Semtech Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Semtech Corporation's first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Lin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good day, everyone, and welcome. In addition to Hong Ho, President and Chief Executive Officer, I'm thrilled to be joined by Mitch Hawes, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Many of you know Mitch, given his breadth of semiconductor experience at AMD, Skyworks, and Freescale, and now Semtech. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mitch.

Thanks, Mark. I'm very happy to join the Semtech team and look forward to engaging with all of you in the months and quarters ahead. Today, after market closed, we released our unaudited results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, which are posted along with an earnings call presentation to our investor website at investors.cemtech.com. Today's call will include various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects, which comprise forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release and see slide two of the earnings presentation, as well as the risk factors section of our most recent end report on Form 10-K, for a number of risk factors that could cause or actually result in events to differ materially from those anticipated or projected on this call. You should consider these risk factors in conjunction with our forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise noted, all income statement related financial measures will be non-GAAP other than net sales. Please refer to today's press release and see slide three of the earnings presentation for important information regarding notes on our non-GAAP financial presentation. The press release and earnings presentation also include reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. With that, I will turn the call over to Hong.

Thank you, Mitch. Welcome aboard. Good afternoon, everyone. We reported Q1 results with net sales, adjusted gross margin, adjusted operating margin, and adjusted diluted earnings per share, each above the midpoint of our guidance. This results illustrate the resiliency of our business and offer another proof point of our operational excellence. SEMTEX Q1 ended on April 27th, so we closed the last month of the quarter during an extremely turbulent period, but we successfully navigated through dynamic tariff policies. Superb coordination among our operations, sales, compliance teams was instrumental in mitigating the tariff situation for Semtech and our customers, facilitating a stable flow of product across the global semiconductor supply chain. I extend my heartfelt thanks to these teams and recognize their efforts in helping us achieve our Q1 results and supports our conviction for the quarters ahead. Some tax Q1 results also reflect our focus on core priorities, including portfolio optimization, strategic investment in R&D, and driving margin expansion. While uncertainty in the market may impact the timing of some of our portfolio optimization initiatives, We have strong conviction that we can operate these businesses to grow the top line, expand profit margins, and improve overall financial metrics. We believe this will create more value for our shareholders. Moving to our end markets, for Q1, infrastructure net sales were $72.8 million, up 5% sequentially and up 30% year over year. Net sales for data center were a record $51.6 million, up 3% sequentially and up 143% year over year. Our expectations for a short-term demand gap in CopperEdge remain consistent. That said, we expect our data center business to be a sustainable growth driver. especially given recent indications of capital expenditure growth by hyperscalers, as well as from innovations in our copper and optical portfolios. AI data centers face critical power and thermal challenges, which will grow exponentially as compute workloads increase. Our analog solutions are well suited to address these challenges. Copper Edge enables a significant paradigm shift in connectivity, delivering the signal integrity and reach extension needed for next generation AI clusters. Compared to DSP-based options, Copper Edge reduced power consumption by over 90% and also enables significantly longer reach than the direct attached copper or DAC cables. At OFC, we demonstrated a number of copper edge-driven ACC applications, all with a bit error rate well below acceptable ranges. At 1.60, we successfully run traffic across a 3-meter 27-gauge cable using two 24-gig 30-sports. Our launch application at our Anker customer last year was a 1.1 meter cable. So this demonstration highlighted the high performance capabilities and the reach of our CopperEdge ICs. At 800 gig, the dominant read of data center traffic, we demonstrated an extended reach 5 meter ACC connected to a Broadcom Tomahawk 5 switch. A prospective customer requested this configuration for use as a replacement to deck cables. Also connected to the Tomahawk 5 switch was an ultra-thin 3-meter 30-gauge cable that had significant benefits in airflow and bending radius, both characteristics valued by REC architects. We remain closely engaged with our CopperEdge Anker customer for applications in their future generation racks. In addition, hyperscalers, switch vendors, and cable manufacturers continue to show interest in CopperEdge ACC's. We have delivered ACC cables for testing and qualification to multiple customers and expect meaningful design wins at hyperscalers and enterprise customers leading to volume ramps before the end of this fiscal year. On the optical side, our LPO demonstration at OFC generated significant interest, and our expectation of deployments in the second half of this fiscal year remains unchanged. We are pleased that the feedback from our customers indicates Semtech PIA for LPO offers superior performance, and we believe we are winning the line share in TIAs. We also released our LPL laser drivers last quarter and are generating design interaction at multiple module suppliers. Moving to our high-end consumer end market, net sales for Q1 were $35.4 million, flat sequentially and up 3% year over year. Net sales in consumer TVS were $24.5 million in line with our outlook for Q1 and up 2% sequentially. We expect a pattern of smartphone unit ramps fairly consistent with the past years, with an increase in the second quarter and a successive increase in the third quarter. Within consumer TVS, we believe our innovation continues to result in increased content. I'm pleased to highlight expanded design and activity of Search Switch, a system-level protection device across a number of manufacturers and platforms. Search Switch has a capability to simultaneously address an expanded dimension of threats from ESD, or electrostatic discharge, or EOS, or electrical overstress across a wide operating temperature range. Finer process geometry in advanced nodes for IC fabrication have increased the demand for the type of rigorous off-chip system level protection offered by surge switch. For a per se or person sensing products, We have discussed use in smart glasses, an application we believe has a strong potential to be next generation AI interface platform. We have a growing field of opportunity and are actively engaged with a broad range of customers on both existing designs and on new launches. In smartphones, Persei addresses increasingly stringent specific absorption rate or SAR standards and is currently deployed on devices at the most leading manufacturers. Persei offers meaningfully lower power, improved sensitivity, and best in class noise rejection. Persei's use of Semtech's novel packaging expertise also results in smaller footprint that allows us and our customers to develop slicker form factors. Moving to our industrial end market, for Q1, industrial net sales were $142.8 million, down 3% sequentially, in line with our outlook and up 24% year over year. Within the industrial end market, Net sales of LoRa-enabled solutions remained strong at $38.9 million, up 5% sequentially and up 81% year-over-year. Demand supporting new product launches and deployments remained robust. We recently announced that Sunova, a world leader in innovative healthcare solutions, chose Semtech as a technology partner to create an ultra-small, ultra-low-power wireless radio and power management IC. LoRa technology highlights Semtech's deep expertise in ultra-low-power RF with the clear match for battery-operated devices, including hearing aids. Robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles are also an emerging market for LoRa. LoRa's ability to operate in dual-band 2.4 gigahertz and ISM frequencies offers enhanced bandwidth, which is well-suited for these applications. In addition, LoRa's modulation scheme, now paired with multiple protocols, provided a capability of LoRa Plus, allows manufacturers to extend the end applications. including safety, security, as well as smart building. Our IoT systems hardware business recorded Q1 net sales of $63.5 million, down 8% sequentially, but within expectation of our outlook, and up 31% year over year. Bookings in the first quarter for this business increased for the seventh consecutive quarter. Pipeline also increased substantially in Q1, attributable to both the inclusion of a significant China-based competitor on a sanctioned list and the strong indications of a broader market recovery. We expect a continued growth and improved profitability in our IoT cellular portfolio based on stronger pipeline and bookings. Growing 5G adoption rates, particularly in North America, is benefiting our hardware business. With the current deployments utilizing the first and second gen modules, in Q1, we launched two third-gen 5G modules, a cost-optimized solution supporting broader 5G adoption for value-focused applications, and a performance-optimized solution supporting 5G advanced to enable next-generation edge-based AI applications. IoT-connected services net sales were overall stable for this largely recurring revenue business. Our connected service business is a great example of Semtech's deployment of AI tools. As an example, anomaly detection highlights abnormal network activities and notifies our operating center, and we believe this improved detection capabilities have prevented a security incident for our customers. In summary, we have made significant strides in strengthening Semtech's financial foundation over the past year, which allows us to sharpen our focus on improving profitability and investing in innovation and capabilities that position us for long-term business growth. Our Q1 results reflect disciplined execution At the same time, we recognize that there is still much work ahead of us to fully unlock the value of our unique technologies and to deliver sustainable long-term returns for our shareholders. We must continue to solidify a winning culture, accelerate innovation, and leverage our technology leadership and execution. all of which position us to deliver enhanced value to our shareholders with increased revenue and expanded margins. I now turn the call to Mark for additional details on our financial results and our outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 26. Mark?

Thank you, Hong. For Q1, net sales were a record $251.1 million. Above the midpoint of our outlook, and up 22% year-over-year. We do not believe our Q1 net sales reflect material pull-ins due to tariffs. Net sales trends by end market, reportable segment, and geographic region is included on slide 16 of the earnings presentation. Adjusted gross margin was 53.5%, up 30 basis points sequentially and up 370 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted net operating expenses were $86.6 million below the midpoint of our outlook. Adjusted operating income was $47.6 million, resulting in an adjusted operating margin of 19%, up 680 basis points year over year. Adjusted EBITDA was $55.4 million, up 68% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 22.1%, up 600 basis points year over year. Adjusted net interest expense was $5 million, down sequentially from $11.2 million. The decrease was primarily reflective of a full quarter of savings from our Q4 debt paydown. We recorded other net non-operating expenses of $2.8 million, substantially reflective of foreign exchange revaluation losses. This amount stemmed from a weaker U.S. dollar, most notably in the month of April. We recorded adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.38, up from $0.06 a year ago. Our operating and free cash flow for Q1 were $27.8 million and $26.2 million, respectively, and these amounts reflect variable compensation payments in Q1. At the end of Q1, net debt sequentially decreased $14.8 million to $396.2 million and comprised of approximately $171 million in term loan, and $382 million in convertible notes, offset by $156 million in cash and cash equivalents. Along with debt reduction, strong business performance contributed to an adjusted net leverage ratio below 2 as of the close of Q1. We continue to prioritize debt reduction with a $10 million term loan prepayment in the first quarter and an additional $15 million to date in the second quarter. On our revolving credit facility, I am pleased we successfully amended the facility to increase our total borrowing capacity by $117.5 million for a total revolving credit facility size of $455 million. No financial covenants or material terms were modified as part of this amendment. As of today, the revolving credit facility remains undrawn except for previously outstanding letters of credit totaling about $3 million. Now turning to our second quarter outlook. We currently expect net sales of $256 million, plus or minus $5 million, up 19% year-over-year at the midpoint. We expect net sales from our infrastructure end market to increase sequentially, including growth and data center. We expect net sales from our high-end consumer end market to be up slightly, reflective of typical seasonality. We expect net sales from our industrial end market to be flat to slightly down, with moderation and LoRa offsetting growth in our IoT cellular business. Based on expected product mix and net sales level, we expect adjusted gross margin to be 53.0%, plus or minus 50 basis points, a 260 basis point improvement year over year at the midpoint. Adjusted net operating expenses are expected to be $87.5 million, plus or minus $1 million, resulting in an adjusted operating margin at the midpoint of 18.8%, a 460 basis point improvement year over year. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $56 million, plus or minus $3 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint of 21.9%, a 310 basis point improvement year over year. We expect adjusted interest and other expenses net to be $5.5 million, reflective of leverage-based pricing on our term loan that reduces our interest rate, another benefit of our lower leverage ratio. We expect an adjusted normalized income tax rate of 15%. These amounts are expected to result in adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.40, plus or minus $0.03, based on a weighted average share count of 90 million shares.

Thank you, Mark. We can now turn the call back over to the operator for the question and answer sessions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Due to the interest of time, we ask that you ask only one question and one follow-up. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. And our first question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Please proceed.

Hey, guys. I wanted to start off with a question on the cellular module business. I was, I guess, a little surprised to see that down, I think, after six quarters of increased bookings and Q1 being the seventh quarter. So I wondered if there was anything specific to call out in the cellular module business in April. And thank you for the additional gross margin disclosure in today's press release. But it does look like the gross margin on the cellular module's also came in down meaningfully both quarter and quarter and year on year. Just wondering if you could explain what happened on the margin side of cellular module business in the first quarter.

Yeah, Quinn, thank you for your question. Yes, so from our Q4 guidance, we expected some level of seasonality on our IoT system product. But you are right, this business is experiencing pretty significant tailwind as I provided during the prepared remarks because of the list for our competitor based in China and also the exit of uBlocks into the IoT cellular business. This tailwind is very evident from our booking activities. And so we do expect this business is going to be revenue is going to be accelerating in the quarters forward. But the Q1 was a little low, and we expected that from the guidance of the Q4.

And, Quinn, just to address gross margins, this also came in with an expectation. We had guided a little bit lower gross margin, or we expected a little bit lower gross margin from the ISC business. But within this business, you also have a little bit of mix between modules and routers affecting the gross margin that we reported.

So you saw a mix shift more to modules away from routers, and that's why it came in lower than, say, the prior quarter or prior year?

That's correct.

And there is also a one-time event on the inventory on the module side. So that is kind of like impacting the overall IoT system margin adversely. That is, that's one time event.

Got it. So there's a write-off of obsolete or excess inventory in that, something like that, that was a further drag.

Patrick, when it was more in Q4, we had a little bit of a tailwind that didn't recur in Q1.

Ah, okay.

Thank you. I'll get back in queue.

The next question comes from the line of Christopher Rollin with Susquehanna International Group. Please proceed.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. So mine is just around AI connectivity. It sounded like there was some progress here, maybe on the CopperEdge side with engagements and revenue by the end of the year. Perhaps you could expand on that and Just more broadly, talk about where we are in visibility around AI connectivity for you guys overall.

Yeah, Chris, thank you for that question. You know, our CopperX product, we trailblazed that product into the market through the engagement with the anchor customer. Since then, we have reached out to more than 20 customers and having very close engagement with many of them. And it is really very encouraging to see that they finally recognize the unique advantage that ACC offers compared to AOC or AEC in terms of low power consumption, low latency performance. And a number of them are taking our product prototype samples for qualification and testing. And so the use cases are going in for a scale-up of the ASICs interconnect and also for a scale-out, especially the first level of the switch fabric from NIC to top of the rack. And our demo at OFC is used by a SYNET and really shows and give a lot of confidence for our customers. They come in, see, and kick the tire, you know, wiggle the cables and see the bit error rate well below the acceptable limit. And so for, say, 200 gigabit, they could see our product can transmit over three meters with a 30-gauge cable. That is really very desirable. So, as I said, we expect a number of the customers we're engaging is going to be finished with qualification and start ramping by Q4 this year.

Excellent. Thank you, Hong. My second question is around LPO and optical more generally for you guys. If you could describe what you're seeing there in terms of like TIAs, drivers, you know, for maybe regular optical, and then for LPO and how that might ramp through the year. That would be great. Thank you, guys.

Yeah, thank you. So, as you know, the Semtech TIA is considered the gold standard for the industry. For traditional retimed Our LPO, our TIA has been designed in almost in every module manufacturers. And the LPO coming out of the OFC, you know that MSAs, they finalize the specification. So now the suppliers, the customers, the cloud service providers, they're all on the same sheet of music and having the same expectation on performance. and there's no longer any argument. Now it's really about the timing and what platform they started deployment. So this is tremendous progress compared to a couple of years ago, as you know this industry and tracking for a long time. We're seeing 800 gig LPL links or 100 gigabit per second is going to be used first by multiple cloud service providers. And we're designed in for on our TIAs. Our driver is a little bit late compared to our competitors. And by the way, we released the last quarter. And our driver, because of late reduction, did incorporate the specific requirements that MSA dictated or authored. So I would say our driver is a fully LPO compliant driver. And we are working well. with multiple module manufacturers in incorporation and qualification. So that will bring additional revenue, say, by, I would say, by Q4 this fiscal year. So in general, our FiberEdge product has a pretty broad application, different data rates and different applications. And we are benefiting from the increased CapEx spending of the industry. but also I believe we're gaining some market share. So that will continue to be a driver for our data center and overall revenue growth. Thanks for the call, Erhang. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Welcome, Mitch. Good to talk to you again. Hong, I had a quick question. I was curious if you could talk about your data center business, the core business, excluding, you know, futuristic outlook for LPO and maybe ACC, just your plain vanilla core data center business, how you see that business trending over the next, call it, six to 12 months. And then I had a follow-up.

Good. Thank you, Harsh. So you know that we disclosed their air pocket in demand on ACC, so from the anchor customer. But the very fact that we delivered a sequential growth in Q1 versus Q4 on our data center product is due to the strength of our fiber edge product. So the LPO certainly is in a design win stage. It's not being contributed to meaningful revenue yet. And based on the booking activities and based on the, you know, our conversation with our customers, we hold a strong conviction for the second half of the year that the fiber edge and the plain vanilla, as you put it, PMDs, we call physical media devices, will continue to experience growth, maybe accelerated growth. I'm really optimistic about that.

Great. Thank you, Hong. And then I was curious about Laura. Laura, I think in your guidance, Mark, you said Laura will be off a little bit. This is coming on the heels of some very strong growth over the last several quarters. You talked about some new end markets, automotive, robotics, hearing aids, et cetera. I was curious if you could help us understand that. why Laura is going to be off just a little bit? Is it just small stuff like timing or just coming off of hot growth? Or is there something else? And then when do you see these new markets materializing? And I'll get back in line after this.

Sure. Thanks for the question, Harsh. So Laura in Q1, we reported $38.9 million, up from $37.1 million in Q4. So very nice sequential growth. Last quarter, we were guiding Laura into the call it the $30 million to $35 million range. So that's where we believe the market will kind of fall out in the next few quarters. We do believe that in our first quarter, there was a little bit of additional build. We've said that Laura has some project spend. Also, we had a customer build additional units in anticipation of a product launch. So that's where Laura is. We believe that Laura next quarter will be coming down a little bit. but still quite a strong business. You know, $30.9 million is still up 81% year over year. Understood.

Thank you, Mark. Just on Laura, we do expect a comfortable $30 to $35 million quarterly run rate. As Mark said, we disclosed a medical customer is ready to launch new product in Q1. There are some additional orders from them to support a new product launch.

Understood. Thank you, guys.

The next question comes from the line of Timothy Arcuri with UBS. Please proceed.

Thanks a lot. I also wanted to ask about the update on AI connectivity. I assume that Copper Edge pretty much is zero in July and October, and then it sounds like you get a pretty big step up in fiscal Q4 because of all these engagements. Is that the right way to think about it?

So, Tim, that's a good question. You know, we talked about the air pocket in demand due to the platform change with the anchor customer. That is unchanged, but we continue to engage with them for future generation, either, well, in both, you know, cable form and chips on board type of linear equalizer applications. that relationship continued to be very tight. But the demand from them was lower, a lot lower than we, you know, early expected. But the engagement with other customers for the application of the Copper Edge product is really very, very exciting and encouraging. There are four or five different application and use cases go beyond just the scale-up interconnect between different RECs are materializing, and some of them are completing the qualification and just waiting for the deployment in their next-generation platforms. We do believe the revenue from other customers will come in Q4 timeframe and start ramping from there. Thanks a lot.

And then, Mark, can you talk about, I mean, this is kind of a nit, but revenues up like $5 million sequentially and gross margins down 50 bits. Is that just mixed?

Yeah. So, Semtech is largely mixed dependent. So, the guide reflects what we believe the current mix will be. So, 53.0% in Q2, it's a 260 basis point improvement. So, You know, in our financial, in our press release, in our earnings presentation, we do now break out our semiconductor products groups that consist of our signal integrity and our analog big signal and wireless segments. So we brought that disclosure in from our 10Q. We felt it would be helpful for investors to see it also in our earnings release and our earnings presentation. So within semiconductor products was 63.7% gross margin, up 720 basis points year over year, but largely mixed dependent.

Thanks a lot. The next question comes from the line of Joe Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Great, thank you. There was a line in your prepared remarks you sort of said when uncertainty in the market may impact timing of some of a portfolio optimization initiatives. Can you just talk about what you mean by that and kind of, you know, it doesn't sound like you guys are overly impacted by tariffs. You know, what kind of uncertainty is that creating for you?

I see. So, Joe, thank you for the question. What I mean by that is not about the tariff related, but it's just the overall macroeconomic uncertainties As you know, the deal flow and the people thinking about strategically is probably get a little bit deferred. But we continue to hold our strategic initiatives at a high priority. But because of the overall industry get distracted and getting focused on how to mitigate the tariff risk and activities on the strategic initiative is going to get delayed. So that's what we mean. But we do provide more visibility in our gross margins from earnings release so that you can see that we own the business, and as long as we own it, we'll continue to work hard to improve and deliver better results. That's the best way to create shareholders' value. We control what we can control. We can't do much on things we can't control. So that's the macroeconomic environment.

Okay, thank you. The next question comes from the line of Torres Vanberg with Stifel.

Please proceed.

Yes, thank you, and welcome on board, Mitch. I had a question about the per se proximity sensor for the glasses. You talked a little bit about that, but how should we think about that business ramping? Would that happen second half of fiscal 26, or is that going to be more of a fiscal 27 event?

Hattori, that's a good question. So we're really excited about the per se product. And as you know, traditionally, that product has been designed for the SAR standards of specific absorption rate reduction. So it comes in really handy due to its low power and high accuracy and also the noise rejection capabilities for smart wearables. I bought a Meta Revan smart glasses. It was absolutely phenomenal. taking pictures and recognize the different locations and do the translation in real time. And we're seeing probably five, six of other customers we are engaging for similar devices. So from the get-go, you know, I think accumulated we have supported over a million smart glasses using this gesture control capability. Just imagine how many variable devices it can have out there and using the smart glasses as an AI interface to link into the infrastructure. So we're very excited about that market perspective. We do believe, again, the second half of this year, there are going to be more than matter jump on that bandwagon to provide smart glasses.

Yeah, that's a great caller. And as my follow-up and specifically on Laura, you mentioned the medical customer or perhaps customers. Is this still only going to be the hearing aids or are you seeing Laura perhaps penetrate other types of medical applications?

For now, it's just the hearing aids we're talking about, but I wouldn't be surprised that the people start using LoRa for other medical device applications. The beauty of that is just the very low power consumption and very robust connectivity. So, you know, for example, the robotics is a new application, and that now is being proliferated pretty widely in using the LoRa to interconnect to different devices. robotics and robots to build a network.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Torrey. The next question comes from the line of Cody Akri with the Benchmark Company. Please proceed.

Yeah, thanks, guys, for taking my questions, and congrats on the progress. Guys, could you talk about your expectations for seasonality into the second half across your various markets?

Yeah, hey Cody, thank you for the question. The seasonality for our TVS product that's a high-end consumer, you know, we know that it's coincide with the smartphone release schedule. Other than that, I think the seasonality for at least for the next two, three quarters, we don't see the obvious seasonality. We do see industrial side the broader market recovery. We see in the data center side, everyone was concerned about the CapEx spending in the AI area, but now many of the CSPs and also the industry participants in the broader ecosystem all show the strong confidence that the second half, the CapEx spending is going to be accelerating. We're seeing that from our booking activities. Laura's side is the only one. I wouldn't call it a seasonality. And it's just this project-based spending. They need more material for our Q1. But the end notes numbers are increasing. And we are shipping records. Every quarter, we're creating a new record for a number of end nodes. The new applications are being discovered. A new product, our RIGI, offers LoRa Plus. What does LoRa Plus mean? In addition to LoRa protocol, we support other RF protocols. The significance for that, for example, BLE, the Bluetooth Enhanced, is that some applications, they wanted to use LoRa, but they wanted to have the backend compatibility on their installed and deployed base. So what this compatibility of LoRa Plus allow us, allow the integrators to offer a product, offer the backend compatibility with the existing protocol, but going forward, they can take advantage of the LoRa protocol. So LoRa Plus is still to us as LoRa-centric. That will unlock a range of new applications. I feel that even though the Q2 revenue compared to Q1 will be slightly down, but that's not a seasonality.

Excellent. Thanks for the help there. And then just thoughts on your gross margin and OpEx drivers in the second half and what kind of trends can we expect?

Hey, Cody. So I think we've talked about product mix between our three end markets. That will largely drive our gross margin into the second half. And for OPEX, just note, for gross margin OPEX, we're only guiding out one quarter. But for OPEX, I believe we're making some very good investments in R&D. So we continue to focus on project spend and monitoring our product spend with R&D. That has not changed quarter over quarter. We believe we have some great opportunities in front of us. Other areas of OPEX growth, we're kind of filling out our commercial team, and that commercial team is like a technical sales force. So that team allows us to get some better information, better information exchange with our customers, and then better aligns our R&D spend to what our customers need.

All right. Thanks for the help.

The next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis with B Reilly Securities. Please proceed.

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. And Mitch, great to be back in touch and having you onboard the Semtech team. Guys, I wanted to start just by getting a better understanding of what you're expecting within data center in the back half of the year. So, it seems clear that we've got two significant things happening. We've got AI connectivity that seems to be coming up and coming back on multiple customer wins away from your key customer. And then we've got LPO that's starting to ramp up. The question is, can you help us dimension those two items as we exit the year? Which will be the bigger driver? And you should look at the arc of what's happening with each. Can you help us by characterizing what we should expect is those programs go from initial ramps to more meaningful volume.

Thank you, Craig. Yeah, so as you know, we have a pretty broad product portfolio for our data center connectivity. We've got fiber edge, which is the TIA and the drivers. We've got a copper edge with the linear equalizers, and then we've got tri-edge, the CDRs, and basically integrated with PMD. So this diverse portfolio does help us, even when we experience a little bit of air pocket in copper edge with an anchor customer, and the growth in fiber edge and tri-edge overweigh the drop or the decrease in demand on the copper edge. But as I said, we expect a lot of good things happening in the later part of this fiscal year. With more than the anchor customer demand for Copper Edge, that's going to materialize. LPO, that's incremental opportunity, is going to materialize. When the customers start deploying 1.60 optical transceivers, they're likely to use drivers for lasers and modulators. And because traditional 100 gig or below, they could use an integrated driver from DSP to drive EML. It looks that the performance, in order to get the link very robust, they need an external driver. So that's incremental opportunities for us. So if I have to take a step back, look at the fiber edge, it's a strong product line and itself provide a very high level of demand. And then, you know, when this tailwind start coming in, playing in, and that's all incremental on top of it. And the fiber ads would benefit from, as I said, that CapEx spending from the CSP side. And that's also, I believe, we're gaining some market share in there. So you get a strong growing base and you get three incremental products opportunities superimposed on top of that. And this really feels like a broader portfolio to help mitigate the exposure on the air pocket we described before.

Okay, so very broad-based as we exit the year and participation from three key parts of the portfolio. The follow-up question was around a product that you spoke to in your prepared remarks. You talked about surge switch as being an integrated product that is more system level protection. I want to understand what types of products is that getting designed into and how does the dollar content for that product compare to what we would typically expect with protection and how should we think about that product's ability to drive visible growth within that part of business and high-end consumer. Thank you.

Yeah, Craig. So on Search Switch, you're right, it is an integrated device. So it provides additional protection and additional features. So we've launched this in multiple customers. System-level design does require a lot more customer intimacy. So we're very happy with the amount of engagement that we have with customers. And it does have some noticeable or some improvement in ASPs. But again, I think Semtex TVS products are not just commodity type products. So we've already been enjoying or deserving, I should say, higher ASPs based on our technology. So surge switch, though, it protects against electrical overstress in addition to electrostatic discharge over a wider temperature operating range. So that's the benefit that our users get when they design a serv switch.

And then also, they used to protect the type C connectors. Now the type C is used everywhere. It's not only in the smartphone. It's in the automotive. It's in a telecom, in many different charge ports. So the circuit switch just provides a lot more robust

Okay, so it's nicely semi-expansive for you over time. Exactly, yeah.

Got it. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

And the last question will come from the line of Scott Searle with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Hey, maybe to just follow up quickly on the data center front, I was wondering if we could get calibrated if we put LPOs to the side, starting to ramp up in third and fourth quarter, and some ACC traction starting by the end of this year and ramping into fiscal 27. The portfolio outside of that, what sort of normalized growth rate do you think we should see over the next couple of years? It sounds like in the near term, we're starting to see FiberEdge continue to drive that. I'm wondering if you could help us understand what that that normalized expansion looks like, and your comfort level that customer inventories are at a pretty good level, so that we don't see any sort of air pockets or big drawdowns in the next couple of quarters, and I'll call it core data center before we get to LPO's and ACC's.

Great. Thank you, Scott. So the normalized growth rate, you know, I think we can track basically all the research report, you know, on the capex spending, then For a number of market research reports, they even call out more specific optical transceivers. As I said, our data center product, the main thing is fiber edge. If you track the volume increase of data center transceivers, and I think our growth rates would track that pretty well and probably higher than that. The LPO adoption will bring incremental capability, incremental revenue for us because of the driver, because the premium on TIA side. And CopperEdge, you know, right now with the anchor customer is not zero, but it's lingering until the next generation. But with other customers, it's going to start contributing more. meaningfully in Q4 and ramping in the next fiscal year. Then the tri-edge product, which is the CDR, we designed with the major CSPs for the reasons beyond our control. They delayed the deployment, and now they seem to be resuming. So that's why, you know, give us a strong conviction. All these factors compounded together. I do feel, barring, you know, the rapid adverse change of the tariff policy or something else beyond our control, we do feel the second half of the year, we are very well positioned.

Okay, very helpful. And if I could conclude just on the... Solar module front, seasonally down quarter, you know, gross margins with utilization under a little bit of pressure. But, you know, given Quactel's headwinds within the North American markets and increasingly, I think, in European markets, what we're seeing at the exit of U-Blocks as well, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the bookings, when you would expect that to inflect, and we start to see that more in the P&L, and really, realistically, what target gross margins could look like in that environment given that some of your competitors are going to be facing pretty high bars in terms of tariff headwinds. Thanks.

Hey, Scott, I'll take that one. So as we reported, we've had seven consecutive quarters of bookings growth. So I think that's long-term kind of sustainable bookings. We did have a down quarter in Q1, but again, that was in line with our expectations, and we guided for Q2, the IoT cellular business, to increase in revenue. Gross margins, again, we should see step-ups in gross margins. We are managing this business for margin expansion, along with our other businesses.

Great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session, and I'd like to turn the call back to Mitch Hodge for closing remarks.

Thanks, Joe. That concludes today's call. Thanks to all of you for joining us today.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.