Keysight Technologies, Inc. (KEYS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

December 4, 2024

New York Stock Exchange US Information Technology Electronic Equipment, Instruments and Components conference_presentation 34 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#1

Perfect. So why don't we go ahead and get started. I'm Aaron Rakers. I'm the IT hardware and semi analyst here at Wells Fargo. Pleased to have with us Neil Dougherty, the Executive Vice President and CFO of Keysight. Neil, if you don't mind, I'm going to jump right in.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#2

Absolutely.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#3

We've talked quite a bit. And so I -- Keysight story is...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#4

Can you turned down the mics, just a touch? Thank you. Sorry about that.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#5

No problem. No problem, maybe it's me. Maybe let's just start at a high level. Can you talk about the CSG, the EISG, unpack those businesses a little bit? Because that's a common question I get. What are the drivers? So let's start there high level and we walk through maybe the drivers, we'll talk about AI, we'll talk about the end markets. But maybe for the audience here and online, let's maybe unpack the model just a little bit on the revenue.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#6

Yes. So business is organized into two operating segments: Communications Solutions and Industrial Solutions. On the Communications side, really have two businesses, one that's focused on commercial end markets and then one that's focused on aerospace, defense and government end markets. And those might not seem like they belong together, but the solutions we're primarily providing into the defense and government space are communications in nature. So there's a lot of technology overlap between those two segments. And then if you kind of further break that down on the Commercial side, you can largely think of that as there's a wireless business and a wireline business. And, this has been a historic area of strength for Keysight going back all the way to the days of Hewlett-Packard and Agilent. But back in history, we were really a physical layer tools provider and over the course of our 10-year history as an independent company, made an exerted effort to move up the protocol stack at increasing levels of software into those communication solutions. So in 2015, we did an acquisition of a company called Anite that got us protocol layer solutions for wireless. In 2017, we bought a company called Ixia that got us protocol layer solutions for wireline. And now we really do service that communications ecosystem kind of end-to-end in both wireless and wireline from the folks who make components and chipsets and kind of the underlying subcomponents that go into these systems to the folks that are making devices, whether that's wireless devices like tablets and handhelds or it's network equipment like routers and network equipment that the Ciscos and Junipers make. And so lots of touch points, network equipment, components, connectors, hyperscalers, these are all customers of ours. And again, physical layer all the way up through the protocol layers. And then I was just going to touch on the industrial side. The Industrial side of our business, we kind of manage in three smaller sub-groupings. We have a semiconductor business, a business in automotive, and then we have kind of a catch-all group which we call general electronics, which really captures all the other industries that would be hiring electrical engineering talent and needing electrical engineering based tools, hardware, software tools. And you can think of kind of the digitalization of all industries that is really the driver of that broader industry group.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#7

So let's start on CSG. Let's go down wireless, wireline, the mix of that business between those two buckets today. And how do you think about the -- how would you characterize the demand, the demand dynamics that you're seeing in the market? Because this one thing -- I'll put this out there is that one thing that's always impressed me about Keysight is, the diversity of your business is extremely remarkable.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#8

Probably underappreciated.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#9

Underappreciated. But wireless versus wireline and the growth vectors that you see there.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#10

Yes. So again, we have commercial and communications, our wireless and wireline business. The wireline business is, I think, our greatest area of strength in the current market environment, clearly inflecting positively with AI as the underlying driver of demand across the wireless-wireline ecosystem. So again, we're selling to folks that are making network silicon. We're selling to the folks that are enabling a transceiver development, the Lumentums and the Eoptolinks and Coherents of the world. We're selling to the network equipment manufacturers like Cisco and Juniper. We sell to the hyperscalers. We sell to the connector guys like Amphenol and TE Connectivity. So the point that I'm trying to make there, and I'll make the same point in a minute when we talk about wireless. There's lots of touch points across that ecosystem. We're helping with, what I would call kind of underlying development and by that specifically mean that the evolution of Ethernet speeds from 100 gigabit to 400 gigabit to 800 gigabit to 1.6 terabit and now we're talking about 3.2 terabit Ethernet. But we're also helping directly with AI-specific applications. For example, with the hyperscalers today, we sell tools that help them model network data flows across the network in a lab environment, but before they make these big investments to deploy data center, so they can optimize those data flows and ultimately end up deploying a smaller, but more efficient, i.e., less expensive network into operation.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#11

And that wireless versus wireline, that mix today is...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#12

Roughly 45% wireline today, 55% wireless. So that's I think roughly $1 billion of wireline, and a little bit north of that on the wireless side of things. And then I'll just go ahead and switch to wireless. So a similar type of environment where we sell broadly across the ecosystem to folks that are making components like Qualcomm and Broadcom and Murata and these folks. We sell to the device manufacturers like Samsung and Google and Oppo and VIVO and Xiaomi, all of the folks that are making handsets. We sell to the network equipment manufacturers, previously a Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, obviously, we obviously don't sell to Huawei anymore, but it was kind of a 3-player market. But with the advent of O-RAN, there are many, many more players that are now playing in that network equipment space. And then we have a small business with the service providers as well. So that's kind of how that plays out. Primarily -- both of those businesses, wireline and wireless skew heavily towards R&D more heavily than the company average, which itself is 55% R&D, but more R&D focused on the comm side than in the rest of the business.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#13

70-30?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#14

70-30. Maybe 65%, 35%, but in that range, that's the right way to think about it.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#15

Yes. And the growth before we go to the Industrial side. I'm ultimately kind of thinking about -- because it's very hard to like just talk about Keysight from just a total growth perspective, top down. I think you got to almost think about the verticals that you're in.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#16

That's right. I think, that's right too. Yes.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#17

And so to me, and I had the opportunity to be on the road with you not too long ago, it sounded to me like we were at a point where the wireless business has, call it, stabilized. And the wireline business has got a vector of growth, right, around this AI narrative. So how do you think about CCG (sic) [ CSG ] and total commercial communications growing, recovering after what we saw through COVID and...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#18

It's almost a reversal of what we were seeing a couple of years ago where it was wireless that was driving the growth, and it was more stability in wireline. And we're now kind of on the other side of that, where it's this AI-driven investments in data center that is driving significant growth on the wireline side of things, whereas the wireless business, there's still a lot of investment going. This is a north of $1 billion business for us. There's a lot of investment going into satellite communications, into O-RAN, into the additional revs of the standards. 18 has recently been frozen, 19 is underway. So they're working towards essentially 5G-Advanced, if you think back to -- we did 3G, 3.5G, 3.9G, LTE, LTE Advanced, LTE Advanced Pro, we're still kind of on the first instantiation of 5G. 5G-Advanced is coming, and people are investing to get ready for those things. And then early 6G research has also started. So there's a lot of investment that's happening in wireless right now. It's just stable, it's not growing currently. We'll see what the inflection is that kind of gets that going. But in the meantime, the commercial comm section is growing nicely because of the growth that we're seeing on the wireline side of the house. And I think that gets back to the diversification point you were making earlier.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#19

Yes, exactly. And it's hard for probably Keysight to like -- it feels like the AI narrative is there, but it's maybe hard to really say like AI is x percent of your business. I think, that's a fair point. You were never going to...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#20

That's right. I mean, we talked about wireline. And AI is the underlying driver of this roughly $1 billion wireline business. And there certainly are insertion points that are very clearly supporting the AI agenda. I've talked about what we're doing for the hyperscalers to help them model their data flows. There are things that we're doing into the NVIDIA ecosystem that are clearly tied to this. But a lot of it is also just kind of structural, right, to enable the overall evolution of wireline networks.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#21

Yes. And we're bouncing all over the place here a little bit, and I can appreciate you sticking with me on this. The wireless business is stable. But if I look out over the next 2 years or 3 years, whatever the time horizon I might look, is it O-RAN that becomes a growth driver? Is it a release cycle of 5G? That's -- because these release cycles don't necessarily drive base station growth or anything like we saw in 5G. But are there things that actually you could see that say, hey, wireless goes from being stable to maybe growing in the next couple of years?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#22

Yes. I mean, I think, there are definitely things that we can see. When it actually turns out to be will remain to be seen. But certainly, we're seeing waves of investment in O-RAN. We're seeing waves of investment in satellite communication. I think we're looking forward to AI at the edge could create a wave of investment. The Chinese are still talking about deploying millimeter-wave. Whether or not they actually do it or not, it will be a question, but that could certainly create a wave of investment around higher frequency 5G. And then, of course, the [ revs ] of the standard, [ Rev] 19 really focused on this 5G-Advanced is going to create -- it can create waves of investment as well. And then again, 6G is already ramping for us, right? I would just characterize it as research rather than development. So capital R, little D, driven initially by academia, government institutes, but we are starting to see market making commercial customers start to staff teams focused on early 6G research as well. So a nice growth coming from that as well.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#23

So shifting over to the Industrial piece of the business, the EISG business. Maybe same kind of line of questions. Can you unpack that business? How much is auto, how much is semi? How do we break those end markets out a little bit?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#24

So if you thought about -- we haven't really sized them in a while. But if you thought about them as being roughly 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 general electronics, semiconductor, automotive, you wouldn't be far off. I think, particularly given the pullback that we've seen in automotive, you're probably -- maybe auto is a little bit smaller than 1/3, general electronics a little bit bigger than 1/3, is the kind of the way that I'd be thinking about that. And again, stepping through those end markets, I'll start with automotive since we've talked about that. I think it's the one area where we are seeing some significant weakness. You could think about our auto business itself. We could even further subsegment into three groups. Manufacturing, which has been weak for a year or so. But there -- as auto volumes return and we're somewhat agnostic. It doesn't need to be a EV, it could be EV, it could be hybrid, it could be ICE. As manufacturing volumes in auto come back, we would expect that business to rebound. Then the EV piece is experiencing significant weakness. We're just selling R&D tools into battery lab development is primarily what's happening. And I think low-cost Chinese batteries are disrupting that investment thesis for some of the OEMs. So I think over time, we'll see what happens with EV battery development, but there certainly will be opportunities in that space around charging infrastructure, around distributed grid, those types of things, I think, will continue to drive an opportunity. And the last piece is kind of a little bit of a catch-up, but in it we would include things like autonomous driving, which I think over the longer term is going to be a big opportunity for Keysight as well as all of the other electronic content that goes into the vehicle itself, whether that's infotainment systems or airbag triggers or e-call, tire pressure sensors, all of that electronic content needs to be designed, developed, tested.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#25

Okay. So auto space is still weak. We're looking for signs of stabilization, but not really seeing it at this point. The semiconductor business, it sounds like there might be some improvement?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#26

Some improvement. I think we've seen some early signs of what will hopefully turn out to be a broader inflection. I think we're very much following kind of the industry commentary from the big foundries, from the big semi-capital equipment manufacturers, who are all signaling kind of calendar '25 is a likely time for inflection. Now we don't know whether that means January or November, but we're looking to calendar '25. And again, we're starting to see some early signs of strength there. So we'll be -- this business has a little bit more of a manufacturing focus versus R&D and a lot of the other segments. So we'll be watching new fab time lines, additional capacity in the existing facilities, those types of things would be the indicators that will ultimately drive that turnaround in semi.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#27

And in that business, there's really kind of two bigger pieces that drives that. There's the test side. And you've got a component piece of...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#28

That's right. Yes. So we have two businesses within our semi offering. We've made something called the parametric tester, which is a necessary step in the fab production process. And you can kind of think of it as the last step that gets done -- almost like a check on the production process itself before they go and test the actual functional performance of the chips that they manufacture, we're agnostic to that. They actually test -- make some tests of the wafer itself, test for how current flows across the wafer. It's almost a backward check on whether or not they've retained the recipe in their fab environment. We have a highly differentiated position in that. And then we actually make a subcomponent that goes into these big photolithography machines. It's essentially a 3D guidance system, so that these things that are laying down the image know where they are across all dimensions vertically and in both directions on the horizontal plane.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#29

So I'm going to kind of wrap all this together. And the question ultimately I get to is that you've got a long-term model framework, 5% to 7% growth. You're coming off of a period of time where you -- not different from other companies had this abnormal backlog build and normalization. We've seen now a quarter or so where you've got order growth returning, right? So I mean, the sustainability of order growth in your mind is in a good place. And ultimately, 5% to 7% growth, I mean, on a recovery basis, why couldn't it be more is what I'm getting at. What's the vectors that could possibly on a recovery drive [ your growth ]

Neil Dougherty

executive
#30

Yes, it's a great question. So first of all, we just announced our Q4 FY '24 earnings. We put out guidance for Q1, and we gave some indication as to how we're thinking about fiscal '25. And our base case right now is around 5% revenue growth, again, just to give an indication of how we're thinking about it. And the first thing I would say is relative to where we were even 6 months ago, it just feels like the business a little bit less hand to mouth than we were, right? There's more degrees of freedom. Our funnels are improving. The rate of flow-through of transactions through our funnel is improving, distributor inventories are improving. So there's signs of improvement out there that give us confidence as we enter fiscal '25. At the same time, as we've just discussed, as you go through our end markets, there are areas of strength, wireline, aerospace defense, areas where we're bullish, optimistic about semiconductor, but that's kind of coupled with stability in wireline, which is -- or wireless, which is a big business. Pessimism in automotive, and general electronics, again, a heavily manufacturing business. We know a lot of capacity went in, in '21, '22 that needs to be absorbed. And so it just right now doesn't feel like all of those markets are going to be in phase to enable growth significantly above that 5% in the immediate time frame. Now history would suggest in our business, when we do see a pullback, there often is more of a snap back in business. So we can't rule it out. But right now, we're just not seeing kind of stars aligned, if you will, across all of the end markets to drive that kind of a bounce back.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#31

Yes. That's a great explanation. So in the context of all your businesses too, and I should have maybe asked this earlier is that the administration change that's happened, and you are exposed to some of the government spending dynamics. How do you see that? I think when we talked 1 month or 2 ago, there's cautiousness around like projects change and is there things in flux there?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#32

Yes. I mean I think as you think about the Trump administration coming in. Probably the #1 thing we'll watch is really more short term than anything else, which is we do know that at change of administration, there can be some disruption to aerospace defense end markets. The good news is it doesn't tend to be demand destruction. It's just as the new President comes in, they bring in their own teams, they can slow things down for 1 quarter or 2. The good news is in the instances where that's happened in the past, there tends to be a catch-up. And so you don't actually lose that business. It's just kind of a short-term perturbation. We'll also be watching trade very carefully. And it's hard to know what's actually going to happen. Obviously, President-elect Trump has said some things about some pretty high levels of tariffs. We'll see whether or not he implements tariffs at those levels or something that's more scaled back, and we'll be watching that carefully. I think the good news is, we don't have a China-based supply chain. We don't manufacture ourselves in China. So at least from that perspective, I think we're somewhat protected, and we'll take a wait-and-see approach, and we'll evaluate as some of these broad campaign-based statements migrate from campaign statements to something that's more of an implementable policy.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#33

How about Mexico? Any supply chain there?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#34

No significant supply chain in Mexico, either.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#35

Yes. That's perfect. Perfect. So from there, I want to go to kind of like one thing, Neil, we've talked about in the past. The company -- when you go in a downturn, I think it took a lot of pride in the fact that you could flex this business model, right? You have variable comp that makes up -- I think the number is 10%. Walk us through like we see 5% growth this year. What do we have to think about in terms of getting back to that kind of longer-term operating margin model, which I think is 31%, 32%? How do you think about the factor of incremental leverage through the P&L?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#36

Yes. So I mean, I guess, if there is a silver lining from a downturn, it's that for the first time as an independent company, we've been able to test our downside model, and we actually outperformed relative to the model that we put out. The revenues, we had talked about a 10% downside model. And organically, we were down 12%. So we're down a little bit more, but managed within the operating margin parameters because of the flexibility of our cost structure. And so kind of a check the box, the model performed as or better than expected. I think as we now inflect back upwards or look forward to inflecting back upwards, we need to be on the lookout for some of those costs that flex down on the downside of the equation coming back in, the variable pay programs will turn back on, and that will become a little bit of a headwind from an expense standpoint. But as you saw in our comments in our most recent quarterly announcement, we guided The Street to -- not a guide, but we talked about our base case scenario for the year being 5% revenue growth, 10% EPS growth. So aligned with the long-term model that we put out there. You'd referenced some of the numbers that we put out at Analyst Day, 66% to 67% gross margin, 31% to 32% operating margin. Unfortunately, at the time that we made those statements in March of 2023, we didn't foresee with the subsequent 18 months we're going to look like from a market perspective. So we are a little bit behind. Gross margins have held up pretty well, considering the revenue pull back. But we're 26-ish percent operating margins today. So I do think we're going to owe The Street an update at some point. I think the good news is we're not backing away from those targets. I think we're going to likely have to push out the time line on which they're realized, and that's ultimately going to be a function of the timing and shape of this recovery, which is just now starting to form. So I don't think we have enough information to put out a new time line, but when the time is right, we'll do so.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#37

Yes. And I think you always -- I think we've talked about like the flex down works good when it's maybe a shorter duration of time. And now that it's maybe a little bit longer than what you thought as far as a downturn, it takes a little bit longer to get yourself back up.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#38

Yes. There's two challenges, right? So there's great flex in the model, but you can't flex the same dollar twice. So that first year, you're taking a lot of cost out. When you get into the second year, there's not a further flex down. So we're now into -- we're now about 6 quarters in. And we're continuing to manage it. That's the reason why we've had to take some incremental actions. I think our headcount, excluding the acquisitions that we've done was down about 4% last year. So we've been taking some incremental actions to ensure performance to model. But now these things are going to turn back on and become a little bit of a headwind. But I think over the longer term, we stand by the model that we've put about -- that we've talked about. We grow our business mid-single digit, we can deliver 40% operating leverage, can continue to grow our operating margins. And if we do get a snapback, as you suggest, why can't it be higher? We'll see, maybe it will be. But if we do get something that's a higher level of growth, then I think there's an opportunity for us to deliver upside.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#39

Yes. That's perfect. Maybe I'll shift to the capital structure, maybe I'll start by -- you're working through a larger acquisition. I'm not going to ask about that right now. How do you think about -- you recently bought the Optical Solutions Group from Synopsys. How do you guys think about capital return versus balancing that on an M&A perspective? And then I'm going to ask you, like how do you think about leverage on the balance sheet in that context as well?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#40

Yes, happy to address it. So first of all, I like the word balance, right? We try and balance return of capital with M&A. And there was a period of time in the '21, '22 time frame, while we had a robust funnel of opportunities, we really struggled to find targets of size that were actionable, at price levels that enabled us to meet our return hurdle. So we were a little bit quieter for a period of time because there's a strong software bias to our M&A funnel, and you know what some of the software multiples are. And so even though as we entered, what was a little bit of a down cycle for our own business, we started to see some targets that were actionable at more reasonable valuations. We bought ESI, a pure software company, high recurring revenue for something closer to 7x revenue about 1 year ago, right? And so we want to make sure that we maintain that dry powder, that we're ready to execute on opportunities when they present themselves and when they meet our return hurdles, and that's what I think you saw us do with ESI. It's what you've seen us do with Spirent, a deal that's pending. And it's what you've seen us do with the Optical Systems Group (sic) [ Optical Solutions Group ], bought from the Synopsis, also a deal that's pending. I think as we look forward, we do have these acquisitions that we need to settle. I think we'll remain committed to at least do buybacks at the anti-dilutive level. And then to the extent that we would do opportunistic buybacks above that, it's really going to be a function of how do we evaluate the benefit of doing that versus starting to stockpile some cash, so that we can bring more cash to closing on these transactions. From a leverage perspective, we touched on that as well. We've talked about targeted gross leverage of approximately 2 turns of leverage. We're closer to 1 turn today. So there's a lot of capacity that exists within the business. And so we're trading all of those things off as it comes time to settle these acquisitions.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#41

And you'd be comfortable going above that leverage ratio for a period of time?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#42

Yes, certainly for a period of time. I'd go back to the time that we bought Ixia back in 2017. We levered up to just over 3x leverage. But within, I don't know, 12 or 14 months, we were back down to our 2x target. So we will step over our leverage target from time to time. But always with a plan to get back into the targeted leverage range within a relatively finite period of time.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#43

Again, there are some things going on with the pending Spirent deal, so I'm not going to go down that path. But can you tell us a little bit about the Synopsis? What does that give you? What's the incremental opportunity you see in that Optical Solutions Group?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#44

Yes, happy to talk about it. So if you went back to our Analyst Day again, March of 2023, we have a little bit over a $20 billion SAM that we currently play in, but Satish had highlighted four areas that were kind of targeted areas for our M&A strategy, data analytics, network analytics, software test and engineering software. We did an acquisition of a company called Eggplant in the software test space. We did an acquisition of ESI in the engineering software space. This Optical Systems Group (sic) [ Optical Solutions Group ] that we're going to get out of Synopsys is another engineering software tool, right? So Keysight has long had presence in this space with our RF and Microwave EDA tools. And what we recognized in the marketplace is that our engineering customers want to do more work in software before they build expensive prototypes. So we're trying to build a larger suite of emulation and simulation tools, so that they can build more complete, more robust models in software before they build expensive prototypes. And so as we said, we had RF and Microwave EDA, we got physical modeling tools in the computer-aided engineering space with the ESI acquisition, and now we're getting optical capability with this business that we're buying from Synopsys.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#45

Yes. How much is software of your business today?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#46

Software is -- software and services combined are about 40%, close to 25% of that is coming from software and about 15% of that is coming from services.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#47

And the software component is predominantly, what subscription like ratables.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#48

It's between the subscription license and the service component, we're probably approaching 60% ratable, and then a big chunk of the services business is ratable as well. So we estimate that across software and services, we have about 30% recurring revenue in the company. It's a mix of software and support.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#49

That's perfect. So when we look at Keysight, I've always struggled a little bit because like your competitive landscape is fairly fragmented, right? How do you characterize the competitive landscape? I know National Instruments oftentimes is referenced, they got bought by Emerson, but that you didn't really [ see them ] that much. So who is your competitor?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#50

Yes. We don't see them that much. Yes, so I would agree it's a fragmented market. And I think one of the things that really differentiates Keysight from the competitors that we play against is the breadth of our portfolio, right? We talk about being able to serve these ecosystems, end to end, up and down the stack, a broad suite of tools. We focus on bringing complete solutions to market. And in order for our customers to build analogous solutions from our competitors, they might need to work with two or three different companies. So when we do think about our competitor set, it's companies like Rohde & Schwarz, a private German company that's strong in the communications space, Anritsu, a public Japanese company, also strong in communications, but with a particular strength around handheld instrumentation. There's the Tektronix brand, which is part of Fortive. It's strong in one particular tool category called oscilloscopes. And so it's a much more fragmented presence. There isn't really a competitor out there that has the breadth and scale of Keysight.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#51

Yes, yes. And again, I want to go back to kind of the -- we are in a -- backlogs normalized. We've talked in the past couple of quarters about extended longer-dated backlog? Just help us think about where is backlog -- remind me again where backlog is, and much...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#52

$2.3 billion or $2.4 billion. I can't remember to the [ tenth ]. But it's $2.2 billion, $2.4 billion today.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#53

And that's inclusive of kind of the longer lead time backlog...

Neil Dougherty

executive
#54

It's inclusive of recurring revenue. It inclusive, i.e., of deferred revenue, it's exclusive of -- inclusive of the longer lead time backlog as well. That's right.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#55

Okay. And because in the past, you've talked about like your backlog number was more of a 6 month.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#56

And it's still not -- well over 90% of it is still that. This longer lead time business that we saw really kind of see outpaced growth during this downturn, focused in automotive, focused in semi, focused in aerospace defense. I think the aerospace defense and semi components of that kind of remain robust, but the automotive part was really focused on this EV space and we have seen a significant pullback in those investments in the current environment.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#57

So I'm going to end with this kind of high-level question. So as you're meeting with investors, I often find like Keysight's diversity, the underlying various different growth drivers, the competitive landscape makes it unique. You're a unique company in terms of that side. When you're talking with investors, where do you feel like the two or three things that are most underappreciated in the Keysight story?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#58

Yes. I mean I think the fact that we're vertically integrated, the technology that is needed to provide instrumentation into the R&D labs of the best technology companies in the world is unique. And so a lot of times, the underlying subcomponents that are needed are not commercially available. So we run our own fab. We were doing our own packaging technology, so that we can get the level of performance that is necessary to enable the best technology companies in the world. And not only we vertically integrated, we have a unique breadth of portfolio that I think is truly differentiating in this marketplace. We have the ability to spend on R&D at a level that's unprecedented. We spent close to $900 million a year in R&D. That's the revenue line for -- or less -- or more than the revenue line for many of our competitors in this space. And so the ability to invest, the customer intimacy, the diversity of our end markets, the breadth of our portfolio, all of these are significant differentiators for us in this marketplace and enabled us to have a #1 position in these end markets for decades. It's been a position that we've been able to sustain. And particularly over the last 10 years, as we've once again been an independent company that's singularly focused on these end markets without the distractions of other businesses, we've been able to really increase growth, increase that customer intimacy, switch to this complete solutions, software-focused framework that is having an impact on gross margin, it's having an impact on operating margins, on free cash flow. The business is stronger than it's ever been.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#59

Yes. And I think one of the things that I don't feel like it's appreciated, you mentioned there, you have your own fab. Like this is complex stuff, right? You're dealing with high frequency. Your ability to leverage your own fab producing your own silicon, that is a strategic advantage?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#60

We're primarily doing in-house, we're doing gallium arsenide, indium phosphide. We do have our own team of silicon ASIC designers, but we would outsource the production of those to the big silicon foundries. But we do our own gallium arsenide, indium phosphide chips in-house.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#61

Anything I should have asked you that I did not?

Neil Dougherty

executive
#62

I mean, I think we've hit on the big things. It does feel like I hesitate to use the word inflection at this point, but things are clearly improving. I said earlier that it feels like the business is less hand to mouth. I feel like there's reason for optimism here as we enter FY '25. And I think the one thing that Keysight has proven over the years is our ability to execute. And so once the markets recover, I'm confident in our ability to capture that market upside to turn that market upside into operating leverage, deliver profit, deliver cash flow. And so a little bit of a wait-and-see game here on the timing of some of these market inflections, but we're well positioned. We've continued to invest through the downturn. We've maintained our R&D investment through the downturn. So we've got a rich pipeline of new products that are set to come out and are really positioned well as markets start to inflect.

Aaron Rakers

analyst
#63

Perfect. Neil, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Neil Dougherty

executive
#64

Thank you. Take care.

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