SMTC

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Semtech Corporation's first quarter 2027 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following our prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mitch Haws, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for Semtech. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to Semtech's first quarter 2027 financial results conference call. Participants on today's conference call are Hong Hou, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Lin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today after the market close, we released our unaudited results for the first quarter ending April 26th, 2026, which are posted along with an earnings call presentation to our investor relations website at investors.semtech.com. Today's call will include various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects, which comprise forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release and see slide two of the earnings presentation, as well as the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K for a number of risk factors that could cause our actual results and events to differ materially from those anticipated or projected on today's call.

You should consider these risk factors in conjunction with our forward-looking statements. We will refer primarily to non-GAAP financial measures during today's call, and we'll also be referring to results for our first quarter of fiscal year 2027, unless otherwise noted. Please see today's press release and slides three and four of the earnings presentation for important information regarding notes on our non-GAAP financial presentation. The press release and earnings presentation also include reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. With that, I will turn the call over to Hong.

Thank you, Mitch. Good afternoon to all of you joining today. Semtech is off to an exceptional start in fiscal year 2027, delivering record quarterly revenue supported by very strong bookings and backlog. We drove strong sequential and year-over-year revenue and earnings growth, expanded our data center and the LoRa design win pipeline, all while advancing our R&D and strategic initiatives. We believe we have built a robust foundation to solidify and expand our presence in key markets. My strong conviction in Semtech's positioning is rooted in the transformation we have seen across Semtech employees, motivation to engage and then partner across the ecosystem and an appreciation for the benefits of collaboration. The time I have invested has been energizing, and I have appreciated opportunities to join my Semtech colleagues in meeting with hyperscalers, device designers, end customers, module manufacturers, and our technical partners to understand their technology roadmaps firsthand.

Those conversations shaped our R&D priorities and gave us first insights into where the industry is heading and how Semtech can remain at the forefront. My team and I spend time with the key suppliers and distributors to round out our understanding of how Semtech can partner with our customers to win from design to delivery. Looking at the Q1, revenue was $291 million, up 6% sequentially and up 16% year-over-year, driven by continued outperformance in both data center and LoRa. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $0.51, up 34% year-over-year. In addition to delivering strong revenue and earnings growth, we're laser focused on executing our portfolio optimization initiatives. We are pleased to report that the divestiture process for our cellular module business is at the final stages. Discussions, which are transition and integration in nature, are progressing well.

We remain confident this business is a compelling opportunity for the right acquirer, and we look forward to bringing this process and transaction to a successful close. Let me move on to a discussion of our end markets. For Q1, infrastructure net sales were $98.8 million, up 14% sequentially, up 36% year-over-year, strongly supported by our growing data center business. Our net sales for data centers in Q1 were a record $71.6 million, up 14% sequentially and up 39% year-over-year, benefiting from strong demand across our broad portfolio, the result of sustainably increased customer engagement, portfolio alignment, and supply assurance. The strength is anchored by our strong position in our 800 gig FiberEdge portfolio. Demand for our leading TIA solutions is exceptionally strong, growing across a wide range of transceiver programs.

Based on our differentiated technology and ability to supply, both established and emerging module suppliers have qualified us on several new sockets, some on a sole source basis. We understand these module suppliers are winning shares in key mega data center deployments. On 800G linear pluggable optics or LPO, our FiberEdge linear TIA end driver solutions are deployed by several leading hyperscalers across both the U.S. and in China, and which contributed to sequential LPO revenue growth, a trend we expect to accelerate over time. We remain confident our foundation in 800G will continue to drive revenue growth throughout this year, further augmented by significant opportunities as our 1.6T shipments launching in Q2 and gaining momentum in the second half of the year. On 1.6T optical, we generated significant design wins with the major optical module makers for their 1.6T transceivers incorporating the latest generation DSPs.

This contributed to exceptionally strong bookings and backlog to support module ramps in the second half of the year. We're also seeing the increased conviction from hyperscalers around 1.6T linear receive optics or LRO and LPO as a preferred solution for a first layer scale of fabric due to the substantial power savings. Looking further ahead, we are participating in the development of the NPO or near package optics MSA, and to see NPO as a meaningful content expansion opportunity for Semtech as 800G and 1.6T successes in LPO and LRO give hyperscalers confidence in the next evolution of high density and the low power optical solutions. We're also developing derivative components with the same core IP in different form factors to support several NPO projects for leading hyperscalers.

We are actively participating in and support XPO MSA, and the many XPO module designs incorporate our FiberEdge chips as they do in OSFP modules. We believe XPO provides a very compelling alternative to CPO scale out. By leveraging liquid-cooled capabilities, proven technologies, and components, and establish the innovative optical module ecosystem, XPO can provide significant rack space savings along with improved serviceability and better reliability. On the copper side, we are very enthusiastic on CopperEdge deployment. ACC continues to gain meaningful traction. Customers evaluating ACC against incumbent solutions are seeing compelling advantages in link margin versus direct attached, and power savings versus DSP-based solutions. Consistent with our expectations, in Q1, we started shipping CopperEdge 1.6T ICs to our cable partners for deployment at a U.S. hyperscaler. In onboard integration applications, including active backplane, CopperEdge linear equalizers are gaining momentum.

Just as we were confident of ACC's acceptance and ramp in the market, we have increased confidence this engagement will convert into design wins and widespread market adoption. Based on our engagement across different sectors of the industry, we believe we are creating a multi-year pipeline of CopperEdge opportunities, design wins, and revenue. Looking forward, we are excited by the opportunity from the Hyfo acquisition we completed in March. Hyfo is reported in our signal integrity product segment, and its indium phosphide photonic products are reported in the data center end market. These products are a strategic building block in 1.6T and the 3.2T optical modules, and the key pillars in our strategy to support next generation data center requirements.

We believe our GaN chips has become the industry standard, providing higher power and serving as reliable building blocks in tunable lasers for coherent modulation applications in metro and data center interconnects. GaN chip demand currently exceeded our supply, but our capacity expansion plan is on schedule. We believe our continuous wave of CW laser design is uniquely differentiated to deliver higher conversion efficiency, superb far field beam profile, and over temperature performance and narrower lineups. These lasers have been sampled to and evaluated by several major module manufacturers for coherent light modules in scale across applications. Concurrently, we are optimizing our laser drivers and TIAs for coherent light applications. We plan to provide a comprehensive suite of photonic and electronic component solutions for these emerging high volume applications.

We're also working with the key customers to make dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) lasers optimized for emerging CPO scale-up applications based on the newly established OCI MSA. This is exactly the kind of strategic investment we believe creates durable and compounded value. Not just a single product win, but a platform capability that strengthens our position across a broad spectrum of optical architectures our customers are building toward. Semtech is uniquely positioned at this intersection with a portfolio that spans scale up, scale out, and scale across, addressing the full hyperscale interconnect stack across both near-term deployment and next generation architectures like 800G, 1.6T, 3.2T, and beyond.

Finally, given the strength and the depth of our backlog, expanding design win momentum, and the 1.6T FiberEdge and CopperEdge inflection building into the second half, we are targeting 35% sequential revenue growth in Q2 for data center, which would represent 85% growth over the same period last year. Based on the current order trend, we expect accelerating demand throughout fiscal year 2027 and beyond. Moving to the high-end consumer end market. Net sales for Q1 were $38.4 million, up 5% sequentially and up 8% year-over-year. Our TVS business continues to demonstrate impressive resilience and momentum with revenue growth outpacing underlying handset volumes. We continue winning shares and expanding content at the premium brand handset manufacturers. Our differentiated technology is aligned with the right customers, and alignment is translating into consistent design win momentum that we expect to continue.

Beyond handsets, we are actively expanding the TVS franchise into higher value applications. Our newest SurgeSwitch solution is an industry's first circuit protection device to deliver near constant clamping voltage for high voltage power delivery applications, addressing a meaningful protection gap as more demanding power standards extend into rugged mobile devices and high performance portable systems. These are environments that require consistent, reliable protection across extreme temperature range and operating conditions. Our solution is purpose-built to meet that bar. We see this as natural and incremental content expansion that broadens the TVS opportunity beyond our core handset market. We continue to expand our PerSe capacitive sensor design wins in specific absorption rate and smart variable applications. The addition of the fourth sensor business enriches our high-end consumer portfolio, expands application verticals, and pulls through some CAP and TVS sales with the same customer base.

The synergies have played out as we planned. For the high-end consumer end market, we expect sequential revenue growth driven by improving seasonality layered on top of the share and content gains that are becoming a defining characteristic of this business. Moving to our industrial end market. Q1 industrial net sales were $153.9 million, up 2% sequentially and up 8% year-over-year, driven by another great quarter for LoRa. LoRa-enabled net sales were $44.9 million, up 12% quarter-over-quarter and up 14% year-over-year, supported by continued expansion across several application verticals such as smart utilities, smart building, smart city, and asset management. As edge AI transitions from concept to deployment reality, LoRaWAN is emerging as a key enabler. Our fourth generation LoRa platform delivers dual band capability while dramatically expanding data throughput to 2.6 Mbps.

A step change increase that unlocks new AI application classes. At the same time, LoRaWAN maintains the best-in-class sensitivity, multi-protocol flexibility, and ultra-low power consumption that defines the LoRa advantage, preserving the extended reach and the long battery life our customers depend on. We are seeing LoRaWAN gaining traction across a broadened set of use cases. LoRa-connected public safety sensors can now transmit high fidelity audio and AI verification rather than simple alert. In healthcare, fault detection systems can relay visual confirmation before dispatching responders. In industrial environments, predictive maintenance sensors can analyze vibration, thermal, and acoustic profile with a level of detail that legacy low power sensors could not support. We have established three distinct and complementary pillars of our low-power connectivity platforms. LoRaWAN for industrial and commercial deployments, LoRa Plus with multiple protocol flexibility for smart home and security market, and Amazon Sidewalk for mass-market consumer applications.

Together, these growth vectors give rise to accelerated growth in our LoRa business as we target LoRa revenue at an all-time high with greater than 15% sequential quarterly revenue growth for Q2. Our IoT systems and connectivity business recorded Q1 net sales of $88.3 million, down 2% sequentially and up 2% year-over-year. Our newly released AirLink RX400 and AirLink EX400 routers are generating strong industry reception. These are industry-leading low-power 5G cellular systems purpose-built for mission-critical applications, and the feedback from customers has been consistently positive. I recently attended our annual AirLink Partner Summit alongside national carriers, integration partners, and value-added resellers, and the enthusiasm for both the router performance and our upgraded AirLink management software was clear. The close collaboration with our channel partners positions us to scale successful use cases from regional to national deployments and accelerate this high-margin business.

We are off to a strong start, and the momentum is building. Our data center business is firing on all cylinders. LoRa is entering a new chapter of growth. The strategic decisions we have made in prioritizing key R&D efforts, enhancing supply assurance, and portfolio optimization are all translating into tangible results and the financial flexibility to pursue strategic opportunities. Our priorities for fiscal 2027 are straightforward. First, accelerating growth by supporting customer ramps with availability and the operational excellence required to compete in this capacity-constrained environment. Second, intensifying R&D investment to add new growth drivers and deepen our solution differentiation, specifically in component offerings for coherent light, CPO, LoRa, and sensors. Third, continuing to transform Semtech by strengthening our culture and completing the initial steps of portfolio optimization. We are just getting started, and the opportunities ahead have never been more compelling.

With that, I will turn the call over to Mark for additional details on our financial results and our second quarter outlook. Mark?

Thank you, Hong. For Q1, we recorded our ninth consecutive quarter of net sales growth, with record net sales of $291 million above the high end of our outlook range. Net sales grew 16% year-over-year, while adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.51 increased 34% year-over-year. Net sales trends by end market, reportable segment, and geographic region are included in the accompanying earnings presentation. Adjusted gross margin was 53%, 20 basis points above the midpoint of our outlook, and total semiconductor products gross margin was 60.7%, 30 basis points above the midpoint of our outlook, both reflective of a favorable mix from our data center and LoRa portfolio. For our signal integrity product segment, Q1 gross margin was 62.7%, compared to 67.4% in Q4. Q1 is the first quarter of operating our recently acquired indium phosphide facility.

This facility is in ramp mode to meet very strong customer demand, and I'm pleased with the integration team's progress in meeting its operating and financial targets. We continue to expect gross margin contributions from our 1.6T data center portfolio to be accretive to both our total semiconductor products and signal integrity products gross margin. Gross margin for IoT systems and connectivity was 35.8%, up sequentially from Q4's 31.6%. Adjusted net operating expenses were $95.1 million, slightly favorable to the low end of our guidance range, reflective of timing on project-related expenses. Demonstrating the operating leverage in our business, a number of metrics were favorable to the high end of our guidance range, including adjusted operating income of $59.3 million, adjusted operating margin of 20.4%, adjusted EBITDA of $66.4 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 22.8%.

Reflective of capital structure changes, Semtech remained in a net interest income position in Q1. We recorded adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.51, above the high end of our guidance range. Operating cash flow for Q1 was $36.2 million, sequentially down 41% from $61.5 million and up 30% from $27.8 million a year ago. Free cash flow for Q1 was $28 million, sequentially down 53% from $59.1 million and up 7% from $26.2 million a year ago. Q1 operating and free cash flow reflect fiscal year 2026 annual bonus payments. In addition, net acquisition consideration of $29.2 million is reflected in our Q1 ending cash and cash equivalents balance of $163.3 million. Principal amount of debt was $503 million, unchanged from last quarter. Now turning to our outlook for the second quarter of fiscal year 2027.

We currently expect net sales of $328 million, ±$5 million, up 13% sequentially and up 27% year-over-year at the midpoint, with growth expected across each of our three segments. We expect net sales from our infrastructure end market to increase sequentially, with projected sequential data center growth of 35%, supported by accelerating shipments of 800 gig and 1.60 components. We expect net sales from our high-end consumer end market to increase, benefiting from improved seasonal trends, market share gain on our TVS products, and contributions from our sensing portfolio. We expect net sales from our industrial end market to broadly grow with accelerating contributions from LoRa, IoT systems and connectivity, and industrial TVS. Based on expected product mix and net sales levels, we expect adjusted gross margin to be 54%, ±50 basis points.

Midpoint, this equates to an increase of 100 basis points sequentially and 80 basis points year-over-year. Our gross margin outlook for our total semiconductor products is expected to be 62.1%, ±50 basis points. At the midpoint, this equates to an increase of 140 basis points sequentially and year-over-year, reflective of stronger data center and LoRa mix. Adjusted net operating expenses are expected to be $105.2 million, ±$2 million. Included in this outlook is increased R&D spend to accelerate time to market on key data center projects, along with SG&A that declines as a % of revenue. We have demonstrated strong returns on our R&D investment and believe we remain prudent on SG&A spend. This results in adjusted operating margin at the midpoint of 21.9%, up 150 basis points sequentially and up 310 basis points year-over-year.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $79.2 million, ±$2.3 million, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint of 24.2%, up 140 basis points sequentially and up 230 basis points year-over-year. We expect adjusted interest and other expenses net to be approximately $500,000. We expect an adjusted normalized income tax rate of 17%, consistent with last quarter's outlook. These amounts are expected to result in adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.61, ±$0.02, up 20% sequentially and up 49% year-over-year at the midpoint, based on a weighted average share count of 97.7 million shares.

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

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Rick Schafer with Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, and thanks, guys, for letting me ask a question, and congrats on another good quarter. Hong, if I could, maybe my first question, I didn't hear you mention it on the call, and I'm sorry if I missed it, but where do we sit now with OCI MSA specs, and when do you expect that we'll get those specs finalized? Because I'm really curious if you think interoperability is holding back the OCI ramp at all, and if you think ratification, I mean, does that create sort of that dam burst moment with some of the other CSP? That's my first question. I'm just curious what you think about that.

Yeah. Rick, thank you. That's a good question. I did not mention in my prepared script, but that's a good point. MSA, they announced right around the DesignCon time. They're still working on finalizing the specification. You are right. When every industry participants, they're on the same page, it will help to accelerate the adoption of the ACC. Currently, they are working on the common denominators, as you can imagine, from different cable manufacturers. There are some related to the cable design. There's some performance related to the manufacturing processes. They just wanted to segregate those different impacts and define a standard and specification that every cable manufacturer can go with and sign off for. Yeah, that can be a catalyst for more accelerated adoption of ACC.

Thanks, Hong, for my follow-up, just on a supply side, I mean, you guys are clearly seeing that step up in growth in 2Q, and I heard you loud and clear talk about acceleration through the year on the top line. My big question is, do you see any curves on your ability to capture some of that upside that's coming through? Continue to capture share like you're doing. I mean, maybe if you could, level-set us on basically what top line currently your current capacity actually supports. Thanks.

Yeah, Rick, that's a great question. This is a time capacity is king. We anticipated that. We started working on the capacity and availability. You hear me like a broken record to talk about making it available over the past quarters, and we started about 18 months ago. I am so happy to say that in this very supply constrained environment. We're doing quite well. We have the availability, we have the right product, we have the right customer engagement. We can support even the drop-in orders. That's why our momentum is building so fast. Going forward, looking into the visibility, the booking, and the outlook opportunities, clearly the capacity we have put in place is now going to be serving us well going forward. We have already started effort lining up with our foundry and OSAT partners, adding capacity and testing.

We are building capacity further, double or triple the current capacity. That's how our conviction is supporting our current planning process.

Thanks, Hong.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shawn O'Laughlin with Cowen and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks, gentlemen. Good afternoon, and thanks for letting me hop on and ask a question here. Congrats on obviously the really solid results and guidance. Hong, one of the things that I perked up at during your prepared remarks was you mentioned the narrow line width CW lasers in the context of coherent light. Then you talked about DWDM and the OCI MSA in the CPO scale up side. I thought that was interesting because I think that the CW and ultra-high power lasers is how we're going about CPO for scale up today. Maybe you're anticipating a shift in how we're going after that in the future.

I was just wondering if you could expand on that and talk about where the Hyfo business is investing their time and is this a organic investment that's coming out of the asset that you acquired, or is there still more to come on either the hiring front or the CapEx front to make this a reality?

Good. Shawn, thank you. That was very good question. Well, good questions. First, the coherent light clearly is going to be a major application. As a data center right now consume a lot of power, you cannot build this mega data center in isolation. In more a cluster of data centers. Scale across to be able to interconnect with high bandwidth the different data centers is very, very important applications. I mentioned about my customer sensing trips and talked to 10 different leading module manufacturers. They all supporting our conviction and the vision of the coherent light is going to be ramping up in the mid 2028 in production. We, through the acquisition of Hyfo, have the right product. Our DFB laser, CW lasers, has a narrow bandwidth well below 300 kilohertz. That is so perfect for coherent light applications.

As I mentioned, we have sampled to some key module manufacturers and getting great feedback. We in the qualification process for that, building upon the acquired product from Hyfo. As for CPO, that clearly is going to be high density, low power, high bandwidth transport solutions. For a future scale out and scale up. As I mentioned in the past, just the current way of the CPO, our FiberEdge product is not an opportunity for FiberEdge product because the customers will be using integrated solutions. We have to be developing application to participate meaningfully in this huge emerging opportunities. This so happened that the Hyfo acquisition, the lasers we bought, and also the gain chips and semiconductor optical amplifiers can really serve the part of the light sources for CPO scale up applications. We're working internally.

We're also working with the partners to provide high power DWDM CPO laser source solutions. This is more for 2028 opportunities. You see our pattern. We're not only investing in the current generation, not only investing in the growth driver for the immediate next year, but a year after that as well. We got a very healthy pipeline of new products and broaden our portfolio serving the high bandwidth AI data center connectivity space.

Awesome. Thanks for all that color, Hong Hou, very clear. Wanted to ask Mitch Haws, guiding for, I think, more than $10 million sequentially in OpEx. Presumably that's not necessarily all going to snacks for the break room, maybe you could just talk about, you mentioned R&D spend and SG&A was coming down as a share of total sales, focus points. Is it going to hiring? Are there maybe non-CapEx type expenses, prepayments, anything like that? That'd be helpful. Thanks.

Sean, we expect to continue to invest in the business. We've said that that's kind of our number one use of capital for capital allocation. The vast majority of the incremental spend is going towards high conviction R&D programs. Largely in data center, also supporting LoRa, it's not in SG&A. Maybe just allow me to add some percentages to that color. R&D in Q1, the Q1 that we just closed, R&D was 17.6% of net sales. That's 20 basis points higher than a year ago, up 17% year-over-year. When I compare that to SG&A in this Q1 that we just closed, SG&A was 15.1% of sales. That's a decrease of 200 basis points. SG&A as a percentage of sales has been in a steady decline, we project this decline to continue in Q2.

Our OpEx growth is really grounded in organic investment in our core products, data center and LoRa. In terms of the composition of spending, there's hiring and there's product spend as well. Really, I think the key is that we see some very good returns on this R&D investment.

If I may double-click on the 15% SG&A is actually sales and field application engineering are increasing sequentially. What gets squeezed are getting more operational leverage is the G&A cost.

Thanks, guys. Really helpful and congrats again.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, guys. I want to echo my congrats as well. I did want to double-click on optical, perhaps, a question for you, Hong Hou. If you could talk a little bit more about the contributors to growth there, in particular, how much of this is LPO? How much of this is a single module maker versus a broad 1.6T deployment? And any update on timing for CW and SiPho chips would be great as well.

Great. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for your questions. For Q1, the predominant data center revenue is 800G FRO and LPO. We do see a clear trend of sequential increase from a mid-single digit reported in Q4 for LPO. We're seeing sequential increase, and the 800G is the main driver for the revenue for Q1. Q1, we also have the early ramp of the CopperEdge revenue to support the second half of significant ramp in the cable demand. In Q2, we are going to be seeing the continued strength of 800G FiberEdge for both FRO and LPO.

We're going to be continuing to see the ramp of 1.6T CopperEdge to support ACC for the second half. We're going to be, for the first time, seeing the FiberEdge revenue to support 1.6T optical transceivers in the new DSP designs. As for the revenue source, it's very broad-based. We, as I mentioned, have qualified with almost all module manufacturers, established and emerging ones. We were able to serve some drop-in demand, even in Q1, because they were not in the forecast, and they are very important strategically for us to go forward. We wanted to support their initial volume, even well within the lead time.

Excellent. Yeah, sorry, go ahead, Hong.

No, hopefully that answered your questions for those. Yeah.

Yep. That did. Switching to the copper side, I think you answered a bunch on ACCs. I guess my only question there is maybe diversification beyond your main customer, how is that progressing? In your presentation, you mentioned linear equalizer, I think on PCB, about active backplane applications. If you can speak a little bit more there on the opportunity, that would be great.

Yeah. Thank you. On the ACC diversification, we continue to having samples being evaluated by multiple hyperscalers and enterprise customers. That reception has been going well. As Rick early on asked, the MSA for ACC is going to help as well. We were actually also seeing the exciting opportunities from multiple physical customers on the linear equalizer onboard. Those are for the real programs. We have the hyperscaler engagement. We have their manufacturing partner, ODM, close engagement as well. Going well. We do expect, as I said, from linear equalizer onboard, on the back plane, and also ACC cables, additional design wins in coming quarters. Early on, people have some doubt and speculation on, oh, copper is to the end of the life. We need to put a terminal value on it, just not yet.

It is going not only strong, it's very strong on higher data rate as well, beyond 224 gig. We're engaging with customers to support higher data rate as well. We're very optimistic about CopperEdge product for its growth potential in the future.

Thanks, Hong. Congrats again.

Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. I'll also offer my congratulations on the nice results and outlook. I just wanted to follow up on Chris's question there on the onboard linear equalizer opportunity. You mentioned hyperscalers, but I was going to ask from a signaling perspective, are you guys seeing demand for linear equalizers for both unidirectional SERDES on those back planes as well as bidirectional SERDES? Can you just talk about your ability to support both unidirectional and bidirectional SERDES on those back planes? I've got a follow-up.

Yeah. Thank you, Quinn, for that question. Yes, we did get request for that BiDi linear equalizer as well. Our current CopperEdge portfolio can only support unidirectional, but our engineers have been put on a drawing board. We have a preliminary architecture formulated to be able to do BiDi on one chip and to support the future more compact interconnect topology.

Any idea when that might be ready? Would that be ready calendar 2027?

The process is once we define the product definition, what goes through the simulation stage. Clearly, BiDi integrated in one package need to be very carefully balanced so that they don't have the crosstalk and introducing additional noise, but it's totally doable. We just are looking at the different competing priorities and getting that defined. We are in a stage of engaging with the customers and trying to sync up with a model, and therefore, after that, we'll allocate resources and start doing the development. The good news is the key building blocks of IP, we already have that in existence. The CopperEdge product, we have three generations in going for a different noise suppression and different frequency domain equalization schemes, and we have rich building block IPs available to drag and drop and getting a product put together pretty quickly.

Yeah. Thank you, Hong. Then, I guess either for Mark or Hong, just you talked about expecting data center growth to accelerate. If I've got my numbers right, looks like with the 35% sequential growth in the July quarter, your data center business in the first half of 2027 will be up about 62% versus the first half of 2026. Would you care to give us some sense? Do you think the entire data center business, could that grow 70, maybe 75% year-on-year in fiscal 2027? I think last quarter you had expressed confidence in 50% year-on-year growth for data center.

Quinn, you're right. In last quarter, that floor number certainly created some confusion. I will not cap that for the year-over-year. As I said, Q2 to Q1, we are very comfortable about sequential 35% quarter-over-quarter growth. Based on the visibility, the backlogs, and the booking we have, we can comfortably say in that second half, the growth rate is going to be accelerating because of the additional growth drivers in 1.6T CopperEdge and FiberEdge 1.6T and Hyfo optical components. It's going to be an exciting year in FY 2027, and we'll be having the unprecedented year-over-year growth.

Excellent. Looking forward to it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cody Acree with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a very strong quarter outlook. Maybe, Hong, can you maybe just talk about your LPO and 1.6T optical expectations, whether that be through module partners or is that more hyperscale driven?

Cody, thank you. The 1.6T, the current design wins we have from multiple major module suppliers in serving different end markets. They're either hyperscalers or a GPU company providing the system solutions. The initial ramp is going to be FRO, fully retimed optics, and we do have the linearized drivers and TIAs provided to the module customers. They're in the evaluation to do LRO or LPO at a 1.6T. The initial volume ramp is going to be FRO, and we do have the right product in the pipeline to be evaluated by our module customers.

Hong Hou, can you maybe help us reframe the total available addressable market for both ACCs and LPOs as you exit this year and look into next?

Yeah. Cody, I think we will probably, when we think the portfolio cleaned up, we're going to be having a tech day or analyst day. At that time, we'll be providing more comprehensive terms, projection, and for our broad product portfolio. At this point, we are just aggressively attacking the opportunities ahead of us. We will be having more quantitative information provided in the future.

Excellent. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tristan Gerra with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. Given the commentary about Broadcom CPO ramping and main volume not until 2029, and the potential for ACC to be at 800G per lane, how should we look at the duration of the double-digit growth that you see in ACC? Obviously, the business is very strong now. Do you think that that business continues to grow three, four years from now, and how well-positioned you are from a technology standpoint, particularly as we get new waves of switches that have stronger SERDES?

Tristan, thank you for the question. Broadcom, clearly, they're the industry leader. They provide outstanding SERDES quality, and with a good signal integrity, that has been the essential performance enabler for the linear redriver. Because if the signal come out not very good, linear redriver cannot make it whole a lot better. We are the pure beneficiary of the Broadcom good SERDES rather than a victim. Their 100G, 200G, and going to 800G per lane in the future, they can go for a certain distance, the so-called bump-to-bump link budget. The redriver linear equalizer can only make it better to stretch the reach to improve the signal integrity compared to the cables or trace without it. This is really complementary capabilities, not like their better service would not need a linear equalizer.

In a way, as you know, that the current ACC cable customer, they are using Broadcom services as well. We have our linear equalizer in the ACC cable to support the interconnects. Their CPO is primarily, my understanding, the current roadmap is support CPO scale-out. They are the leading switch provider anyway, without a CPO or with CPO. Motivation for them to do CPO could be a little bit different from the other leader in the industry. As for 800G per lane, that is two generations ahead, in general, as the data rate goes up the transmission distance is shortened. The rack, on the other hand, is going to be going bigger. The topology will have to require a longer length. You can do CPO to have the optical scale up, but you always have some traces.

It's just a tool or a cue to use optical scale up. By putting a redriver in between, you may as well just extend the reach long enough to allow the copper scale up. This is a complementary capability I think is going to be there for a long while.

Okay, thank you. That's very useful. Could you talk about your medium-term views on LoRa? Clearly, it's rebounding. We're past the inventory accumulation that we saw a year and a half ago. Where could this business grow in the next few years? How does that improve the mix? Any update on whether the deployments that you see this year and next year are primarily driven on the base station side or the actual sensor side? I don't know if there's any numbers to back up versus base station product for LoRa.

Yeah. Yeah, there are several questions. Let me try to address a couple of them. First of all, the growth potential we see is really exciting. As we mentioned, there's three things we did in increasing the bandwidth and increasing the LoRa capability by adding other RF protocols to unlock new application verticals like security, like smart building. The mass market, like Amazon Sidewalk. Those are all bringing new growth drivers to LoRa. The second question, really a good one. Tristan, you know this market well. We see if a year ago, LoRa growth has been primarily on the end node. We are increasing the end node right now to what? 150 million end nodes. Started from last nine months, 12 months ago, all integrators has been commenting, oh, they are adding new gateways.

That means they have more sensor devices, and they need to improve the coverage and the capacity. That's with the gateway increase, and they will be just pulling in more capacity for end node applications. That's why we see this LoRa growth driven by the three pillars is going to be sustainable. One wild card is the edge AI application, so it's an exciting opportunity. We're just starting, so we have been helping the market and generating a lot of collaterals and making the market enablement effort to accelerate the growth on that. Thank you, Tristan.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kyle Smith with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, everyone. This is Kyle Smith on for Tore Svanberg at Stifel. I'll also echo my congratulations on the really strong prints and guide. I think in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that gain chip demand currently exceeds your supply. A bit of a two-parter. One, it would be really helpful if you could quantify the degree to which that demand exceeded the supply. Secondly, I know you mentioned that your capacity expansion plan is well on track, maybe when do you expect your increase in capacity to intersect with the demand that you're seeing from the market?

Thank you, Kyle. The gain chip, as you know, Hyfo and its predecessor, EMCORE, has been a leading supplier of gain chip integrated into the tunable laser for metro and coherent applications. We have a solid customer base, and after the acquisition of Hyfo by Semtech, we have a lot of inbound interest from the customers that Hyfo has not been able to serve. You aggregate the demand will probably outpace the capacity by about 3X also. We clearly are adding capacity by adding more shift, by adding more manufacturing space, which primarily clean room, and by adding more process equipment. We are doing very creative ways to expand the capacity. We expect by the end of this year, we can get the capacity increased by about 3, 4X, and end of next year, it's going to be another 3, 4X.

To serve the high-end coherent market.

That's really helpful color. Thank you. I guess pivoting over to LPO and LRO, it's pretty clear that the market is growing, and the opportunity just continues to expand. I guess from your position today, based on the outlook that you provided on the call, what degree do you feel that that raised guide is coming from potential market share gains? To what degree do you feel it's more so coming from just the market as a whole expanding meaningfully as we see these deployments take shape?

Yeah, Kyle, I think, the LPO, LRO, we see the growth is primarily driven by the customer shift from FRO to the LPO, LRO. The reason for that is that they evaluated their connectivity topology and to see where they can save powers. We do expect in a year or two timeframe, the linear solution will account for 25% plus or minus of the total transceiver mix.

Thank you. Congratulations again.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now live.

Yeah, thanks for sneaking me in. Guys, congratulations on the strong results. I wanted to start off just with a clarification. Clearly we're seeing much higher growth here than we were expecting three months ago, with the business seemingly tracking in the 70s range now versus up LoRa 50% earlier. The question is this: where across TIAs, LPOs, and ACC are we seeing the greatest acceleration versus what we were expecting three months ago?

Yeah, Craig, that's a great question. We were on the road right after OFC. The dynamic has picked up pretty dramatically. The demand across the board, not on just one product, across the board for FiberEdge, CopperEdge, 800G, 1.6T, LPO, LRO, and lasers, they all have demonstrated such a strong demand. It's broad-based.

That's very helpful, Hong. Thanks. One of the things that's clear from your prepared remarks and here in the Q&A is just the significant visibility you have in the back half of the year. Can you characterize across the different product groups to what extent does that extend? Are you actually getting visibility into fiscal 2028, or is it really at different points into the back half of this fiscal year? Thank you.

Yes. Back half of this year into the first half of fiscal 2028.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. Therefore, I'll now turn the call back over to Mitch Haws for closing remarks.

That concludes today's call. Thanks to all of you for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing you at various investor events.