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Operator
Conference Call Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Texas Instruments First Quarter 2020 earnings release conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand things over to Mr. Dave Paul. Please go ahead, sir.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. For any of you who missed the release, you can find it on our website at ti.com slash IR. This call is being broadcast live over the web and can be accessed through our website. A replay will be available through the web. This call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause TI's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the notice regarding forward-looking statements contained in the release published today, as well as TI's most recent SEC filings for a more complete description. Given the likelihood of a significant economic recession due to COVID-19, we're changing the format for this quarter's earnings call. In addition to Rafael Lazzardi, our CFO, we will be joined by Rich Templeton, our chairman and CEO. Rich will be covering a broader frame of how we're approaching the current environment. I will then provide a summary of first quarter, and Rafael will wrap up with the financial details of first quarter and our outlook for second quarter. Our prepared remarks will be longer than usual, as we hope to cover a range of anticipated questions. Let me turn it over to Rich.
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Thanks, Dave. At the highest level, to understand how we will approach a likely significant recession resulting from COVID-19, I remind you of the three ambitions that for decades have driven all decisions inside of TI. These ambitions are, first, we will act like owners who will own the company for decades. Second, we will adapt and succeed in a world that is ever-changing. And third, we will be a company that you are proud to be part of and would be proud to have as a neighbor. When we pursue these ambitions, our employees, customers, communities, and owners will all benefit. These guiding ambitions have served us well for decades, but they are enormously valuable in these times because they help simplify many decisions in an uncertain environment. Like many companies in the COVID-19 crisis, we have acted aggressively, keeping our people safe and able to support their families. We have kept our operations running to support our customers with special emphasis on our medical customers. And in the communities where we operate around the world, we have provided direct financial support and medical supplies to provide some relief. The list of actions is lengthy. So, starting with the economic framework. No two economic recessions are identical, but the 2008 financial crisis provides us the most recent significant recession and therefore is the best example to study and inform decisions on operating plans, revenue forecasts, and investment and spending plans. As a reminder, if you look back to 2008 and specifically to September of 2008, our new orders turned off overnight. This led to a 26% sequential drop of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2008, an additional 16% sequential decline in the first quarter of 2009, and then a rapid snapback for the next six quarters. By the second quarter of 2010, or within two years of the start of the sharp decline, revenue moved back above the level of the third quarter of 2008. For the benefit of hindsight, our customers overcorrected to the downside and we then spent a year and a half chasing back up to support demand. With this in mind, we are not trying to predict this economic recession and recovery, but instead we want to ensure that we have the highest degree of optionality so that we can deal successfully with any outcome. Therefore, regarding our operating plan, looking at the pattern from pre and post 2008, in the second quarter of 2020, and quite likely the third quarter of 2020, we will be running our factories at about the level they ran in the first quarter of 2020. This will likely result in an increase in inventory during the second quarter, but this will be important to support our customers during a time when they have limited ability to forecast. Our product portfolio, primarily long-lived products, makes this an easy decision and maximizes our optionality. Regarding second quarter revenue guidance, Rafael will elaborate in a minute, but with reduced visibility of customer demand, we have used the historical transitions that I mentioned from 2008 and adjusted for seasonality. We are not implying precision, but explaining the assumptions. We are using an expanded range to account for the current uncertainty. Regarding spending and investments, first, research and development spending will be essentially unchanged. As these are five to 10-year time horizon decisions, we will continue to make these ongoing portfolio adjustments, but these are unlikely to make meaningful changes to investment levels. On SG&A, we will maintain critical investments and new capabilities, such as strengthening TI.com, because these are important times to gain ground. Where we can minimize expense, we are, and we will certainly continue to do so. On capital spending, our plans are generally unchanged, because the bulk of capital spending is driven by roadmap capacity needs in the 2022 to 2025 time frame. We will continue with previously announced construction plans that are underway for the next generation 300-millimeter analog wafer fab in Richardson, Texas. Lastly, regarding how we are operating in the current environment, we were fortunately prepared for the unforeseen disruptions of COVID-19 as presented. We updated our customers in late March that our lead times remain short and unchanged and that we could respond to short-term demand. This is because we invested in inventory, had a robust business continuity plan, and invested in a geographically diverse internal manufacturing footprint. Our manufacturing teams are operating throughout the world, including countries like Malaysia and the Philippines, where local restrictions have resulted in partial operations. We have adopted protocols quickly to keep our people safe and minimize any disruptions. Our team was prepared and is comfortable getting our work done remotely. We continue to actively work new design wins with customers via virtual selling processes that we instituted several years ago. On most days across TI, we are averaging a peak of 10,000 VPN connections and 2 million meeting minutes per day, about four times higher than normal. We are all looking forward to things getting back to normal, but in the meantime, we are focused on execution. Let me hand things back to Dave.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Rich. I will provide the standard comments of first quarter revenue by end market and then I will add some additional insight about the quarter in light of COVID-19. First, for highlights on first quarter revenue by end market versus a year ago. Industrial increased mid-single digits from a year ago quarter and improved compared to fourth quarter. Automotive declined mid-single digits and decelerated in the quarter as our customers' factory sounds impacted demand. Personal electronics declined mid-single digits, but by sector was a mixed bag. Mobile phones declined low double digits, while by contrast PCs increased low double digits. Communications equipment declined about 50% as expected due to a comparison against a very strong first quarter of 2019. Communications was up sequentially. And lastly, enterprise systems increased double digits on strong data center demand. For additional insight, the first quarter ran as expected into Chinese New Year, but was slow coming out of the holiday as Chinese factories struggled to come back due to COVID-19. In early March, we saw pick up in orders from most markets as supply chain disruptions led to increased customer concerns about being able to secure supply. This increase in demand that we experienced in March had continued into early April with the exception of automotive as manufacturers' plant closures reduced consumption. This increase in orders has steadily abated in April, but returned to levels we saw in early March. The midpoint of our range assumes that this decline continues through the quarter as customers have reduced visibility to end demand. Rafael will now review profitability, capital management, and our outlook. Thanks,
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Dave, and good afternoon, everyone. Revenue was $3.3 billion, down 7% from a year ago. Gross profit in the quarter was $2.1 billion, or 63% of revenue. From a year ago, gross profit decreased due to lower revenue. Gross profit margin decreased 20 basis points. Operating expenses in the quarter were $794 million, about even from a year ago and about as expected. On a 12-month basis, operating expenses were 23% of revenue. Over the last 12 months, we have invested $1.5 billion in R&D. Operating profit was $1.2 billion, or 37% of revenue. Operating profit was down 10% from the year ago quarter. Net income in the first quarter was $1.2 billion, or $1.24 per share, which included a 10-cent benefit for items that were not in our prior outlook, as we have discussed. Let me now comment on our capital management results, starting with our cash generation. Cash flow from operations was $851 million in the quarter. As a reminder, first quarter is typically the seasonally low point for cash flow from operations due to payout of profit sharing and bonuses. Capital expenditures were $161 million in the quarter. Free cash flow on a trailing 12-month basis was $5.6 billion. In the quarter, we paid $841 million in dividends and repurchased $1.6 billion of our stock for a total return to owners of $2.5 billion. In total, we have returned $6.6 billion in the past 12 months, consistent with our strategy to return all free cash flow. Over the same period, our dividends represented 55% of free cash flow, underscoring their sustainability. Our balance sheet remains strong with $4.7 billion of cash and short-term investment at the end of the first quarter. In the quarter, we issued $750 million of debt with a coupon of .375% due in five years. This resulted in total debt of $6.6 billion with a weighted average coupon of 2.81%. Since then, we have repaid $500 million of debt due in second quarter, and we have no further debt due this year. We have $550 million of debt due in 2021. Regarding inventory, TA inventory dollars were flat to fourth quarter and dates were $145. Distribution-owned inventory declined again in first quarter by about $50 million, the sixth consecutive quarter of planned reductions, as we continue the transition of our channel to have fewer distributors and bring more customers direct. We had about four weeks of distribution inventory, the lowest since third quarter of 2017. Tactically and strategically, we are very pleased. We have steadily decreased total inventory dollars while increasing the percent of inventory concentrated inside TI and therefore in fewer places. This enables us to maintain short leak times and high availability, which is critically important in an environment where end-demand visibility for our customers will be limited. With a recession likely upon us, as Rich mentioned earlier, we are using the 2008 financial crisis to inform our second quarter outlook. To reflect the increased uncertainty, we have also expanded the range. For the second quarter, we expect TI revenue in the range of $2.61 to $3.19 billion and earnings per share to be in the range of $0.64 to $1.04. Regarding our operating plan for running our factories, we expect that customers in this similar to past recessions will overcorrect in the short term as their visibility of their end-demand drops. We believe it will be an important advantage to maintain consistent leak times and to offer customers high levels of product availability. Our product portfolio of mostly long-lived parts affords us to have a steady hand. Therefore, we will be running our factories in second quarter at approximately the same level we ran them in first quarter of 2020. TI inventory will likely grow during the second quarter, while distributor-owned inventory will likely drain. In closing, we continue to invest in our competitive advantages and in making our business stronger. History has shown us that in times like this is when we can make the most strategic progress. With that,
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
let me turn it back to Dave. Thanks, Raphael. Operator, you can now open the lines up for questions. In order to provide as many of you the possibility to ask a question, please limit yourself to a single question and after a response we'll provide you an opportunity for a follow-up. Operator?
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you, sir and ladies and gentlemen. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please make sure your mute button is turned off to allow your signal to reach your equipment. Again, everyone, that is star one. If you have a question, we'll take our first question today from Vivek Arya, Bank of America.
Vivek Arya
Bank of America Equity Research Analyst
Thanks for taking my question. For my first one, I understand visibility is low and I understand the way you are predicting Q2, but just a few weeks into Q2, have your orders or bookings played out same way as they did during the financial crisis? Does your confinement program now provide you better visibility? I'm just curious what you have actually seen so far in the quarter so that we can get a better handle on the outlook that you're giving.
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
I'll start and Dave, you want to chime in on that. As we said in the prepared remarks, April has in fact behaved very differently than 2008 in the comparison. Not only April, but March. March was strong. Coming out of Chinese New Year, as we said in the prepared remarks, we came out a little slowly, but then things strengthened and into April, those things have abated in the second half of April. We think that is due to the concern that customers have on supply disruption. Our range, and particularly the midpoint of our range, implies an expectation that demand will drop as customers internalize better their end demand. Frankly, they're going to have very low visibility. We expect them to have very low visibility of demand. That's why the important point here is that we're keeping high optionality throughout this process so that if things snap back, we can support that on the other side of this. Dave? I think that's well said. Do you have a follow-up to that?
Vivek Arya
Bank of America Equity Research Analyst
Yeah, thank you. You mentioned that you're continuing to run your factory loadings in Q2 as the same level as Q1. I'm curious if you can give us some color around what your modeling days of inventory to be exiting Q2. Is there a certain maximum limit to the amount of inventory, or in terms of days or dollars that you're willing to build before you have to start taking actions?
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, thanks for that question. Vivek, just as you framed it, I'm glad you framed it that way. It is a capital allocation decision. We are allocating capital in the form of inventory. Capital is going to go into inventory instead of going to other places. The inventory will increase. We expect it's very likely to increase into Q2. That's what gives us the optionality that I mentioned earlier, having that inventory on hand. The key thing to remember, and you know it very well, the vast majority of our products are long-lived. They're highly diverse. They sell to many, many customers. They live a long time on the shelf, and the customer's product life cycles are very long. That inventory will not go bad. It's an option with a fairly low cost to have that option.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
That's great. Thank you, Vivek. We'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Next up, we'll hear from Stacey Raskin, Bernstein Research.
Stacey Raskin
Bernstein Research Equity Analyst
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. For the first one, if I go back to 2008, I think the decline was a lot quicker, but if I look from Q308 peak to Q19 trough, revenues fell about 40%. This cycle has been longer, but if I take maybe that the peak was Q318 to your guide in Q220, you'd be down about 30%. Does that suggest that maybe there's still a little more to go for following the same kind of trajectory? I guess also if the decline from peak to trough is longer, does that suggest that you might be thinking about the increase off the peak also being longer? How do we compare the two situations?
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Stacey, this is Rich. Given the recollection of 2008, I'd be careful with too much precision in where you're trying to compare. I think you know this very well from the history, is that 2008 was a reasonably, 2007 and first half of 2008 were reasonably hot semiconductor markets, not overheated, but pretty hot. Clearly, 2019 and the first quarter of 2020 were cooler compared to the heat of 2017 and 2018. When you try to get peak to trough, that's a little more complex. We just tried to basically look through what did we think demand was doing for a couple of years prior. That was what helped inform and help set where we would put the operating planes.
Stacey Raskin
Bernstein Research Equity Analyst
Got it. For my follow-up, I know you generally don't have tons of visibility into what true end demand is doing, but do you have any way to gauge the amount of pull forward that we might be seeing right now, whether it's gauging the pace of rush orders or anything like that? Is there anything that you can give us to try to gauge how much of the strong near-term demand might be pull forward versus anything else?
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
I don't think we have any precision on that. I think that as we saw after Chinese New Year's, we saw strength. We believe that that was due to the customer concerns. It's hard to have any precision around what percentage of that was due to that concern with any degree of accuracy. Rafael, you want to add to that? Yeah,
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
I agree. The only thing I would add is that we know is the channel is clean, the district channel, because as we said, we're four weeks. We drain about $50 million on that channel, and we plan to continue draining for the next three quarters or so, about another $200 million or so, plain drain, as we convert more and more customers to go indirect. The channel we know is clean and will continue to be clean, but as Dave alluded to, we really don't know the end customers when they pull, how much of that is true end demand
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
versus
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
stocking up for potential
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
disruptions. Yeah, and I might add too that, as you know, Stacy, -70% of our revenue is on confinement. We're not curbing backlog, but we see plans that are in our customer factories, but as they have reduced visibility, all those plans are not updated. They're being updated slowly as they're deciding what to build in those factories. So those updated plans are rolling through, and that's what's creating the uncertainty, as you'd imagine. Okay, thank you, Stacy. We'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Next up from Morgan Stanley is Craig Hettenbach.
Craig Hettenbach
Morgan Stanley Equity Research Analyst
Yes, thank you. I appreciate the color on the OPEC side of things. Any additional thoughts around just kind of variable compensation and as revenue comes down, some mitigation in terms of OPEC's impact in the next couple quarters?
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Sure, so as we said in the prepared remarks, in general, OPEC's will be relatively unchanged. So R&D, those are long-term investments. SG&A, we also have some investments areas there with TI.com. In other places, we frankly run the company pretty tight to begin with, but wherever we can tighten up more, we do. On your specific question on variable compensation, that tends to be profit sharing and bonus. Profit sharing moves according to a formula, so it's very formulaic, so depending on what happens, that adjusts. And bonus is determined by the board, depending on relative performance on one to three years on several metrics. The following? Craig?
Craig Hettenbach
Morgan Stanley Equity Research Analyst
I do, thanks. And understand the different cadence by geography in terms of China was weak and came back, and Europe and North America maybe weaker now, but just love to get your thoughts just for Q2, how you're expecting kind of things within your guidance from a geographic perspective.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, I always give caution when asked about the geographical revenue. Sometimes we can see distinct patterns, but where we ship our product is very rarely where it's actually consumed, as you know. So we ship a product that ends up in a phone built in China, it may end up in Europe. So if there was something distinct in our guidance that was impacted by a geography, we'd share that, and we don't have anything specific to share with that right now. But thank you, Craig, and we'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Our next question is Ross Seymour, Deutsche Bank.
Ross Seymour
Deutsche Bank Equity Research Analyst
Hi, guys. Thanks for all these additional details, especially with Rich on the line. Maybe one for Rich. In your comments earlier, you said you wanted to use 2008 as a template, and that's about as fair a template as I could imagine as well. You also laid out about how the pattern was a steep fall, then a steep rise back. Given that you're behaving, your actions are very different this time where you're keeping the utilization flat, etc. Is that because you view this cycle as being any different to short duration matching the same one as a decade ago, or is it simply just the optionality side of the equation at the end of the day that you're trying to maintain? Let me have Raphael.
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Ross, just to help on that, I think Raphael covered this in some ways. If you think back to 2008, and you know and a bunch of folks know, we were very much different. We had a large wireless business. We had portfolio re-profiling we had to do. We had a high percentage of our product that wasn't exactly custom, but it behaved a lot like custom. Building inventory was a much more difficult game. The beauty about where we are today, as Raphael pointed out, is that a high percentage of the portfolio is a long-lived product. We've got our R&D and our resources well deployed in the areas we want to be long term. That's what really puts us into a wonderful position where the cost to have maximum optionality is actually pretty low in our particular case in 2020 versus where it was back in October of 2008. Great, thank you for that.
Ross Seymour
Deutsche Bank Equity Research Analyst
I guess as my follow-up, just switching over to cash return side of the equation, it looks like you guys had pretty much the second biggest buyback a single quarter you've had in a decade. Can you just remind us on how you guys are thinking about the ability to return cash? I know your long-term policy of returning 100% of your free cash flow, and it's not just dictated by any single quarter. I appreciate that as well, but this was significantly above what you guys generated in a single quarter and maybe even in a couple quarters of free cash flow. Just talk about how much leverage you're willing to put on the balance to take advantage opportunistically of a pullback in your stock when it's below what I guess you view to be your intrinsic value.
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Sure, so let me first, you alluded to it, but let me just remind everybody on the call that our objective when it comes to cash return is to return all free cash flow to the owners of the company, and we do that through buybacks and dividends. So for example, on a 12-month basis, we generated $5.6 billion of free cash flow and we returned $6.6 billion. So obviously all free cash flow there has been returned. And then you mentioned debt, and we have debt on the balance sheet. As we said on the call, $6.6 billion we finished. On a net basis, it's $1.8 billion because we have $4.7 billion of cash on the balance sheet. But we use debt to increase the rates of return with some leverage when it makes sense. So that's how we view the returns and the debt for many, many years as we have talked about it on capital management. Okay, thank you, Ross. We'll
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Next up is John Pitzer, Credit Suisse.
Troy Sponberg
Stiefel Equity Research Analyst
Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. Dave, I just want to go back to your comments and your prepared remarks about booking slowing as we've been coming to the end of April. Was there any end market distinction you can talk about? And I'm particularly interested in kind of understanding how auto and industrial is behaving at the beginning of this pandemic versus maybe things like PC, data center, and comms.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, John, I'd say that when we looked at last quarter, it was very distinct that we saw strength in PCs. We saw strength in data center. We saw distinct slowing in auto as we talked about. I'd say that the relative strength in orders that we saw in the quarter that happened in March and continued into April was broad-based generally and was across the board with the exception of auto. And then the slowing, I would say that it is also broad-based. Do you have a follow on?
Troy Sponberg
Stiefel Equity Research Analyst
Yeah, this is my follow on. Returning to Ross's question about capital allocation and return, Rich, since you're on the call, you guys have always been good at sort of tagging when everybody else is zigging, and you've got a longer duration out there. I'm kind of curious about how you're viewing the current environment relative to M&A. That's sort of an arrow in your strategic quiver as we go through the next couple of quarters of what's clearly going to be a recession.
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Yeah, you know, John, if you think about it, and you can't even, you've watched this for a long time, you can go back to 2008 and then look at what we did through 2009, 1011 and such. And clearly, if you think about capital allocation, the things that I stepped through, keeping on the right R&D investments, keeping on the right capital expenditures, making the right capability investments on things like TI.com, you know, that's where you get just very excited about we will be getting stronger during this period and those strengths will help us, you know, even as the secular trends of more semiconductors in your life are growing. To the degree that we have an opportunity to buy used equipment or used factories or potentially M&A, as with anything on capital allocation, I think that one just goes down to the it depends type comment, meaning it would have to be probably a more prolonged downturn. If you think about what the mood was in 2010 and 11, well, 2009, 1011, you know, that mood had to be there for a while before opportunities became available. But we're certainly, we try to just be wise over the long term.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Okay, thank you, John. We'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
And we'll go to Chris Danili, Citigroup.
Chris Danili
Citigroup Equity Research Analyst
Hey, thanks, guys. And Rich, thanks for making the cameo. My first question, Rich, do you think or do you anticipate any longer term structural changes in the business, either in terms of end markets or anything you're looking at as a result of this pandemic?
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
You know, Chris, my, I think it's early, I think, you know, I know your world tries to get ahead on trying to guess what will happen. I, in general, think that, you know, the secular trends that we've seen with semiconductors and more semiconductors coming into people's lives are going to continue. Okay. And I think somewhat is, as John alluded to in his question, it's obvious in the near term that, you know, server sales and PCs are going to do well as working from home continues. But I just think longer term, you look at industrial products, industrial equipment, and even automotive, even though in the near term, people will see SAR numbers come down, the secular trend on semiconductor growth inside of automotive is going to make it a great market to be in for the long term. So now I don't, I don't think from that point, there'll be big structural change. I do think we've got a great advantage of having structural channel advantage. So the changes that we've been working towards for a number of years, building closer direct relationship with customers, things that you now see playing out with a higher and higher percentage of inventory being in our hands to where we can be more efficient. It's, that's going to be a fantastic trend. TI is well, well prepared to take advantage of that with our breadth of channel reach through the industry.
Chris Danili
Citigroup Equity Research Analyst
Thanks. Do I can follow up? Yes, sir. Go, go for it, Chris. Great. Thanks. And then Rich, to the extent you can, you know, if you could give us any insight into what the customer conversations are like, what are they asking? What are their big concerns? And I guess at the root of it, you know, you guys talked about it, I've thought about this, why aren't we seeing this sort of fall off in origin? Is everybody just kind of frozen in place out there? Why is that happening?
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
You know, Chris, I think if you and Dave, I thought, you know, was very direct with what he described as we saw, you know, orders rise starting to, you know, picket first, second week of March, you saw them rise up, you've seen them start to trend down. They're still at that level. We saw, you know, approximately ending February and early March. I think that's starting to filter through for us, especially, and they will have the number where we're 60, 70 percent consignment. It takes a while for those consignment feeds to really get updated because companies have got to start getting better numbers on that front. So I think customers are just still processing through what their customers are telling them. And we will see that play through. It's why we've made assumptions that May would be down from April and June down versus April as well for the range.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Okay. Thank you, Chris. We'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Next up is Troy Sponberg, Stiefel.
Tori
Stiefel Equity Research Analyst
Yes, thank you. And I appreciate the wide range of the guidance in this environment. But could you maybe elaborate a little bit on what the assumptions are sort of at the low end and the high end of the range?
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so I'll give you my take. Frankly, there's no science on that. As we talked about earlier, we're using 2008 as the model for that. Again, it doesn't imply precision, not even similarity. It's just the most recent exogenous event that we can use. So we're using that and the midpoint is the closest thing to that, kind of adjusted for seasonality. What you normally would see on a first, second quarter transition, now you're seeing a negative 13% at that midpoint. But the entire range, then the other reason we widen the range is to reflect the great level of uncertainty that we have going on. As Rich mentioned, many customers right now, they're still processing what's happening. And we've actually heard some of them haven't been able to update their feeds to us. So they got to go through all that process. So that's embedded in that wide range. The biggest point I want to make, and we've made it a couple times already, is the optionality that we're going to get based on how we're running the factories. This thing can go multiple ways for second quarter and third quarter and beyond, but we have just great optionality the way we're running the business both strategically, the type of parts we build and the end products and so forth, but tactically the way we're running the factories and the inventory in second quarter. You'll follow on, Tori?
Tori
Stiefel Equity Research Analyst
Yes, thank you, Dave. The other question goes back to what you just mentioned there. I'm sure your customers are probably thinking about this too, and maybe they are perhaps building some inventory too to be able to respond to eventual demand. If that's indeed the case, how long would you be willing to have this optionality or perhaps run the inventories a little bit longer than normal?
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
It's going to depend on a number of we and the world and the industry will learn over the coming weeks and months, and then we will adjust as necessary. I think the advantage we have with the way we're set up strategically with the type of parts we build and the type of customers we have and the type of end markets is that we can afford to have this optionality. These parts are not going to go bad. It was very different in a custom centric, custom part centric world in personal electronics type of centric world. That's not the case with the way we structure the company. So we have great optionality to go through this beyond second
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
quarter. Okay, thank you, Tori. We'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
And next from BMO is Ambrish Srivastava.
Ambrish Srivastava
BMO Equity Research Analyst
Hi, thank you, Rich. Good to hear your voice. I'm sure nobody really wanted to hear you in this kind of forum. I had a question back on capital allocation and going back to the 2008-2009 template or playbook. You raised your dividend in the fourth quarter back then. It was a small portion, but it was a thing on a percentage basis was pretty meaningful. So as we compare where we're heading now versus I'm sure nobody had any idea what next quarter was going to be, what's the right way to think about capital allocation based on the comments you and Dave and Rafael are making? It sounds like no change in 100% free cash flow back, DV plus buyback, no change to that. Just kind of just help us understand the thinking or scenarios that you're playing out that you're thinking through, which might lead to a near-term modification in that, Rich, and then I had a follow-up.
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Yeah, so I'll set up and I'll let Rafael cover it. The answer is no change, Ambrish, because we really have tried to have a very thoughtful long-term plan, but I think it's helpful for Rafael to summarize some of those points.
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so just to comment and Ambrish, as you said and Rich just confirmed that, yeah, there's no change in the way we think about capital management and our long-term objectives. So as I said earlier, cash return, return all free cash flow on dividends specifically as you alluded to, the objective is provide a sustainable and growing dividend to appeal to a broader set of owners. And as a reminder, on a trailing 12-month basis, our dividend was 55% of our free cash flow. Now, of course, that's a backwards-looking metric, I understand it, but it's a great place to start. Frankly, few companies are at that level in our industry and in the S&P 500, so it's a great place to start. But that objective of providing a sustainable and growing dividend, it has been and continues to be very important for us. Follow-up, Ambrish?
Ambrish Srivastava
BMO Equity Research Analyst
Yeah, I did, and this is more to do with, I think Chris asked a good question on structural changes. Given that we're all working from home, at least those of us who can afford to work from home, how is it impacting the design activity that TI engages in in multiple CEOs, multiple customers, so many in markets? What's the right way to think about the changes that you're seeing there? And does it portend poorly for when we ultimately get to a more quote-unquote normal world?
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
You know, Ambrish, it's why we included in my remarks comments about how we're operating, and it's one of these deals I produced an update for internal. And basically, I've had a bunch of people telling me, gosh, we got lucky on some things. And I explained there's this great quote that you know, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And we put in place this mass market selling, really virtual selling technique starting three years ago. It's an instituted standard process. Our sales teams work it, applications people work it, comfortable with customers. And so it's almost been like nothing has changed in terms of where we spend our time working between ourselves and the customers. They all want to do it on the phone anyhow, our products group connecting in on that. So the readiness that we had to operate in this world is actually enormously high. Having TI.com, you know, more capable to support customers' decisions, to be able to support online commerce as we're bringing more customers direct. The comfort of our product groups, design engineers, and people to work collaboratively, because we've always had to do that is really very, very unchanged. I do think people are working more hours, just because the days and hours tend to blend into one another, as I'm sure everybody on this call is experiencing. But it's very impressive to watch the watch the team performing and watching what getting done. We're even at the point where all the set of customer visits even next week, where those customer visits will be virtual as well. So we're just well into the way of operating this way.
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
I just want to comment on a slightly different topic, what related in the spirit of preparation meeting opportunity. Just want to highlight, and we talked about it during the remarks, but we were prepared for the unforeseen disruptions with a combination of our inventory strategy, our business continuity program, and our geographically diverse manufacturing footprint, which of course is part of our one of our competitive advantages of manufacturing and technology. So we're having all of those together. We were able and continue to be able to provide our customers with short lead times and inventory availability in this time where they needed most. Now, in the coming quarters, when their visibility will be impaired.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, and I would say that we've had customers actually contact us and they're rather surprised that our lead times are stable and they can get the product that they need. So they're very happy with that. So thank you, Ambrish. We'll go to the next caller, please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
And next we'll be talking, sir, JP Morgan.
Harlan
JP Morgan Equity Research Analyst
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question and I appreciate the additional commentary on which you've been on the call today. I know you guys don't like to talk about sort of specific geographies, but the fact of the matter is China is coming out of this pandemic and starting to open up their economy and throwing quite a bit of stimulus at it. Are you seeing this being reflected in your order rates or consignment forecast for your domestic China customers? And roughly what percentage of your business today comes from domestic China consumption?
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, I'll start and please chime in, Rafael, if you'd like. So again, I'll give the numbers of products of where we actually ship the product, but always offer the caution that it's where the box ships from. So we've got 50% of our product ships from into China, but again cellular phones, as an example, may be built there, may be designed in California and end up in Europe as an example. So, and yeah, we are seeing those factories coming back online as we talked about in our prepared remarks. I think the uncertainty is how much demand will actually be there as those factories come back online and I think that that's what's creating that uncertainty. So do you have a follow up?
Harlan
JP Morgan Equity Research Analyst
Yeah, thank you for that. So IHS in its most recent forecast is calling for global light vehicle production to drop almost 20% this year. This is twice the year over year drop as experienced in the 08-09 financial crisis. Outside, maybe just the near term inventory correction to kind of normalize to the lower production trends. How is the TI team thinking about your content growth and auto to potentially partially offset the significant decline in production this year?
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, I think Harlan, I'll make a couple of comments. Rich, if you want to jump in afterwards, feel free to. I think that what's important for us is the longer term opportunity in automotive remains unchanged and we continue to invest in five different sectors inside of automotive. There will be more content per vehicle, as you know, Harlan, as you're pointing to. We will respond tactically to those changes in demand and we know how to do that and take care of that operationally. That's not something that we'll be able to control, but we will keep our investment steady and be prepared to support that growing opportunity as it arrives. So, Rich, do you have anything to add to that?
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Yeah, I would just, you know, Harlan amplified as I suggested earlier that, you know, the secular growth themes that are embedded in things like automotive or embedded in industrial are alive and well, okay? They're going to be with us. They are not going to offset a 20% saw drop in any one year and you know that. I think everybody does. But when it comes to, you know, making investments, as Dave said very well, you've got to be looking five and six years out and we think automotive will continue to be a great average upper of our long-term growth and performance.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Okay, thank you. Harlan, we'll go to the next caller please.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
And up next is Tushia Hari, Goldman Sachs.
Tushia Hari
Goldman Sachs Equity Research Analyst
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking the question. I just had one probably for Rich. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the competitive landscape that you're seeing today both in embedded processing as well as analog. You guys have been a pretty consistent share gainer over the past five, 10, 15 years. I wanted to get your thoughts on share growth potential going forward. Obviously, you guys are going through this recession, which all else equal I would think would be positive for industry leaders like yourself. You're also going through the -to-market strategy change. You've also got the trade tensions between the US and China. So when you think about those three items, if you can talk to your confidence level around share growth over the next call it three to five years, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
Yeah, Tushia, I think you've almost answered the question. I think you described a couple of secular tailwinds. If we do our job well with, you know, a secular headwind depending on trade tensions, but even there, if we do our job well, I think we can mitigate some of that. I think you also, and I'm sure Dave is smiling, you got to the right context, which is you've got to look at this over two, three, and four years. I think he reminds everybody all the time. And so, you know, you look at the share we gained going kind of into and then the position we were coming out of the 09 downturn and we gained momentum in that. And that's certainly what our plans are right now. And that's about both analog and embedded. And it's about, you know, the markets that we focus on. It's the customers, the products, the technology, the capabilities like TI.com that we put in place. And it's where all our energy is going on a weekly and daily basis is to get better
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
and better. Okay. Thank you Tushia. We'll go to the next caller,
Operator
Conference Call Operator
please. Next up is Timothy R. Curry, UBS.
Timothy R. Curry
UBS Equity Research Analyst
Thanks a lot. I had to, I guess the first one, you know, which is another, I have to think about how this seems around. And I understand that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, hello? Hey, Tim.
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, we were having trouble hearing you. Could you, could you start over, please?
Timothy R. Curry
UBS Equity Research Analyst
Oh, sure. Okay. So the first question really is around how the cycle evolves and how to think about it. And I guess I understand that the magnitude, the peak to trough magnitude, it's hard to look back at 08 and, and to sort of look at that. But, but it seems like the near term supply chain boost that, or, you know, the, you know, the concerns that, you know, customers have about that, that's, you know, boosting near term demand. It seems like for you, that effect is sort of beginning to wane maybe a little earlier than others because of your consignment model. So, we're seeing it first. And I wonder if you'd agree with that, with that, that it relates to, you know, to the consignment model. And I guess the question is, does that agree that, or, you know, does that argue that you would maybe see it out the other side first as well?
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
Yeah, Tim, you know, so I don't know, you know, so first of all, we haven't seen what others have have reported yet or what they've seen. So it's probably too early to do that. And, you know, we've had theories of us seeing it early and seeing late. I'd just rather not weigh in on that debate and just report facts that we have and let others debate it, right? We do believe that by pulling and controlling that inventory, we'll get much cleaner signals. But as, you know, we've talked about before, you know, our customers right now, you know, they're not sure what their demand is going to look like. And so what they're telling us hasn't been updated yet. So, you know, even what they're telling us isn't completely clear. So, you know, it's going to take a little bit of time before all that stuff is updated. So do you have a follow on?
Timothy R. Curry
UBS Equity Research Analyst
I do. I do. Yes, it's for Rafael. So I guess on inventory, so if I assume that it's sort of flat to up in dollar terms, obviously, days are going to go way up in June, maybe they're 170, 180 days like that, and, you know, possibly even up again in September. I guess I was just wondering, like, can you give us some sense of what the pain point is where you might cut, you know, utilization? Is it an inventory dollar thing? Is it a day thing or is it a sort of just a, you know, duration of recovery thing? Thanks.
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, no, good question. First, let me step back and remind you that for us, the objective inventory to maintain high levels of customer service, minimize obsolescence while we improve our manufacturing after utilization. The target of 115 to 145, frankly, is kind of incidental, right? It's just a calculation. At the end of the day, this is a capital location decision. We're going to have two points on billion dollars of inventory. That's real money. That's on the balance sheet that if it wasn't there, it'd be back in the owner's pocket. So we're very thoughtful in how we make those decisions to put potentially more inventory on that balance sheet, right? That's less cash that we have. But we just think it's going to give us great optionality throughout this thing, right? And, you know, like any decision when it comes to capital management, it's going to depend, right? So that's the decision we're making now. We have to see how things develop in the coming months. And based on that, we'll adjust. The important thing, the inventory lasts a long time. This is inventory that the scrap levels on this inventory is very, very low. So the others that will there's a working capital and an opportunity cost to it, but it's very low, given that it's highly unlikely that that is going to be scrapped. And it gives you just tremendous optionality on the other side. Okay. Just
Rich Templeton
Chairman and CEO
to follow up, Rafael and Tim, Rafael said this before, so it's just me feeding his comment. The other thing to keep in mind, and he spelled this out is while our inventory would be growing in second quarter, we will drain yet again distribution inventory. So we just got to keep these multiple variables in mind. And it just keeps putting us in a better and better position when we're doing that. So our balance sheet may show higher inventory, but we love the fact that that channel inventory will be getting leaner and leaner. And the inventory will be in one place where we can get the most effective use out of it.
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
And I'll go ahead and add, when you and all the investors listen on the call, when you compare us to most or maybe all of our competitors, our balance sheet is very different in that regard, because we have many consignment arrangements. Well, 65%, two thirds of our revenue goes to consignment, whether it's the distribution or directly with the end customers. So that puts upwards pressure on that inventory level that we have. We also have our own manufacturing to including assembly test operation, whereas to a very high degree, about 80% of our output goes through our fabs and maybe 60 or 70 through our assembly test operation. So that's also very different than our competitors. So that's why it's not apples to apples when you compare our inventory levels to those of our competitors. But let me make the point though, that we think owning and controlling that inventory is a strategic asset. So we're very pleased with we have in those consignment arrangements, clearly very pleased with owning our own manufacturing and what that has enabled us to do anytime, but particularly in times of disruption, like what we just experienced and continue to experience, where it just really puts us in a much better position to support our customers. Okay, we have time for
Dave Paul
Vice President, Investor Relations
one last caller.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
And we will go to Mark Lippes, Jeffreys.
Mark Lippes
Jeffreys Equity Research Analyst
Great. Thanks for taking my question. So I had one, you know, our own field work in the supply chain downstream from you guys, indicate that inventories are indeed like normal, if not lean levels. And as the virus spreads around the world to places like Malaysia and Philippines, that there's shortages of components, understanding that your inventories are higher than, at the high end of the range and not hearing anything about TI shortages, but basically supplies being disruptive. And there's a reticence to give up any excess inventories downstream for you. I'm wondering if you could describe what you're seeing on your own supplier base that you want to run your factories at consistent levels here. Are you seeing any of these supply chain disruptions that that, you know, your customers are seeing at other components? Are you seeing that and how are you managing that? And there's a risk that you you're not going to be able to run your capacities consistently because of your own supply disruptions. That's all I had. Yeah,
Rafael Lazzardi
Chief Financial Officer
sure. Yeah, not a problem. The short answer to that is we're not seeing anything worth mentioning on this call. You know, little things here and there, but nothing that we cannot manage. Remember, you know, I referred to our business continuity program and we've been, in this call, we've been talking mainly about inventory, finished goods inventory that we carry, but that also applies on multiple other angles. So for example, we also carry raw material inventory buffer. We have many dual and triple and quadruple sourcing of key raw materials. And we also have, as I talked about earlier, geographically diverse manufacturing footprint in Malaysia, in the Philippines, in Taiwan, in Mexico, in China. So that just really puts us in a very good position. Also gives us leverage to work with those suppliers, which by the way, we pay them in 30 days. We make that part of our thinking to be fair to those suppliers and we don't play games on that. So that's also from a long-term relationship standpoint. I think we are in very good shape with all those suppliers. Would you like to wrap this up? Yeah. So let me wrap up by reiterating what we have said previously. History has shown us that it is times like this when we can make the most strategic progress. We will continue to invest in and strengthen our four competitive advantages, which are manufacturing and technology, portfolio breadth, market reach, and diverse and long-lived products. We will also continue to pursue the three ambitions Rich mentioned. We will act like owners who will own the company for decades. We will adapt in a world that's ever-changing and we will be a company that we're personally proud to be a part of and would be proud to have as a neighbor. When we are successful, our employees, customers, communities, and owners will all benefit. It is these ambitions that will guide our decisions in the weeks and months ahead as we navigate these uncertain times. Our best to you and your families.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for your participation.
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