Broadcom Q3 2021 Earnings Report

Broadcom EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.70
• Consensus EPS: $0.69
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.01
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.54

Broadcom Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $6.78 billion
• Expected Revenue: $6.76 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$21.32 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +16.40%

Broadcom Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2021
• Date: 9/1/2021
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, September 1, 2021
• Conference Call Time: 8:00PM ET

Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) (NASDAQ:AVGO) designs, develops and supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software products for businesses, telecommunications providers and other organizations worldwide. Its semiconductor portfolio includes networking and connectivity components, custom application-specific integrated circuits, broadband and wireless communications products, storage adapters, optical components, and industrial solutions.

The company also provides enterprise infrastructure software through businesses including VMware, which offers virtualization and private- and hybrid-cloud solutions; mainframe and enterprise software; and cybersecurity products. These offerings support data centers, cloud computing, telecommunications networks, storage systems, industrial applications and enterprise information technology environments.

Broadcom’s history includes roots in the semiconductor operations of Hewlett-Packard, the formation of Avago Technologies in 2005, and Avago’s acquisition of Broadcom Corporation in 2016. The combined company adopted the Broadcom name and has since expanded its software operations through acquisitions, including CA Technologies, Symantec’s enterprise security business and VMware. Broadcom is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Hock E. Tan and serves customers across North America, Europe, Asia and other international markets.

Broadcom Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• The company reported Q3 non-GAAP net revenue of $6.8 billion, up 16% year-over-year, with Semiconductor Solutions at $5 billion (+19%) and Infrastructure Software at $1.8 billion (+10%).
• Networking revenue rose 19% to $1.8 billion on 5G backhaul and data-center share gains, while server-storage connectivity fell 9% to $673 million but is forecast to grow low-double digits in Q4.
• Broadband sales grew 23% to $910 million, driven by Wi-Fi 6 access gateways and next-gen fiber/DOCSIS deployments, and wireless is set to ramp ~33% sequentially in Q4 on new smartphone launches.
• Management maintained disciplined supply-chain allocation—shipping to real end-user demand to keep lead times stable and avoid excess channel inventory despite high OEM bookings.
• Q4 guidance calls for total revenue of $7.35 billion (+14% YoY), with semiconductor up double digits, software up mid-single digits, and free cash flow conversion near 50% of revenue supporting a $3.60/share dividend.

Presentation

[Operator]

Welcome to Broadcom Inc.'s third quarter fiscal year 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Ji Yoo, Director of Investor Relations of Broadcom Inc.

[Ji Yoo, Director of Investor Relations at Broadcom Inc]

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on today's call are Hock Tan, President and CEO, Kirsten Spears, Chief Financial Officer, Tom Krause, President, Broadcom Software Group, and Charlie Kawwas, Chief Operating Officer. Broadcom also distributed a press release and financial tables after the market closed describing our financial performance for the third quarter of fiscal year 2021. If you did not receive a copy, you may obtain the information from the investors section of Broadcom's website at broadcom.com. This conference call is being webcast live, and a recording will be available via telephone playback for one week. It will also be archived in the investors section of our website at broadcom.com. During the prepared remarks, Hock and Kirsten will be providing details of our third quarter fiscal year 2021 results, guidance for our fourth quarter, as well as commentary regarding the business environment.

[Ji Yoo, Director of Investor Relations at Broadcom Inc]

We'll take questions after the end of our prepared comments. Please refer to our press release today and our recent filings with the SEC for information on the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made on this call. In addition to U.S. GAAP reporting, Broadcom reports certain financial measures on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures is included in the tables attached to today's press release. Comments made during today's call will primarily refer to our non-GAAP financial results. I'll now turn the call over to Hock.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Thank you, Ji, and thank you everyone for joining us today. In Q3, Semiconductor Solutions revenue grew 19% year-on-year to $5 billion. With infrastructure software revenue growing 10% year-on-year to $1.8 billion, consolidated net revenue was $6.8 billion or up 16% year-on-year. In Q3, demand continued to be strong from hypercloud and service provider customers. Wireless continued to have a strong year-on-year compare, and while enterprise has been on a trajectory of recovery, we believe Q3 is still early in that cycle and that enterprise was down year-on-year. On the supply side, we continue to keep our lead times stable. With that as context, let me provide more color by end markets. Starting with networking. Networking revenue of $1.8 billion grew stronger than we had forecasted, up 19% year-on-year versus low double-digit growth and represented 36% of our semiconductor revenue.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

The better than expected growth was driven by routing from service providers in the expansion of 5G networks for backhaul, metro, and core, as well as major share gains in Ethernet network interface controllers within data centers. While we experienced strong orders from OEMs, consistent with a recovering environment for enterprise spending, we believe actual deployment of networking in enterprise are still lagging from a year ago. Our shipments and revenue appropriately reflects this. In Q4, however, we expect a different set of demand dynamics. We see cloud customers upgrading to our next generation 800 Gb based Tomahawk 4 and Trident switches. We're the first and only provider of 25.6 Terabit switches, and we are shipping two versions, one with 512 lanes at 50G SerDes and the other 256 lanes at 100G SerDes. I would like to highlight that we are the only company today shipping 100G SerDes.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

In data center switching, as in service provider routing, we continue to lead in next generation product transitions as our engineers continue to out-execute what's out there. In Q4, against a very strong year-on-year compare, we expect networking revenue growth to be low double digits year-on-year. Next, our server storage connectivity business was $673 million in Q3, down 9% year-on-year, in line with our guidance and represented approximately 13% of semiconductor revenue. As you know, our products here supply mission critical applications largely to enterprise, which as I said earlier was in a state of recovery. That being said, we have seen a very strong booking trajectory from traditional enterprise customers within this segment. We expect such enterprise recovery in server storage, and the same is happening in networking, to be one of the engines of growth in Q4 and into 2022.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

In this particular segment, customer transition to our next generation SAS and NVMe connectivity at the server is amplifying this growth. The aggressive migration in cloud to 18 terabyte hard disk drives will also provide a strong tailwind to demand for external storage connectivity products in this segment. In sharp contrast to the 9% decline in Q3, we forecast in Q4 server storage connectivity revenue to be up low double digits percentage year-on-year. Moving on to broadband. Revenue of $910 million in Q3 grew 23% year-on-year and represented 18% of semiconductor revenue. This was primarily driven by the 2x growth in deployments of Wi-Fi 6 access gateways, as well as double-digit growth in next generation fiber and DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem deployments. For Q4, we continue to expect double-digit year-on-year revenue growth in broadband as has been seen for the last few quarters.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Looking ahead, we see service providers like AT&T, British Telecom, and even Deutsche Telekom deploying in increasing volumes next generation last mile fiber connectivity to homes in the U.S. and globally. These are multi-year and multi-billion dollar investments by these operators. Attached to every one of these fiber nodes, you need Wi-Fi connectivity for the last 100 ft within the homes. We lead the global transition to Wi-Fi 6 today. We expect our strong design win momentum for Wi-Fi 6E at U.S. and European operators will sustain our market position into the next generation. Moving to wireless. Q3 revenue of $1.4 billion was up 35% year-on-year, in line with expectations and represented 29% of semiconductor revenue mix.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

In Q4, we expect wireless revenue to ramp approximately 33% sequentially in support of the launch of next-generation smartphones and to be up 25% year-on-year. Finally, industrial revenue of $205 million in Q3 represented approximately 4% of Q3 Semiconductor Solutions revenue. Resales here grew what we consider an unsustainable 55% year-over-year, driven by aggressive buying from OEMs in automotive, robotics, and renewable energy. As a result, inventory in our channels declined significantly to below two months. Turning to Q4, we do expect resales to come down to a more rational 20% year-upon-year growth. In summary, Q3 Semiconductor Solutions revenue was up 19% year-on-year, and in Q4, we expect the momentum to continue and revenue growth to be up double-digits percentage year-on-year.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Turning to software. In Q3, infrastructure software revenue of $1.8 billion grew 10% year-on-year and represented 26% of total revenue. Within this, Brocade grew 27% year-on-year, driven by the launch of new generation Gen 7 Fibre Channel SAN products. Excluding Brocade, Broadcom software revenue grew 6% year-on-year. In dollar terms, bookings average 116% over expiring contracts, while in our core accounts, we average 129%. Over 9% of these bookings represented recurring subscription and maintenance revenues.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Reflecting these renewals, we expect our infrastructure software revenue to be on track to grow around mid-single digit percentage year-over-year, which is again what we expect to see in Q4. In summary, combining a strongly growing semiconductor segment with a more stable software segment, total Q3 net revenue grew 16% year-on-year, and we expect this double-digit growth to sustain in Q4 and total revenue to be $7.35 billion, or up 14% year-on-year. With that, let me turn the call over to Kirsten.

[Kirsten Spears, CFO at Broadcom Inc]

Thank you, Hock. Let me now provide additional detail on our financial performance. Revenue was $6.8 billion for the quarter, up 16% year-on-year. Gross margins were 75% of revenue in the quarter and up approximately 85 basis points year-on-year. Operating expenses were $1.1 billion, flat year-on-year, driven by lower SG&A and continued investment in R&D. Operating income for the quarter was $3.9 billion and was up 24% year-on-year. Operating margin was 58% of revenue, up approximately 360 basis points year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $4.1 billion or 61% of revenue. This figure excludes $134 million of depreciation. Now a review of the P&L for our two segments. Revenue for our Semiconductor Solutions segment was $5 billion and represented 74% of total revenue in the quarter. This was up 19% year-on-year.

[Kirsten Spears, CFO at Broadcom Inc]

Gross margins for our Semiconductor Solutions segment were approximately 70%, up 110 basis points year-over-year, driven primarily by favorable product mix and content growth as we deploy more next-generation products in broadband and networking. Operating expenses were $783 million in Q3, flat year-over-year. R&D was $693 million in Q3, up 1% year-over-year. Q3 operating margins increased to 54%, up 410 basis points year-over-year. While semiconductor revenue was up 19%, operating profit grew 29%. Moving to the P&L for our Infrastructure Software segment. Revenue for Infrastructure Software was $1.8 billion and represented 26% of revenue. This was up 10% year-over-year. Gross margins for Infrastructure Software were 90% in the quarter, up 125 basis points year-over-year. Operating expenses were $359 million in the quarter, up 1% year-over-year.

[Kirsten Spears, CFO at Broadcom Inc]

R&D spending at $226 million is up 9% year-over-year, and SG&A of $133 million is down 11% year-over-year. Operating margin was 70% in Q3, up 305 basis points year-over-year, and operating profit grew 15%. Moving to cash flow. Free cash flow in the third quarter was $3.4 billion, representing 51% of revenue. We spent $115 million on capital expenditures. Days sales outstanding were 30 days in the third quarter, compared to 42 days a year ago. We ended the third quarter with inventory of $1.2 billion, an increase of $156 million or 16% from the end of the prior quarter in preparation to meet customer demand in Q4. We ended the third quarter with $11.1 billion of cash and $40.5 billion of total debt, of which $279 million is short term. Turning to capital allocation.

[Kirsten Spears, CFO at Broadcom Inc]

In the quarter, we paid stockholders $1.6 billion of cash dividends. We also paid $347 million in withholding taxes due on vesting of employee equity, resulting in the elimination of approximately 739,000 AVGO shares. We ended the quarter with 412 million outstanding common shares and 449 million diluted shares. Note that we expect the diluted share count to be 448 million in Q4. Our board of directors has approved a quarterly cash dividend on our common stock of $3.60 per share in Q4. Based on current business trends and conditions, and to reiterate what Hock had said, our guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 is for consolidated revenues of $7.35 billion and adjusted EBITDA of approximately 61% of projected revenue. That concludes my prepared remarks. Operator, please open up the call for questions.

[Operator]

As a reminder to ask a question you will need to press star one key on your telephone, to withdraw your question press the pound key. Please limit yourself to one question. Please, stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of John Pitzer from Credit Suisse your line is now open.

[John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. Hock, I'm just kind of curious. You kind of did what you said you were going to do 90 days ago, but this is usually the part of the cycle, especially on the semi business, where I would have expected more upside. Clearly, when you look across the sector, most companies are putting up an upside that you guys didn't see in the July quarter. I'm kind of curious if you can help us better understand what happened. Do you think that this was mostly a supply issue? Given that inventory grew 15% sequentially in the quarter, to what extent do you think now that you're kind of got that under control and going forward, you'll have a better supply environment to fulfill this demand?

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Well, supply is always something that is very much an issue of constraint in this environment, as you well know. The other side of the picture is we are really shipping, as we have said in previous calls several times. To put it directly, we are shipping to exactly, we believe, to what demand requires. By that, I mean end user demand requires. We are trying very hard not to overship and end up building pockets of excess inventory within our ecosystem. I think we're managing very much to what we see out there.

[John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Harsh Kumar from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

[Harsh Kumar, Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Hey, Hock. First of all, congratulations on the solid results guidance. Question for you is, everybody's favorite foundry, TSMC, is talking about price increases. In some cases, they're substantial. Do you feel that you can pass this along? Also, at this point in time, companies are probably securing capacity for next year. Can you talk about your ability to get some extra capacity to be able to grow next year? Thank you.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Okay. Very interesting question, Harsh. First and foremost, from our side, we try not to talk about customers specifically, and the same applies very much to strategic suppliers, too. I won't comment at all on what you alluded to here. As far as our capacity for 2022, I think we have gotten a pretty good supply availability lineup for 2022, and we feel pretty okay about that. I won't say great, but in this environment, all things considered, we're feeling quite good.

[Harsh Kumar, Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ross Seymore from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

[Ross Seymore, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Hock, I wanted to touch on the enterprise business. You mentioned it a couple different times when you were talking about both networking and your server storage connectivity segments. I guess a two-part question. One, how much of your semiconductor business do you believe is enterprise exposed? Two, when do you believe that will return to year-over-year growth? Is that a specific thing to Broadcom with your product cycles, or is it just the end markets returning to year-over-year growth at that time?

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Well, traditional enterprise, as we define it, I think I made a point of purposely demarketing the fact that in semiconductors, focusing on semiconductor segment by itself, you can literally look at our data, our revenue as selling into three distinct elements. One is cloud and service providers, which we clump together as one. There's consumer, which is very much our wireless business. The rest companies out there, enterprises, we call traditional enterprise. We do put telcos, service providers, to make clear, as part of cloud in that category. We break it into three categories. Under that measure, enterprise represents about half, just around half of the total semiconductor revenues.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

To basically answer your question, which I did indicate in remarks on server storage end markets for our semiconductor business, we have seen an improvement year-on-year of revenues in server storage, which is 80%, at least 90% driven by traditional enterprise. They are a very good indicator of what traditional enterprise is showing. We have seen it show of improving year-on-year compares. Ending in the latest Q3, still mid to high single digit decline from a year ago. We did also guide that because of strong bookings that we have been seeing now for the last three months, at least from enterprise, which is going through largely the large OEMs who integrate the products and sell it to end users. We are going to likely expect enterprise to grow double digits year-on-year in Q4.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

We see the point of crossover probably now, Q4.

[Ross Seymore, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Edward Snyder from Charter Equity Research. Your line is now open.

[Edward Snyder, Analyst at Charter Equity Research]

Thanks a lot. Hock, following up on that same question. Last quarter, you were predicting, or you thought that the excellent growth you've seen in cloud server providers and telcos might lighten up next year as they digest that as enterprise started to grow, and there'd be a mix shift there. It sounds like that isn't lightening up and enterprise is coming back a bit sooner. Do you think any differently now about telcos and service provider in the cloud? Will that last longer, or do you still expect it maybe to lighten up in 2022? How long do you expect the enterprise that's been down for quite a while now, the enterprise upward trend to last? I'm just trying to get a feeling what the profile of demand looks like in your core business next year. Thanks.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Sure. Happy to do that. What we are seeing now, what we expect to see in 2022 in terms of broad direction is, in telcos, service providers are running quite well, quite hot, and it looks like they are sustaining as opposed to perhaps rolling over. They seem to be sustaining where we are right now. Regarding enterprise, it's pretty much what we had indicated before and continue to see, which is a continuing trajectory of improving demand, spending and demand. We see that continuing to improve and grow this coming quarter, Q4, and beyond. In fact, I would say that the engine for growth for our semiconductor business in 2022 will likely be enterprise spending, whether it's coming from networking, one sector for us, and/or from server storage, which is largely enterprise. We see both these showing strong growth as we go into 2022.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Just to repeat myself, we see telcos and service provider not rolling over, just hanging up there at a very elevated level.

[Edward Snyder, Analyst at Charter Equity Research]

Does that imply you expect the cloud to lighten up a bit then too? Because you just called out service providers and telcos, but you kind of avoided talking about the cloud.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

No, I use service providers sometimes to say cloud as well. No, we see cloud also hanging out together with the telcos.

[Edward Snyder, Analyst at Charter Equity Research]

Great. Thank you.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Sure.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stacy Rasgon from Bernstein Research. Your line is now open.

[Stacy Rasgon, Analyst at Bernstein Research]

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask you about capital allocation. Obviously, while half the cash flow goes to the dividend, the other half goes, ideally, to M&A or buybacks. It's been a while since, obviously, you executed M&A, and we're kind of getting toward the end of the year. At what point do you make the decision to give up on M&A this year and start buying back stock? Do you save the cash for a potential deal next year? How do we think about your mindset around M&A environment versus just using the cash for buybacks and then maybe starting the cycle over again at some point as we get into next year?

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Well, it's not the first time I got this question. I got it last quarter and the quarter before, and I told you guys, and I stick by that answer still now. We're running it until the end of this fiscal year, which is October, November. We'll make the call at that time whether we use the cash to buy, or we use the cash either to do an M&A or to buy back our shares.

[Stacy Rasgon, Analyst at Bernstein Research]

Does that mean that you have to have a deal in mind in October, November, or could the call be to save the cash for something in the future? If you don't have a deal on the books in October, November, do we see a buyback?

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

We'll probably play the simple way as far as saying that, as you correctly say, we're accumulating cash at a fairly dramatic rate. By the end of October, our fiscal year, we'll probably see the cash net of dividends, our cash pool, to be up to close to $13 billion, which is something like $6 billion, $7 billion, $8 billion above what we would otherwise like to carry on our books. We have to make a call at that point, a decision at that point.

[Stacy Rasgon, Analyst at Bernstein Research]

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Harlan Sur from JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

[Harlan Sur, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Good afternoon. Congratulations on the strong quarterly execution and results. Strong free cash flow generation in Q3. You gave us the EBITDA profile for Q4. If I use normalized assumptions on cash interest payments, cash taxes, and CapEx, looks like the team is going to generate about $13.7 billion-ish roughly in free cash flow this fiscal year, which roughly translates into a dividend increase to at least $16.70, maybe a bit more, if the team continues to return 50% of the free cash flow. I guess my question is, on Q4, are there any one-time cash events, timing related dynamics, CapEx increases, or tax related events which we should be considering? Is my free cash flow and dividend math roughly correct? Just a quick follow-up. The team has a fairly large footprint of logistics, warehousing, and key suppliers for assembly and tests in Malaysia.

[Harlan Sur, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Just given the significant uptick in COVID-19 cases there, is the team being impacted by potential facilities closures, or how is the team mitigating this impact?

[Kirsten Spears, CFO at Broadcom Inc]

I'll take that first question that you asked, and then I'll have Hock take the second one. Essentially, our policy isn't changing. We're going to return 50% of our free cash flows to our shareholders, and I would say your math's pretty good.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

You're spot on on your math, almost.

[Harlan Sur, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Right. In terms of the concern that you expressed about the resurgence of COVID-19 infections in Malaysia, where we have correctly said, have a large supply chain team located. You're right, it's challenging, but we are managing very well, I think, our teams there. I would say, practically 99% of our people in Malaysia have been vaccinated. We made arrangements with the Malaysian government and ensured that this has been done, and so we are able to manage through this resurgence in Malaysia, and we will continue to keep our eye very closely on conditions over there. For now, I think we are okay.

[Harlan Sur, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Thank you, Hock. Thanks, Kirsten.

[Kirsten Spears, CFO at Broadcom Inc]

You're welcome.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to clarify something and then have the question. On the clarification, I think, Hock, you mentioned you're shipping to demand. Does it mean you're not seeing any supply shortages? That would be very different than what we are hearing from every other semiconductor company. I just wanted to make sure I had the right interpretation. My question is, just the long-term growth rate for Broadcom. In the past, you have mentioned this mid-single-digit kind of growth rate. I understand that this year, right, compares make it easier to grow faster than that. As you look at Broadcom over the next handful of years, do you think you are in a situation to grow better than mid-single-digit growth rate?

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

What is missing to make you upgrade that mid-single digit growth rate, the conceptual forecast that you have provided in the past?

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Okay. Let me take the first part of your question first because I think it's very important and very interesting. It ties into the first question by John Pitzer, is, "Hey, why are you guys not shipping like crazy? Are you supply constrained?" There's always overhanging our care about making every wafer count in this environment, and we do that very carefully. We do that, I believe, very well given in looking at how well our margins are performing in this environment. We also are always, as I said before a few times, with the way we manage our supply chain, we pretty much like to carefully scrutinize end demand as defined by ourselves, which is the end user who need those products.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

What we also see, I mentioned that in our industrial segment in Q3, where resale from a distributor, as you know, industrial pretty much go through distributors. The end users just go to our distributors and wipe out most of our inventory there. We show a resale growth of 55%, we all know that's not real demand. People are building up buffer. There's a certain level of panic buying. Take that across all segments of semiconductor markets today. You see that kind of behavior. Unless you as core key suppliers, we put in careful discipline to manage supply to where demand is really needed, as opposed to where OEMs or even end users are just building up buffers, pocket of buffers everywhere. That's pretty much what we spend a lot of our time doing.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

I cannot necessarily say the same of many other semiconductor companies out there, which is probably why John Pitzer is saying, "Well, why are people showing bigger numbers?" We can show bigger numbers, but that means we will build up inventory in the wrong places, and we need every one of those wafers in this environment, not just this quarter, but next quarter and the quarter after that, to ensure that our strategic customers are able to get what they need to launch, to deploy programs. All right?

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

On the long-term growth rate, Hock?

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Sorry. Well, I like to believe, like some of you do, that with this recent event and with these things happening, especially COVID-19 creating a change of work habits in our tech ecosystem, that there is a reset upwards towards a higher consumption of technology and by extension, semiconductor chips in the long term. I agree there has been an accelerated adoption of certain technologies under these lockdown conditions in our lifestyle economy over the last 18 months. This accelerated the adoption of technology has created a strong growth demand for semiconductor products over these last 12 months. I agree, and we report those results, which we believe are true end demand, as I indicated in my brief early part of my answer to your question, that is now up to mid to high double-digit teens, so to speak, year-on-year.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

That's good. That's very strong. That's a far cry from my model that says semiconductor grows long-term mid-single digits. This accelerated consumption does not necessarily create a fundamental shift in our people's ability to consume technology. When things revert back towards a more normal lifestyle, maybe not this year, maybe next year or the year after, I would expect this accelerated consumption would reset itself. Then you ask yourself, fundamentally, over the next five, 10 years, is semiconductor consumption usage going to increase any higher? I find it hard to imagine why it should. If fundamentally, we have an industry that's relatively mature, still evolving, still changing, which makes it exciting for us, but pretty much, been around fairly much a long time. I may be wrong. I still think it will revert over the next five, 10 years back to a norm.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

The question, your view is, will that norm be high single digits perhaps rather than mid-single digits? You may be right. I don't know the answer to that. Right now, you're right. We are seeing 15%-20% year-on-year in demand usage of our semiconductor chips. By the way, we are pretty broad across multiple end markets in applications of semiconductors. We kind of represent a large part of the overall semiconductor growth. Now there may be particular that could grow faster than that mid-single digits. I do accept that. Given how broad-based we are, I tend to think we revert to what will be the norm. I cannot disagree with you that the norm might be higher than the mid-single digits I've said before.

[Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Blayne Curtis from Barclays. Your line is now open.

[Blayne Curtis, Analyst at Barclays]

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks. Same question. I want to ask you on broadband. It's been running kind of in the 20s year-over-year. You said up double digits for Q4. I think last year is an easy compare. I just want to know how literally to take that. I know you said maybe over time, that would be the one segment that could moderate. I just didn't know if you were signaling anything for October.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Broadband is hot. To cut to the chase, it's hot. It's hot, driven by two things, and I articulated that in my remarks. Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi is a big area now that service providers basically operate the telcos, and cable operators are using as part of connectivity to households globally. We have literally won, again, a huge part of that market successfully. We're seeing that trend continuing into next generation Wi-Fi 6E. What's also driving broadband, I should say, Blayne, and I mentioned that, is fiber. Fiber is, several large telcos, Europe, U.S., are investing very big in putting fiber out there to households. It's particularly driven, I guess, to some extent, by political considerations. They want to connect households very well.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

You hear about British telecoms are openly saying they have a program over the next five, six years to connect over 20 million British households. Deutsche Telekom is doing exactly the same thing, and so is AT&T here in the U.S., where they have very large program. These are, as I indicated, multi-year programs, where each of these operators will spend multiple billion of dollars of investment to put that fiber out to the home. At the end of each fiber node, you have that wireless connectivity, Wi-Fi, within for the last 100 ft in the home. What I'm implying here is saying this is not a one-shot thing, and the thinking in the past that fiber is a kind of boring, single-digit, slow growth business might be changing from our perspective because we are seeing the program from those operators coming.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

A big part of it is both U.S. and Europe putting in large broadband in the form of fiber, because it's the most effective way, in some ways, economic way to expand to households and hand-in-hand with 5G network, wireless networks out there. It's also very interesting for us, market share wise, because you used to talk about China doing broadband fiber. Today, it's beyond that. It's Europe, U.S. The number of players fighting in this market on technology is much less now, given the interesting political events between China and the rest of the world.

[Blayne Curtis, Analyst at Barclays]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Ramsay from Cowen. Your line is now open.

[Matthew Ramsay, Analyst at Cowen]

Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Hock, I noticed in your prepared script that you were a bit more specific about some of the leadership position that Broadcom has in different levels of advanced SerDes, and you maybe called it out a bit more than you had in the past. It's an advantage the company's had in your own switching routing product, but also in being the preferred ASIC shop for a few hyperscale folks. I wonder if you might, did you call that out on purpose? Is there something changing there competitively given the scale of your R&D? Do you feel like that lead is expanding, shrinking, staying the same? Any update there would be great. Thank you.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

Oh, that's very perceptive of you. The only reason I call that out is because it's true, and it's been true for many years. Just want to reemphasize this point that in terms of being probably the preferred vendor for specialized silicon engines to drive specialized workloads. I have indicated to you guys what some of those are, especially in hypercloud. We definitely are in the lead by far in this area. For the reasons you mentioned.

[Hock Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom Inc]

We have the scale, we have a lot of the IP cores, and the capability to do all those chips for those multiple hyper clients who can afford and are willing to push the envelope on specialized offload, I used to call it offload computing engines, be they video transcoding, machine learning, even what people call DPUs, smartNICs, otherwise called, and various other specialized engines and security hardware that we put in place in multiple cloud guys. Just a point of, I guess, reinforcement that we still very much are the leader.

[Operator]

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Ms. Ji Yoo for closing remarks.

[Ji Yoo, Director of Investor Relations at Broadcom Inc]

Thank you, operator. In closing, please note that Hock Tan will be presenting at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference on Thursday, September 9th, 2021 and the Citi Technology Conference on Tuesday, September 14th, 2021. Kirsten Spears will participate in the Piper Sandler Tech Conference on September 13th, 2021. We will also be hosting a Broadcom Software investor meeting on Tuesday, November 9th, 2021 in New York. Tom Krause, Broadcom Software Group, will be leading the event, and senior leadership from our software business will present. We will be sending invitations to analysts and investors in the coming week. That will conclude our earnings call today. Thank you all for joining. Operator, you may end the call.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Hock Tan, President and CEO
• Ji Yoo, Director of Investor Relations
• Kirsten Spears, CFO

Analysts

• Blayne Curtis, Analyst at Barclays
• Edward Snyder, Analyst at Charter Equity Research
• Harlan Sur, Analyst at JPMorgan
• Harsh Kumar, Analyst at Piper Sandler
• John Pitzer, Analyst at Credit Suisse
• Matthew Ramsay, Analyst at Cowen
• Ross Seymore, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Stacy Rasgon, Analyst at Bernstein Research
• Vivek Arya, Analyst at Bank of America