Lenovo Group Ltd Ord

Afternoon and good evening. Welcome to Lenovo's Earnings Investor Webcast. This is Jenny Lai, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Before we start, I would like to introduce our management team joining the call today, Lenovo's Chairman and CEO, Yuan Qingyang. Group CFO, Yiming Wang. President of Solutions and Services Group, Ken Wang. Senior Vice President of Infrastructure Solutions Group, Vlad Rosinovich. President of Intelligent Devices Group, Luca Rossi. And Senior Vice President of Mobile Business Group and President of Motorola, Sergio Buniak. We will begin with Ernie's presentations and after that, we'll open the call for questions. Now, let me turn it over to Yuan Qing. Yuan Qing, please.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we are pleased to report a great start to our fiscal year 2024-2025, driven by our clear strategy and strong execution. our persistent innovation and operational excellence, as well as our globalization advantages. We delivered a solid performance in our first quarter, with all of our businesses improving profitability and growing faster than the market. As the trend of hybrid AI is becoming more clear, we also made important progress in strengthening our capabilities to capture this major opportunity. This performance and progress, together with a recovering global IT market, significantly boost our confidence to accelerate our transformation and further improve our performance in the coming quarters. Last quarter, we delivered a strong year-on-year revenue growth of 20%. Profit improvement was even more robust. On a non-Hong Kong FRS basis, our net income increased by 65% year-on-year to $315 million. our diversified growth engines continued to accelerate with non-PC revenue mix up five points year-on-year to a historical high of almost 47%. Regarding AI, now more clearly than ever, we are seeing that the public AI alone cannot address the increasing needs of either individuals or enterprises. Hybrid AI, which is formed by personal AI, enterprise AI, together with public AI, is indeed the way forward. As the outlook becomes more evident, major ecosystem players are accelerating the development and application of personal AI agents and enterprise AI agents. which is creating enormous growth opportunities across devices, infrastructure, solutions, and services. By pioneering our hybrid AI vision and continually investing in AI and computing across personal and enterprise AI agents, Lenovo has already built a full-stack AI portfolio and capability. This features our AI devices like AIPC, our AI servers that support all major architectures, as well as our rich AI-native and AI-embedded solutions and services. Last quarter, our R&D investment further increased year on year. We will continue to innovate to deliver AI for every individual and every enterprise. Now I will talk about each of our businesses. Let's start with our Intelligent Devices Group or IDG. We delivered a strong quarter with double digit revenue growth and almost a one point improvement in operating margin year on year. For PC, we maintained our market leadership in both shipments and activations with premier to the market. We also succeeded in maintaining our industry-leading profitability. Moreover, we are very encouraged by the positive user feedback on our five-feature AIPC, which was launched first for the China market in May. We will launch more AIPC products for the global market at IFA and Tech World. And we are confident with leading market share in next-gen AIPCs. Our smartphone business and tablet business both deliver strong revenue year-on-year growth of around 30%, with particular hyper-growth in smartphone. in Asia Pacific, EMEA, and the North American markets. Looking ahead, we expect the PC market to enter a new refresh cycle driven by AI PCs, which will gradually grow to represent more than 50% of the PC industry landscape by 2027. We will continue to deliver groundbreaking innovations to achieve the full potential of personal AI agents while leveraging on deepened strategic partnerships to build a more diversified portfolio and a richer ecosystem. Next, our infrastructure solution group, or ISG. Last quarter, driven by the strong growth of our cloud service provider business, ISG delivered a 65% year-on-year growth in revenue, a historical high. profitability saw improvement both quarter-to-quarter and year-on-year. The combined revenue from storage, software, and services achieved a significant growth of almost 60% year-on-year and set a new record. Moreover, revenue from our Neptune liquid-cooled servers with unique sustainability benefits, grow more than 50% year-on-year to a record high. Looking ahead, we will continue to drive the recovery of profitability for this business through optimizing the business model for enterprise SMB business, including simplifying portfolios and improving operations. We will continue to leverage our industry-leading liquid cooling technology to meet increasing demands for AI workloads, while at the same time capture the growth opportunities in AI servers and storage markets. And we will continue to grow key strategic partnerships and build infrastructure platforms that support hybrid AI solutions. Our SSG Solutions and Services Group has delivered the 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit year-on-year revenue growth since its establishment, with an operating margin of 20% or above, further strengthening its position as our growth engine and profit contributor. We expanded managed services and project and solution services. The revenue mix has grown three points year-on-year to account for 55% of SSG's business. Over the next three years, the global IT services market is expected to grow steadily. And AI services will grow almost twice as fast as the market in general to become the primary driver. Lenovo will continue to embed AI in our key hero offerings such as digital workplace solutions, hybrid cloud, and sustainability solutions. while at the same time developing more AI-native services to drive the adoption of AI for our customers and accelerate their transformation journey. Before I close, I would like to share that the hybrid AI era has only just began. As the ecosystem evolves along with the changing industry landscape, Lenovo is uniquely positioned and well-prepared to lead with our full-stack AI capabilities. Meanwhile, our globalization advantages consistently help us seize opportunities and mitigate potential macro risks. Two months ago, we announced our strategic partnership with Allat. This collaboration will greatly benefit our efforts to go deep with our intelligent transformation, leveraging the growth momentum in the Middle East and further strengthen our supply chain. Looking ahead, we are confident that through capturing the hybrid AI opportunities and leveraging our globalization advantages, we will continue to achieve sustainable growth and profitability increases. Thank you. Now let me turn it over to our CFO, Wei Ming. Wei Ming, please.

Thank you, Yanqing. I will now take you through Lenovo's financial and operational performance for Q1 in fiscal year 2025. Next chart, please. In Q1, Thank you very much. was catalyzed by a combination of factors, including clear strategy, strong execution, operational excellence, innovation, and globalization. The group achieved premium-to-market growth across its operating regions, and all the business groups delivered double-digit growth. The group focused on delivering a comprehensive full-stack portfolio to drive innovation through personal and enterprise AI twins increasing R&D expenses by 6% year-on-year. IDG benefited from growing AI investment and commercial demand, lifting revenue by 11%, which is better than expected. The introduction of its AI PC line with five distinct AI features mark an important milestone in the group AI journey. Premium sales emerged as another bright spot. with its PC and smartphone premium sales growing 21% and 142% year-on-year, respectively. ISG revenue grew 65% year-on-year, exceeding $3 billion in quarterly sales for the first time. With its comprehensive hybrid AI capabilities and introduction of new AI infrastructure products, services and partnerships, ISG explored new opportunities in generative AI infrastructure systems, while collaborating with the key GPU suppliers and utilising Neptune liquid cooling technology. The non-PC business made up a record 47% of the combined revenue of the three business groups, mainly driven by the hybrid growth in ISG. SSG delivered its record first quarter revenue and profit. Its segment profit now accounts for one-third of the combined segment profit across the three business groups. Another milestone is the Strategic Collaboration Framework Agreement signed with Allat. This partnership will help the group leverage the growth momentum in the Middle East and Africa region, further globalise its supply chain and support the group's transformation. This is an important strategic initiative and more details will follow in the later slide. Next chart, please. Our solid cash flow management and profitability gains led to a 53% year-on-year increase in free cash flow, contributing to a strong cash balance. This also facilitated continued investment in hybrid AI innovation and IP generation. The group's total borrowing reduced from a year ago due to strong profit growth, healthy cash flow generation, and full conversion of 2024 convertible bond. At the same time, we continue to maintain a healthy cash balance exceeding $3.6 billion. Cash conversion cycle lengthened 11 days from a year ago. This is primarily driven by the longer inventory days, which is in response to rising demand, new product launches and preparation for strong seasonality. IBG bids expectation with an 11% year-on-year revenue growth, driven by solid premium-to-market growth in both PC and non-PC segments. This growth is resulted from a commercial sales recovery and a demand shift towards higher value-added models. OPM reached 7.3%, up 92 basis points year-on-year, and approaching historic peak levels. Operational excellence, along with ASP expansion and higher premium mix, make it possible for a 27% profit growth. IDG is spearheading the AIPC revolution. would mark an industry turning point creating opportunities to further strengthen its leading position. IDG's approach to AI PC innovation spans hardware development, proprietary software and components, driving product differentiation. Our five feature AI PCs have received encouraging user feedback in China and we are now preparing for a worldwide launch. On the non-PC front, Smartphone and tablet businesses deliver strong revenue year-to-year growth. Smartphone continue to shine with notable premium-to-market growth across Asia Pacific, EMEA, and North America. The strong performance of the smartphone business stems from our continued effort to enhance the product portfolio with a focus on AI-featured premium models such as the foldable Razer phone. Next slide, please. ISG achieved record-breaking quarterly revenue with a 65% year-on-year hyper-growth driven by surging demand from cloud service providers. ISG also delivered a new record high for the combined revenue from storage, software and services in the first quarter, operating performance improved by 23 million year-on-year and 59 million quarter-on-quarter, reflecting enhanced operational performance. ISG quarterly revenue from liquid cooling service reached a new height with more than 50% year-on-year increase. Our proprietary Neptune technology, backed by over 10 years of experience, has established our leading position in this area and allow us to benefit from high cooling requirements of more powerful GPU platforms in the future. On the AI front, ISG continued to see strong momentum, with the AI GPU server pipeline increasing by more than 20% quarter-in-quarter, while order growth was faster at over 30% quarter-in-quarter. SSG continued to benefit from AI power services and solutions, reporting record first-quarter revenue and profits. Revenue grew 10% year-on-year to $1.9 billion, the 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. With a leading operating margin of 21%, SSG contributed one-third of the combined operating profits across the three business groups. Both managed services and project and solution services revenue grew double digits year-on-year, reaching 55% of SSG revenue, up 3 percentage points. As a service, remains a bright spot for many services. Its total contract value of devices as a service and infrastructure as a service increased by strong double digits, reinforcing long-term growth. SSG also expanded key vertical wins with the group's AI-powered solutions, including smart factory IoT and smart warehouse solutions. Lastly, SSG is actively and continuously embedding AI into existing offerings to enhance value proposition. Meanwhile, we are developing AI services to meet customer demand at every stage of their AI journey, from IT transformation to data modernization to AI adoption. Next chart, please. The group has introduced ALAT, a US dollar 100 billion fund wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund. as a long-term strategic investor. This collaboration enables the group to capitalize on the strong growth momentum in the MIA region, which offers identifiable and incremental revenue and profit opportunities for all our business groups. In addition, go-to-market partnership with LUT will help accelerate market entry in the region. Our collaboration includes establishing a new manufacturing facility to serve the regional market adding to our existing global footprint of over 30 sites around the world. This expansion will enhance our global supply chain resilience and flexibility while leveraging the region's extensive clean energy initiatives. As part of the collaboration, the group will issue a convertible bond and warrants totaling $2.21 billion, which will be used for zero-interest-cost debt refinancing, supply chain investments, The President Additionally, the Group will achieve $100 million of annual interest saving for the three years without dilution from convertible bonds. The above-mentioned resolutions are subject to shareholders' approval at an EGM. The Group's steadfast dedication to corporate governance and sustainability has been recognised once again. at its secure 10th place in Gartner's prestigious Global Supply Chain Top 25 for 2024. Our environmental efforts remain on track to help us reach our SPTI-aligned 2030 emissions reductions goals, with 94,000 metric tonnes of products recycled since 2020. The group has also made significant strides in promoting diversity and inclusion, with an industry-leading 29% representation of women in technical roles. These accomplishments highlight the growth balance approach to sustainability and strategic excellence across its diversified growth engines. Hybrid AI presents a significant and unique opportunity for the group to supercharge growth, further R&D investment Thank you very much. Looking ahead, AIPC is about to kick-start a new demand cycle for products with premium pricing and attractive features for commercial users. This is critical for IDG to drive premium-to-market growth, higher ASP and sustainable profitability. IDG has unveiled its first batch of five-feature AIPCs in China, incorporating proprietary technologies as well as co-pilot plus AIPC. An extensive lineup of these five feature AI PCs is set to launch for the rest of the world in the second half of this fiscal year. At the same time, our significant growth in the smartphone sector will continue to be a driver for our premium-to-market growth strategy. ISG aims to continuously drive growth and improve profitability by leveraging its investment in differentiated technology solutions in hybrid AI technologies. infrastructure, high-performance computing, storage, and edge systems. ISG has introduced its sixth-generation industry-leading Neptune liquid cooling technology to meet increasing demand for AI GPU servers and capture business opportunity in this rapidly growing segment. The water cooling trend is just beginning, and we are well positioned to capitalize on its growth. SSG will roll out new AI native servers and embedded AI functions into his service offerings to address growing enterprise demand for AI technologies. Concurrently, SSG will focus on safeguarding its core business with high value-added support services across both the PC and infrastructure segments. Through collaboration with ecosystem partners, SSG is well positioned to help customers advance their digital transformation journey and further enhance its financial contribution to the growth. As mentioned earlier, our proposed strategic collaboration with the LAT will form an important part of our sustainable growth plan. We will put forward the relevant resolutions, and an EGM is expected to be held soon. We hope shareholders can support this exciting opportunity. Finally, as always, we stay committed to driving sustainable growth. and improving profitability for our shareholders. Thank you. We will now take your questions.

Thank you, Wai Min. Now we are open for questions and this session will be in English only. Please be reminded to limit yourself to two questions at a time. Please also state your name and company before asking questions. Operator, I will now turn it over to you. Please give us your instructions. To submit a question, please type your question in the Q&A box on the right and click Submit.

Thank you. The first question is coming from Kona Omara at Jefferies. Sandy from our team will announce the question.

The increase in IDG margins is quite a positive surprise given many others are talking about margin pressure from increased conformant cost. Were you able to offset the component cost increase with a significant improvement in product mix? How much did your ASP rise quarter on quarter?

So, Luca, could you please answer? Yes.

Yeah, that's for me. Thank you. And hello to everyone. Good morning and afternoon. So thanks for the question. We are very satisfied with our ability to maintain margins, balancing growths. as we kept the number one spot globally and we expanded our market share year over year this quarter while delivering industry-leading profitability, as you know. Our AUR expanded actually a couple of points, percentage points year over year and also sequentially percentage quarter on quarter to a lower extent. And when I look at the pre-COVID versus today as a data point, Our AUR, in fact, has grown significantly in a double-digit percentage way. It's true that certain component costs are increasing, but some others are decreasing as well, and we feel very good about our procurement power and our design to cost in the platform enabled by our R&D efforts. Combined with a strong pricing discipline, improved premium product mix and also segment mix towards commercial, particularly SMB. We have been able to maintain and even slightly improve our GP year over year in percentage. And with higher operating leverage and we maintained tight expense management, we were able to grow our profitability as shown by more than one point year over year. Thank you.

So, Luca, I think our operational excellence also matters. So definitely we know when we should buy more and when we should stop purchasing.

Yes, for sure. Thank you, Yanqing.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Danny Tan at Nomura. Is there any specific project wins after we strategically work with a lot in the Middle East? When can we see sales and the profit contribution?

So I think you're probably with me. You are the best person to answer the question.

Thank you, YY. Thank you, Donny. We are obviously doing, the deal is still subject to the shareholders' approval, which we hope that, as I mentioned in the presentation, that we will hope to have the EGM soon. So we have already started. I think before the deal was actually approved, we were working, I think, with the help of a lot to approach many corporates in Saudi Arabia. So far, I think that preparation work is done, but we are just waiting for the due to go to be voted by shareholders in Egypt.

Thank you, Wei Ming. Our next question comes from Grace Chen at UBS. What's the AI server sales mix of total ISG? What's the margin for AI server versus the margin for general purpose servers? And finally, what's Lenovo's strategy to improve the profitability of the loss-making ISG business?

So, Vlad, could you please answer the question?

Yes, thank you, YY. And good morning, good afternoon, everyone. So thank you for the question. One of the things that Lenovo is extremely proud of is how we've prepared for this hybrid AI error, given the investments that we've made across our infrastructure products, solutions, and services. We have seen a robust traction in our AI server pipeline. We've seen double-digit growth across our pipeline. And in fact, we've even seen higher growth across orders from a variety of customers. We've seen orders coming from industries such as banking and financial services for high-frequency trading. We've seen traction in research institutions, energy companies, manufacturing companies, and also in GPU as a service companies. So the AI traction we see in the market is strong, and we will continue to focus on that part of the market. To unpack the question on profit recovery, that is something that we are going to continue to focus on. Recovery of profitability for the ISG Group is the priority for our business. And the way we are going to do that is a few ways. Lenovo has always been strong with our enterprise and global channel partners. We're going to continue that deeper engagement with that customer base to drive further profit enhancement for IASG. But we're also going to optimize our business model continuing to look at improvements and simplifying portfolio, improving operations, and making sure that we are putting the right R&D into our portfolio to ensure we are ready for this hybrid AI era. Thank you.

Thank you, Vilet. Our next question comes from Ishan Dutt at Kennerleys. Can you give some early insights into how AIPC is contributing to premium segment share and growth, and what is the expected impact over the coming quarters?

So, Luca.

Yes. So, as you are probably familiar, there are several definitions of AIPC. As we are actually at the infancy of this that we believe it's an inflection point to the PC industry. So based on, say, major industry annual definition, that is probably a little bit more basic. The mix of AIPC this quarter and probably even next quarter is around 15% of the shipments. But based on our own Lenovo industry, which we call five pillar definition. And we believe this definition will shape the industry going forward. This number is much lower, is actually a low one digit number. That is to say that the real impact of AIPC into the industry and also into our financial results is yet to come. And we will see probably the second half of the fiscal year with more sophisticated product launched globally. That percentage to grow, but still to maintain in the probably low to mid single digit and then gradually ramp. We expect a much stronger contribution of those five pillar AIPC into 2025. and then growing all the way into 2026 to 50 or even 60% of the mix. So that is to conclude that the impact into our first quarter result is very modest and the best has yet to come. We believe there will be more sophisticated solution user experiences that will attract stronger demand, re-energize the category into stronger growth in the second half and particularly in 2025. Thank you.

Thank you, Luca.

I want to add, so actually we launched this five-pillar AIPC in China. First, we started to do ship in... middle of May. So definitely we see a better result in China. So probably middle single digit last quarter. So we are on track to achieve around the 10% mix by the end of this year. So definitely the rest of the world is behind of China.

Thank you, Yuanqing. Our next question comes from Albert Hong at JPMorgan. Could you please explain the economic scale benefits in ISG business? Why ISG revenue increased to 3.2 billion, but the bottom line stayed at 37 million loss, similar to 3Q23 when ISG revenue was only 2.5 billion?

Yes. So, Vlad, this is still your question.

Yes, thanks, YY. So thank you for the question. When I look at, as I previously mentioned, when we see the profit recovery that ISG is on a journey of, making sure that we are going to continue to look at our ESMB portfolio, and drive profit out of that portfolio. We also have the realization that it does take R&D effort to make sure we are positioning the right products, especially with our AI portfolio and where we have shown strength in hybrid AI to really develop that full solution stack. We've invested in our AI innovators program, which is really to make sure that not only are we time to market with all of the GPU suppliers' schedules, but also making sure that as we develop and implement over 80 new portfolio products within AI, making sure we're investing in four new AI centers and delivering over 165 state-of-the-art AI vertical and horizontal solutions, We've mentioned previously that we have increased R&D. R&D investments increased over 6% year on year to make sure we have that full stack development of AI portfolio across all of our infrastructure devices, solutions, and services.

Thank you, Ville. Our next question comes from Robert Jan at Bank of America. On the smartphone side, what's the breakdown by key market for your smartphone business, and what's the profitability and margin?

Hello, everyone. So I think what we're seeing, it's the fastest growing markets being Europe and Asia. Last quarter, we saw North America at 40%, Europe at 43%, Asia at triple digit. Latin America, we sustain our number two position with lower growth. We are also seeing a growth in our, what we call premium units, on our Razor and Edge franchise. Last quarter, 33% of our sales come from this premium device movement year over year. Profitability, our gross profit is on the 20% range. It's one point higher than last year. Still overall profitability low single digit, given that we are increasing significantly the investment, especially in marketing and AI R&D.

Our next question comes from Cherry Ma at Macquarie. On the robust ISG revenue growth, can you briefly go through what we saw during the quarter for our general server, AI server, and storage business? How is the order book looking for our CSP customers? Any delay to AI server business due to some hiccup in Blackwell supply chain? And finally, are we expecting to get more CSP customers in the coming quarters?

Yes, so Vlad.

Yes, thank you, YY. So a lot to that question that I jotted down. Let me take each of those as certain parts. So the first portion of that question was on the revenue growth. How did we see general purpose versus storage versus AI? I would say that when you look at our business growing 65% year-on-year, all aspects of our vertical markets saw improvement from a revenue standpoint. When you look at things like storage software services as part of the Lenovo 3S strategy, that part of our business was up 59% year-on-year. The enterprise portion or general-purpose server part of the market, it's critical for Lenovo. And we did see high double-digit growths year on year in those general-purpose server offerings. Specifically in growth areas, Like Edge, when we look at our Think Edge portfolio, our Think Agile portfolio of HCI solutions, we're at this era of smart AI everywhere. And that goes along the strategy that Lenovo has to look at Certain markets like smart retail, smart manufacturing, healthcare, and smart cities, these are all areas that really drive that general purpose server market. And it's also the area that we continue to engage with our channel partners on a global basis to continue to drive profitability. There was a question there about Blackwell's supply chain. I would say that from a Lenovo perspective, our plan to move forward on the ISG group is to make sure we are time to market so that as our suppliers' schedules are fulfilled, that we are going to continue to be time to market with all of our GPU suppliers. And then I think there was one more question there about CSPs. So this is something that we continue to look at. CSP has been one of Lenovo's real bright spots in our ISG business. And we continue to look at recruiting additional customers. I think CSP customers recognize the value that Lenovo brings with our ODM Plus platform. APPROACH TO THE MARKET, WHERE WE ACT NOT ONLY AS AN OEM, BUT ALSO AN ODM, AND WE LOOK AT OUR CAPABILITIES FROM A MANUFACTURING STANDPOINT AROUND THE WORLD. CSP CUSTOMERS REALLY APPRECIATE LENOVO'S GLOBAL MINDSET. SO AS WE LOOK AT THINGS LIKE DEPLOYING IN MULTIPLE REGIONS AROUND THE WORLD, WE ARE UNIQUELY POSITIONED IN A WAY WHERE WE CAN SATISFY LARGE CSP GROWTH ALL AROUND THE WORLD.

Yeah, so I want to help Vlad to talk about the ISG's profitability.

So actually now CSP business and the ESMB business probably are very balanced in Lenovo ISG portfolio. So actually our CSB business is a profitable business, although the margin is lower than ESMB. So our ESMB margin is much higher than CSB. But why we still lost the money? Because in the past couple of years, we keep investing in the new portfolio. We are strengthening our server portfolio. We are strengthening our storage portfolio. Then when the market quickly shifted to the AI, so we are strengthening our AI portfolio. So that's probably the key reason for us to still lose money. But I think we have the very good plan to drive the business back to the profitable. But definitely not just the product portfolio. We will sharpen our business model as well, as Vlad just said. So we will... drive the stronger, better business model in both relationship business as well as transactional business. Transaction business will be together with business partners. So last but not least, so we will sharpen our operation as well so that we can ensure we could leverage our global supply chain to get the best cost to have the best demand supply match. So that would be our action to drive the business back to the profit. Thank you.

Thank you for that, and thank you, Yuanqing. Our next question is on SSG. How is enterprise demand for AI services involving, and how is Lenovo meeting that demand?

Yeah, still. Ice deep, yeah. Nice one.

Yeah, maybe I can take that, YY. So good morning, good afternoon, everyone. This is Ken from SSG. So first of all, I think we are very excited about the momentum that we have in the solution and services group. We were able to achieve a premium to market growth and also a healthy margin, largely thanks to the the 13th consecutive quarter of premium to the market growth and with double-digit year-to-year revenue growth. Now coming back to the enterprise demand. This is definitely one of the most popular discussion whenever we discuss with our customer on a worldwide basis. I think by and large there are three kinds of demand from our customer. One is, you know, I think more than 50% of our customers are looking at how can they continue to improve their IT infrastructure. And in Lenovo, we call it the new IT transformation. The second demand is coming from data modernization, because I think everyone knows that in order to have a desired outcome for AI use cases, data is definitely very important. And last but not least, once our customer, especially with a more mature one, once they have a modernized IT infrastructure, as well as with all the data available, where we're able to help them to implement AI use cases and bring the desired outcome. So at Lenovo, this is covered by our AI Fast Start services, which include a consulting POC, scaling of the production environment, all the way to managing AI use cases in order to support our customer to achieve their desired outcome and resolve some of their challenges. One of the examples that I can share is that we just had a project with one of the leading technology customer on a worldwide basis to help them to improve their marketing operation, especially around how can they improve their product launch in terms of marketing campaign, used to be, you know, they needed two months in terms of marketing campaign launch. But with the Lenovo AI fast start offering, we were able to help them to significantly reduce the time to market to their marketing campaign, leveraging Gen AI and AI technology to one to two weeks. And at the same time, a significant saving in cost. And last but not least, is able to keep their IP within the customer premises, which is one of the major requirements for most of the customers that we have encountered. So in that, I think we still see a very strong demand from our customers. we've got to AI, we've got to how to use AI to supercharge the business, and Lenovo can help in all their different stage of journey in order to unleash the full power of AI. All right, thank you.

Thank you, Ken. Our next question comes from Howard Gao from Morgan Stanley. iX3 business revenue is seeing very strong momentum. Is revenue expected to continue? grow over the next one or two quarters? When can we expect ISG to get back to profitability?

Yes. Yes. Thanks. Thanks. And Howard, I would I would say that when you look at the market for data center today, the expected growth rate across AI infrastructure being in the 15 percent range. When you look at things like storage and general purpose server, we see those respectively growing about four and 10 percent. The viewpoint we have on the market is that we will drive to get to a premium to that market. And so it's our goals based off of the portfolio we're developing, the customer relationships we have, the channel partner relationships, and most importantly, the customer focus that we have that we will continue with at least market growth. On the question of profitability, I would just say that that's everything that we've talked about so far up until now, that YY has mentioned the focus that we have as a business group looking to how do we get to profit recovery. It is the number one focus. focus that I have for the business to make sure that improving the operations, making sure we are looking at profit optimization, making sure we're looking at portfolio optimization while continuing to invest in these high growth areas around hybrid AI is really going to be the continued focus we have on how we get back to profitability.

Thank you, Villette. Our next question comes from Edison Lee at Jefferies. What is Lenovo's definition of premium smartphone? What are the regions that contribute the most in the premium growth? And in terms of the IDGs revenue growth of 11%, how much of that is coming from ASP growth versus the volume growth?

Yeah, so I think there's more correction. Smartphone growth is 30% year over year. So units grew 30% and revenue also 30%. What we define as premium is our Edge and Razor franchises. Edge franchises and AORs start, ASPs starts at 399 up to 699, 799. And Razor starts at 699 to 999 price point. In terms of growth of Edge, we see a 2x growth year over year from around 700,000 units to 2 million. We are seeing growth coming from all deals. Razor being stronger, especially in North America. but also increasing in Europe and Asia and Latin America. And the edge grows more focused in Asia, in markets like India, Japan, Australia, Europe, and also Latin America.

Yeah, so we have seen strong growth in North America, in Europe, and in key Asia-Pacific market, Japan, India. So actually, in U.S., we have become a stronger number three with a double digit with more than double digit market share. Right. So when you're.

We are number one in foldable and number one in prepaid. We are number one in foldable with a 60% share. Yeah, north of 60%. More than 60% share. So we definitely dominated the market in the U.S.,

Okay.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Carbonio at Technology Business Research. With respect to Lenovo's AI advisory and professional services, are you seeing more customer engagements beginning at the AI discover stage or at the AI fast start stage? Okay.

So Wawa, I can check it if you're okay.

Yes, sure, please.

Yeah, Ken again here. So thank you, Ben. Well, let me answer this question from two fronts, right? When I interact with our customer, I think starting from two years ago, there has been, especially the pioneer part of the customer segment, there has been a lot of exploration, or we call it proof of concept projects. Now, when I look at the market, I think there are more and more POC finished. A lot of the discussion is actually around whether and how can we scale the POC learnings and results. Now, I believe when we come back to Lenovo, our AI offering are quite unique in the market for two reasons. Number one is if you look at our portfolio of offering from pocket to the edge to cloud, I think we are one of the broadest in the market. The second is that, as Flat mentioned, I think we have a library of AI solution, today we are about 150-ish, that are either deployed within Lenovo, which we have business across 180 markets, or we have deployed for our customers. So to my point, this is proven, verified, and we were able to implement for our customer. So with that, I think our uniqueness is that our broadness and our experience and our tools in terms of able to bring the AI use cases for our customer to meet with their demand. Thank you.

Thank you, Pien. Due to time constraints, this is our last question coming from Howard Gao at Moen Stanley. Can you talk about the inventory increase in June quarter? What does this comprise of?

to women. Could you please talk? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Howard. The increase of about $1.8 billion, most of it's, I think, from, or 50% of which is from our enterprise business, because you can actually see that our significant growth in our in our cloud service provider and therefore I think we are getting ready. Now the other one probably about I think 30% I think coming out from our PCSD. I think significant improvement I think in the market and we also enjoy the benefit of doing the buy ahead for the quarter. But one thing for sure that a large part of the increase in the inventory I think is really in parts which we're actually going to consume I think in the current quarter. Thank you.

Thank you, Huamin, and thank you, everyone. We thank you very much for joining today's call. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact the IR team directly. And replay of this webcast will be available in the next couple of hours at our investor relations website. Thank you again for joining us. This concludes the call today. Thank you.