KEYS

This call is being recorded today, Tuesday, May 19th, 2026, at 1:30 P.M. Pacific Time. I would now like to hand the call over to Liz Morali, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ms. Morali.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Keysight's second quarter earnings conference call for fiscal year 2026. Joining me on today's call are Satish Dhanasekaran, President and CEO; Neil Dougherty, Executive Vice President and CFO; Kailash Narayanan, President of the Communication Solutions Group; Jason Carey, President of the Electronic Industrial Solutions Group; and Steve Yoon, Senior Vice President of Global Sales. Following the prepared remarks from Satish and Neil, we will take your questions. The press release and information to supplement today's discussion can be found on our investor relations website, investor.keysight.com. During today's discussion, we will make forward-looking statements about the financial performance of the company. Actual results may differ materially from those mentioned in these forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties.

Information about these risks and uncertainties can be found in our most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC. We do not intend to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures and reference core growth, which excludes the impact of acquisitions or divestitures completed within the last 12 months and currency movements. The most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations can be found on our Investor Relations website, and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to Satish.

Thank you, Liz. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Keysight delivered the best quarter in company history, capping off a record first half. Quarter two orders grew 56% year-over-year, surpassing $2 billion. Revenue grew 31%, earnings per share grew 69%, and we generated a record $472 million in free cash flow. These results demonstrate the strength of Keysight's portfolio, which has been built strategically to deliver first-to-market solutions that enable innovations across our end markets, including data centers, networking, defense, semiconductors, and general electronics. We are raising our growth expectations for fiscal 2026, driven by the solid start to the year and the pipeline of opportunities we see in the second half.

We now expect revenue growth in the high 20s% for the fiscal year as the underlying trends driving our business are expected to continue. These investments we're making in our comprehensive set of solutions and deep engagements with market-defining customers positions us well for sustained value creation. Moving to our results by business. Communication Solutions order growth significantly outpaced revenue growth of 35% year-over-year, with broad strength across both commercial communications and aerospace, defense, and government. This performance builds on the growth we saw in quarter two last year, where CSG delivered 9% revenue growth. In commercial communications, we continued to see accelerating momentum in our wireline business, driven by the ongoing AI data center expansions. Wireline delivered record orders again this quarter with robust demand for both R&D and manufacturing solutions.

In the first half of fiscal 2026, our AI-related business has already surpassed the levels achieved in all of 2025. As I mentioned in our Q1 earnings call, this momentum continues to be driven by four key pillars of opportunity that we expect to continue: AI infrastructure scaling, speed transitions, optical and photonics technologies, and system-level emulations. First, the scaling challenge is intensifying as AI clusters integrate GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, switches, NICs, memory fabrics, and storage across multiple vendors and the networking technologies including Ethernet, UALink, PCIe, NVMe, and CXL. Customers are adopting Keysight solutions for end-to-end interoperability and system validation to ensure that these components function reliably together at scale. This quarter, Keysight announced new scale-up validation solutions for performance characterization.

As systems become more complex and expensive, additional investments in deeper manufacturing validation and production test coverage are needed to improve yields and reduce post-deployment failures. We saw strong adoption for newly introduced ultra-high-density interconnect solutions that enable rapid characterization of rack backplanes for next-generation scale-up networks. Second, the industry continues to navigate multiple overlapping speed transitions, with continued 800 gig deployments, accelerating adoption of 1.6 terabit architectures, and increased R&D activity around 3.2 terabit technologies. The Optical Fiber Conference and NVIDIA's GTC this quarter reinforced the accelerating importance of networking as a critical enabler of AI data center scaling. At OFC, Keysight demonstrated our 1.6 terabit physical layer solutions with over 20 industry leaders. We also showcased 1.6 terabit traffic emulation, link reliability validation, and SerDes signal integrity solutions for switch and system vendors.

We collaborated with Broadcom on the industry's first public interoperability demonstration of Ultra Ethernet Consortium specifications, marking a major step towards production-ready AI-optimized Ethernet fabrics. Third, activity in silicon photonics and co-packaged optics continues to expand. Our early engagements in co-packaged optics positions Keysight well to capture value as the industry transitions to these architectures. We are also seeing strong demand from next-generation optical component and transceiver development and deployment driven by expansion and scale-out networks. We recently expanded our optical portfolio with the industry's first 220 gigahertz lightwave component analyzer to support advanced transceiver and photonics designs. Building on our existing chiplet and photonic design solutions, our new 3D Interconnect Designer is also helping customers address the growing complexity of designing next-generation 3D stacked chip architectures. Finally, customers need system-level emulation and benchmarking capabilities for data centers at scale.

We saw strong adoption of our AI workload emulation solutions among hyperscalers as they work to improve utilization of GPU power resources while addressing growing system and security complexity. This quarter, we expanded Keysight's AI portfolio with the release of Keysight AI Inference Builder, designed to support emerging inference applications. Together, these trends are driving increased demand for our solutions across multiple domains. The breadth of Keysight solutions portfolio and ongoing R&D investments enable us to maintain a differentiated portfolio and an industry-leading position. Turning to wireless, orders saw robust growth in the quarter with activity in non-terrestrial networks, 6G research, and increased demand to support the supply chain associated with AI expansion. NTN is becoming an important layer of future wireless architectures with new LEO constellations scaling and the industry targeting direct-to-cell deployments in the next few quarters.

The increasing complexity of LEO environments, including speed, dynamic link conditions, and stringent positioning requirements, is driving demand for Keysight's orbit emulation and Spirent's PNT solutions, which together provide customers with a differentiated ability to validate next-generation NTN systems. As the industry explores new use cases for 6G, such as integrated sensing and communication, energy-efficient networks, and expanded coverage capabilities, we are well-positioned to intercept these opportunities through our portfolio of high-fidelity tools for design and emulation. This quarter, we expanded our collaboration with Qualcomm on RF digital twins and at Mobile World Congress conducted a joint demonstration with Samsung on AI-RAN workflows. Next month, Keysight will host the 3GPP meeting in Singapore, where the timeline for 6G standardization is being solidified, further reflecting Keysight's leadership position as the ecosystem evolves towards commercialization.

Turning to Aerospace, Defense and Government, we saw broad-based global momentum led by Europe, supported by continued strength in Americas as the global defense modernization priorities increasingly translate into new programs and investments in next-generation systems. Demand was strongest across radar and electromagnetic spectrum operations as governments and prime contractors expanded capacity to support evolving operational requirements, while activity in space satellite and autonomous systems remained healthy. This drove ongoing customer engagement and new wins for our recently introduced radar target generation solutions. Keysight's ability to accurately simulate radar signals and emulate threat environments is a key differentiator, creating higher-value system-level opportunities with defense contractors and government agencies around the world. As contested spectrum environments drive a greater focus on radar survivability and autonomous operations, customers are increasingly adopting Keysight solutions that include high-fidelity emulation, signal analysis, PNT, and RF validation to accelerate their development and deployment.

This quarter, we secured a key win with US Air Force to enable next-generation operational flight line testing with more stringent requirements. Given the mission-critical nature of this defense market, we also continue to see increased attach rate for our value-added services to enable mission readiness and operations. Moving to Electronic Industrial Solutions Group, we delivered a record quarter with all-time highs for both orders and revenue, with strong growth across all 3 EISG markets, general electronics, semiconductors, and automotive and energy. In general electronics, double-digit order and revenue growth was driven by ongoing momentum in AI-related innovation and infrastructure investments. Customer capacity investment for high-performance PCBs was again strong this quarter. Greater complexity, increasing density interconnects, multilayer architectures, and higher speeds are driving customer engagement across multiple standards and applications, resulting in a higher test intensity for PCBs.

In education, we saw healthy demand from governments and universities around the globe in the development of next generation of semiconductor workforce talent through our tailored training modules. Our solutions are also facilitating leading-edge university research in advanced technologies with key wins this quarter in quantum, photonics, semiconductor and 6G. In our semiconductor markets, we saw continued momentum in the pace of innovation and customer investments as the industry races to scale capacity through 2030. AI ecosystem demand further accelerated this quarter across advanced node memory and silicon photonics. Our collaborations with leading foundries from R&D to production are enabling faster development and commercial ramp timelines for increasingly complex chip architectures and packaging. This quarter, we had key wafer test solution wins in support of silicon photonics and advanced node programs across Asia, the U.S. and Europe, while our solutions for key lithography customers grew strongly as well.

We expect this to be a sustainable contributor of growth for us over the next several years. Finally, in automotive and energy, orders grew for the third consecutive quarter as the business has largely stabilized. Growth was across both software-defined vehicles and EV charging solutions, with key wins for in-vehicle network, cybersecurity and over-the-air design and validation at OEMs and test labs globally. They're leveraging our expertise and leadership in networking applications to develop solutions for the new mobility market. In closing, the strong results we're delivering in fiscal 2026 reflect the execution of our strategy we outlined at Investor Day in 2023, centered around consistently identifying and investing in long-term growth opportunities across technology trends, transforming industries and global market dynamics.

This framework has guided our disciplined organic and inorganic investments, enabling us to build a differentiated portfolio aligned with some of the world's most important and fastest-growing end markets. As we are focused on capitalizing on our early leadership in the AI data center infrastructure ecosystem, we're equally excited by the broader set of secular growth opportunities we're progressing, including defense technology, space, 6G and quantum computing. We believe our portfolio's technology leadership, product pipeline and deep customer relationships position us well to capitalize on these opportunities and continue creating long-term value for our customers and shareholders. All of this value creation is enabled by the commitment of our team and the collaborative and innovative culture in the company. I want to acknowledge the entire Keysight team for their hard work and dedication to our success.

I'll now pass the call over to Neil to provide additional details on our financial performance and guidance. Neil?

Thank you, Satish, and hello, everyone. We delivered outstanding results in fiscal Q2, setting new company records for orders, revenue and earnings per share. Our teams capitalized on the robust and dynamic demand environment, resulting in strong double-digit growth across all our business groups. Q2 orders of $2 billion 51 million were up 56% on a reported basis, with acquisitions adding 700 basis points and currency adding 100 basis points. On a core basis, excluding those items, orders grew 48%. Revenue of $1 billion 717 million was up 31% on a reported basis and up 24% on a core basis. Gross margin was 72.3% and operating expenses were $669 million. We delivered net income of $497 million and earnings per share of $2.87.

As noted in our earnings press release, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating the IEEPA tariffs, in Q2 we recognized the impact of tariff refunds and the refund of associated surcharges collected from our customers. This resulted in a $40 million reduction in Q2 revenue and a $97 million reduction in costs and expenses. Excluding these one-time impacts, Q2 revenue was $1,758 million, up 35%. Gross margin was 67.6%, up 300 basis points, and EPS was $2.58, up 52%. Our Q2 investor presentation contains additional details on these adjustments, including impacts by operating segment.

These strong results were driven by acceleration in our organic business, which excluding one-time tariff impacts, delivered operating margin of 30.4%, up 520 basis points year-over-year as a result of 49% operating leverage. Moving to the segments, the Communication Solutions Group generated revenue of $1.231 billion, up 35% on a reported basis and up 27% on a core basis. CSG gross margin was 74.1% and operating margin was 33.4%. Within CSG, the commercial communications business generated revenue of $858 million, up 40%, with robust growth in both wireless and wireline. Aerospace, defense, and government achieved revenue of $373 million, an increase of 24%.

The Electronic Industrial Solutions Group generated $486 million in revenue, an increase of 24% with growth across all three end markets: general electronics, semiconductor, and automotive and energy. EISG delivered gross margin of 67.8% and operating margin of 33.1%. Software and services accounted for approximately 36% of Keysight revenue, while annual recurring revenue was 27% of total mix. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with $2,412 million in cash and cash equivalents, generating record cash flow from operations of $501 million and record free cash flow of $472 million.

This quarter, we repurchased approximately 780,000 shares of Keysight stock at an average price of approximately $283 per share for a total consideration of $220 million. Turning to our outlook. For the third quarter of 2026, we expect revenue in the range of $1.73 billion-$1.75 billion, representing 29% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect Q3 earnings per share to be in the range of $2.43-$2.49, representing 43% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. This guidance is based on a weighted diluted share count of approximately 173 million shares.

Our acquisition integrations remain on track, and we continue to expect $375 million in FY 2026 revenue from the acquisitions and greater than $100 million in cost synergies and other operational efficiencies. As a reminder, we expect to have about 80% of those cost synergies realized on a run rate basis exiting this fiscal year. As Satish mentioned, given the strong results we have delivered in the first half of the fiscal year, combined with our guidance for fiscal Q3, we are on track for revenue growth in the high 20s% range for fiscal 2026. With the visibility we currently have, we would expect to see a historically typical sequential revenue increase into fiscal Q4.

In addition, we are increasing investments to meet these higher growth levels and now expect FY 2026 capital expenditures to be in the range of $200 million. In summary, we delivered a record quarter driven by focused execution with robust growth across our businesses, improved operating leverage, and record cash flow generation. We are seeing accelerating market momentum underpinned by our differentiated portfolio of solutions and increased customer demand, and believe we are well-positioned to capture sustained investments over the near and medium term as we integrate our acquisitions, evolve our portfolio with new product introductions, and make focused R&D investments aligned to multi-year technology trends. With that, I will now turn the call over to Liz to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you, Neil. Abby, will you please provide the instructions for the Q&A session?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. To withdraw your question, press star one a second time. Please hold for just a moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks for taking my question. I have two for Neil. Historically, your backlog had the age of six months. The backlog will be shippable in six months. As your orders are trending at a faster rate, how should I think about the age of backlog? Should I assume that you have enough visibility to extend beyond six? For Satish, I want to follow up to something I asked you last earning conference call. It has to do with the opportunities in the wireline. Perhaps it would be helpful if you could tell us how opportunities in wireline are split between commercial comms and semis.

Yeah. Hi, Mehdi. Let me take this, and maybe Neil can chime in. First and foremost, you know, the opportunities that we size as our AI business, which is I think really the heart of your question, finished the first half in the $500 million-$600 million range, almost in line with what we did the whole of last year. Quite pleased with the progression of the opportunity in the wireline business. You know, the AI portion of our business as we size it for you, is largely in the wireline segment.

Okay.

Secondly, there's really no change.

Yeah, sorry.

There's no change to our backlog policy. We still have a majority of our business, that we book and recognize in a quarter, you know, within a six month period of delivery.

Sure. Is there any way we can size the wireline or AI opportunity as it relates to components?

Components for?

For wireline and AI. Well, the reason I ask the question is, historically, you have had exposure to the entire stack, including components. The components that go into

wireline networking system. Of this $5 - $600 million, how does the component size relative to the?

Yeah

rest of the stack?

I think I understand the opportunity. I think if you think about our entire business, you know, it's pretty broad-based. We service the computing marketplace, the networking marketplace, the transceivers and interconnects, and also the hyperscalers, right? We service pretty significant part of their workflow, you know, early R&D to early design to validation, conformance, compliance testing, into emulations and as they deploy these large clusters. Particularly for this quarter, again, things more around any given quarter, we also participated meaningfully in the scale-out opportunity, which is where some of the transceiver related businesses fall in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Spinola with UBS. Your line is open.

Thanks. I wanted to ask about the Q3 revenue guide. I guess, you know, you gave the number pro forma for the tariff, and I guess the midpoint of the range would be kind of down slightly from Q2. I'm just wondering, was there anything sequential in any of the businesses that we should expect to decline in Q3, or what's driving that guidance?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we take the same approach to guidance that we always take, where we look at what's scheduled to ship beginning into the quarter, and we have, you know, pretty robust models looking at, you know, how in-quarter orders are gonna convert to revenue. As you noted, you know, the Q3 revenues are I would describe as in line with what we saw in Q2, slightly down, but largely in line. I think it's, as we look at on a half-over-half basis, you know, given our more qualitative comments about Q4, we are expecting, you know, the second half of the year to be materially above the first half as we grow. Yeah, expecting significant growth in the second half on a revenue basis.

Yeah, I also wanna add, this is Satish. I also want to add that the customer demand continues to be very strong. The pace of revenue conversion is influenced by the mix and some timings of some new product introductions and how quickly we can ramp them. Particularly, I think we noted that we have a higher backlog in our AI business due to the strong demand in the first half, and we also have a strong pipeline of systems wins that we've in our backlog, both in our semiconductor business, aerospace defense business, which typically have a longer lead times.

Understood. I just wanted to ask, you know, the orders growth in the quarter was quite strong. I'm just wondering in general, are you seeing any change in the way your customers are buying, or are there any concerns on their part about, you know, ensuring supply, or is this just organic growth from AI demand that we're seeing? Thank you.

Thank you for asking. The strength, it was an exceptional quarter. you know, bookings were very strong. It was record bookings for the company, and the strength was broad. If you think of the themes of the strength, AI was obviously the strong theme. Equally, aerospace defense and semiconductor were key contributors to that growth. The growth came across all our businesses and across all of our sales regions, which we are very pleased by. Even with the strong finish, we expect we are entering the second half with a solid set of opportunities that we're very excited about. I'd say that it's broad strength.

From a customer behavior, probably the only thing that we've seen is that for the AI business, there was a stronger sense of urgency from our customers to convert, which translates to a velocity in the pipeline where things or opportunities moved faster, but that's about it. There was no pull forwards that we can, that if any, we can discern from the data.

That's clear. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the results. You know, it's been a while, but there's been a lot of dynamics that have changed since you guys have provided a longer term, you know, growth framework. I'm curious, Satish, as you think about what's evolved in the business, how you think about the growth algorithms, you know, looking forward for the company. Is 5%-7% still the right growth rate, or should we be thinking that this, just the TAM itself, seems with AI to have a stronger growth profile to it?

Thank you, Aaron. You know, yes, thank you for noting it was a great quarter. We're very excited also by the opportunities to have a strong year this year. I would say from a value creation algorithm, you know, fundamental is organic growth for us. There were three pillars that I laid out, right? This idea that innovation is only going to accelerate, creating a portfolio and a company that's built around the first to market capabilities is something we view sustainable. When we called out AI in 2023, you know, it was just about the time of the ChatGPT moment. We felt really good about the long-term opportunity. We identified it, we invested in it. We're excited by not only AI, but also the other opportunities that we laid out as part of this accelerating technology trends.

Equally, we continue to expand our customer footprint, as different end markets become addressable. We talked about automotive, which has been okay, but space and satellite is one area that's emerging that we're very excited right now, and into the future into 6G. The third one, it's very important, to be a resilient company, is to be a company that navigates market dynamics and identifies opportunity. I think one of the things that we called out was supply chain rebalancing or reshoring that was occurring globally. This quarter and for the whole half, the investments that we made from a go-to-market perspective has enabled us to grow our Southeast Asia business significantly as the supply chains get reconfigured.

I feel very confident about our strategy as we look ahead, and the progress we have made in progressing each of our initiatives has got a multi-year runway as we think about it. We'll update you on the long-term growth dynamics of the market and our ability to outperform. I am very confident of our ability to outperform under a range of economic conditions. We'll keep you updated on what that forecast should look like as we look ahead.

Fair enough. As a quick follow-up, you know, Neil, I'm curious, when we think about the gross margin, I know there's some adjustments given the tariff refunds to consider in the reported results, but still very strong gross margin of 300 basis points. You know, is there any kind of one-time items this quarter, or is that a good durable level of gross margin that you think is something to consider going forward? Thank you.

Yeah, no, I think if you make the adjustments for the tariff, and again, we provided a reconciliation in our presentation, you'll see gross margin excluding the one-time items in the mid-67% range. I think, you know, post the acquisitions which were accreted to our gross margins, I think that's the right level at these volumes.

Yep. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks so much for the question. Congrats on the quarter. Maybe, Neil, a question for you just in terms of, you know, the incremental margins, moving, you know, close to 50%. Just wondering how you're thinking about incremental margins, just given kind of prior commentary about, kind of 40% being that level. Just trying to get a sense of whether the acquisitions have meaningfully changed that. Then maybe a second question, just in terms of, you know, as you guys see all of this AI and just other categories kind of, accelerating, just in terms of how you're thinking of the blend of the business between production and lab, or has that meaningfully changed at this point? Thanks.

I'll take the first question with regard to the incrementals. Obviously, we incremental this year, this quarter on a core basis was just under 59%, and if I'm remembering correctly, it was similar last quarter. I think it has less to do with the acquisitions than it does with the high rate of growth, right? We've talked for a long time about 40% incrementals on mid-single-digit growth. I think that's the right way to think about our business when we're growing at mid-single digits. Obviously, when you're growing at multiples of that, you have an opportunity, you know, with tightly managed tight expense management to outperform on the incremental, and that's what you're seeing from us. Again, we're pleased with the flow-through in this environment.

Yeah, I think that addressed the question.

With regard to the second part of the question, Meta, we're, you know, we feel like we have a very strong portfolio with a strong value proposition for the R&D customer and the manufacturing customer. It's really about their workflow, how do we enable them to innovate on the front end, but then carry the advantages and learnings into production where there is value? That's what we have focused on. This quarter, as an example, and even for the half, both R&D and manufacturing components of our business and portfolio doubled. If you look at our wireline business, still a very high percentage of R&D in the portfolio, but manufacturing is obviously up given the scaling that's occurring on the AI clusters.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon. This is Will on for Mark Delaney, and thank you for taking our question. To start off, Satish, I believe you called out space as one of the pillars of growth. Maybe you can help us think about how large of a driver and opportunity non-terrestrial networks and LEOs are to the business, and maybe how big is it to the contributors of revenue today?

Yeah, it's still, it's still a, you know, fairly smaller part of our entire revenue stream. I mean, like space is sub 1% of the total revenue of the company, but especially as it relates to the wireless ecosystem and our participation there. One we feel like positions us very well as that opportunity scales, as more commercial satellites launch, as this multilayered communication architecture of the future emerges. We obviously have a bigger business in space and satellite in the defense sector as well.

We get to participate in the component part of the ecosystem and also as an expansion opportunity into the emulation side of things as things are getting more, more complicated from a spectrum perspective. Feel very good about our early position, also the growth potential looking into the future. Kailash, I don't know if you have any other comments to add on.

Yeah, that's right, Satish. We're obviously excited by the number of constellations scaling. Clearly, you've seen in the news about Amazon, Globalstar, SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile. This ecosystem is widening. We're happy to be in a position to contribute to the scaling of the constellations. The use cases are scaling as well. You have direct-to-cell, you have broadband, you have other applications like autonomous vehicles. The frequency bands are also expanding. You have L, S, E, W, Ka, Ku, Q. All of this is requiring more advanced capabilities. We have the complete portfolio. We're able to emulate the network. We're able to emulate the device. We're able to emulate now orbits as well with the Spirent acquisition and core networks.

We're able to provide an end-to-end solution which customers find very differentiated, and we're excited about the opportunities ahead.

Thank you for all the color. Just for my follow-up, you all maintain that you expect the recent acquisitions to contribute $375 to revenue in fiscal 2026. Is there any reason we haven't seen an uptick in the acquisition revenue expectations given the improve in market demand in your broader business? Thank you.

No, I mean, I think a big chunk of that was, you know, the portions of that we got out of the Synopsys, Ansys acquisition. Those are recurring revenue businesses. Those, you know, so the revenue tends to respond more slowly. I think on the, on the Spirent side, we've certainly seen nice pickup in the PNT side of the business and the network monitoring side of the business. You know, that market is, you know, kind of in between cycles at this point in time. I think we're pleased with the way the integration is going. It's very much on track, well-positioned to deliver both on the revenue and realize the synergies that we communicated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Atif Malik with Citi. Your line is open.

Hi, it's Adrian for Atif. Thank you for the question. We've been hearing more about the adoption of quantum technology, particularly in the defense communities around precision clocks and sensors, and the timeline for quantum computing seems to be pulling in. You did mention quantum a couple of times in your prepared remarks, so I'm interested in how you're seeing quantum shaping the future of test and measurement. Any color you can provide?

Yeah, let me take that one. Thanks for the question. Obviously, quantum is a long-term trend, we're pleased with the progress that we're making. This is an investment that we started to make several years ago. At this point, we are enabling quantum computers, more than 1K quantum computers, going into higher qubit range with multiple entities, government entities, research institutions. It's a steady triple digit business for us. We also are excited about new opportunities where you get into this hybrid compute state where you have quantum computers, you have CPUs and GPUs, really driving the next generation of computer architectures, we're excited to be playing in that long-range team.

Pretty excited, and it's steady, and we're enabling research in this area.

Do you have a follow-up, Adrian?

I don't. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Niknam with Truist.

Hey, thanks so much for taking the question, and congrats on the quarter. I had two questions somewhat related. First, on supply chain, I'm just wondering where you are with procuring enough supply to accommodate the robu-- the robust demand you're seeing, any sort of supplier delays or decommits that you've seen. Just secondarily on memory, if you could just remind us how material some of the cost increases we've seen in memory are to your COGS or gross margins and the strategy to offset the cost increases here. Thanks.

With the first question with regard to the supply chain, I mean, I think it's a true statement that we're actively managing the supply chain more so than we were six months ago. I think we're doing a good job working with suppliers and don't have any major concerns from a supply perspective. I think as Satish mentioned earlier, we have a handful of new products that are enabling, these are NPIs from Keysight that are enabling the AI build-out that are seeing an unprecedented ramp following introduction. We're working really hard to ramp those products more quickly as they transition out of R&D into full scale production.

As you noticed, we've raised our own CapEx spend expectation for the year by about 25% from $160 - $200 million this quarter with the majority of that incremental investment going to aid in that ramp. I guess the last comment that I would make is reminding you that we are vertically integrated, so while we do buy some chips and other things from, you know, from outside parties, a significant portion of our highly specialized chips and assemblies are manufactured in-house by Keysight, which gives us a unique level of control. Remind me the second question. I apologize. It's

Memory in terms of, like, materiality to your COGS, gross margins, and how you're offsetting.

Yeah

the cost increases.

Yeah. The memory is a pretty small portion of our overall BOM, if you will, and we have proportionally less exposure to, you know, the high bandwidth, you know, leading edge memory that is in the news these days.

Thank you.

Our final question comes from the line of Rob Mason with Baird. Your line is open.

Yes, good evening, and congrats again on the quarter as well.

Thanks, Rob.

I was hoping you could contextualize the orders a little finer. I think coming into the quarter, you know, the thought was maybe the book-to-bill would be closer to one and you clearly outperformed that. Just, Satish, you also mentioned more systems orders. You know, are these, you know, I think we used to call them longer-dated orders, but we think larger orders. How are those contributing to orders in terms of percentage of total now versus six months ago?

I'll tell you what, let me knock down the second part of that, and while these guys give broader comment on the broader order picture. With regard to the systems orders, the systems orders that Satish were talking about in aerospace defense and in semi, were not the same as the long-dated orders we were talking about a few years back. These are just products that have lead times that are at the longer end of Keysight products. And we have everything from, you know, stuff that's stocked on the shelves days, kinds of turnarounds, up to things that have, you know, lead times that, you know, are three months or more.

I think in the-- given the nature of the way semi and aerospace defense ordering happens, those tend to be longer lead time products for us. Still largely within the six-month order acceptance window of our standard product portfolio. I'll hand it off to the guys to take the other part.

On the, I'll just say the AI infrastructure, as I mentioned, we saw a stronger sense of customer urgency that manifested in stronger than expected bookings. Equally, we're pleased by the doubling of the number of customers in the AI space. The ecosystem is broadening, and we're participating in it. On the aerospace and defense side, you know, the program spend, the budget stability, both in U.S. and in Europe, has resulted in also stronger bookings, as Neil mentioned. The systems part of it is only as an example to point out that there's a lot of contested threat environments that we're able to emulate and simulate for the security applications, which had considerable momentum in the quarter.

Finally, you know, the semiconductor space has been very strong with advanced nodes, especially with regard to AI compute and the scaling that's occurring globally from a supply chain perspective, and we're capitalizing on all through this quarter. I'll let Steve make some comments on the pipeline and what we see as well from an order perspective.

Thank you, Satish. As you heard, our orders was a record quarter this quarter. Despite that, our funnel remains really, really strong. Our focus on engaging our customers, both new and existing customers, and developing new strong collaborations is really showing up in the funnel metrics. Our funnel intake and our total overall pipeline remains very, very strong. On top of that, our funnel velocity and conversion rates are increasing. With that and our robust upcoming NPI pipeline for the second half, we're very confident in a strong quarter in Q3 and sustained momentum into the second half.

Excellent. Very good. Just a quick follow-up. Caught the update, you know, of course, for full-year revenue growth. Was there any update to, you know, EPS growth expectation? I'm sure there was, but, did you quantify that?

We didn't make any specific comments about EPS. I mean, I think I made a comment around kind of gross margin. You know how we think about incremental margins on growth. I think we've given you enough information to get close.

Very good. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Spinola with UBS. Your line is open. Andrew, your line is live. Please check your mute button.

Very sorry about that. Thank you for taking the follow-up. Satish, I wanted to ask you a very high-level question about your AI business. You know, if I'm thinking on a multi-year period, right now, I guess ASPs are going up as we go from 800 gig to 1.60. You know, we know that the demand for optics is growing strongly from the hyperscalers. I guess my understanding is the complexity grows and the amount of testing grows, so the need for testers grows. There's this very linear growth that seems to be happening. It looks like it appears to be, you know, it baked in over the next couple of years, probably beyond that at this point.

I'm wondering, you know, when I think about a technology market, I think things tend to evolve and customers can get more efficient, and new technologies could maybe change things. I'm wondering how you think about the next couple of years, three years in the AI business, and what are some of the things you're looking at in terms of how it could change or how it could grow?

Thank you, Andrew. Very, very thoughtful question. I mean, it is quite interesting, right? We're still in the very early innings in the overall AI landscape, yet we've all seen multiple turns as this market has moved. I would just say reflecting on what we've seen play out over the last couple of years even, is the focus was only on training and models. Now you're moving from training to inference being the focus with the promise of agentic yet to come. The AI clusters are scaling, and we know one thing for sure is that there's gonna be a few 100GW of capacity that is gonna come online through 2030.

If you think of the big headline numbers, people talk about the $multi-hundred billion of spend commitments being made, it takes quite a bit of time for all of that to trickle through the ecosystem and the supply chain and manifest itself into demand that is actually implemented in a data center. We all know constructions are still going on, et cetera. This ecosystem is expanding as well. I would say the what was once a fully vertically integrated stack, driven by the fact that now you're thinking about training, you're thinking about inference, there's a little bit more openness to more standards-based environments. The environment's becoming heterogeneous. What does all this mean?

It means that depending on the customer's particular situation, architectures, workloads that they're optimizing for, the type of scale they're building, everything, all plethora of underlying technologies are turning into an end. It's no more is it optical or electrical? Well, it's optical and electrical. It's not just is it open standards or closed? It's both. Is it pluggable optics or integrated optics? It is both. This sort of heterogeneous environment really fits the kinda portfolio that we have, the breadth we have. We're able to participate in it broadening. This is primarily all the stuff I talked about is in the physics of the AI infrastructure. We're equally excited by some of the announcements we made around emulating data center infrastructures, emulating inference infrastructures.

That's still a very small part of the overall business, one we're getting considerable traction from customers. Look, you know, we look at where we stand, and we see this as a multi-year runway that's ahead of us because of all the discussions we're having with customers, you know, around their future plans. You know, we'll keep you posted as we, as we go. We're continuing to invest in what we see unfolding.

I appreciate that color. I wanted to ask just 1 follow-up on that. Another question I get a lot is the difference between the growth in your manufacturing versus R&D businesses in AI. I think the assumption is the manufacturing piece is moving very quickly, but it sounds like from some of the things you highlighted, you've got some strong demand for the emulators as well. How do those compare? Any comment on, you know, what that breakdown is? Has it changed at all from when you indicated it was 70-30?

It's still for the wireline business, largely things move quarter by quarter, but I think it's largely we still, it's in the 70-30 range with both R&D, as I mentioned, in the AI space, both R&D and manufacturing, near doubling as we think about the first half business. You know, we're continuing to make traction in both, but clearly in any given quarter, depending on what customers emphasize, you could see that number move a bit.

Makes sense. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That concludes our question and answer session for today. I would now like to turn the call back over to Liz Morali for any closing comments.

Thank you, Abby, and thank you all for joining us today. A replay of today's call will be available on the investor relations website later today, and we appreciate your interest in Keysight.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes today's call, and you may now disconnect.