairly consistent way across time. And obviously, as the product ramps, the costs come down, the yields improve. then the gross margin improves over time. That's typically how it works for pretty much all the products. And the early level of gross margin is lower than what the mature yield gross margin ends up being. Despite that and, you know, us being very early in the yield ramp of HPM, We have said that our first full quarter of production with over $100 million of revenue already achieved HBM margins that were accreted to the company margins as well as to the company's DRAM margins.

speaker
CJ Muse
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

Thank you very much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Aaron Rakers from Wells Fargo. Your question, please.

speaker
Aaron Rakers
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Yeah, thanks for doing the after call and let me ask a question. So going on the HBM discussion a little bit farther, you know, I guess two quarters ago, I think you guys reported some prepayments. Given the agreements that you're establishing on HBM, I'm curious, is there any update to the prepayments? I think it was $600 million previously these last two quarters. And then I guess as part of that, How do I think about the capacity footprint of HBM? How that's evolved over the course of this last quarter? Is there any flexibility to move that higher or are you just pretty much completely set for fiscal 25 at this point?

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, I'll take the prepayment question and then I'll turn it over to Manish to talk about the HBM manufacturing footprint. In terms of prepayments, we have had, like you said, some level of prepayment. And we continue to have these discussions with customers about their goals and desires to enter into these agreements with us and use prepayments as appropriate as part of the discussion and value from both sides in terms of the puts and takes on the various terms in the agreement. And so we'll continue to evaluate these sort of opportunities. Of course, as you know, in 2023, we have had a tough downturn in the industry. So as we were coming out of it, we were definitely open to some of these discussions. We remain open to some of these discussions. However, as Mark and Sanjay have provided to you in the earlier call and in the prepared remarks, our expectation is that we will fund a lot of the capital investments for next year and the growth in those capital investments for next year through our operating cash flow and still have robust growth in our free cash flow for next year. We are going to continue to rely on that, but there can be opportunities to enter into certain unique types of arrangements with customers, and we continue to evaluate those on a case-by-case basis. And I'll turn it over to Manish to talk about the footprint.

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

Sure. So, Aaron, you know that we're coming from a very low base installed capacity for HBMs. given our decision to skip HPM3 and really focus on our HPM3e, where we felt we would have product differentiation capability, which our technology and product team have really delivered and our customers are really appreciating. So our goal, and we set the target to intercept our normal DRAM market share with our HPM share to match our overall DRAM market share in calendar year 25, and that's what we're marching towards. And so our investments in the unique HBM equipment, our investments in clean room space are all marching towards that, and we're on that ramp trajectory and confident in achieving that. Just keep in mind a couple of things. The clean room space that we're enabling for this HBM ramp is more complex than standard assembly clean room space. So, you know, That's one element of what we're working towards to be able to reach that goal, but the ramp is significant given where we're starting from, but we're confident we're going to be able to achieve that goal and do so with world-class quality, world-class yield, and excellent cost structure. Thank you.

speaker
Aaron Rakers
Analyst, Wells Fargo

And Mark, just a quick follow-up. How do you think about operating expenses as the fundamentals improve from here? I know you gave this quarter's guidance, but just curious of how you would think about the glide path, you know, beyond this quarter.

speaker
Mark Murphy
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, you know, we did well in the quarter on OPEX, demonstrating control. Again, we're at the lower end of the guide on our OPEX. It's up in fourth quarter, as we said, and that's driven really by primarily R&D program expenses, but we also had in the third quarter, which was built into our guidance, a land sale that was about a third of, you know, would be responsible for about a third of the increase from third to fourth quarter. In November quarter, we do see OPEX picking up again. again, driven principally by R&D program expenses, great work on the NAN front, also a number of DRAM-related activities, including HBM development. So we would expect OPEX to be up sort of mid-single digits, 4Q to 1Q, over $1.1 billion, and then some Yeah, some modest increase sequentially through the year in 25.

speaker
Aaron Rakers
Analyst, Wells Fargo

Thank you, Mark.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Srini Pajuri from Raymond James. Your question, please.

speaker
Srini Pajuri
Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah, thank you, guys. My question is on inventories that your customers maybe, you know, just looking at your PC and smartphone customers, there's some talk that some of the customers pre-built some inventory ahead of the price increases. If you can talk about, you know, what your view based on your visibility as to how much inventory they're holding. And then on the data center, it looks like the inventory correction is mostly done. And, you know, I'm just curious, you know, you talked about, you know, some optimism about even standard server demand picking up a bit, so I was wondering if you can, you know, comment on that as well.

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, I mean, I'll comment on the data center first, and then we'll go to PCs and smartphones. On the data center side, we had been saying for some time that we expect the data center demand to start returning in the first half of calendar 24, and that has been pretty much on target, and as the Second calendar quarter or third fiscal quarter continued. We saw a strengthening of that demand in the data center, and that strong trend has continued, mainly driven by AI. It started with a lot of the demand coming from AI, and then we are starting to see, and we had mentioned this earlier, we had started to see some early signs of improvement in demand in traditional servers and that kind of demand improvement is continuing. So that's a positive sign overall in the data center beyond just the AI servers as well. And the inventory is pretty normalized in the data center and a lot of the demand comes with a level of urgency and we have been trying to chase that supply because the leading edge nodes are tied. Now, you know, we had mentioned in terms of the shape of the recovery of the industry for certain end markets that coming out of the 2023 downturn that PCs and smartphones would pick up in terms of volume before data center and that has been exactly how it transpired. We started seeing strength in those segments late in calendar 24, and then that strength continued into calendar Q1, etc. And so, yes, those customers have purchased and built some inventory because of three important factors. One relates to obviously the price strength that was being discussed with customers in terms of the trajectory of pricing. also articulated that we expect pricing to continue to increase throughout calendar 2024. And so that has been an incentive for some customers to purchase some of the volume ahead. The second factor relates to customers' own expectations of demand growth in their business as they launch AI PCs and AI smartphones. These obviously come with higher average capacities. We have spoken about that quite a bit in our prepared remarks. And if you look at the expectations of replacement cycles within unit volume increases, we have fairly modest assumptions in terms of unit volume growth this year, only low single digit percentage in PCs, mid single digit percentage in smartphones. And even next year, our expectations are fairly modest. But there could be upsides. Some of our customers are expecting higher levels of unit volume growth next year than what we are modeling. And so there could be upsides. And that could be driven by a stronger replacement cycle driven by these AI capabilities in smartphones and PCs. So that brings us to the third portion of their drive to build some buffer, which is that you know, some of these customers are getting concerned about their ability to get their hands on supply next year. And this is part of what is driving some of these earlier than usual discussions on LTAs, these long-term agreements for 2025 calendar year supply, because the growth in the data center continues at a pretty robust pace. The HBM growth, as we have said earlier, with that three-to-one trade ratio displaces a lot of wafers. And between HBM, high-cap DIMMs, et cetera, on the DRAM side, AI server growth, return of traditional server growth. And if you get any of this growth in the PC and smartphone space, pretty soon you get to very quickly a scenario where the supply growth in the industry is unable to keep up with the demand growth. And that is causing customers to pull in some of these discussions about supply and And, you know, they're carrying some extra inventory to guard against that. So that's sort of the high-level perspective on that.

speaker
Srini Pajuri
Analyst, Raymond James

Great. Sumit, maybe one quick follow-up on that. You mentioned the high-cap DIMMs as, you know, one of the, you know, strong areas in the quarter. Just curious, I mean, how does high-cap DIMM, I guess, compare versus HBM in terms of the proprietary nature of the product and the complexity, and also, you know, given that it's higher margin, it seems like then in DDR, is it as good a margin as HPM? And also, do you think that sustains? And also, if you could put that into some context as to how big the SAM is, what the applications are for this particular product. Thank you.

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, I think, you know, first, I just mentioned that, and this is an important clarification, we define high-cap DIMMs as anything that is, you know, more than 64 gigabytes of DIMM capacity. So 96 gigabytes, 128 gigabytes and higher, right? So anything that is 96 gigabytes or higher, we classify that as high cap DIMMs. Now, when it comes to high cap DIMMs, you know, we were one of the first ones to introduce 96 gigabyte DIMMs in the industry. And when you look at 128 gigabyte DIMMs, Micron was the first company to introduce a monolithic 32-gigabit die-based 128-gigabyte DIMM. So I know it's a mouthful, but essentially it's a DIMM head without use of TSV, right? So it is extraordinarily cost-efficient product. And we were able to demonstrate that this product actually has lower latency than TSV-based DIMMs and higher performance And so it's a very, very good world-class product. And Micron is really one of the first ones in the market with this. And we have a very compelling cost structure on this. Now, these products going to AI servers, I've mentioned before, these AI server growth has been very robust. And the demand has been strong for these high-cap DIMMs. And we have definitely, you know, very accretive margins on these products compared to the company margins. And both HPM and HiCapDim have some of the stronger margin profiles in the DRAM portfolio, very accretive to the overall company level. But I'll also mention that obviously the rest of the company product pricing is increasing quarter on quarter, and that rest of the company portfolio pricing keeps improving the margins of the rest of the company portfolio. So that's a positive too, but these two products are very robust margins.

speaker
Srini Pajuri
Analyst, Raymond James

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Brian Chin from Stifel.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Your question, please.

speaker
Brian Shin
Analyst, Stifel

Yeah, it's Brian Shin here. Thanks for taking a few questions. Maybe just one kind of nearer term first. I know you'll give sort of detailed P&Ls between DRAM and NAN, but maybe just kind of in terms of a crossover. Was your NAN business profitable in fiscal 3Q, or if not, do you expect it to be in fiscal 4Q? And is that low single-digit bid shipment growth guidance in NAN reflecting more of the pull forward of smartphone demand, or is that somewhat reflective of your increasing bit shipment constraint as utilization rates there fully recover?

speaker
Mark Murphy
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Brian, while we disclose, you'll see the cue tomorrow. I can say that, you know, the NAND business overall gross margins improved in the third quarter. And then at the segment level, probably the best proxy for that business is the storage business unit. And that business did deliver operating profit in the quarter, which was substantially improved from the prior quarter.

speaker
Brian Shin
Analyst, Stifel

Got it. And then just that part about the forward guidance for bid shipment growth, low single digits in NANN.

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, I think in terms of the growth in NAND, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, there are always all kinds of ebbs and flows between quarters. And the important thing that we are trying to do is to shift our mix towards the data center. And that is obviously a lot of demand that we are chasing. at very good prices and margins compared to the rest of the NAND portfolio. So that's what we are doing. And all of the changes that we reported in terms of our revenue, like for example, our mobile business, you referred to the smartphone volumes, our mobile business was down 1% in FQ3. That was all planned changes in volume and mixed changes happening in our business. The overall trends for 2024 calendar year for the mobile business have been fairly stable and consistent with what we have been mentioning for several quarters now that our expectation has been in that sell-through of mobile phones to be in that mid-single-digit percentage. Unit volume growth for calendar 24. If anything, calendar 2020 for Q1 numbers that were reported out of the industry in terms of sell-through are better than what the overall full year expectation would suggest. But we are not changing our outlook at this time.

speaker
Brian Shin
Analyst, Stifel

Great. Great. And maybe just for a follow-up, I think other folks have maybe tried to get at this somewhat as well. At the expected level of CapEx, you're currently communicating now for fiscal 25, and understanding that more than half of that increases for construction CapEx, is it reasonable to expect Micron will be able to increase bit supply in that mid-teens for DRAM, maybe high-teens for NAND next year, or would more investment be needed to grow in line with the market if bit demand is at that level or even stronger next year?

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

So, Brian... Just trying to parse your question out. A couple of just clarifications. You know, we said that more than the half or more of the increase in CapEx between, expected increase in CapEx between fiscal 24 and 25 will be for the U.S. construction CapEx, right? And so we do have some other, you know, ongoing facilities and, you know, work around the rest of our footprint in Asia, as I mentioned on the call earlier, to be able to enable our our technology transitions. And that's really the answer is that our technology transitions for DRAM in Japan and Taiwan, again, one beta continuing to ramp, and then one gamma being introduced in calendar year 25, those are going to be sufficient, even with a growing penetration of HBM for us to be able to maintain our market share in that mid-teens range. And we believe we can achieve the long-term category with that. As technology transitions become less efficient, as demand continues to grow and HPM penetration grows, we do, as we've said for many years, expect greenfield wafer capacity growth to be needed. And that's timed with these US projects, which will be towards the latter half of the decade.

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah. And just to build on that, the 2025 calendar year and fiscal year for us, we expect to maintain our bid share across both DRAM and NAND. And part of that, part of those shipments will come from inventory. So you have heard Mark mention to you that our inventory will normalize by the end of 2025. And part of that inventory is going to be helping us ensure that we can maintain flat-bit share next year.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Okay, thanks. Very helpful.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Harsh Kumar from Piper Sandler. Your question, please.

speaker
Harsh Kumar
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Yeah. Hey, guys. When I kind of look at your long-term model and I look back a little bit, I saw that your peak margins are somewhere in the 61.5% range. Now, you've got contracted pricing for HVM sounds like for 24 and 25, but it's hard for me to think that your pricing would call for HVM gross margin to be in that range. in that 60% range, because that's what logic commands. Could you, I was wondering if you could give us an idea of what your aspirational gross margin is, and if you can, for HPM, and if you can give us a number, maybe help us think about a framework so that we can try and get an idea of where you might be, what you might be planning for margins for HPM.

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, I mean, we are obviously not disclosing our HPM margins. But you can imagine that we certainly have this view that the industry is in a tight place today. We expect to have continued price increases in 24 calendar year. And going into fiscal and calendar 25, we obviously continue to see tight and tightening industry conditions due to the growth of HBM data center growth, all of the other segments going into AI-driven growth mode. And so, obviously, when we think about fixing pricing for all of calendar 2025 for HBM, we are going to do the pricing with that backdrop in mind that we want to fix pricing at a level that we don't regret later. And, of course, the industry is going to continue to strengthen in terms of financial performance and margins. We expect that from Micron for sure. But, you know, we are comfortable with our HBM margin profile because of which we have been able to set these prices ahead of time. And this is a super complex product. And the margin profile justifies, you know, that level of value that it is creating for the ecosystem.

speaker
Harsh Kumar
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Understood. And just a quick follow-up. You've talked about pricing locked in through 25 Fisco. Could you talk about your design visibility? How many years? Is that also 2025 as an indication of design visibility with large GPU vendors? Or is your design visibility longer than that?

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

I mean we have customers that we have logged volumes with and they are some of those customers are starting purchases for their platforms in 2025 and those platforms are going to continue into 2026 and beyond. So the discussion we have had earlier with you about launching with NVIDIA for 2024, and then multiple customers in 2025. Those multiple customers who we work with to launch the products in 2025 are actually going to continue into 2026 and beyond. Now, keep in mind these all relate to the HBM 3e product. The 3e product launches with 8i And then through the course of calendar 2025, we'll transition the mix over to 12 pi. And then HBM4 comes in in 2026. And then you have, you know, HBM4 going on. And then following that, a while later, you'll get HBM4E. And so, HBM4E will happen, will shift through the end of the decade, late in the decade and through the end of the decade. And so, we are already in very deep engagements with customers on designing HBM4 and HBM4E. And so, these are long partnerships with customers. They require long cycle time planning for IP. And as we get to HBM4E, there is going to be a very strong possibility of integration of customer IP into the base die. And that will make HBM4E more of a customized product, won't be the same product going to all customers, more of a customized HBM product. And because of that, it necessitates long-term planning and very deep R&D engagement with customers. And because of our leadership in HBM3e, where, as we have mentioned before, 30% lower power consumption, leadership specs and performance, we have really great relationships with multiple HBM customers, and we are firmly engaged in their long-term designs.

speaker
Harsh Kumar
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Congratulations, guys, and super helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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

speaker
Quinn Bolton
Analyst, Needham & Company

Thanks for taking that question. I guess I want to come back just to the ability to maintain market share with the transition to HBM memory with the high-cap DIMM modules and the no transitions. I mean, I guess I think historically, no transitions. You typically, with the same equipment set, see net wafer starts typically decline. And so it feels like you've got a lot of factors that would sort of argue for a net reduction, continued net reduction in wafer starts. And so I just wondered if you could address, over the next couple of years, what trends should we be thinking about in terms of your DRAM kind of wafer starts? over that period.

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

Sure, Quinn. So, you know, we talked and have kind of given some color on what we think is an industry-wide phenomenon out of the downturn in fiscal, in calendar 23 and into calendar 24 now, where we, as well as others in the industry, we believe all others in the industry, did take advantage of this opportunity phenomenon that you mentioned where as we transition to newer technologies, we reduced wafer start capabilities structurally. So that did happen for us and for others. Having said that, that's not something that is always going to be the case because we, as well as the rest of the industry, did it to be able to reduce capex in the face of very, very weak demand. and still get the benefits in terms of performance and cost reduction from the technology transitions. So, you know, moving forward, obviously you can imagine if every, every year you just keep structurally reducing, that's not, you know, that's going to have impacts on both your bid supply and your costs. So, you know, I would, I would not be thinking as we head into this upturn that, you know, the industry will continue with that structural reduction year on year. You'll see investments more in line with a typical, pre downturn where we would maintain our wafer capacity while we make these transition investments. Now, as we go towards the second half of the decade and beyond, as technology transitions become more challenging, the bid growth capability from the newer technologies is not as great as maybe previous generations. That's where we see the need for And if we've commented before, the need for greenfield wafer capacity grows for the entire DRAM industry. And HBM and this trade ratio that we're talking about is just one aspect of that phenomenon that maybe makes that need for new wafer capacity as we go towards the second half of the decade more important. But again, to your core question, we feel good about as we discussed, being able to maintain our DRAM market share even as we grow our HBM share to be in line with our overall DRAM share.

speaker
Quinn Bolton
Analyst, Needham & Company

So it sounds like you've got the facility space in Japan and Taiwan to kind of increase wafer starts to allow you to maintain share.

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

Basically, to be able to make technology transitions while broadly maintaining our wafer starts. Got it.

speaker
Quinn Bolton
Analyst, Needham & Company

Yeah. Okay. Thanks. And then just to follow up on the HBM, obviously, you know, a lot of this is being driven today by the AI accelerators. But just wondering, you know, do you see that proliferating to CPUs like the great CPU, obviously, in the Blackwell generation has some pretty significant HBM content with it. Do you see, you know, FPGAs or network switches, anything becoming more meaningful? Do you think this is largely AI accelerator, you know, kind of GPU AI accelerator content? driven in terms of the HVM demand drivers?

speaker
Sumit Sadana
Chief Business Officer

Yeah, I mean, this is heavily based on the requirements of the system level performance and the type of applications that require that high level of performance. If that performance level really dictates a level of processor memory bandwidth that cannot be met easily with traditional approaches, then, of course, you know, HBM has to be considered. Thus far, it is AI servers, but there are other product categories and applications which are starting to investigate HBM. Of course, not with these many placements, as you see around the GPU, because the GPU placements, you know, six placements, eight placements, you know, eight high, 12 high, et cetera, just a lot of memory and other applications which may contemplate using HPM may not need that many placements. It is being contemplated in other places, but obviously the bar is high because HPM is a very expensive implementation of memory. But it is also one that is very power efficient compared to doing it in other ways. And another way that companies are trying to figure out how this architecture evolves over time is to assess the mix of HBM versus DDR5 versus LP5. So LP, low power memory, is starting to make its way into the data center. Then used to be the way, obviously, the RAS capabilities of LP, which is reliability, availability, and serviceability, is not the same as DDR5 and consequently requires a lot of new architectural approaches, but you've seen leaders like NVIDIA show the way in terms of using LPD RAM in their servers. So that trend is also starting as another approach. But overall, HBM usage will increase over time, but the volumes will be dominated by accelerators.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

And our final question for today comes from the line of Vivek Arya from Bank of America Securities. Your question, please.

speaker
Vivek Arya
Analyst, Bank of America Securities

Thanks for the follow-up. Just a few clarifications on the capex side. So the mid-30s capex intensity, is that gross or net of any CHIPS funding? And are you assuming any depreciation benefits and gross margin benefits like Intel, you know, has been doing?

speaker
Mark Murphy
Chief Financial Officer

That's a net number, Vivek. So we'll be providing you net numbers based on our latest assessment on when grants come in and also when ITC is received. We will get the depreciation benefits when it's put in service, but the cash reimbursement in the case of ITC, there may be a timing difference. Well, there will be a timing difference on that compared to grants.

speaker
Vivek Arya
Analyst, Bank of America Securities

So the mid-30s is a net number, and gross capex could be higher than that. That's correct. Got it. And then on WSE, can you give us a sense, Marco, what was sort of the mix in capex in fiscal, or what is the mix in fiscal 24, and how should we conceptually think about the mix in fiscal 25?

speaker
Mark Murphy
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, we... We did say that WFE was down in fiscal 24 like it had been in fiscal – it was down in fiscal 23, then down again in fiscal 24. We have said it will be up in fiscal 25. However, we did say that, you know, greenfield construction is a material part of the spend in fiscal 25. But, you know, beyond that, you know, we've not given specific WFE details.

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

I'd say, Vivek, one other thing to keep in mind is that, and we did try to provide more color, this HBM ramp does consume, you know, the equipment for the HBM ramps, equipment there, you know, does start to make up a bigger portion as we are embarking on this ramp to be able to go from very little share towards our natural market share next year. So that is a As a percentage-wise, you know, in terms of equipment categories, HBM's unique equipment is obviously going to be a very high or the highest growth area.

speaker
Vivek Arya
Analyst, Bank of America Securities

And anything incremental for EUV? Sorry, please, go ahead.

speaker
Manish Bhatia
Executive Vice President, Global Operations

No, go ahead with that. I mean, we are going to be, you know, we've talked about we've already made some EUV investments, and, you know, we've got a pretty efficient EUV system. implementation plan for for one gamma we are going to be implementing uv in japan though that is one thing we've we've guided so uv is in the mix of the of our um you know wfe plans for for ramping one gamma and beyond okay i'll get back in the queue thank you thank you this does conclude the question and answer session of today's program i'd now like to hand the program back to mark murphy for any further remarks

speaker
Mark Murphy
Chief Financial Officer

I just wanted to provide a bit of housekeeping for your models. In the third quarter that we just reported, DRAM bit costs were flattish. NAND was down several percent sequentially. For FY25, DRAM all-in costs, mid to high single digits, down long term. But HBM mix in 25 will impact cost downs, and cost downs in 25 for DRAM will be down only modestly.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you all for joining today's call. Thank you, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.

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Q3MU 2024

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