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spk00: Welcome to the RAMBIS first quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star 1 on your touch-tone pad at any time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your touchtone pad at any time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to Rahul Mathur, Chief Financial Officer. Please begin your conference.
spk05: Thank you, Operator, and welcome to the RAMBUS first quarter 2021 results conference call. I'm Rahul Mathur, CFO, and on the call with me today is Luke Serafin, our CEO. The press release for the results that we will be discussing today have been furnished to the SEC on Form 8K. A replay of this call will be available for the next week at 855-859-2056. You can hear the replay by dialing the toll-free number and then entering ID number 398-5069 when you hear the prompt. In addition, we are simultaneously webcasting this call, and along with the audio, we are webcasting slides that we will reference during portions of today's call. So even if you're joining us via conference call, you may want to access the webcast with the slide presentation. A replay of this call can be accessed on our website beginning today at 5 p.m. Pacific time. Our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements, including our financial guidance for future periods, product investment strategies, timing of expected product launches, demand for existing and newly acquired technologies, the growth opportunities of the various markets we serve, the expected benefits of our merger, acquisition, and divestiture activity, including the success of our integration efforts, risks and potential adverse impacts related to or arising from COVID-19, and the effects of AC-606 on reported revenue, amongst other things. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that are discussed during this call and may be more fully described in the documents we file with the SEC, including our 8-Ks, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks. These forward-looking statements may differ materially from our actual results, and we're under no obligation to update these statements. In an effort to provide greater clarity to our financials, we're using both GAAP and non-GAAP financial presentations in both our press release and also on this call. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financials to the most directly comparable GAAP measures has been included in our press release, in our slide presentation, and on our website at campus.com on the investor relations page under financial releases. We adopted ASC 606 in 2018 using the modified retrospective method, which did not restate prior periods, but rather ran the cumulative effect of the adoption through retained earnings as a beginning balance sheet adjustment. Any comparison between our results under ASC 606 and prior results under ASC 605 is not an accurate way to track the company's progress. We will continue to provide operational metrics, such as licensing billings, to give our investors better insight into our operational performance. The order of our call today will be as follows. Luke will start with an overview of the business. I will discuss our financial results, including our guidance for future periods. And then we will end with Q&A. I'll turn the call over to Luke to provide an overview of the quarter. Luke?
spk07: Thanks, Rahul, and good afternoon, everyone. Q1 was a strong quarter for the company, delivering at a high end of expectations for revenue and profitability. We continue to meet or beat expectations, and I'm very proud of the team's continued execution. Our cash generation remains strong, with $39.5 million in cash flow operations, and continues to fuel our ongoing investments in our product roadmap. As anticipated, our memory interface kit business rebounded to over $30 million, and we continue to expect our annual product growth to significantly outpace the market. We also see a positive trajectory in SiliconIP customer engagements with the opportunity to build enterprise-level relationships. Ongoing share gains and strong demand in our target markets and growth for the company with data center as the primary catalyst across all of our businesses. We are actively building our ecosystem and expanding our reach through partnerships and collaboration, and are confident in our ability to deliver profitable top-line growth. Over the past few quarters, we've discussed some of the company's vectors for growth at a high level, and I wanted to provide more detail on some of the more exciting trends shaping our roadmap and market opportunity. we see three fundamental trends that are driving growth at the market, system, and chip level. First is the accelerated transition from enterprise to cloud. Second is the sustained increase in data generation and usage. And third is the proliferation of AI and data-intensive applications across all markets. Beyond the secular growth in data center, These trends are increasing demand for performance with rising AI and AI workloads driving server growth at the system level. And at the chip level, the need for more data to feed the system is driving memory bandwidth and big growth. As a result, data delivery, particularly in the memory subsystem, is now on the critical path for meeting ongoing performance requirements. Additionally, the emergence of new architectures and growing need for privacy create the necessity for securing data at rest and in motion, where we have built an instinctive portfolio of offerings. The combination of these factors has created an amplified market opportunity and a growing time for Rambus. Our company's time expansion is driven by a number of factors. In the near term, Intel's latest DDR4 platform supports a higher maximum memory module attach rate This platform is currently ramping and will enable an optional increase in corresponding modules per box in high-end systems. As the industry transitions to DDR5 beginning later this year, the growing complexity at higher speeds will require additional companionships like temperature sensors, power management integrated circuits, also known as PMICs, and serial present detect hubs, also known as SPD hubs. Each of these provides an adjacent chip opportunity for RAMBUS, and we expect to see an increase in our portion of chip content per module. Looking to next year and beyond, the industry is converging on the use of Compute Express LIMS, or CXL, as part of a differentiated memory interface architecture, in addition to traditional DIMMs, to expand system bandwidth and capacity. we are actively engaged with the ecosystem on the design and development of the new memory interface products. And finally, as we look a bit farther out in the future, there are opportunities to leverage those same high speed links as part of new disaggregated architectures that can boost utilization and efficiency and reduce total cost of ownership for data center customers. It is also important to point out that security has become a critical concern that must be addressed at the hardware level to deliver both performance and protection in future architectures. We see a growing number of industry standards and customer requirements for security as part of chip and system specifications. As an industry pioneer with over 30 years of experience in high-speed interfaces and an extensive portfolio of security offerings, Rambus is ideally suited to address these challenges. we see many opportunities for our product roadmap and focused R&D investments to drive some expansion and expect the long-term profitable growth of the company to outpace that of the market. Now let's get back to our product business. The industry has returned to healthy memory consumption levels following the short-term inventory digestion in the second half of last year. We remain confident that we have the supply chain in place to satisfy our ongoing customer demand and support share growth. As I mentioned previously, our first quarter product revenue returns to over $30 million and will continue to build as demand for server memory is expected to remain robust throughout 2021 and into 2022. We expect our annual product growth to significantly outpace the market, driven by share gains in DDR4 and ramping volumes in DDR5. We continue to improve our market position in DDR4 through superior execution and expect incremental gains given our larger qualification footprint on Intel's most recent DDR4 platform. With respect to DDR5, we are in the leading position for qualification with our memory customers on both Intel and AMD DDR5 platforms. All of the major DRAM suppliers are shipping DDR5 modules without chips for end customer qualification. and we expect volume to ramp in the second half of the year. We continue to invest in the development of companionship for DDR5 platforms and look forward to sharing more in the near future. In closing, I'm very proud of the company's performance in the first quarter. We are well positioned for above-market growth, and I'm excited about the many opportunities this year and beyond. The health and safety of our global workforce, customers, and partners remain our top priority. We approach people, culture and diversity with the same level of passion and dedication as our technology leadership, profitability and capital investments. And we remain committed to responsible and sustainable environmental and social practices as we deliver products to our customers. With that, I turn the call over to Rahul to discuss the quarterly financial results.
spk05: Rahul? Thanks, Luke. I'd like to begin with a summary of our financial results for the first quarter on slide eight. Once again, we delivered a solid quarter and are very pleased with the ongoing execution on our growth initiative. We delivered financial results at the high end of our revenue and earnings expectations. Our product revenue grew 41% quarter over quarter. We generated $39.5 million in cash from operations, bringing our total cash position to $529.1 million. Our execution and operational discipline have yielded solid financial results and a strong balance sheet that enables us to support our strategic initiatives. Let me talk you through some financial highlights on slide nine. We continue to be focused on profitable growth and have demonstrated this over the past many years. As Luke mentioned earlier, the significant growth in token IT revenues is a result of our focused R&D investments in the exciting cloud and data center market. We have dramatically improved our cash from operations and free cash flow. This has allowed us to return capital to shareholders while also further strengthening our balance sheet. Let me walk you through our non-GAAP income statement on slide 10. Revenue for the first quarter was $70.4 million towards the high end of our expected range. Realty revenue was $28.9 million, while licensing billings was $63.5 million. The difference between licensing billings and royalty revenue primarily relates to timing, as we don't always recognize revenue in the same quarter as we bill our customers. Our buffer chip business rebounded in the first quarter as we worked through the inventory digestion and supply chain we had anticipated and discussed previously. Product revenue was $30.8 million, consisting primarily of our buffer chip business. Our contract and other revenue was $10.7 million, consisting primarily of our silicon IP business. Total operating expenses, including COGS, for the quarter came in at $58.2 million. Operating expenses of $45.3 million were lower than our expectations due to our continued focus on operational efficiency. We ended the quarter with headcount of $589, lower than $623 in the previous quarter, as we continued to align our product programs with growth markets. Under ASC 606, we recorded $2.8 million of interest income related to the financing component of our fixed fee licensing arrangement for which we recognize revenue but not yet receive payment. We incurred $0.7 million of interest expense primarily associated with our convertible notes. This was offset by incremental interest income related to the return on our cash and investment portfolio. After adjusting for non-cash interest expense on a convertible note, this resulted in non-GAAP interest and other income for the quarter of $2.2 million. Using an assumed flat rate of 24% for non-GAAP pre-tax income, non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $10.9 million. With continued focus on cost and disciplined execution, we delivered profit that was nicely above our expectations. Now, let me turn to the balance sheet details on slide 11. We have consistently generated cash. Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaled $529.1 million up from the previous quarter, primarily due to cash from operations of $39.5 million. As we deliver on the top line and execute on operational efficiency, we expect to continue to deliver strong cash from operations in the future. At the end of Q1, we had contract assets worth $344.7 million, which reflects the net present value of unbilled AR related to licensing arrangements for which the company has no future performance obligations. I expect this number to continue to trend down as we bill and collect for these contracts. It's important to note that this metric doesn't represent the entire value of our existing licensing arrangements, as several customers have royalty-based agreements that allow us to recognize revenue each quarter. First quarter CapEx was $6.6 million, while depreciation was $4.7 million. We delivered $32.8 million of free cash flow in the quarter. Looking forward, I expect CapEx for the second quarter to be less than $5 million. I also expect depreciation of roughly $20 million for the full year of 2021. Now, let me turn to our guidance for the second quarter on slide 12. As a reminder, our forward-looking guidance reflects our current best estimates, and our actual results could differ materially from what I'm about to review. In addition to the financial outlook under AC606, we've also been providing information on licensing billings, which is an operational metric that amounts invoice to our licensing customers during the period adjusted for certain differences. As you see in the supplemental information we provide on slide 16 of our earnings deck, licensing billings closely correlates with what we've historically reported as royalty revenue under AC605. Under AC606, we expect revenue in the second quarter between $76 and $82 million. We expect royalty revenue between $32 and $38 million. We also expect licensing billings between $60 and $66 million. As Luke mentioned, we continue to closely monitor our supply chain. We're upholding our lead time commitments to our customers. Additionally, we maintain inventory to respond to unforeseen events and customer upsides. We remain confident in our ability to fulfill customer demand. Our expected Q2 non-GAAP total operating costs and expenses, which includes COGS, We expect to be between $61 and $57 million as we continue to invest in programs. Under ASC 606, non-GAAP operating results for the second quarter is expected to be between a $15 and $25 million profit. For non-GAAP interest and other income and expense, which excludes interest income related to ASC 606, we expect approximately $1 million of expense, which includes a $0.6 million of interest expense related to the notes due in 2023. We expect our pro forma tax rate to remain consistent at roughly 24%. The 24% is higher than the statutory rate of 21%, primarily due to higher tax rates in our foreign jurisdictions. As a reminder, we pay roughly $20 million of cash taxes each year, driven primarily by our licensing agreements with our partners in Korea. We expect non-GAAP taxes to be between an expense of $3 and $6 million in Q2. We expect our Q2 share count to be roughly $116 million, basic and diluted shares outstanding. This leads you to between a gap profit per share of 9 and 16 cents for the quarter. Our product businesses are well-positioned relative market, and we anticipate steady execution across our strategic priorities. With that said, while we don't provide guidance beyond Q2, consensus estimates for our top-line and bottom-line growth in the remaining quarters of 2021 reflect our belief that our product growth will continue to outpace the broader semiconductor industry. Let me finish with a summary on slide 13. We are proud of the excellent execution by our team. Over the past several years, we've made substantial progress strategically, operationally, and financially. We've realigned our portfolio to address data center and cloud opportunities and to support our long-term growth strategy. We're consistently improving our profitability, investing in the growth opportunities Luke mentioned previously, and delivering value to our shareholders. Before I open up the call to Q&A, I would once again like to thank our employees for their continued teamwork and execution resilience during these uncertain times. Everyone, please stay safe and take care of yourself and your families. With that, I'll turn the call back to our operator to begin Q&A. Could we please have our first question?
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Sidney Ho with Deutsche Bank. Two lines open, and we ask a question.
spk04: Thank you for taking my question. My first question is related to supply constraints that we've been hearing all over SIEM conductor supply chain. Has that been a headwind for you, or do you expect that to be a headwind either directly or indirectly for both your memory chipset business as well as the solar and IP businesses?
spk07: Hi, Sydney. Great question. At this point in time, we don't see this as a headwind. We hear what's happening in the market at large. But we have built for many years our supply chain and inventory profile for growth. We knew that our strategy for buffer shape was to gain share. And so the whole supply chain strategy has been built around that. And this means that today we feel confident that we can supply to our customers. We actually believe that we can supply higher than what their demand will be in the next few quarters. Yes, some lead times have increased a bit, but we also have increased our lead time for orders to our suppliers, and they can supply to us. So at this point in time, we continue to be confident in our ability to supply. As I said, the whole supply chain on our side was built on the view that our share would grow and our business would grow and that holds true now. Now, you're absolutely right. There's always a possible risk that another device might disrupt our supply chain. But in our case, again, you know, on the module, you don't have many devices, you know, you have a circuit written board, you have memories, and you have software chips, and a few other devices. So at this point in time, we've not seen any of these situations popping up. But that's something we are constantly watching.
spk04: Great. That's helpful. Maybe my follow-up question is, you talk about the compute express link architecture. Can you talk about what that means to your revenue opportunity versus the traditional DDR5 DIMMs from a product revenue standpoint, as well as royalty licensing? And when do you expect the ramp-up for C-cell to begin? Understanding that DDR5 opportunity is already higher than DDR4.
spk07: Right. That's a great question. So we do see the... DDR5 opportunity and adding to the revenue growth potential starting next year. CXL is going to significantly contribute to revenue starting in 2020 into 2024. But the designs for CXL chips are going to start now, are starting now, actually. So, you know, it's a bit like what happens in the buffer chip area. Designs and architectures are very early, and three years down the road, you start to see revenue ramp. But if you do add the DDR5 potential, which we currently see on DDR4, plus the CXL potential, we expect the time for our overall buffetry business to more than double by 2024. Great. Thank you.
spk00: Thanks, Yannick. Your next question comes from the line of Mehdi Husseini with FIG. Your line is open, and we ask your question.
spk01: Yes, thanks for taking my question. Just want to follow up to Sydney's and want to dig into silicon IP opportunities, especially with AI and machine learning. And this is something that In my opinion, we're still in the early phase, but I want to see how much of those incremental opportunities are part of your expectation, or would this actually provide any upside to your overall opportunities for this year and beyond? And I have a follow-up.
spk07: Hi, Mehdi. AI and ML opportunities do add potential revenue for our IT cores, especially HPM, where we do show a very high bandwidth capability. AI is going to be consuming a large portion of the data center growth going forward. So anyone building a chip for AI that goes into data center will eventually need these high-speed interfaces, mostly HBM, to some extent GDDR6. So these growth of AI into the data center, the data center market growth itself, are driving growth for our IP cores. Our IP core business is growing in double-digit growth. that the AI through HBMGDR6 are the main drivers for that.
spk01: But would it be possible that this early in adoption and perhaps if it materializes, it may provide an upside to your expectation for this year and beyond? Or is it already dialed into what you have communicated for opportunities?
spk07: Maybe it is dialed in what we have communicated for our opportunities. The Rambler strategy has always been to focus on data centers and high-speed interfaces. So what we've done over the last few years is we focus our portfolio on the IP that serves those markets, and HBM, GDDR6, Conforon 5, as well as a security IP, focus on benefiting from that market growth. So this is dialed in our expectations.
spk01: Got it. Thank you. And just a quick follow-up. Your pro forma OPEX over the past four quarters has remained below $50 million. Is this something that we should be thinking of over the next four to eight quarters, like at most $50 million of OPEX?
spk05: Hi, Macy. It's Rahul. Thanks very much for the question, and we're delighted to have you on the call today. In terms of an OpEx perspective, look, I think we've done a fantastic job of improving our operational efficiency and in particularly taking cost out of SG&A. You know, what you've seen is that we've taken probably about $20 million of cost out compared to where we were a couple of years ago. My expectation is that from an overall OpEx perspective, our SG&A through the course of this year should stay roughly flat on a quarterly basis. There's always some ins and outs on a quarterly basis related to tax or hiring or other things as well. What I'd expect, though, is that if we had some increases in spend, it would be on the R&D side. We are investing in these very exciting projects. product programs that Luke was talking about earlier, both on the chip side as well as on the Silicon IP side. So you might see a little bit of increase on the R&D side from a quarter-to-quarter perspective. But I think that $50 million a quarter, we should be under that through the course of this year. But I'd like to see us continue to invest in R&D towards the back half of this year and then out in the future to fuel these product plans that are growing very nicely. Maybe to the question you were asking earlier, you know, we look at our silicon IP business on total, as Luke mentioned, growing kind of in the double-digit range on an annual basis. And that's embedded, I think, in the growth estimates that you see for analysts and consensus estimates. And I think I mentioned that in our prepared remarks.
spk01: Okay, great. Thanks for the detail. I appreciate it.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Gary Mobley with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line's open. Can you ask your question?
spk06: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about your supply chain. I noticed that in the first quarter, your product gross margins were down about 400 basis points from where they were last year, and I know they were exceptionally high last year. Is that a function of – having to pay for higher input costs, in particular finished wakers. And I wanted to ask the converse, I guess go from a different angle from a question asked earlier. And I know your two main competitors in buffer chips are also fabulous. Any chance that you could benefit from those two competitors perhaps being capacity-constrained?
spk05: Hey, Gary, it's Rahul. Great to hear from you. I think in terms of your questions, we've been very consistent that we think our buffer chip gross margins should be in the 60% or 65% range. As you mentioned, we had a couple of few quarters earlier that were higher than that, which was wonderful to see. But I think us dropping in any period is really related more to product mix more than anything else. It's not associated with any expedite or other costs that we have associated with the supply chain. It really is mixed. And the margins that we printed last quarter, I think, are very consistent with what we expect from a longer-term basis. Does that help answer your question?
spk06: Sure. And just a question about your competition in their supply chain. Yes.
spk05: So I think we've done a very nice job of gaining share from our competitors. If you see our numbers for Q1 versus Q4 versus some of the other competitors who have bounced, clearly we've bounced back up, and other folks haven't shown that 41% growth quarter over quarter. i think it's really more associated with design win activity um this is one of the things that we've talked about fairly consistently is that we get access to the design wins and that's what gives us confidence in our ability to continue to grow that actually gives us confidence in talking about you know the back half of this year and growth and growth and things like ddr5 as well so i think it's really design win which is a key part of it is winning you know at the socket with the technology and speed and performance as luke mentioned earlier certainly we designed a supply chain to grow with us and so maintaining some of that strategic inventory to quickly satisfy demand has helped us i think that was one of the reasons that we had such nice growth particularly in the first half of last year as well so hopefully that answers that part of that question as well yeah gary i think she got little demand grew demand grew
spk07: because of our designing activities. And as we said earlier, from day one, we built a supply chain and inventory profile for growth so that we could benefit from those design wins. And what it means is that we have good redundancy in our supply chain. We have strategic inventories placed in our supply chain. And we also own more and more of our own testing. So, you know, we can maintain that growth trajectory, you know, through these market share entries.
spk06: Appreciate that. A follow-up question about GDR5. You mentioned some revenue in the back half of this year. I would assume a fairly immaterial amount, correct me if I'm wrong there. And then you mentioned a three-die solution in DDR5, and I believe for DDR4 it's a two-die solution. Is it too simplistic to think that that translates into a 50% boost in your bill material per DIMM? And if not, could you give us some sense of the ASP boost for you? Sure.
spk07: So to the first question, GDR5 is going to ramp in the market in earnest in 2022. But we should expect customers to place orders before that to feel their channels. So we should see some pre-production orders in the second half of this year and the large production orders in 2022. We are currently shipping GDR5 in some volume to the memory module vendors as they go through their qualification process with their own customers. So that's the profile we see for DDR5. So you should expect some revenue in the second half of the year, but this ramping in earnest in 2022. With respect to the ASP, there's a combination of new generation of product coming to market that typically uh gives a a pop to the asp and uh the potential for additional chips so we will certainly see uh overall an increase of asp on the ddr5 platform which uh yeah you i think you mentioned 50 um you know that could be in that range uh and then Like every generation, this will decay, at least on the same chips. But we have the opportunity for additional chips, you're right. Appreciate that. Thanks. Thank you.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of John Fitzgerald with Credit Smith. Your line is open.
spk02: Yeah, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. Luca, I'm curious, in your opening comments, you talked about Ice Lake and the benefit of moving up the number of memory channels. I would be curious, though, if you could talk a little bit about your opportunity to grow in the memory buffer space outside of Intel and either x86 or ARM. And I sort of asked the question because you're putting up good year-over-year growth at a time where their server, Intel server business isn't. And so I'd be curious as to kind of helping to better understand your opportunities, you know, outside of the largest provider right now.
spk07: Yeah, correct. You know, we mentioned the platforms from Intel. We do have the same types of engagements with AMD. So, you know, we are at the same levels of qualifications on Intel's platforms or AMD platforms. You know, when there's a market share change between the two, we continue to grow. And that's also true for the next generation of memories. We engaged with, you know, the two main vendors there. We also engaged with, I would say, nascent vendors who are starting to develop their own processors for data centers, and that will create some additional opportunity down the road, not this year or next year, but the year after. So we try to engage with everyone developing chips for data centers, whether it's the traditional AMDs or Intel chips, or the people developing their own ships, especially the cloud guys.
spk02: And then, Lucas, as my follow-up, you've talked about kind of the long design cycles as we go from DDR4 to DDR5 and your optimism around kind of your ability to continue to grow shared through that transition. I'm curious, is it too early on the CXL side to talk about what the design funnel looks like and kind of what your position is in that design funnel?
spk07: It's a bit early to say where we are in the design funnel. What I would say is we think the industry first has converged mostly to the CXL interface. The architecture of the chips for CXL interfaces are being defined as we speak, and we are central to those discussions with memory vendors, processor vendors, and the cloud guys. I think we are in the phase of defining chip architectures and memory subsystem architecture, and we're taking a good part or a central part to those discussions. Then we will go into a phase of development and market ramp. As I said, the volume for CXL buffers in earnest will start sometime in 2023 and 2024. But the thing that has changed since last time we've talked is that The industry has aligned around CXL interfaces. The architectures are being defined, and we are part of those discussions with the industry. The other thing that is happening for RAMBUS, and I think we're uniquely positioned for that, is that a lot of the IP contained in the CXL buffer are IP that we have developed as part of our IP business. You know, a CFL interface is actually a 32G5 and a controller. We have this as part of our offering in our IT core business. The CFL buffers will require security functions. We have this as part of our IT business. So from an IT content standpoint that goes into these chips, I think we need the position to be successful in that space.
spk02: Perfect. Thank you.
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, if you have questions, please press star one on your touchtone telephone. Your next question comes from the line of Mark Macassar with Jefferies. Your line's open. You may ask your question.
spk03: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions, a couple of questions. Luke, in the past, you've successfully used inventory strategically to to meet upside. And today you had mentioned again that, you know, you often have, or you have like some strategic inventory placed in the supply chain. Can you, if I look at your balance sheet, it looks like your inventories are kind of flattish year on year, but you're expecting more revenues this year. So where's the strategic inventory? Is it on, is it on other, is that other places in the supply chain not showing up on your balance sheet where you have the If you could help explain how you're positioned right now with the ability to meet upside should it manifest.
spk05: Hey, Mark. It's Rahul. Thanks, and it's a great question. You know, what I'll tell you is that inventory report is at a point in time at the end of the quarter, and so clearly over some part of the quarter, it'll go up a little bit higher, and sometimes it'll go a little lower. We do have some inventory that's placed with some distributors, and that helps us solve the inventory or requests from partners on a quick basis, and so that's not going to show up in our balance sheet, but hopefully that's a little bit of additional color.
spk03: That's helpful. Thank you. And then a follow-up, if I may. Can you talk about, like, the visibility you see, and again, on the DDR product side, the visibility you have into orders from the hyperscale customers? You know, it seems like these are products that you're making that would go into the hyperscale data centers. And we hear from other semiconductor companies that supply to hyperscalers that the the planning is fairly robust and they typically get very good visibility. And most we spoke with have believed that there's very good visibility into growth in the second half of the year. So I guess I'm wondering, can you characterize the visibility you see from that kind of classic customer? Does it come directly? Do you get visibility directly from the consumer here, the hyperscale company, or do you get it through your the memory module makers themselves or the PCOAMs. Thank you.
spk07: Yeah, thanks. We see it from both. From the cloud guys, what we see is aggregate growth, especially driven by the needs for the AI applications. So that confirms the growth that we see in our forecast. Then from the memory vendors, we do see how this growth translates into different types of platforms, especially this year where there's an introduction of a lot of different platforms. The last generation of DDR4 platforms on both AMD and Intel, and there's the first generation of DDR5 platforms from the same vendors. So that transition is going to translate into a demand mix that we're watching carefully for the second half of the year. But in aggregate, you know, all of these fuels the growth driven by the data center guys, which, you know, which are the end users.
spk03: Thank you. That's very helpful. I appreciate the help.
spk00: Always welcome, Marcus. At this time, there are no further questions. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Luc.
spk07: Thank you for your interest in Rambas and we wish you all health and hope to talk to you soon. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. This now concludes today's conference.
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