MaxLinear, Inc

Greetings and welcome to the MaxLinear third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Leslie Green. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Julian, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Max Lanier's third quarter 2024 financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Kishore Sundripu, CEO, and Steve Litchfield, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer. After our premier comments, we will take questions. Our comments today include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements relating to our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2024, including revenue, gap and non-gap gross margin, gap and non-gap operating expenses, gap and non-gap interest in other expense, and gap and non-gap diluted share count. In addition, we will make forward-looking statements relating to trends, opportunities, execution of our business plan and potential growth and uncertainties in various product and geographic markets, including without limitation statements concerning future financial and operating results, opportunities for revenue and market share across our target markets, new products, including the timing of production and launches of such products, demand for and adoption of certain technologies, and our total addressable market. These forward-looking statements involve substantial risk and uncertainties, including risks outlined in our risk factors section of our recent SEC filings, including our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2024, which we filed today. Any forward-looking statements are made as of today, and MaxLinear has no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. The third quarter 2024 earnings release is available in the investor relations section of our website at maxlinear.com. In addition, we report certain historical financial metrics, including but not limited to gross margin, operating margin, operating expenses, and interest and other expense on a both GAAP and non-GAAP basis. We encourage investors to review detailed reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP presentations and the press release available on our website. We do not provide a reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance for future periods, because of the inherent uncertainty associated with our ability to project certain future changes, including stock-based compensation and its related tax effects, as well as potential impairments. Non-GAAP financial measures are discussed today are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for comparable GAAP financial measures. We are providing this information because management believes it is useful to investors as it reflects how management measures our business. Lastly, this call is also being webcast, and replay will be available on our website for two weeks. And now let me turn the call over to Dr. Kishore Sindhipu, CEO of Max Lineo. Kishore.

Thank you, Leslie, and good afternoon, everyone. Our Q3 results were slightly above the midpoint of our guidance at $81.1 million in revenue, and non-GAAP gross margin was 58.7%. We have seen meaningful improvements in our customer order rates for several quarters, along with expedites and orders placed within lead times. These are early signs of recovery, and combined with new product traction, we are feeling confident that we can achieve sequential improvement in our revenues in the coming quarters. Q3 was also a very active quarter for us, as we demonstrated new technology and products at several industry events. In July, at The Flash Memory Summit, we showcased our partnership with AMD for Panther 3, our hardware accelerated storage compression and encryption product, targeting enterprise storage and compute server applications. At ECOC, along with O-Net, we demonstrated the industry's by far lowest power 800 gigabit DR8 optical transceiver solution, consuming less than 12 watts for data center applications. And recently, at Network X Summit, we announced Max AI, a use case-aware native machine language technology framework integrated into our AnyVAN broadband access and connectivity platform solution for service providers. Additionally, in the quarter, we were delighted to receive Best Emerging Supplier of the Year Award from Cisco. Looking at our key markets... In infrastructure, the exponential growth in AI workloads continues to drive massive design activity and on high-speed optical data center connectivity. We are excited that our product shipment volume run rate is now greater than 1 million units per year across several direct customers, including our Q3 ramp at a U.S. data center player. We are seeing continued progress on initial qualification testing for 800-gigabit transceivers and active electrical cables at several large data center customers. More broadly, across the industry, 800 gigabit PAM4 Ethernet adoption is starting to ramp, even as 400 gigabit demand continues to accelerate. The superior power and performance of our Keystone high-speed optical PAM4 products strongly position us for current opportunities. And we are highly competitive with our differentiated Rushmore family of 200 gigabit per lane, BAM-4 DSPs for early market adopters moving to 1.6 terabit interconnections. Moving to 5D wireless infrastructure, we are making significant customer inroads with our millimeter and microwave backhaul modem and RF transceiver products as the only full-system merchant multiband radio solution in the world. With increasing mobile usage and new functionality such as AI, our hybrid microwave and millimeter wave backhaul technologies are required to support increasing transport data rates. We believe we are positioned strongly for content growth and revenue expansion as service provider cap expense is expected to improve in 2025 and 5G access network upgrades pick up pace globally. Also, within our infrastructure revenues, our Panther 3 series hardware storage accelerators are providing exciting incremental growth opportunities. The need for AI at the edge as well as growing security considerations are resulting in a shift towards enterprise storage with all flash array and hybrid storage enterprise application systems. Panther is also gaining traction in compute subsystems for usage across servers as well as data center storage customers. Our Panther product is strongly positioned for this macro 10, and we have multiple design means and enterprise OEM customers and wires across major geographies. In Ethernet connectivity, MaxLinia is one of the broadest and most competitive portfolios of 2.5 gigabit Ethernet switch and 5 products for the enterprise and small and medium business switch markets, where we offer a strong value proposition for the upgrade from 1 gigabit per second legacy data rates to to 2.5 gigabits per second using existing CatFi cabling. Our tier one North American enterprise OEM customer is expected to ramp to production in 2025 and contribute to significant Ethernet revenue growth over the coming years. In addition, we are seeing widespread interest from next generation broadband gateways and routers. In total, we believe we could reach $100 million run rate over the next 24 months. Moving to broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity, we are focused on PON for new broadband time growth in addition to our existing cable MSO data offering, including the latest DOCSIS 4.0 solution. We are excited by the design win traction for our PON platform based on our single-chip integrated fiber PON and 10-gigabit processor gateway SOC and tri-band Wi-Fi 7 single-chip solution. We have seen continued momentum with design wins and promising ongoing engagements, including traction in the second tier of our North American carrier, which we believe can become a major opportunity for 2025 and 2026. As mentioned before, at NetworkX, we were pleased to announce Max AI, a user-aware native machine learning technology framework integrated into our AnyVAN solutions. Max AI is designed to enhance network performance, security, issue triage and diagnostics, as well as improving the user connectivity experience. in multi-user applications like AR, VR, video conferencing, and multiplayer gaming. We believe Max AI further strengthens our competitive position in this market. In conclusion, multiple factors give us confidence that we are well positioned to resume growth in Q4 and 2025. Following three years of innovative product development, we are gaining traction with new products in high-value markets. including optical data center interconnect, enterprise Ethernet and storage accelerators, 5G wireless infrastructure, multi-gigabit PON broadband access, and Wi-Fi connectivity. These products not only open significant new target addressable market, but are poised to drive a sustained cycle of revenue growth over the next several years, creating enhanced value for our customers and shareholders. With that, let me turn the call over to Steve Litchfield, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer. Steve?

Thanks, Kishore. Total revenue for the third quarter was $81.1 million, down 12% from $92 million in the previous quarter. Broadband revenue for the third quarter was $32 million. Connectivity revenue was $13 million. Infrastructure revenue was $23 million, and industrial multi-market revenue was $13 million. Gap and non-gap gross margin for the third quarter were approximately 54.4 percent and 58.7 percent of revenue. The delta between gap and non-gap gross margin in the third quarter was primarily driven by 3.5 million of acquisition-related intangible asset amortization. Third quarter gap operating expenses were 110.8 million, and non-gap operating expenses were 72.8 million. The delta between the GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses was primarily due to restructuring costs of $26.8 million related to the workforce reduction initiated in Q2 and stock-based compensation and performance-based equity accruals of $11.5 million combined. GAAP and non-GAAP loss from operations for Q3 2024 was 82% and 31% of net revenues. Gap and non-gap interest and other expense during the quarter was $15.8 million and $4 million, respectfully, which did include some currency fluctuation in the quarter. The delta between the gap and non-gap interest and other expense was primarily impairment of an investment in a privately held company of $11.8 million. And the Q3 cash flow used in operating activities was approximately $31 million. We exited Q3 of 2024 with approximately $149 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. Our day sales outstanding was down meaningfully in the third quarter to approximately 54 days. Our gross inventory was also down versus previous quarter as we continue to make improvements with inventory turns slightly less than one. This concludes the discussion of our Q3 financial results. With that, let's turn to our guidance for Q4 of 2024. We currently expect in the fourth quarter of 2024 to be between $80 million and $100 million in revenue. Looking at Q4 by end market, we expect broadband to be slightly down and infrastructure, connectivity, and industrial multi-market to be up. We expect fourth quarter gap gross margin to be approximately 54% to 57%. and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 57.5% and 60.5% of revenue. We expect Q4 2024 GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $88 million to $94 million. We expect Q4 2024 non-GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $58 million to $64 million. We expect our Q4 GAAP and non-GAAP interest and other expense each to be in the range of approximately $1 to $2.5 million. We expect our Q4 GAAP and non-GAAP diluted share count to be approximately $84.5 million each. In closing, following a prolonged market correction, we are now seeing a positive turning point in our business. We're excited that our innovation and investment in strategic applications such as optical high-speed interconnects Wireless infrastructure, storage, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and fiber broadband access gateways are creating transformative opportunities for long-term growth. In addition, our strong focus on operating efficiency and physical discipline are opening up near-term leverage in our business model as we enter our next stage of growth and expansion. With that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. Julian? Julian?

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up a handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for questions. And our first question comes from Tor Svanberg, Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, thank you, and congratulations on the turnaround here. Kishore, I was hoping you could elaborate a little bit more on your 1 million optical transceiver comment. Could you give us a sense for the mix between 400 and 800 gig? And I assume that's what you've shipped so far. And, you know, basically what I'm trying to get to here, of course, is, you know, is this sort of a run rate now that we should think about into calendar 25, meaning that you could potentially do more than a million for the whole year next year?

Thank you, Tori. Yes, you know, our prepared remarks did point to a 1 million unit per year run rate as we exit the year. But coincidentally, if you accumulate all the units that we are now forecasting to ship through the end of 2024, we'll be pretty much in a million units or more slightly. So, yes, we are excited about the progress we have made. And these million units run rate is actually being – primarily driven by optical transceiver revenues related to both 800 gigabit and 400 gigabit, but 800 gigabit being the larger fraction relative to 400 gigabit transceivers. We do expect many more designs to come to finish. We have a huge number of design wins that are in place with OEMs, but they're all gated by sort of delays or prolonged data center calls that are happening. So we are very optimistic that we'll exceed this run rate through 2025. And I just want to point out that as we entered the year, we were hoping for a range of $0 to $30 million of revenue. We are well in excess of that based on the volume I've just indicated.

Yeah, no, that's very helpful. And as a follow-up, I was hoping you could give us an update on the broadband business. It's great to see the other three segments growing sequentially in Q4. Obviously, broadband is still going to be down. Just help us understand, you know, where we sit on inventory levels. I know there's been some delays with DOCSIS 4.0. Is that starting to clear out? So, yeah, any visibility and especially sort of a comment on how you expect that broadband business to do in 2025?

So, Tori, obviously, from where we are, we expect the broadband business to grow in 2025. However, as we're sort of straddling the bottom here, the order rates have picked up. And as you know, it's a full platform solution. They tend to come in a chunky manner. And as you know, As the market is gearing up, you know, I think of the character in the Flintstones, you know, revolving legs, you know. So I think we will start picking up orders, but I wouldn't read much into Q4 dip. It's just the cadence of the POs, and you're seeing still a lagging effect of customer deliveries. I do want to point out that the pickup and the bookings are really good. primarily related to broadband, which is a very good sign. And so outside of our infrastructure and optical, these have been the two drivers of our engine for orders right now. So I'm very happy about that. So getting back to the cable side of the business, you know, cable business right now is still a DOCSIS 3.0, 3.1 business. 4.0 is really, really pilot quantities. And even so, I believe and I know that when the Cable Recovery Act happens, it will still be dominated by 3.1, and UltraDocs is 3.1, and 4.0 will remain a small fraction of the revenues in 2025 and probably grow steadily from there in 2026. Put it another way, since our design incumbency prevails in 3.0 and 3.1, as the market wakes up, we should start seeing some steady recovery as we head into the end of next year. Okay?

Sounds good. I'll go back in line, and I love the Flintstone analogy. Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Ross Seymour, Deutsche Bank. Hi, guys.

Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, great. Also, congratulations. I love the Flintstones thing, too. Just a near-term question, then a little bit of a longer-term question. Steve, when you talked about the guidance for the fourth quarter, a little bit down in broadband, everything else up, it seems like everything else has to go up by about 20% sequentially. Can you just give us an idea of where that's coming from? Is it just shipping closer to demand? Is it the secular growth in the infrastructure side and kind of the optical transceivers? Just any color on that is my first question, please.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think we're seeing improved demand in general, I mean, really across the board, right? I mean, the bookings have been across the board. Kishore mentioned the strength in broadband in particular. Yes, that's definitely picked up, but that's also been the one that lagged the most, I think. You know, I think we're doing well on the optical front. As you're aware, Ross, we were, you know, this year was going to be pretty back-end loaded as 800 gig kind of adoption started. And so that'll be a big contributor. As far as the other end markets, I mean, we do see some modest recovery happening in connectivity. Industrial multi-market was down quite a bit in Q3. You know, China continues to be depressed. Industrial continues to be depressed. But we'll start to see that improve in Q4, and I think we'll see some modest improvements throughout 2025.

Got it. Thanks for that color, Stephen. And I guess you guys talked about the OPEX cutting last quarter. How should we think about the linearity of that? I think you said year over year down 20% to 25%, if I recall right, for next year. Are we still on path for that? And kind of how do you get from the $61 million you talked about before to to it looks like you'd be slightly less than that at some point next year.

Yeah, I'm glad you noticed that. That's been a lot of work throughout Q3 is kind of getting this cost structure down. Yes, we are on track to realize the 20% to 25% reduction next year. Some of the majority of those costs have been realized, but there will still be some residual kind of you know, over the next quarter or two. But we do feel like we're on track to hit that number. Great.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Quinn Bolton. Need him in company. Quinn? Maybe.

Maybe.

Sorry, guys. Hey, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to start with bookings. You guys have talked about bookings improving now, I think, for several quarters. Are we now at a point where book-to-bill is back above one? I mean, it looks like it likely is, given that you guided higher for the December quarter, but just wanted to see if you could comment whether book-to-bill is back above one.

Yeah, so I think, you know, I think, you know, we don't break out the bookings number. We feel very good. I mean, we saw a really significant uptick in bookings in this past quarter. So that was very encouraging. And we're seeing follow through now even. And so backlog's building nicely for Q4 and Q1 already. And so we're running at higher levels than we were in previous quarters. So another encouraging sign. And then I think the last one that I would mention is probably sell-through. Sell-through has been very good. So it feels like that in-demand continues. So all of those are encouraging signs.

So we are kind of feeling optimistic that the gap between the sell-in and the sell-through, so to speak, closes within the next couple of quarters, and both will be at a equal dynamic, so to speak, on a rate basis.

Got it. Any comment on how much higher sell-out is right now than sell-in? That's not my second question. I'd like to ask it.

That's a good try. You know, we're still in the Flintstone era, so I want to be clear.

The second question, you know, the optical business obviously sounds like it's on uh, you know, very, very good pace. You talked about exceeding, uh, 30 million. If you guys are going to do, you know, close to a million, uh, you know, optical DSPs this year, my guess is, you know, ASP and the DSP space is definitely over 30 bucks. And so I wouldn't be surprised and I won't ask you to comment, but you know, if optical DSP might be closer to 40 or 50, if that's the case, total infrastructure revenue looks like it's going to be on pace to be about 115 to maybe 120 million, uh, And so if I back out optical, you know, everything else is probably only 70 or 80 million, where it was probably 177 million last year. And so I understand optical is good, but you've talked about Panther, you've talked about, you know, the microwave backhaul, and everything you say sounds very encouraging, but like the revenue is still very, very depressed. And so can you give us Outside of optical, when do you think the rest of the business really starts to get back? Because it feels like it's pretty depressed. I assume a lot of it's inventory depletion rather than end market demand destruction. But wondering if you could comment on the infrastructure X opticals.

Yeah, no problem, Gwen. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we had mentioned this, talked through it last quarter as well. So, as expected, wireless infrastructure is definitely a drag. Telecom spending is down. You know, was it 12-plus months ago now? You know, wireless infrastructure was really humming, and that's really dialed back, consistent with all the telecom capex spending information that's out there. So, I think You know, those revenues really follow that. There is some analog product, as you're aware, that sells into the infrastructure market that's soft. Some of that's enterprise-related. As far as, you know, the real growth drivers, I mean, we sort of kind of talked through the optical side, but Panther also is another encouraging one as far as You know, we are seeing good traction. We do, you know, really have positive developments on the customer front with that, and we think we're really well positioned. So Outlook is very good as we get through inventory with some of the telecom spent. You know, we'll start to see that recover. I mean, next year I think we'll see, you know, 30-plus percent increases in our infrastructure business. So I think that's really exciting. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Christopher Roland, Susquehanna International Group.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. And congrats on what looks like the bottom here. And as we have more confidence in this bottom, do you guys have a better view on kind of what more normalized revenue would look like either quarterly or annually? For broadband, I guess, number one, and then connectivity, number two. You know, just in a completely normalized environment, where do you think those revenues go to now?

Yeah, I think we are getting through the inventory challenges that we've been through over the last two years, frankly. So that's encouraging. You kind of saw that last quarter. You know, you'll see some follow-through over the next couple of quarters, which is good. I think of it a little bit more, Chris. I don't know that we're completely out of the woods yet, but I do feel like we're kind of getting back to that other level. And so, I mean, I do expect to see kind of broadband connectivity grow in double digits next year. So I think we're on the right track there. Is there more to be made up? Yes. But I think all the signs are there. The bookings are there. The new wins. I mean, I think this is really important, right? The pond business that we're winning. It's really encouraging. And for that matter, even the cable improvements that we're seeing is also good. You know, you continue to see upgrades. I think as we look into next year, you're going to start to see some of the bead money roll out. And so there's a handful of, you know, drivers that will see a recovery in the market beyond just inventory situation. There's new products. There's new wins. There's share gains. There's pond transition opportunities. You know, there's Wi-Fi 7 transition as well, which is something else. There's been a bit of a lull in the market as that adoption takes place.

Thank you for that, Steve. And then my second question is on optical. Kishore, you talked about the huge number of design wins. I was wondering if you could kind of bucket these into customers for us, particularly those that you expect to ship in big volumes. So what percent do you think are going to be general transceiver providers versus, let's say, hyperscalers versus systems vendors? And can you speak to qualifications, particularly at the systems guys and then at hyperscalers?

So I would say that, I would step back and say that, you know, we have many designs going on with all the top module makers in the world now. I can safely claim that. I would probably claim that later, but right now, safely claim that. And these guys are targeting all the major data centers, you know, all the All the tear in shipments in optical transceivers really being InfiniBand-driven NVIDIA products in the last one and a half years. And I just want to point out as far as the data center guys go on the Ethernet side of the thing, actually the adoption has been very slow. And that is just beginning to move. And in fact, if anything, 400 gigabit is accelerating fast. So some of these module vendors are fully qualified in system vendors if it is systems level solutions. And some of these module vendors are directly in interop process with many data centers. And I want to point out is that China is going to hit a massive AI boom in the next deployment boom in the next, you know, starting in the next, in 25. So there are many, many data centers, if you combine both the U.S. and China, and the data is raised from the big guys like, you know, to what we call tier two, but they're gigantic as well. So I think at certain tier two data centers, we are through the calls. At tier ones, we're in the process of the calls, but it is build out going on in preparation for that. There's a lot of optimism in the industry about MaxLunius products. Maybe it's a part of a rite of passage that they want to put through. It's like hazing in a fraternity, you know. So, you know, you can see all my analogies are pretty interesting right now. But I feel good, you know, I feel really good that we can deliver, we are delivering, and feel pretty excited about it. So I will leave it there and let the results speak for themselves as we move forward because, you know, that's what it's been for us, and that's how we want to be measured as well.

Thank you, Kishore.

Thanks, Chris. Thank you. Our next question comes from David Williams, Benchmark Company.

Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the question, and let me also give my congrats on the turn here.

Thanks, David.

I guess maybe the first question is just around – and you talked a little bit about this earlier, Kishore, but Swan Creek and just that transition to 2.5G – It sounds like you've got some really nice traction there. Can you talk maybe about what your expectation is over maybe 25 and what that contribution could look like? And how is that, I guess, is the adoption coming in at expectations, or do you think it's slower or maybe even faster than you would have anticipated?

David, this is one case I would say the adoption has been excellent. It's moving faster than we can support. And so having said that, you know, Adoption is two parts to it. One is the rate at which they can sell at the end market. So there are two parts to it. One is enterprise type businesses. Other one is kind of consumerish type of businesses. So we were very surprised with the amount of traction is getting on the sort of the consumerish retail type markets. Whereas the small business and medium business and major enterprise business are going to pace as expected. with no hiccups. So we're very, very pleased with it. In fact, if anything, it's emboldened in our view about our future roadmap on Ethernet switch product lines, you know, and the various configurations of 2.5 gigabit and the number of ports associated with this. And, you know, I did talk about Max AI from MaxLinear. And Max AI is not just a machine learning AI framework. for various use case scenarios and performance optimizations just for the broadband platforms. It's a general concept and capability that we are building on that will proliferate all our product lines, including our five switch products, our Panther accelerated parts and so on. So we're really trying to drive the company now to be very, very AI being a necessary tool in terms of showing our competitive superiority in the product. Looking forward to the next year, it's 2025, and I can't give you about 2025, but I can only tell you about how big the Switch Swan Creek product can be. I look at the Switch Swan Creek product to be anywhere between a $50 million to $100 million potential on an annualized run rate basis over a three-year window.

Perfect. Thanks so much. And maybe talking about the Max AI, how do you think about that in terms of value and driving? Is that something you can monetize, or is it more of a value add? How do you think maybe just what does that go-to-market look like with Max AI?

So there are two parts to it. One is, right, there are parts of it that we imagine we'll be offering as default because it's stable stakes and competitive differentiation. The other parts of it, that will be very customized to develop for the various customers. And these days, right, as a company, we ship to very large customers. Customer bases have dramatically consolidated. So there will be some customization. So I think there's what you call a pay-to-play model, and there is, you know, if we don't play, we won't win, so to speak, right? So those are the two buckets. So I think it will be a hybrid model. But the latter model of a pay-to-play will take some time because, The industry is in a very infant phase in terms of utilizing AI for delivering real performance, you know, for improving efficiency on the networking, communication side, and use case scenarios. And I think that will play out as time develops.

Great. Thanks so much for the time and the questions, gentlemen.

Thank you, David.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Suji Da Silva, Roth Capital.

Hi, Kishore. Hi, Steve. Congrats on the progress here. Kishore, I hadn't heard other optical guys mentioning the China hyperscaler opportunity. Maybe it's just they see it as a larger bucket, but are you guys differentiated in your position in China relative to others who may be competitors, maybe more focused on the U.S. opportunity, or is it similar across the landscape?

I would say the differentiation is is universal. It's neither Chinese nor American, right? Low power, low power, low power. And if you really go back to history, we were made to deliver low power on all the products and communications that we ever offered. And I think that's what is beginning to come through. And we'll continue to do so with not just a Keystone product. Of course, everybody knows it's the lowest power there. But if you look forward to our Rushmore product and the offering of BOM around Rushmore, it will by far be the lowest power anybody will bring out in the next 12 months for sure.

Okay, Kishore, helpful. And maybe perhaps for Steve, on the Wi-Fi, the connectivity revenue versus the broadband revenue, Steve, should I think of those as more coupled than not, or are there specific drivers for each one as you go through the next few quarters?

I think there's definitely some overlap, right? So Wi-Fi and Ethernet, there's a lot of attach that has happened historically, as you're well aware. But we keep them separate because we continue to see more traction kind of winning Wi-Fi outside of a standard gateway business, as well as kind of winning more Ethernet business. And that was really, you know, you've heard us talk a lot about some of the traction we're getting with our Ethernet product in the industrial markets, in the enterprise markets. That's one of the places that we've really leveraged that 2.5 gig solution and penetrating the you know, with our Salesforce kind of getting more opportunities out there. And so going forward, you're going to continue to see more growth out of that connectivity enabled by these new markets. Okay. Thanks, Steve. Thanks. Sure. Thanks, Judy.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ananda Barua loop capital markets, LLC.

Hey guys. Yeah. Thanks for taking the, uh, the question. Uh, Yeah, a couple if I could. Really, the first two are probably clarification. Kishore, in the prepared remarks, actually, I think it may have been beginning of Q&A, you talked about run rate, this is DSP run rate, exiting, optical DSP run rate, exiting this year, 24. And did I hear you accurately that you were saying right now the run rate is a million, but exiting 24, you made have shipped 1 million, which would put you 4 million run rate heading into 25. Just looking for a clarification there, and then I have a couple more.

Thanks. So, Ananda, just for clarity, the exiting run rate is 1 million unit per year. So it's not a quarterly run rate, right? So the question that I believe Tori asked is, and which I responded that we obviously expect to do much better than that and will be in excess of the one million unit per year run rate. Now, four would be fantastic, but let's stick to being greater than one million unit per year for now.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And then another clarification around Tsuji's question, are you also working with And actually, just sort of clarification on your remarks also. When you say you're working with all the leading module makers, does that include the Chinese module makers?

Everyone.

Everyone. Got it. Okay, cool. That's it for me. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Thank you. Next question comes from Carl Ackerman, BNP Paribas.

Thank you. I have one clarification question and a follow-up. Just on the clarification question, Steve, I think you were mentioning China restrictions being a headwind to your September quarter and December quarter guide. Were those restrictions more or less than your prior view or – Hopefully you could clarify the commentary for December.

Yeah, well, we said that it would probably $5 to $10 million in the back half of the year would be the impact, and we're definitely feeling that. You can kind of see that in our industrial multi-market numbers. And so, yeah, I mean, I think the good thing here is that You know, that's behind us. We don't see problems going ahead, and so, you know, excited about looking forward into next year. Got it.

Okay. Thanks for that. And then, you know, and then I think within broadband, UNHK and PON remains a strong longer-term opportunity, particularly with your tri-band single-chip solution at a second Tier 1 U.S. carrier. You know, I know you were talking about how broadband is – still down for December, but I guess as you look into 2025, are you seeing orders for PON being pulled in earlier than you previously envisioned at the second carrier, or is a recovery in PON more of a back-to-half 2025 and into 2026 view? Thank you.

So, Steve, I'll just take it for a second. The general trend, you know, there's a lot of activity on the telco players to start rolling out fiber. So they have taken their sort of, you know, dusted up their plants. And whether they're doing fixed parallel access or not, they realize that they really need a pond fiber network. And anything they're considering right now is how do we lay out, you know, what do you call – start laying more fiber, right? You see that in AT&T commitment and that's like their big thing. And you see that in Verizon, you're seeing that their communication related to acquisition discussions, right? That have been in the newspapers. So there's a general trend for everybody to start visiting their fiber rollout plans very seriously now. And the real backbone to the bounty they have been getting on the fixed wireless access. Okay, so we are seeing momentum. They're discussing RFPs, RFQs, and stuff. So while some are ahead, some are later, but in terms of the revenue momentum on solutions for gateways and so on and so forth, I really look at it happening the latter half of 2025, slowly coming more and more revenues coming into the run rate basis and the follow-on continuing through 2026 and 2027. So there's not going to be any jump starts, like suddenly they turn on the switch, because you've got to keep in mind that our revenue in fiber to start with is a very small share. And last year was about a $5,200 million range. And now we hope, and you know the telecom spend has been down, but that has not shown up in the fiber numbers because it's been a growth venue for us. But the momentum should start moving forward in brand new fiber designs, picking up some velocity.

Understood. Thank you.

Thanks, Carl.

Our next question comes from Richard Shannon, Craig Hullum.

Well, good, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe to hit on a product segment that hasn't been asked about here in wireless infrastructure, I think you gave, Keisha, some pretty positive comments about the go-forwards from here. Maybe you can just give us a sense of visibility here in terms of of bookings and when we might start to see some sort of pickup and get back to prior highs?

It's a very, very good question, Richard. And, you know, look, everybody's like wireless infrastructure, blah, blah, blah. It's all looking boring and stuff. But I just look at it as the last man's tiny game. You have the right technology, and in a couple of years, it'll turn around, and then there's going to be beautiful revenue that's really, really long-term revenue. And we have the right investment in technology, right? Now we're going to start seeing some recovery in telecom spend, and the first focus will be in Southeast Asia, Latin America, India, all the expansion in terms of starting to upgrade their networks to 5G, and their wireless transport is the single biggest mechanism. And they're really, really hungry for expanded bandwidth data rate for transport because fiber is not an option. So we are very, very well positioned there. And then you come back to the fact of how is the recovery looking like. Oh, my gosh. I mean, last quarter, I think Quinn pointed out, he said, outside of optical, things must be very down. Yes, they are very down. In fact, they were horribly down on the wireless side last quarter. And now we have all the indications that there's going to be a steady improvement in bookings. And we have bookings that actually reflect those. So wireless is going to recover for the entire year next year. And beyond 45, it's going to really pick up even more strongly. So things are beginning to look positively up on wireless infrastructure and seem to be pretty steadily recovery potential. Okay.

Okay, great. Appreciate that summary there. Maybe touching on another topic that hasn't been hit on much today here in storage. I think you made one brief comment about some progress there at Flash Memory Summit. I think you've been quoted publicly in an investor conference talking about a revenue bogey of that category of $50 to $75 million. I think that was applied to the account of year 26. Wondering if you're progressing well towards that generic goal or above or below that. Just kind of general thoughts there. Thank you.

So I still hold the bogey over the next three-year window, but things are a little bit slow in terms of that timeline right now because, as I told you, much of the design traction was enterprise storage applications, and those guys have delayed their rollout plans due to a lot of inventory on their side as well. And so the 26 bogey number may shift out a bit, but there's no reason to change our view on how big the Panther storage business can be. And so, yeah, that's absolutely right what you've said. But what we are trying to do right now is proliferate Panther beyond just a storage application. Steve talked a bit. There are like compute server subsystems and expand the scope beyond that. And so it's getting a lot of traction right now in what we call customer evaluation and proofs of concepts within the customer itself. So to help that process, we also rolled out a software-defined storage that mimics Panther so that customers can prepare their solutions well ahead of using the hardware to be ready.

Okay? Okay, great. Thanks for the comments, Kishore. That's all for me.

Thanks, Richard.

And our final question comes from Torres von Berg, Stiefel.

Yeah, thanks. I just had a follow-up. Kishore, I know you've been sampling the Rushmore 200 gig per lane since OFC this year. I was just wondering as far as timing of revenue there and where would that revenue come initially between regular optical modules versus LRO or AEC?

So that's a very good question, Tori. I think now we can all I think this ECOG, the flavor was just give me the same old DSPs, but much, much, much lower power, right? And LROs are being considered. We are being the champions of LROs. But this ECOG was about just give me those darn DSPs with like a fraction of the power, right? That's become the motto. That tells you how complex and difficult these PAM-4 modulation system is as you start increasing the bandwidth. And the problem gets even more challenging in the copper side. the active electrical cable, you will. So this is really a big boy game in terms of technology. And as it heads towards us, we feel very good. So regarding the 200 gig, really the only one who's really looking at 200 gig is really the AI type systems. And it's really driven by NVIDIA right now. All the other data center folks are sort of the Ethernet types, there's a lot more time for this to happen. Having said that, you're not real in this market unless you have everything the world wants, and so we're gearing up to that, and we hope to showcase our Rushmore product in a full-blown way with multiple vendors in the OFC that's just going to come about in a couple of months. Okay, it's three months away, but yeah, that's the goal here, and really there's no real customer for 200 gigabit in any way other than NVIDIA trying to get ahead. And we have told this before. NVIDIA is developing its own DSP solutions. That will be their first preference, number one. And then hopefully they expand the scope to other multiple vendors to secure their supplies in the future. Very helpful. Thank you. Yep. Thank you, everyone. With that being the last question, I want to thank you all. This quarter we'll be presenting a number of financial conferences in person and in virtual events, and we'll post the details of the calendar on the investor relations page. And we look forward to speaking with you again soon. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.