Silicon Motion Technology Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 2, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Silicon Motion delivered sequential revenue growth of 11% to $211 million in Q2, driven by strong demand from NAND flash maker customers and anticipation of stronger second-half PC and smartphone sales.
  • Non-GAAP gross margin reached 46% (at the high end of guidance) and operating margin rose to 16.5%, supporting EPS of $0.96 and demonstrating improved profitability from better product mix and pricing.
  • The company gained market share with major NAND makers by winning sockets across mainstream to high-end SSD, eMMC and UFS controllers, leveraging its QC L NAND expertise to secure significant design wins.
  • Escalating NAND pricing and broader inflationary pressures have softened retail aftermarket SSD demand, leading Q3 revenue guidance to be flat (±2.5%) at $205 million–$216 million and muted seasonal sales.
  • Silicon Motion is investing heavily in R&D for next-generation controllers (PCIe 5.0, UFS 4.0 and the enterprise-focused Mt. Titan platform), incurring higher tape-out costs and OpEx now to fortify its long-term technology leadership.
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Earnings Conference Call
Silicon Motion Technology Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Silicon Motion Technology Corporation's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, at which time, if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding trends in the semiconductor industry and all future results of operations, financial condition, and business prospects. Although such statements are based on our own information and information from other sources we believe to be reliable, you should not place any reliance on them.

Operator

These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual market trends and all results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, continued competitive pressure in the semiconductor industry and the effect of such pressure on prices, unpredictable changes in technology and consumer demand for multimedia consumer electronics, the state of and any change in our relationship with our major customers, and changes in political, economic, legal, and social conditions in Taiwan. For additional discussion of these risks and uncertainties and other factors, please see the documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this conference call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

It is now my pleasure to hand you over to Mr. Tom Sepenzis, Senior Director of IR and Strategy of the company. Please go ahead, sir.

Tom Sepenzis
Tom Sepenzis
Senior Director of IR and Strategy at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Silicon Motion's Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. Joining me today is Wallace Kou, our President and CEO, and Jason Tsai, our Interim CFO. Wallace will first provide a review of our key business developments, and then Jason will discuss our second quarter results and outlook. Following our prepared remarks, we will conclude with a Q&A session. Before we get started, I would like to remind you of our Safe Harbor policy, which was read at the start of this call. For a comprehensive overview of the risks involved with investing in our securities, please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For more details on our financial results, please refer to our press release, which was filed on Form 6-K after the close of the market yesterday.

Tom Sepenzis
Tom Sepenzis
Senior Director of IR and Strategy at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

This webcast will be available for replay in the investor relations section of our website for a limited time. To enhance investors' understanding of our ongoing economic performance, we will discuss non-GAAP information during this call. We use non-GAAP financial measures internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We have therefore chosen to provide this information to enable you to perform comparisons of our operating results in a manner consistent with how we analyze our own operating results. The reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP financial data can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday. We ask that you review it in conjunction with this call. With that, I will turn the call over to Wallace.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Thank you, Tom. Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a strong start to 2024, building on the momentum that began in the second half of calendar 2023. We delivered sequential revenue growth ahead of expectations and achieved gross margins at the high end of our guidance range as better mix and pricing continue to steadily improve our profitability. The revenue upside was driven by our continued strength with our NAND flash customers, as demand from PC and smartphone OEMs increased in anticipation of similarly stronger second-half demand. Additionally, we benefited from increased market share at the top NAND flash makers as they continue to source controllers externally rather than develop them in-house. Over the past few quarters, our team has been working hard toward deepening our partnership with our NAND flash maker customers.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

We are winning more and more sockets, from mainstream to high-end SD and eMMC and UFS controllers for PC, smartphones, automotive, and other markets. Our success with our flash maker partners has helped improve our visibility and is crucial to our strong growth this year, despite market uncertainty, especially in the retail aftermarket. This quarter, our revenue from NAND flash makers grew nearly 15% sequentially, accounting for more than 60% of our total revenue. Both SD and eMMC UFS controllers' strengths found new progress, more than upside emerging softness in the retail market as our module maker customers. Demand for our product is rising, and NAND flash makers increasingly outsource controller solutions, and we are in the best position to benefit from this growing trend.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

We have unmatched technical and financial resources to build next-generation controllers, and we intend to enhance our position through the introduction of multiple new products in the coming year, including our enterprise-class MonTitan family, new PCIe 5.0, and UFS 4.0 controllers. I'm pleased with our team's execution in the first half of the year and the momentum going into the second half of this year. We have significant opportunities ahead of us as we deliver products and solutions our customers need and remain focused on driving additional revenue growth and improving profitability across our platform of leading NAND controller solutions. I would now like to provide you with an overview of the macro-market dynamics. NAND pricing is increasing and expected to move higher throughout the remainder of the year and early 2025, primarily driven by demand from data centers and enterprise storage applications.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

As pricing continues to increase from the lows experienced last year, NAND flash makers are beginning to bring some capacity back online and invest in new-generation flash productions. But we do not expect flash supply and demand to come back into balance until the middle of 2025. Higher flash pricing and the weaker global economy environment caused by higher inflation have softened retail demand for our module maker customers. With continued inflationary pressure and expected flash price increase for the remainder of the year, we expect muted back-to-school and holiday sales of retail aftermarket SSD. Despite the headwind, the overall PC demand appears stable, and we also continue to see incremental improvement in the smartphone market, with unit sales expected to grow modestly year over year. OEM interest in QLC adoption continues to increase in both the data center and the edge in PC, smartphone, and other devices.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

This is being driven by device OEMs anticipating the need to support AI and other applications that require higher performance and higher density solid-state storage solutions. It becomes clear each day that our experience and expertise with QLC NAND is a defining differentiator that has resulted in significant wins with flash makers and other customers across our major product categories. As 3D NAND layers continue to increase, managing QLC NAND becomes even more challenging as they require more sophisticated controller technology, such as our proprietary advanced LDPC and 3D RAID technology, and advanced firmware algorithms to ensure data retention and reduce read/write endurance issues. We expect QLC NAND will increasingly be deployed across all major market categories that we serve, given its ability to deliver high density at low cost. We believe we are best positioned to benefit from the trend in the coming years.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Now, I'd like to discuss each of our major product segments, beginning with our SSD controllers. We experienced strong demand in June quarter from our flash maker customers, driven by PC OEMs. PC OEMs' controller sales represent approximately 80% of our client controller sales. It is the high end of our historical range, as high NAND flash prices are putting pressure on channel and module makers. We continue to generate strong interest in our new PCIe Gen-5 8-channel controller that we tape out last year. This is a premium product that will be ideally suited for high-end notebook and desktop AI PC, as well as for gaming and workstation PC that offer unparalleled performance with ultra-low power consumption. The controller offers best-in-class power-to-performance, offering 20%-30% lower power consumption than competing controllers, including those internally developed by NAND flash makers.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

This is the first 6-nanometer 8-channel PCIe 5 controller available in the market, which has led to significant wins, including our fourth non-Flash maker, which I'm pleased to announce we won this quarter, in addition to nearly every major module maker. We remain on track to ramp initial units of the new PCIe 5 controller with our customers later this year. Additionally, we have a strong pipeline of design activity with several flash makers of a PCIe 4 SSD using next-generation TLC and QLC NAND. This new SSD delivers high performance and high density at a lower cost, ideal for rapidly growing AI PC markets that are searching for lower-cost solutions. While the PC market remains a top priority and will continue to drive significant growth and revenue, we are seeing emerging opportunities with our automotive, commercial, and industrial-grade SSD controllers.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

This includes our automotive-grade PCIe 4 controller, as well as multiple controllers targeting industrial and commercial applications. We intend to expand our leadership through the introduction of our upcoming dual-port PCIe 5 controller for the automotive market next year. We expect to continue adding meaningful growth opportunities in 2025 and beyond, with a more diversified customer and end market base. Now, I would like to move to our eMMC and UFS business. We continue to benefit from the improving smartphone market during the June quarter, as well as with strengths with our two eMMC and UFS non-Flash customers. We successfully taped out our first UFS 4.0 controller early this year, and the response has been positive. We are beginning qualification, and we are targeting production ramp in the second half of calendar 2025.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

UFS 3.1 and 2.2 continue to account for most of the smartphone market volume today, and are expected to stay relevant in the coming years. While flash makers allocate more resources to next-generation UFS products in support of new-generation NAND, we are seeing greater opportunity in high-volume applications as flash makers look to outsource mainstream controllers so that they can more effectively compete at leading edge. As with our leading PCIe products, we are generating strong inbound activity in our QLC controller technology in UFS and eMMC. With a growing interest in edge AI, smartphone OEMs are looking for a cost-effective way to increase on-device memory density. Our leadership in QLC NAND conforming technology places Silicon Motion at the forefront of QLC adoption.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

As smartphone manufacturers are looking to deploy QLC with UFS for mid-to-high-end devices and QLC with eMMC in low-end handsets for AI and other storage-intensive applications over the next few years. Our first handset OEM partner that will deploy QLC on UFS is expected to ramp later this year. What's more, I'm pleased to report to you today that this customer is expected to expand production of this new QLC UFS solution into additional smartphone models next year. Looking beyond the smartphone market, OEMs are interested in adopting UFS and eMMC for smart connected devices and other consumer applications. Our growing list of wins and customers in this additional area will further diversify our end-market growth opportunity. Given the increasing opportunity to capture share with our flash maker partners and through the introduction of new eMMC and UFS QLC solutions, we believe we are well-positioned for continued growth.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Now, let me turn to our MonTitan platform. As we have mentioned before, enterprise and data center storage offers Silicon Motion a tremendous new revenue opportunity combined with a meaningfully high ASP and margin profile over the medium to long term. We continue to see more inbound interest in our MonTitan solutions. Given our unique differentiation, we believe we are well-positioned to scale with the flash maker and storage solution enabler, as well as directly with data center and enterprise customers in the coming years. Our first MonTitan PCIe Gen-5 controller manages TLC and QLC components on a single platform, enabling the seamless transition and adoption of QLC components with enterprise and data center storage applications.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

As we announced last quarter, we have won two Tier 1 customers for our new MonTitan PCIe Gen5 controller, one in the U.S. and one in China, and expect to secure two additional Tier 1 wins later this year. We are on track to begin early mass production later this year and ramp more meaningfully next year. Our early success has been driven through differentiation with our controller offering high performance and greater power efficiency, with support for more NAND components than any other platform in the market today. MonTitan delivers two key technologies: low over-provisioning space and flexible data placement with QLC, which it combines to improve latency and throughput speed while lowering overall costs to drive retail demand. Additionally, our proprietary power and performance shaping technology enables our customers to dynamically adjust their storage to meet rapidly changing data center performance requirements.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

This includes in the upcoming 2-terabit mono-die QLC NAND, the ability to deliver 128-terabyte SSD. These high-capacity SSD have the highest sequential read performance and lower costs to meet ever-increasing AI compute and storage requirements. It is becoming increasingly clear for our customers that our MonTitan solutions will be essential for the next-generation data center and storage build-out plan, especially for delivering faster and more accurate AI capabilities to the market. As we have mentioned on previous calls, given our record of managing our QLC NAND qualification than anyone over the past decade, we believe that this new product platform will drive multiple-year growth cycles for Silicon Motion as we enter a greenfield market opportunity for our company with leading technology.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Given the early MonTitan performance and widespread interest in our products, we expect the platform to grow to 5%-10% of our total revenue in the 2026-2027 timeframes. Overall, I'm excited by our strong start to 2024 and our outlook for the remainder of the year. I'm especially pleased that we continue to target year-over-year revenue growth of 25%-30%, despite the challenges in the near term from increased NAND components prices in some of our customers. Looking ahead, we are confident that our technology leadership and diversified portfolio of our controllers across a wide range of markets and applications will accelerate and drive the substantial long-term growth of our business. We continue to push beyond PC and smartphone into new opportunities, including the enterprise, automotive, industrial, commercial, and consumer markets.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

I'm especially excited about emerging MonTitan opportunities and what I expect will be a significantly positive impact on our revenue growth and operating margins over the next few years. As we capture share in the enterprise market, I look forward to detailing more about our progress in the area in the future update. Now, let me turn the call over to Jason to go over our financial results and outlook.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Thank you, Wallace, and good morning, everyone joining us today. I will discuss additional details of our second quarter results and then provide our guidance. Please note that my comments today will focus primarily on our non-GAAP results unless otherwise specifically noted. A reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP data is included in the earnings release issued yesterday, as well as the presentation that was uploaded to our website a little while ago.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

In the second quarter, sales increased 11% sequentially to $211 million. SSD sales increased modestly sequentially, representing our fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Our strong share gains of flash makers continue to deliver outstanding results despite some market uncertainties from continued inflationary pressure and higher NAND flash prices contributing to weaker aftermarket SSD demand. eMMC and UFS controllers increased 25%-30% sequentially as demand inflected in the second quarter from increased smartphone builds in anticipation of demand growth in the second half of this year. SSD solution sales increased 20%-25% sequentially. Gross margin in the second quarter increased to 46%, primarily from better mixed and newer products. Operating expenses in the second quarter were $62.1 million, a slight decrease from the first quarter.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Operating expenses, specifically R&D project expense, was higher than expected in the second quarter as we made the decision to retape out our upcoming high-performance 8-channel PCIe 5 client SSD controller to deliver superior yields when we enter mass production later this year. This will result in higher overall gross margins for this product in the long term. Operating margins increased to 16.5% in the quarter, up from 12% in the first quarter. Our effective tax rate in the second quarter is 16.5%, a modest increase from the 16.1% tax rate in the first quarter. Earnings per ADS were $0.96, an increase from the $0.64 in the first quarter. Total stock-based compensation, which we exclude from our non-GAAP results, was $385,000 in the second quarter.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

We had $343.6 million of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments at the end of the second quarter compared to $349.3 million at the end of the first quarter. Inventory decreased sequentially in the second quarter to $241 million from $253 million in the first quarter. Before I turn to outlook, I'd like to talk a bit more about our higher R&D investments that we are making this year. As the industry adopts new high-performance standards that double the performance from previous standards, power consumption needs to remain at the same or lower to assure the same battery life for smartphones and notebooks that consumers demand. The only way to balance both significantly higher performance and lower power is to move to lower process geometry production, and that means building these next-generation PCIe and UFS controllers on 16 nanometers.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

In addition, we need to develop new SoC architecture, new firmware architecture, and customized mixed signal capabilities that collaborate closely with our NAND partners to achieve these goals. While all of this does result in higher R&D expenses in the near term, we do see significant benefits, including higher ASPs, more outsourcing, and a bigger moat around our product leadership than ever before. We have unmatched technical and financial resources and intend to make this essential investment in order for us to continue to grow faster and increase our market share and to drive higher growth and better profitability over the long term. Let me now turn to our outlook. As Wallace talked about earlier this year, due to the ongoing higher NAND prices and weaker retail consumer electronics demand, our customers, especially module makers, are seeing demand soften in the retail aftermarket.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

As a result, they're anticipating a much more muted seasonal pattern for retail demand for the second half of this year. Despite this, our ongoing success with flash makers, customers, and the increased outsourcing we have won over the past year gives us confidence that we'll be able to achieve our full-year revenue outlook. For the third quarter, we expect revenue to be flat ±2.5% sequentially to approximately $205 million-$216 million due to the expected weaker-than-seasonal aftermarket SSD demand. We expect eMMC and SSD controller sales to be stable sequentially. Third quarter gross margins are expected to continue to improve and be in the range of 46%-47%. Our improving mix of sales towards newer products should lead to sustained gross margin improvements.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Third quarter operating margin will experience a one-quarter decline driven by the expected tape-out of our new 6-nanometer four-channel mainstream client PCIe 5 SSD controller. We expect this new controller will enter mass production in early 2026 as PCIe 5 SSDs expand into the mainstream market. Operating margin is expected to be in the range of 14.3%-15.3% in the September quarter and then return to more normalized levels. Third quarter effective tax rate should be 18%, and third quarter stock-based compensation and dispute-related expenses should be in the range of $6.4 million-$7.4 million. For the full year, we are maintaining our revenue outlook given the continuing strong demand from our NAND maker customers, but improving our profitability. Revenue is expected to increase 25%-30% this year to approximately $800 million-$830 million.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

We're tightening our gross margin range given the strength of our margin improvement this year already. Full-year gross margins are expected to be in the 46%-47% range. Operating margin is expected to improve modestly given the better gross margin performance in the first half of this year and is expected to be in the range of 14.8%-16.8%, despite accelerated investments in our technology leadership and the new product introductions that should lead to revenue growth in 2025 and beyond. Our 2024 effective tax rate is expected to come down slightly and be now approximately 18%. 2024 stock-based compensation, dispute-related expenses, and loss from settlement of litigation should be in the range of $29 million-$31 million.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

With the dedication of our team over the past year, we have been able to develop and deliver cutting-edge controller solutions that will power AI applications and PCs, smartphones, and soon data centers and enterprises. Our wide range of controller solutions is gaining significant traction in other markets such as automotive, industrial, and commercial applications, further diversifying our long-term growth drivers. Our efforts to collaborate more with flash makers have allowed us to benefit from the recent trend of more outsourcing, driving more predictable growth and better visibility despite near-term market volatility. While we will continue to invest in growing our R&D capabilities and building more leading-edge controllers, we're seeing these investments begin to pay dividends, and we expect these products to scale meaningfully next year, driving additional revenue growth and profitability and further extending our technology and market share leadership in the flash controller market.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

This concludes our prepared remarks. We'll now open the call for your questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Craig Ellis from B. Riley Securities. Please ask your question.

Craig Ellis
Craig Ellis
Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Wallace, I wanted to start off with one that was high level and followed up on some of your comments regarding execution with non-OEM share gain. At the beginning of the year, we were intending to see 500 basis points of share gain this year.

Craig Ellis
Craig Ellis
Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Can you just talk about where you think you stand at midyear against that objective and any positive or negative variances versus what you were hoping for six months ago?

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

So far, I think we're on track for all the projects we're aiming and plan to do. We maintain a very, very close relationship with all the NAND makers, and we capture all the variable sockets open to us. And so our share last year was about, for SSD, about 25%-30%, and we believe we'll continue to gain share with this is a forecast in design win. And we believe the mobile portion, we're also gaining around 20%-25% range by year-end. So we are cautiously monitoring all the opportunities to capture our outsource to third parties, especially Silicon Motion.

Craig Ellis
Craig Ellis
Analyst at B. Riley Securities

That's helpful. And then the follow-up question, excuse me, relates to the PCIe Gen 5 transition.

Craig Ellis
Craig Ellis
Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Can you just help us put that in context by providing a summary of where PCIe Gen 4 mix would be this year? And as we look to next year when PCIe Gen 5 would ship in higher volume, how much of the business on the SSD controller side shifts over to PCIe Gen 5 next year? Thank you.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Yeah, PCIe Gen 5 will start to run from early 2025, but 2025 will maintain the high-end premium line. So that will be the high-end notebook in the high-end PC for AI PC and gaming PC and workstation PC. So next year, the volume probably will stay maintained very low, only about 5% transition. But for 2026, we're moving to the high volume and the mainstream PCIe Gen 5 coming. So next year, I think PCIe majority for SSD will maintain in the PCIe Gen 4.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

By 2026, PCIe Gen 5 will probably occupy around 30% of total market.

Craig Ellis
Craig Ellis
Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Very helpful, Wallace. Thanks, and I'll hop back into the queue.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Stoss from Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead, Tony.

Anthony Stoss
Anthony Stoss
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Maybe for you, Jason, I just want to follow up on the tape-out commentary expected for Q3. Can you maybe size that for us? And also, do you expect any continued tape-outs in Q4? And then I'd love to hear your thoughts. A lot of positive commentary related to increasing gross margins. Can you give us a sense of kind of what you think ballpark might be heading into 2025? I would assume it's higher than 2024.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Yeah, so for tape-out costs, we talked about 6-nanometer tape-out costs, typically running $15 million-$20 million per controller.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Obviously, that's over the entire production of the tape-out. In any given quarter where we do actually tape out, that's probably a $5 million-$10 million charge in that quarter. So that's the ballpark that we're talking about here from an incremental perspective in Q3, given the new 6-nanometer four-channel PCIe 5 controller tape-out this quarter. Going into Q4, we do not expect any additional tape-outs for 6-nanometer. So you should see our OpEx come down in the fourth quarter. In terms of gross margins, we've been steadily progressing over the last year or so, improving our gross margins due to better mix. And we expect that to continue as more and more of our products come from newer generation products. Next year, we'll also have PCIe 5 as well as MonTitan starting to ramp a little more meaningfully.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

So those should be positive and additive for us as well. Historically, we've been at 48%-50% gross margins. I think we're going to get pretty close to that this year. And then going into next year, we should be in that range.

Anthony Stoss
Anthony Stoss
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Got it. And then, Wallace, maybe a follow-up for you on the MonTitan and your adding of two additional customers to make it four at the end of this year. I think in the last quarterly conference call, you talked about a number of customers that you can handle. Can you update us, and do you think you can take on even more customers and maybe give us a sense of how many additional ones you think you can take on in 2025?

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Yeah, so we have roughly our R&D resource can handle maximum around four Tier 1 customers simultaneously.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

But as of today, we're winning two Tier 1 customers. One of the customers will develop the firmware themselves with our SDK. So that will help us offload the resources. We provide complete documentation to develop technology and, by the way, help them to port in their firmware into our platform. So once it gets done, I think that will be the golden basis for the complete SDK and documentation we can offer to other OEM customers. We're looking forward to expanding more resources, and we try to expand a wider range of customers in 2025. Because if customers decide to use our standard turnkey solution with both firmware and our ASIC, I think we are able to support more than four Tier 1 customers.

Anthony Stoss
Anthony Stoss
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

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

Quinn Bolton
Quinn Bolton
Analyst at Needham & Company

Hey, guys. Just wanted to follow up sort of a similar question to what Craig asked, except this time maybe on the mix of QLC. Where do you see QLC as a % of both SSDs and the smartphone business as you get into 2025 and 2026? And then I've got a couple of follow-ups.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

So it's very good question. I think the QLC today in the PC, that's about around 10%-15% in the very low side. But all the NAND maker are roughly driving into the QLC op-eds. So in 2025, for client SSD, we should be minimum 20%-25%. For smartphone, the majority of smartphone makers that are deploying the opportunity, they're in the trial mode. So for next year, the total percentage should be very, very low, single digit, probably less than 5%.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

But after they deploy very successfully, they will expand to multiple models. We see the UFS adoption initially come from the mid-range. But after the mid-range is down, they will try to fill into the high-end. At the same time, we see two smartphone makers going to try QLC into the eMMC for value line. So this is a tremendous opportunity and momentum, but they have to try the field trial and make sure it's really transparent to end users and consumers. They probably won't see the difference between TLC and QLC, but with a higher density than traditional TLC.

Quinn Bolton
Quinn Bolton
Analyst at Needham & Company

Got it. Thank you for that, Wallace. And then a follow-up question on MonTitan. As you ramp that solution, you've mentioned it carries premium margins.

Quinn Bolton
Quinn Bolton
Analyst at Needham & Company

Wondering if that ramp takes and it hits that 5%-10% target in 2026, 2027, do you think that that carries enough lift on margins that it puts you to the higher end of your kind of target range of 48%-50%? Could it push you above the 50% level? Just any sense on how additive MonTitan could be to the margin profile?

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Yeah, it's a little too early for us to comment about 2026, 2027 margin profile at this point, Quinn. But I think historically, we've been able to achieve that 48%-50% based upon what we have today and the products that we have today vs MonTitan is a greenfield opportunity, like Wallace had pointed out.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

So I think that could be additive to that, maybe potentially lift us up longer term, but it's a little too early to say how additive that is in that 2026, 2027 timeframe.

Quinn Bolton
Quinn Bolton
Analyst at Needham & Company

Yeah, no, I know it's a long ways out. And then lastly, Jason, just as you look at the expenses you're spending today on the PCIe Gen 5 products, the UFS4 controllers, wondering if you expect another heavy investment year in 2025. You guys have done a great job upsiding revenue this year, but obviously, expenses are increasing as well, and so there's been less fall through to EPS. And just wondering if you might expect additional operating leverage on revenue growth next year as perhaps some of those investments kind of maybe stabilize next year rather than continue to increase at a pretty fast pace.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Yeah, that's exactly the way we look at it.

Jason Tsai
Jason Tsai
Interim CFO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

We're going to start seeing the dividends pay off for these investments we're making this year. That'll lead to revenue growth, but we do expect to—I think it's a little early to talk about OpEx for next year, but we wouldn't expect it to grow nearly as fast as we saw it grow this year, just given the kind of initial sting of the 6-nanometer tape-outs that we had to bear this year.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Let me just add some comment. I think we try to control our operating spend next year. However, we have a very, very strong demand from NAND makers. Some even asked to customize certain new UFS controllers. We have to base on the resource and financial return to do calculation. If we decide to do it, that will increase some of our operating expense.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

But I think we will, based on every major project, we will be cautiously reviewing all the ROI to make a decision.

Quinn Bolton
Quinn Bolton
Analyst at Needham & Company

Thank you, Wallace. Thank you, Jason.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Suji Desilva from Roth MKM. Please ask your question, Suji.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth MKM

Hi, Wallace. Hi, Jason. Congrats on the progress here. The AI PC, I'm just wondering, what is the content uplift there for the SSDs in terms of product or ASP vs the non-AI PCs? Just if you could clarify that would be helpful.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Yeah, it's a very good question. I hope I can answer you. But I think that so far, AI PCs get a tremendous momentum. However, we do not see any meaningful impact or increase in PC unit shipment so far.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Besides the Microsoft Copilot, I think the market is really waiting for more meaningful applications coming to add a practical application purpose to make both the corporate and the consumer feel comfortable. So I think there's many different new platforms coming, but it's also some bundle with PC OEM's own AI application. So we have to wait for to see the consumer feedback to see adoption. So far, I think the PC unit shipment for 2024 is maintained the same at the beginning of the year, a single-digit increase compared to 2023. Okay. And then switching over to the infrastructure side. Sorry, we definitely see PCIe Gen 5 SSDs that become a plus because they have much better performance, provide a better sequential read, provide a much better shorter latency. So that's why we do see potentially there will be high demand for PCIe Gen 5 HMB SSD in 2025. Okay.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

That's available 2025.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth MKM

Great. Got it. And then switching over, Wallace, to the AI infrastructure side, can you give us some framework for these programs that are on the cloud that you have that you might be adding?

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

How to think about the inner ASPs, maybe on a content per server, content per rack framework. Maybe that would be one way to kind of get a sense of these MonTitan programs and how big they can get for you.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

We talk about it on a volume basis, right? Because we sell controllers. We don't sell density. I think if you take a look at historically, enterprise SSD controllers are typically in the 50-75+ range in that ballpark. Obviously, configurations for different servers, different applications can vary.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

So it's difficult for us to assess or to really say that there is any sort of real kind of algorithm you can use on that. So we can only give you a rough range for the 16-channel MonTitan controller. The ASP is between $55-$65 range. Whether TLC, TLC, or whether density. The controller price is similar range. We also have a version for 8-channel controller, which we have a new design, probably tape-out in the middle of next year. And for 8-channel controller, the selling price is between $42-$50 range. So this is about the ballpark for the MonTitan family controller price.

Suji Desilva
Suji Desilva
Analyst at Roth MKM

All right. Very helpful, Wallace. Jason, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Xu from JPMorgan.

Tom Sepenzis
Tom Sepenzis
Senior Director of IR and Strategy at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Please ask your question, Robert.

Robert Xu
Robert Xu
Analyst at JPMorgan

Okay. Thank you. I'm asking on behalf of Gokul Hariharan. So I have a quick question on the inventory level. How should we think about the inventory level for the client SSD or with the PC OEMs as well as the mobile solutions with the OEM customers? Thank you.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

So at this moment, we see the inventory level in the channel naturally is relatively healthy. But however, just because the demand side is very weak from the channel in retail. So most of our customers see inventory level, I think, is largely healthy and in line now. And for the NAND makers, I think they definitely have much less of the inventory for the client SSD.

Tom Sepenzis
Tom Sepenzis
Senior Director of IR and Strategy at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Do you have any follow-up question, Robert?

Robert Xu
Robert Xu
Analyst at JPMorgan

Yeah, that's it.

Tom Sepenzis
Tom Sepenzis
Senior Director of IR and Strategy at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

All right. Thank you. I'm sharing no further questions. I'll now turn the conference back to the President and CEO, Mr.

Tom Sepenzis
Tom Sepenzis
Senior Director of IR and Strategy at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Wallace Kou, for closing comments.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your continuing to Silicon Motion. We'll be attending the Future Memory and Storage Conference in Santa Clara next week, as well as several investor conferences in the coming months. The schedule of this event will be posted on the investor relations section of our corporate website. Look forward to speaking with you at this event.

Wallace Kou
Wallace Kou
President and CEO at Silicon Motion Technology Corporation

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Goodbye for now.

Operator

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

Executives
    • Jason Tsai
      Jason Tsai
      Interim CFO
    • Tom Sepenzis
      Tom Sepenzis
      Senior Director of IR and Strategy
    • Wallace Kou
      Wallace Kou
      President and CEO
Analysts
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