Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Silicon Motion Technology Corporation's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session, at which time, if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone keypad. This conference call contains forelooking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. Such forelooking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding trends in the semiconductor industry and all future results of operations, financial condition, and business prospects. Although such statements are based on our own information and information from other sources we believe to be reliable, you should not place undue reliance on them. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual market trends and our results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these following statements for a variety of reasons. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, competitive pressure in the semiconductor industry and the effect of such pressure on prices, unpredictable changes in technology and consumer demand for multimedia consumer electronics, the state of and any change in our relationship with our major customers, and changes in political, economic, legal, and social conditions in Taiwan. For additional discussion of this risk and uncertainties and other factors, please see the documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update any further looking statements which apply only as of the date of this conference call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to hand you over to Mr. Tom Sabances, Senior Director of IR and Strategy of the company. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Silicon Motion's second quarter 2024 financial results conference call and webcast. Joining me today is Wallace Koh, our president and CEO, and Jason Tsai, our interim CFO. Wallace will first provide a review of our key business developments, and then Jason will discuss our second quarter results and outlook. Following our prepared remarks, we will conclude with a Q&A session. Before we get started, I would like to remind you of our safe harbor policy, which was read at the start of this call. For a comprehensive overview of the risks involved with investing in our securities, please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For more details on our financial results, please refer to our press release, which was filed on Form 6-K after the close of the market yesterday. This webcast will be available for replay in the Investor Relations section of our website for a limited time. To enhance investors' understanding of our ongoing economic performance, we will discuss non-GAAP information during this call. We use non-GAAP financial measures internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We have therefore chosen to provide this information to enable you to perform comparisons of our operating results in a manner consistent with how we analyze our own operating results. The reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP financial data can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday. We ask that you review it in conjunction with this call. With that, I will turn the call over to Wallace.

Thank you, Tom. Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a strong start to 2024, building on the momentum that began in the second half of calendar 2023. We delivered sequential revenue growth ahead of expectation and achieved gross margin at the high end of our guidance range. as better mix and pricing continue to steadily improve our profitability. The revenue upside was driven by our continued strength as our NAND Flash customer, as demand from PC and smartphone OEM increased in anticipation of seasonally stronger second half demand. Additionally, we benefited from increased market share as the top NAND Flash makers as they continue to source controller externally rather than develop them in-house. Over the past few quarters, our team have been working hard toward deepening our partnership with our NAND FlashMaker customers. We are winning more and more sockets, from mainstream to high-end SD and EMC and UFS controllers for PC, smartphones, automotive, and other markets. Our success with our Flash maker partners has helped improve our visibility and crucial to our strong growth this year, despite market uncertainty, especially in the retail aftermarket. This quarter, our revenue from NAM flash makers grew nearly 15% sequentially, accounting for more than 60% of our total revenue. Both SAD and EMC UF controller strengths found new programs more than upside emerging softness in the retail market. These are our module maker customers. Demand for our product is rising, and now fashion makers increasingly outsource controller solutions, and we are in the best position to benefit from this growing trend. We have unmatched technical and financial resources to build next-generation controllers, and we intend to enhance our position through the introduction of multiple new products in the coming year, including our enterprise-class Montyton family, new PCIe 5.0 and UFS 4.0 controllers. I am pleased with our team's execution in the first half of the year and the momentum going into the second half of this year. We have significant opportunities ahead of us as we deliver products and solutions our customers need and remain focused on driving additional revenue growth and improving profitability across our platform of leading NAND controller solutions. I would now like to provide you with an overview of the NAND market dynamics. NAND pricing is increasing and expected to move higher throughout the remainder of the year and early 2025. primarily driven by demand from data centers and enterprise storage applications. As pricing continues to increase from the lowest experience last year, NAND makers are beginning to bring some capacity back online and invest in new generation NAND productions. But we do not expect NAND supply and demand to come back into balance until mid-2025. Higher NAM pricing and the weaker global economy environment caused by higher inflation has softened retail demand for our module-maker customers. With continuing inflationary pressures and expected NAM price increase for the remainder of the year, we expect muted back-to-school and holiday sales of retail aftermarket S&D. Despite the headwind, the overall PC demand appears stable And we also continue to see incremental improvement in the smartphone market, with the unit sales expected to grow modestly year over year. OEM entry in QLC NAND continue to increase in both the data center and the edge in PC, smartphone, and other devices. This is being driven by device OEM, anticipating the need to support AI and other applications that require higher performance and higher-density solid-state storage solutions. It becomes clear each day that our experience and expertise with QLC NAND is a defining differentiator that has resulted in significant wins with FlashMaker and other customers across major product categories. As 3D NAND layers continue to increase, managing QLC NAND becomes even more challenging They require more sophisticated controller technology, such as our proprietary advanced LDPC and 3D ray technology and advanced firmware algorithm to ensure data retention and reduce rewrite deterrent issue. We expect QRCNN will increasingly be deployed across all major market category that we serve given its ability to deliver high density at low cost. and we believe we are best positioned to balance it from the trend in the coming years. Now I would like to discuss each of our major product segments, beginning with our SSD controllers. We experienced strong demand in June quarter from our FlashMaker customer driven by PCOEMs. PCOEM's controller sales represent approximately 80% of our client's controller sales. is a high end of our historical range, as high end prices are putting pressure on channel and module makers. We continue to generate strong interest in our new PCIe Gen 5 eight channel controller that we tape out last year. This is a premium product that will be ideally suited for high end notebook and desktop AI PC, as well as for gaming and workstation PC. that offer unparalleled performance with ultra-low power consumption. The controller offers best-in-class power-to-performance, offers 20% to 30% lower power consumption than competing controllers, including those internally developed by NAND makers. This is the first 6nm 8-channel PCIe 5 controller available in the market, which has led to significant wins including our fourth NAND maker, which I'm pleased to announce we won this quarter, in addition to nearly every major model makers. We remain on track to run initial units of the new PCIe 5 controller with our customers later this year. Additionally, we have a strong pipeline of design activity with several flash makers of PCIe 4 SSD using next generation TLC and QLC NAND. This new SSD delivers high performance and high density at a lower cost, ideal for rapidly growing AI PC market that is searching for lower cost solutions. While the PC market remains a top priority and will continue to drive significant growth in revenue, we are seeing emerging opportunity with our automotive commercial, industrial-grade CD controllers. This includes our automotive-grade PCIe 4 controller, as well as multiple controller targeting industrial and commercial applications. We intend to expand our leadership through the introduction of our upcoming dual-port PCIe 5 controller for the automotive market next year, and we expect to continue adding meaningful growth opportunity in 2025 and beyond with a more diversified customer and end market base. Now I would like to move to our EMC and UFS business. We continue to benefit from the improving smartphone market during the June quarter, as well as with strengths with our two EMC and UFS NAND customers. We successfully taper our first UFS 4.0 controller early this year, and the response has been positive. We are beginning qualification, and we are targeting production ramp in the second half of calendar 2025. UFS 3.1 and 2.2 continue to account for most of the smartphone market volume today, and I expect it to stay relevant in the coming years. While FlashMaker allocate more resources to next generation UFS products in support of new generation NAMP, we are seeing greater opportunity in high volume application as FlashMaker look to outsource mainstream controller so that they can more effectively compete at leading edge. As with our leading PCIe product, we are generating strong inbound activity in our QLC controller technology in UFS and EMC. With a growing interest in edge AI, smartphone OEMs are looking for cost-effective way to increase own device memory density. Our leadership in QLC NAND controller technology plays the commotion as a forefront of QLC adoption a smartphone manufacturer looking to deploy QLC with UFS for mid- to high-end devices and QLC with EMC in low-end handsets for AI and other storage intensification over the next few years. Our first handset OEM partner that will deploy QLC on UFS expected to ramp later this year. What is more, I am pleased to report to you today that this customer expects to expand production of this new KLC-UFS solution into additional smartphone models next year. Looking beyond the smartphone market, OEMs are interested in adopting UFS-EMC for smart connected devices and other consumer applications. Our growing list of wins and customers in this additional area will further diversify our end-market growth opportunity. Given the increasing opportunity to capture shares with our flash-maker partners and show the introduction of new EMC and user QRC solutions, we believe we are well positioned for continued growth. Now let me turn to our Mount Titan platform. As we have mentioned before, Enterprise and data center storage offers SiliconMotion a tremendous new revenue opportunity combined with a meaningfully high ASP and margin profile over the median to long term. We continue to see more inbound interest in our Montyton solution. Given our unique differentiation, we believe we are well positioned to scale with the FlashMaker and storage solution enabler, as well as directly with data center and enterprise customers in the coming years. Our first Montyton PCIe 5 controller managed TLC and QLC NAND on a single platform, enabling the seamless transition and adoption of QLC NAND with enterprise and data center storage applications. As we announced last quarter, we have won two Tier 1 customers for our new Montyton PCIe 5 controller, one in the US, and wine in China expect to secure two additional tier one win later this year. We are on track to begin early mass production later this year and run more meaningfully next year. Our early success has been driven through differentiation with our controller offering high performance and greater power efficiency. We support for more NAND than any other platform in the market today. Pantitan delivered two key technologies, zone and space, and flexible data placement with QLC, which is combined to improve latency and throughput speed while lowering overall cost to reduce DRAM demand. Additionally, our proprietary power and performance shaping technology enable our customers to dynamically adjust their storage to meet rapidly changing data center performance requirements. This includes, in the upcoming 2 terabit monodic QLC NAND, the ability to deliver 128 terabyte SSD. These high-capacity SSD have the highest sequential read performance and lower cost to meet ever-increasing AI compute and star requirements. It is becoming increasingly clear for our customers that our MonTitan solutions will be essential for the next generation data center and storage build our plan, especially for delivering faster and more accurate AI capability to the market. We have mentioned on previous calls, given our record of managing our QLC NAND than anyone over the past decade. We believe that this new product platform will drive multiple year growth cycle for SiliconMotion. as we enter a greenfield market opportunity for our company with leading technology. Given the early MonTitan performance and widespread interest in our products, we expect the platform to grow to 5% to 10% of our total revenue in the 2026 to 2027 time trends. Overall, I'm excited by our strong start to 2024 and our outlook For the remainder of the year, I'm especially pleased that we continue to target year-over-year revenue growth of 25% to 30%, despite the challenges in the near term from increased non-fresh prices in the sum of our customers. Looking ahead, we are confident that our technology leadership and diversified portfolio of our controllers across a wide range of the market and application will accelerate and drive the substantial long-term growth of our business. We continue to push beyond PC and smartphone into new opportunity, including the enterprise, automotive, industrial, commercial, and consumer markets. I'm especially excited about emerging long-time opportunity, and what I expect will be a significantly positive impact on our revenue, growth, and operation margins over the next few years. As we capture share in the enterprise market, I look forward to detailing more about our progress in the area in the future update. Now let me turn the call over to Jason to go over our financial results and outlook.

Thank you, Wallace, and good morning, everyone joining us today. I will discuss additional details of our second quarter results and then provide our guidance. Please note that my comments today will focus primarily on our non-GAAP results unless otherwise specifically noted. A reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP data is included in the earnings release issued yesterday as well as the presentation that was uploaded to our website a little while ago. In the second quarter, sales increased 11% sequentially to $211 million. SSD sales increased significantly increased modestly sequentially representing our fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Our strong share gains of flash makers continues to deliver outstanding results despite some market uncertainties from continued inflationary pressure and higher NAND flash prices contributing to weaker aftermarket SSD demand. EMMC and UFS controllers increased 25% to 30% sequentially as demand inflected in the second quarter from increased smartphone builds in anticipation of demand growth in the second half of this year. SSD solution sales increased 20% to 25% sequentially. Gross margin in the second quarter increased to 46%, primarily from better mixed and newer products. Operating expenses in the second quarter were $62.1 million, a slight decrease from the first quarter. Operating expenses, specifically R&D project expense, was higher than expected in the second quarter as we made the decision to re-tape out our upcoming high-performance 8-channel PCIe 5 client SSD controller to deliver superior yields when we enter mass production later this year. This will result in higher overall gross margins for this product in the long term. Operating margins increased to 16.5% in the quarter, up from 12% in the first quarter. Our effective tax rate in the second quarter is 16.5%, a modest increase from the 16.1% tax rate in the first quarter. Earnings per ADS were $0.96, an increase from the $0.64 in the first quarter. Total stock-based compensation, which we exclude from our non-GAAP results, was $385,000 in the second quarter. We had $343.6 million of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments at the end of the second quarter, compared to $349.3 million at the end of the first quarter. Inventory decreased sequentially in the second quarter to $241 million from $253 million in the first quarter. Before I turn to Outlook, I'd like to talk a bit more about our higher R&D investments that we are making this year. As the industry adopts new high performance standards that doubles the performance from previous standards, power consumption needs to remain at the same or lower to assure the same battery life for smartphones and notebooks that consumers demand. The only way to balance both significantly higher performance and lower power is to move to lower process geometry production, and that means building these next generation PCIE and UFS controllers on 6 nanometer. In addition, we need to develop new SOC architecture, new firmware architecture, and customized mixed signal capabilities that collaborate closely with our NAND partners to achieve these goals. While all of this does result in higher R&D expenses in the near term, We do see significant benefits including higher ASPs, more outsourcing, and a bigger moat around our product leadership than ever before. We have unmatched technical and financial resources and intend to make this essential investment in order for us to continue to grow faster and increase our market share and to drive higher growth and better profitability over the long term. Let me now turn to our outlook. As Wallace talked about earlier this year, Earlier, due to the ongoing higher NAN prices and weaker retail consumer electronics demand, our customers, especially module makers, are seeing demand soften in the retail aftermarket. As a result, they're anticipating a much more muted seasonal pattern for retail demand for the second half of this year. Despite this, our ongoing success with Flashmakers customers and the increased outsourcing we have won over the past year gives us confidence that we'll be able to achieve our full year revenue outlook. For the third quarter, we expect revenue to be flat plus or minus 2.5% sequentially to approximately 205 to 216 million due to the expected weaker than seasonal aftermarket SSD demand. We expect eMMC and SSD controller sales to be stable sequentially. Third quarter gross margins is expected to continue to improve and be in the range of 46 to 47%. Our improving mix of sales towards newer products should lead to sustained gross margin improvements. Third quarter operating margin will experience a one-quarter decline driven by the expected tape-out of our new 6-nanometer, 4-channel mainstream client PCIe 5 SSD controller. We expect this new controller will enter mass production early 2026 as PCIe 5 SSDs expand into the mainstream market. Operating margin is expected to be in the range of 14.3 to 15.3 in the September quarter and then return to more normalized levels. Third quarter effective tax rate should be 18%. and third-order stock-based compensation and dispute-related expenses to be in the range of $6.4 to $7.4 million. For the full year, we are maintaining our revenue outlook given the continually strong demand from our NAN maker customers but improving our profitability. Revenue is expected to increase 25% to 30% this year to approximately $800 to $830 million. We're tightening our gross margin range given the strength of our margin improvement this year already. Full-year gross margins is expected to be in the 46 to 47% range. Operating margin is expected to improve modestly given the better gross margin performance in the first half of this year and is expected to be in the range of 14.8 to 16.8% despite accelerated investment in our technology leadership and the new product introductions that should lead to revenue growth in 2025 and beyond. Our 2024 effective tax rate is expected to come down slightly be now approximately 18%. 2024 stock-based compensation, dispute-related expenses, and loss from settlement of litigation should be in the range of $29 to $31 million. With the dedication of our team over the past year, we have been able to develop and deliver cutting-edge controller solutions that will power AI applications in PCs, smartphones, and soon data centers and enterprises. Our wide range of controller solutions are gaining significant traction in other markets such as automotive, industrial, and commercial applications, further diversifying our long-term growth drivers. Our efforts to collaborate more with Flashmakers have allowed us to benefit from the recent trend of more outsourcing driving more predictable growth and better visibility despite near-term market volatility. While we will continue to invest in growing our R&D capabilities and building more leading-edge controllers, we're seeing these investments begin to pay dividends, and we expect these products to scale meaningfully next year, driving additional revenue growth and profitability and further extending our technology and market share leadership in the flash controller market. This concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call for your questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Craig Ellis from B Reilly Securities. Please ask your question.

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Wallace, I wanted to start off with one that was high level and followed up on some of your comments regarding execution with NAND OEM share gain. At the beginning of the year, we were intending to see 500 basis points of share gain this year. Can you just talk about where you think you stand at mid-year against that objective and any positive or negative variances versus what you were hoping for six months ago?

So far, I think we're on track with all the projects we've aiming and plan to do. We maintain very, very close relationship with all the net makers, and we capture all the variable socket open to us. And so, see, our share last year was about, for S&D, about 25 to 30 percent, and we believe we'll continue gain share with this is a forecast and design wing. And we believe the mobile portion, we also gaining around 20% to 25% range by year end. So we cautiously monitor all the opportunity to capture all sorts to serve parties, especially second motion.

That's helpful. And then the follow-up question, excuse me, relates to the PCIe Gen 5 transition. Can you just help us put that in context by providing a summary of where PCIe Gen 4 mix would be this year, and as we look to next year when PCIe Gen 5 would ship in higher volume, how much of the business on the SSD controller side shifts over to PCIe Gen 5 next year? Thank you.

Yeah, PCIe Gen 5 will start to run from early 2025, but 2025 will maintain the high-end premium line. So that will be the high-end notebook in the high-end PC for AIPC and gaming PC and workstation PC. So next year, the volume probably will stay maintained very low, only about 5% transition. But for 2026, we're moving to the high volume. and the mainstream PCIe Gen 5 coming. So next year, I think PCIe majority for S&D will maintain in the PCIe Gen 4. By 2026, and probably PCIe Gen 5 will occupy around 30% of total market.

Very helpful, Wallace. Thanks, and I'll hop back into the queue.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Tony Stahls from Craig Holland. Please go ahead, Tony.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Maybe for you, Jason, just want to follow up on the tapeout commentary expected for Q3. Can you maybe size that for us? And also, do you expect any continued tapeouts in Q4? And then I'd love to hear your thoughts. A lot of positive comments here related to increasing gross margins. Can you give us a sense of kind of what you think ballpark might be heading into 2025? I would assume it's higher than 2024.

Yeah, so for tape out costs, you know, we talked about six nanometer tape out costs typically running 15 to 20 million per controller. Obviously, that's over the entire production of the tape out. And given any given quarter where we do actually tape out, that's probably a $5 to $10 million charge in that quarter. So that's what we're, that's the ballpark that we're talking about here from an incremental perspective in Q3, given the new six nanometer, four channel PCI-5 controller we're taping out this quarter. Going into Q4, we do not expect any additional tape-outs for 6 nanometers, so you should see our op-eds come down in the fourth quarter. In terms of gross margins, we've been steadily progressing over the last year or so, improving our gross margins due to better mix, and we expect that to continue as more and more of our products come from newer generation products. Next year, we'll also have PCIe 5 as well as MonTitan starting to ramp a little more meaningfully. So those should be positive and additive for us as well. Historically, we've been at 48% to 50% gross margins. I think we're going to get pretty close to that this year. And then going into next year, we should be in that range.

Got it. And then, Wallace, maybe a follow-up for you on the MonTitan and your adding of two additional customers to make it four at the end of this year. I think in the last quarterly conference call you talked about a number of customers that you can handle. Can you update us and do you think you can take on even more customers and maybe give us a sense of how many additional ones you think you can take on in 2025?

Yeah, so we have roughly our R&D resource can handle maximum around four tier one customers simultaneously. But see, as of today, we're winning two tier one customers One of the customers would develop the firmware themselves with our SDK. So that will help us offload the resources. We provide complete documentation, technology, and by the way, help them to porting their firmware into our platform. So once it gets done, I think that will be the golden basis for the complete SDK and documentation we can offer to other OEM customers. We're looking forward to expand more resources, and we try to expand a wider range of customers in 2025. Because if customers decide to use our standard turnkey solution with both firmware and our ASIC, I think we are able to support more than four tier one customers. Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from a line of Quinn Bowden from Neat Herman Company. Please ask your question, Quinn.

Hey, guys. I just wanted to follow up sort of similar question to what Craig asked, except this time maybe on the mix of QLC. Where do you see QLC as a percent of both SSDs and the smartphone business as you get into 25 and 26? And then I've got a couple of follow-ups.

So it's a very good question. I think the QLC today in the PC, that's about around 10% to 15% in the very low single-digit, very low site. But all the NAMIC roughly driving into the QLC output. So in 2025, for client SD, what should be minimum 20% to 25%. For smartphones, the majority of smartphone makers that are deploying the opportunity, they're in the trial mode. So for next year, the total percentage should be very, very low, single digit, probably less than 5%. But after they deploy very successful, they will expand to multiple model. We see the UFS adoption initially come from the mean range. But after majoring it down, they will try to fill into the high end. At the same time, we see two smartphone makers going to try QLC into the EMSC provider line. So this is a tremendous opportunity and momentum, but they have to try the field trial and make sure it's It's really transparent to end user and consumer. They probably won't see the difference between TLC and QLC, but with a higher density than traditional TLC.

Got it. Thank you for that, Wallace. And then a follow-up question on MonTitan. As you ramp that solution, you mentioned it carries premium margins. Wondering if that ramp takes and it hits that 5% to 10% target in 2026, 2027, Do you think that that carries enough, you know, lift on margins that it puts you to the higher end of your, you know, kind of target range of 48 to 50? Could it push you above the 50% level? Just, you know, any sense on how additive Montitan can be to the margin profile?

Yeah, it's a little too early for us to comment about 26, 27 margin profile at this point, Quint. But, you know, I think historically we've been able to achieve that 48% to 50% based upon, you know, what we have today and the products that we have today versus, you know, Montaigne is a greenfield opportunity like Wallace had pointed out. So I think that could be additive to that, maybe potentially lift us up longer term, but it's a little too early to say how additive that is in that 26-27 timeframe.

Yeah, no, I know it's a long ways out. And then lastly, Jason, just as you look at the expenses you're spending today on the PCA Gen 5 products, the UFS4 controllers, wondering if you expect another heavy investment year in 25. You guys have done a great job upsetting revenue this year, but obviously expenses are increasing as well, and so there's been less fall through to EPS, and just wondering if you might expect additional operating leverage on revenue growth next year as perhaps some of those investments, you know, kind of maybe stabilize next year rather than continue to increase at a pretty fast pace?

Yeah, that's exactly the way we look at it. We're going to start seeing the dividends pay off for these investments we're making this year. That'll lead to, you know, revenue growth. But, you know, we do expect to I think it's a little early to talk about OpEx for next year, but we wouldn't expect it to grow nearly as fast as we saw it grow this year, just given the initial sting of the six nanometer tapeouts that we had to bear this year.

Let me just add some comment. I think we try to control our operating spend next year. However, we have a very, very strong demand from NAND maker. Some even ask to customize certain new UFS controller. We have to base on the resource and finding a return to do calculation. If we decide to do it, that will increase some of our operating expense. But I think we will, based on every major project, we will be cautiously reviewing all the ROI to make decisions. Thank you, Wallace. Thank you, Jason.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Suji DeSilvio from Rawls Capital. Please ask your question, Suji.

Hi, Wallace. Hi, Jason. Congrats on the progress here. The AIPC, I'm just wondering, What is the content uplift there for the SSDs in terms of product or ASP versus the non-AIPCs? Just to clarify that would be helpful.

You asked a very good question. I hope I can answer you. By seeing this so far, AI APC get a tremendous momentum, however, we did not see any meaningful impact or increase the PC unit shipment so far. Besides the Microsoft compiler, I think the market is really waiting for more meaningful applications coming to add a practical application purpose to make both the corporate and the consumer feel comfortable. So I think there's many, many different new platforms coming. But it's also some bundle with PCOEN's own AR application, so we have to wait to see the consumer feedback to see adoption. So far, I think the PC unit shipment for 2024 is maintained the same at the beginning of the year, a single-digit increase compared to 2023. Okay.

And then switching over to the infrastructure side.

Sorry, we definitely see PCIe Gen 5 SAD that become a plus because they have much better performance, provide a better sequential rate, provide a much better shorter latency. So that's why we do see potentially there will be high demand for PCIe Gen 5 A-channel SAD in 2025. Okay.

It's available 2025. Great. Got it. Switching overall to the AI infrastructure side, can you give us some framework for these programs that are on the come, the two you have, the two you might be adding? How do you think about the inner ASPs, maybe on a content per server, content per rack framework? Maybe that would be one way to kind of get a sense of these MonTitan programs and how big they can get for you.

You know, we talk about it on a volume basis, right, because we sell controllers. We don't sell densities. I think if you take a look at, historically, enterprise SSD controllers are typically in the 50 to 75 plus range in that ballpark. Obviously, configurations for different servers, different applications can vary. So it's difficult for us to assess or to really say that there is any sort of real kind of algorithm you can use on that.

So we can only give you a roughly range for the 16 channel among Titan controller. The ASP is between $55 to $65 range. Dairy matter TLC, TLC, dairy matter density, the controller price is similar range. We also have a version for eight-channel controller, which we have a new design probably will take by mid of next year. And this will, for eight-channel controller, the selling price between $42 to $50 range. So this is part of the ballpark for the Mount Titan family controller price.

All right. Very helpful. Jason, thanks.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press dial 11 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Xu from JP Morgan. Please ask your question, Robert.

Okay, thank you. I'm asking on behalf of Goku Haruhara. So I have a quick question on the inventory level. How should we think about the inventory level for the client SSD or with the PC OEMs? as well as the mobile solutions with OEM customers. Thank you.

So at this moment, we see the inventory level in the channel naturally is relatively healthy. But however, just because the demand side is very weak from the channel, the retail. So most of our customers see inventory level, I think, is largely healthy and in line now. And for the net maker, I think, they definitely have much less inventory for the client CD.

Do you have any follow-up questions, Robert? Yeah, that's it. All right, thank you.

I'm sharing no further questions. I'll now turn the conference back to the President and CEO, Mr. Walaszko, for closing comments.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your continuing interest in CICOMMOTION. We'll be attending the Future Memory and Story Conference in Santa Clara next week, as well as several investor conferences in the coming months. The schedule of this event will be posted on the investor relationship section of our corporate website. and look forward to speaking with you at this event. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Goodbye for now.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.