ON Semiconductor Corporation (ON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So people are still coming into the room, but welcome back. I'm Joe Moore. Happy to have with us here today the management team onsemi, Hassane El-Khoury and Thad Trent, CEO and CFO, respectively. So thank you guys for coming.

I guess I'd like to start off giving you guys credit a couple of years ago at this event. You sort of talked about industrial starting to weaken, and you were right about that. Last year, it was auto and like it's probably not all that rewarding to be a good early warning indicator, but it helps me a lot so -- and I appreciate it a lot, and you guys have built a lot of credibility through that. And now it feels like we're kind of through the worst of it and sort of maybe tracking near term, but feeling better about next year. Can you just maybe give us an overview of what that inventory correction has looked like and kind of where you feel like we are now?

Sure. So you -- it's good memory there. But one thing I would say, it's not good to be right about that, but what it allowed us to do is position the company with lean inventory in the channel, lean inventory on the balance sheet. We took utilization down early on. So that proactive view of the market really allowed us set the company up for the next upturn. So I'll just say, that's the positive that came out of our visibility. Now where that puts us today in the market, we see industrial stabilized. It's been stable for a few quarters. It's kind of bouncing at the bottom, but at this point, stabilization is actually a positive, relatively speaking to where we were. Automotive is in the same spot. We do believe that we're, by the end of this quarter, so next couple of months, we'll be done with the inventory burn, where we'll see, and we have seen stabilization. This conference last year, we're still talking about degradation. So sitting here and talking about stabilization, which is the first step in a recovery is a much more positive situation we're in. Visibility is not where we want it to be, but it's better. Booking patterns are better. So things are incrementally better, not where to the point where I would sit here and talk about a -- the recovery is imminent, but stabilization and improvement from the baseline we've been dealing with the last couple of years is a much better improvement where we are.

And would you say in both of those markets that you're shipping below the level of end demand still, you still see that?

Yes. Yes. So stabilization, I talked about stabilization. It's kind of the first step in recovery because we're under-shipping to burn inventory. So next, when you burn inventory, you have what we call the replenishment cycle that comes next. We haven't seen that yet. So there's a replenishment cycle, and then there's the demand, which is the incremental demand from the base. We haven't seen the replenishment cycle. So that's a positive sign that we will still get that, call it, the bump that is not a demand recovery, but just basically shipping to natural demand, which is a replenishment, and then obviously, whatever the macro does, would the demand will benefit from that. Back to my earlier comment, based on our inventory position in the channel and our inventory position on the balance sheet, as soon as we see demand clicking up, we take utilization up, margin goes up, top line goes up, everything, and we're off to the races from all the work that we've done in the last couple of years.

Great. I appreciate that. You talked about bookings being a little bit better. I guess what does that indicate? Is that lead times a little bit longer, people giving you a little bit more visibility? Just, can you frame that a little bit?

Yes. Actually, lead times have not really moved, maybe contracted a little bit.

Yes, they've come down slightly. It's about 14 weeks on average for us right now.

So that's not -- that wasn't a lever or a catalyst that changes it, but it could mean a lot of different things. You hear conversations in the market and some of our customers. I get more questions about, hey, do you think we're going to be on an allocation? Or have you heard of some shortages here or there? So there's that conversation. It's not yet leading to a replenishment cycle, but it's more on, we have customers that don't want to have to deal with it. They're placing the backlog. So they don't lose their spot online, but it depends on the customer and what markets they're in. Some -- the more confident you are in your outlook, the faster you're going to put backlog on us. So what I would read into it as bookings are getting better is potentially the customer sentiment is getting better, because now they're placing backlog earlier?

That's helpful. I guess one of the surprising things in the last, kind of, cycle of quarterly earnings, this Nexperia situation, pretty short-term disruption with one of your competitors based on geopolitics. The semiconductor companies didn't see a lot of difference from it, but the Tier 1s, all were stressed by it. We saw a number of kind of line down situations. And it's like kind of surprised me that a few days of disruption took us into that situation where suddenly we were struggling a little bit. And after the sort of once-in-a-generation shortage 2 years ago that there's been seems like very little memory of that, can you just talk to that situation? Does that tell us that inventories are getting to the point where they're too...

Yes. This is another spot. This is another one where I wish I wasn't right also. But I did send a letter to Tier 1 saying your inventory is to a very low level, any disruption or any uptick in demand is going to cause a ripple. Of course, nothing happened. Fast forward, there's a disruption, and then some OEMs 3 days later, screening lines down. That tells you exactly there is no inventory. So back to the replenishment, the replenishment is a critical aspect of being able to deal, not just a disruption of one of our peers having a dislocation or disruption, any disruption. If one of my peers has a power outage in the fab for a day, you're going to have that ripple. So that's how lean the inventory is, when you go lines down in 3 days, when there is no really -- when there's just a hiccup. So that tells you that we're down back to what we talked about earlier, inventory replenishment is kind of almost behind us. There's a few pockets that will work their way out by the end of the year, but we're bound to have a replenishment cycle, because of that lean inventory out at the Tier 1s.

And couldn't it be pretty significant? I mean, you talk about people asking you, are we going back on allocation? Like it seems like there should be some memory of how, 2 years ago, I couldn't -- I literally couldn't buy an internal combustion vehicle because there was no semis. Just shouldn't there be a significant replenishment at some point?

So from a business and resilience perspective, I'd say absolutely, there has to be, but you also can look at who's going to carry inventory on their balance sheet. It's a working capital. And the margin, the cost of capital is very expensive, and a lot of these business models are really on thin margins. So unless you see back to the end-to-end demand confidence, nobody is going to be a risk in placing backlog, or even placing backlog and taking the orders on their balance sheet. So we're in that just-in-time kind of ordering pattern. The problem is just-in-time is fine if there's no disruption, but that's the risk versus risk adjustment or risk analysis that our customers have to do. And of course, we're here to help also with the Nexperia disruption. We wanted to support our customers. We're -- you said it, we're not interested in the short-term side of it, but from a supply resiliency perspective, I think we've proven we are a company with a very strong supply resilience strategy that we've implemented from the COVID days. Even when demand softened the last few years, we did not stop our effort of supply resilience, because there's going to be a disruption. I don't know from where, I don't know what's going to cause it, but one thing I can guarantee, there will be a disruption of some kind.

There's a lot of potential.

There's a lot of potential. So for us, resiliency became a strategic vector, not just something that we had to work around the shortages. So we maintained that strategy, and now it's paying off by being able to help customers that are in need during disruption. And that's a value -- that's a long-term value we provide to customers.

Great. And just a couple of other macro questions before we get into some of the markets. The role of price, you guys have sort of talked about you had long-term agreements. You were flexible in terms of scheduling, but tend to be pretty disciplined about price. Can you just talk about where you are in kind of like-for-like pricing now? And do you see any change going forward?

Yes. I think we're back. Part of the stabilization, I think we can -- we talked about it on the last call, low single-digit pricing. We don't talk about it as a meaningful impact to any of our results, because part of the industry, part of what we do is we also have cost reductions from ourselves, from an efficiency gain, from a cost of products gain and so on. So it tend to offset it. So where we are now from a pricing environment, I would call it stable pricing environment, which is where we go to historical. So nothing really notable that I can talk about pricing that is out of the ordinary here.

Okay. And then where you overlap with Chinese competitors? I guess people worry about Chinese IGBTs, silicon carbide, image sensors and areas of overlap. They're not really automotive grade. They're not really at the same caliber, but they're probably not going to get worse at it over time. But it also seems like a cyclically improving environment there. I was just in China, I met with a bunch of people talking about shortages of Chinese discretes and things like that. So can you just talk generally about what it's like competing in that market over time with the domestic competition?

Yes. So a little bit different than some of your reference, especially when you talked about IGBT, impact some of our peers and they've talked about the China headwind. So we don't have that same exposure as most of our peers because recall, the last kind of 3 to 4 years, we've talked about exiting some of the noncore business. A lot of those exits were the products that have a, call it, a match or an equivalent Chinese or a not just Chinese, a low-cost alternative or a low-margin alternative, meaning if the customer doesn't see the value in the product, they can take a non-semi product or an Infineon product or a China domestic product and so on. Those are the businesses we exited. So when we talk about China being a competitive to and causing a headwind to some of the -- weather margin or products, we're not exposed to that because that's behind us. We've exited that business. What we supply to China are high-value products, meaning what we compete with is Western or there's no competition because there's no equivalent product. Our performance is much better than what's in the market and so on. So we can command a better margin or better structure from an ASP perspective. So we feel we're in a pretty good position. Of course, competition is not a sleep at the wheel, neither are we. So a lot of our R&D is going into advancing those products at a much faster pace, and that's going to keep us ahead, not just versus competition in China, but competition in Western peers as well.

Great. So maybe if we shift to some of the growth opportunities. Starting with silicon carbide, it seems like we're evolving from silicon carbide being thought of as mostly automotive. There's a lot of other opportunities for silicon carbide materials. Can you just talk about your general position there and what you see going forward?

Yes. So if I break down silicon carbide, so obviously, automotive electrification, EV or battery electric vehicle was the primary use of silicon carbide as far as technology. Then while remaining in the automotive, actually, 2 announcements that we've made over the last couple of quarters on plug-in hybrids, which is we can talk about EV, not at the rate that it used to be, still growth. Plug-in hybrids is another growth vector for us. Plug-in hybrid historically has been IGBT-driven or silicon-product-driven. Now they're converting to silicon carbide. So that's a new market that is evolving, which is plug-in hybrid, that is also utilizing silicon carbide. When we go outside of automotive, we talk about microgrids or energy storage systems, whether it's industrial, utility scale or commercial scale energy storage, think about it the big container-sized batteries that sit next to a site that supply power in the case of a disruption or in the case, the grid can't support it. So anything microgriding energy storage that is making its way there. That plays a very big role as I transition the conversation to AI, where a lot of the AI data center now need energy storage systems outside of them to support the power from the grid that is not yet up to par. Going into the data center, silicon carbide also finds its way in the UPS or at the entry point in the server of the power, especially as you go up to the 800-volt rail. That's where silicon carbide comes in. For us, it's a sweet spot. We've been doing automotive 800-volt battery for a few years now. So our devices are already ready for it. And on top of that, the difference we can talk about silicon carbide JFET, which is a different technology based on silicon carbide, that is actually the most optimal silicon carbide product that can go into the data center.

Great. Maybe we could talk about that data center opportunity a little bit more. The -- you don't have the current revenue exposure that some of your competitors have into AI servers, but you just talked about a very strong position heading into particularly 800-volt in the future. Can you just talk about the priority that you're putting on that? And I think there's 14 suppliers that are partnered with NVIDIA on 800-volt. Of those, how should we think of onsemi being positioned?

Sure. So a couple of things. So one, on the AI data center product, obviously, the growth that we talked about: in Q1, I talked about that revenue doubling year-on-year; Q2 doubled year-on-year; Q3 doubled year-on-year. So we went from almost no revenue to 2025 being around the $250 million. That will continue to grow with the opportunity ahead as we get to the 800 volts. Answering directly on kind of the breadth of the competitors out there. If you take the list of companies that were listed with partnering with NVIDIA, and you talk about which one of them has capability to go to 800 volts, just high voltage. It turns down to 2, us and Infineon. Everybody else kind of taps out 48-volt, 100 volts and so on. So why is that important? At 800-volt, today, to get to the GPU, you get from high voltage, let's talk 800-volt, 400-volt, maybe 48-volt, 12-volt and then down, right? So you have multiple phases of conversion, to get from the plug to the core. So if your technology is, call it, the 48-volt technology, like some -- like most of those companies are because they're sitting next to the core today. When you want to get to 800 volts, you don't have that. So when you go from 800 volts to 48 volts, you need to have both of them in-house. And only 2 companies have all these voltages in-house, it's us and Infineon. So that's how we differentiate. Now how we differentiate now within the 2, us and Infineon, I talk about silicon carbide JFET. We're the only company that has that. So we differentiate based on fundamental technology where our portfolio is broader in these applications. And we've announced last quarter, vertical GaN, which is GaN-on-GaN that goes up to 1,200 volts, which is now putting natively GaN at the high-voltage rail that lateral GaN or GaN on silicon is not able to achieve today. And that, today, we're the only company that has that as well. So from a positioning or thinning the competitive field, it's end-to-end, high voltage to low voltage. And within that thinner field of 2, we differentiate by having technologies that others do not have, that play very well in that data center.

Great. And then within silicon carbide, you control your own vertically integrated substrate. I know in GaN, you signed a deal with Innoscience. Can you just talk generally about the capabilities that you're bringing to these markets and that sort of, even in silicon carbide, I know you have been one of the first to actually source from China as well as having your own substrate. How do you think about that balance?

So we think about back to supply resilience. We've always said, just starting with silicon carbide, we've always said we didn't want 100% internal. So we've always said that gives us the best of both worlds where we have our internal vertical integration, and we can flex outside as the market evolves. And that played very, very well where we are today where we're able to source inside and outside for silicon carbide. So fast forward for GaN, same kind of concept. GaN today is a technology that is available from foundry. When a technology is available at foundry or multiple foundries, then the differentiation happens of what you do with the technology. So what do we bring to the table? We've introduced -- you've heard me talk about the Treo platform. We have a very compelling and differentiated portfolio of drivers for silicon carbide, but also for GaN, packaging technology that we're very good at, that's the differentiation. So in order to do GaN with high value and very well, you need technology, GaN, you need drivers and you need packaging for thermals. Have with the Innoscience agreement that we talked about that we announced, we get now all 3. It gives us the technology from Innoscience, and it gives us all of the value adder that we provide with the drivers and the packaging. So it's a win-win for us and a win for Innoscience.

Great. So I have a number of growth opportunities I wanted to come back to, but maybe ask that first, can you give us a sense first of where you are with factory utilization today? Where do you see it going? It seems like you've managed that pretty tightly. Just generally, are we near the bottom of your cycle there?

Yes. So we're -- so last quarter, we were at 74% utilized. I said it was going to step backwards slightly because we're building some inventory for the mass market and holding that in die bank. We started investing in the mass market about a year ago, moving inventory into the distribution channel. That's where the mass market gets handled. And a year later, we're seeing the customer count go up by 19%. So we seeded that market now we've got to seed the die bank to be able to move quickly inventory into the channel when it's needed, but back on the utilization, utilization is what's going to drive gross margin in the short term. So let's assume we're 70% to 74% utilized today. If you think about where we can get to with some type of market recovery, as Hassane was saying, we can match our utilization very closely to whatever the market response looks like given that we have lean inventory on our balance sheet and in the channel. So for every point of utilization, it's 25 to 30 basis points of gross margin improvement. So there's -- to get to fully utilized, there's about 650 to 700 basis points of gross margin improvement, just getting from where we are today to fully utilized. If you look at our free cash flow this year in 2025, we're running close to 25% free cash flow margin. So the impact on gross margin is noncash. So as we think about this market and whatever it's going to do, we're going to closely match that utilization, hopefully taking it up. And it takes about 2 quarters for that utilization to hit the P&L as you bleed through the inventory that's on the balance sheet. But that's our opportunity in the short term when I think about 2026 is the primary driver of gross margin is going to be utilization.

Yes. And so if you think about a path back to 40%. How linear should we think of that utilization improvement being? You mentioned there's a little bit of inventory build this quarter. I know you have this kind of buffer inventory that you've been working through to deal with some of the footprint consolidations. Can you just kind of outline the path to 40%?

Yes. So that strategic build that we did for the fab transitions is outside of utilization because that's all manufactured outside. So it's all about what's inside. So look, I think if you're assuming some market recovery early mid next year, that utilization is going to match it, and we should see the benefit in the second half of next year, just all going to depend on how quick the market and what that recovery looks like. I'll also say, in Q1 of this year, we took 12% of our capacity offline, not because demand was down, but because we're getting more throughput out of our existing footprint. So for 4 years, we've been working on what we call our fab right initiative, just driving more efficiency in our fabs and our back ends, and we're getting it. A couple of weeks ago, we announced another $200 million impairment where we're taking equipment offline. That equates to about $45 million to $50 million next year in 2026 of depreciation benefit. So just taking that off on an annualized basis. So that starts to impact us later in the year as well. So all things equal, we should see margin improvement in the second half, if not sooner.

Great. And then just one more question and then I'll open it. So can you talk about cash return, your strategy there? I know, there's been...

Yes. So a few weeks ago, we announced a $6 billion share repurchase authorization over 3 years. We've been returning 100% of our free cash flow to our shareholders. Our priorities in capital allocation is: one, invest in our business. We've been doing that through R&D. You've seen the products that we've announced, whether it's Treo, the vertical GaN, all these new products. The big CapEx investments are behind us. We invested in silicon carbide. We invested in our 300-millimeter fab in East Fishkill. So the big investments are behind us. So when you think about our capital intensity, mid-single-digit percentage-wise, and that's really maintenance. And I'd see for many years, we're going to be kind of in that mode. So that's one, investment in the business. Second was balance sheet flexibility, which we have. If you think about our leverage on a net basis, we're pretty close to 0. We have a lot of firepower for M&A if something opportunistically came along. We've done some technology tuck-ins. Absent any meaningful M&A, we're returning 100% of our free cash flow. We've been doing that over this last year. So this year, generating roughly $1.5 billion of free cash flow, we're returning 100% of it.

Okay. So if we have questions from the audience?

Have I understood it right that you're basically buying back 6 billion shares?

$6 million.

$6 million.

Yes, that would basically mean 30% of your market capital.

That's the number. Now that will depend on free cash flow. We return 100% of our free cash flow.

And you're hoping the market cap go up as well.

Yes. I mean obviously, right? I mean, again, back to where we're running today, if you assume some growth, we should be able to get to $6 million.

In the downturn today, we're generating $1.5 billion.

But why are you basically giving back all the free cash flow? Is it because the share price is so attractive? Or are there no growth opportunities?

No. Look, that's why I started with option #1. Our priority #1 is investing in our business, and we have been doing that, right? We're continuing to invest in our business, investing in R&D. We've invested in CapEx. So that's the first priority is fund the business for long-term growth. So we definitely see above-market growth when we return to market growth. We see that we will outgrow the market. So that's priority #1. After that is return it to shareholders.

But you're basically returning 100% of your free cash flow back to...

After making all the investments, yes.

And you said unless M&A opportunities present...

Yes, of course. But you can't, M&A is not deterministic. That doesn't mean we're not going to do M&A it means if there's an M&A, we go in that order.

Okay. Then basically, you were to reduce the share.

Yes, of course. That's why he mentioned the priority order. The last few years, the focus was on the business, so we invested in CapEx.

So just on M&A, if I can. You obviously looked at Allegro. What is the strategic gap, if you like, that you saw there that you wanted to plug? And can you develop that organically? Or are there other assets like that, that you can find?

Yes. It wasn't more of a gap. The -- if you look at the portfolio, it was more complementary. It was an expansion of the SAM. So it wasn't a gap that we have today to address the market. It was more of a market expansion, but that's the strategic impact of it. So it doesn't cause or create a gap that we have. We still have a ton of organic opportunities, like Thad said, on investments that we've made that will just start to grow.

Maybe we have 1 minute left. Maybe I didn't give you a chance to talk about Treo. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what you're doing there?

Yes. So just to remind you, we announced the Treo platform, which is our 65-nanometer BCD mixed-signal analog. It is a revolutionary platform because it's the only 65-nanometer platform in the world that is able to do low voltage, all the way to 90 volts monolithic. And the importance of it is, of course, AI data centers, automotive and industrial. So that was November of '24 when we announced it, and we said that revenue will start the second half of 2025. So we are in the second half of 2025. So where are we on that progress? We're ahead of schedule on revenue. We actually recognized revenue on the platform in the first half of '25, so that was ahead of schedule. We also talked about doubling the number of products in 2025 from 2024. We're on track to do that. So the product momentum is coming in where we want it. We talked about $1 billion of revenue in 2030. We just talked in our last earnings, I talked about crossing the $1 billion of design funnel, getting us. So all of these are leading indicators that build that confidence into the $1 billion in 2030. So the platform is going very well. Market adoption is going very well. Customer design in is going very well. And just to explain a little bit, how do we tie the platform to the technology? What I talk about in product, we talk about data center products on the board on the server. In automotive, anywhere from 10-based T1S Ethernet to drivers for silicon carbide or GaN, like I talked about. Ultrasonic sensors onsemi is #1 in ultrasonic sensing and automotive. So that is going also on the Treo platform. If I go into industrial, medical, continuous glucose monitor. So I'm giving those examples just to show that this one platform that we've presented and the technology that underlines it is a versatile technology that covers all of these end markets with a multitude of products. So when I talk about doubling the number of products, it's actually very important because it broadens the addressable market for us across all of these applications that I've talked about. So it's an important thing for us. And the margin profile on the Treo platform that we're able to achieve already is that 60% to 70% gross margin. So as that business grows, that's going to be a contributor to our margin expansion crossing that 50% that we talked about in our long-term model. So part of it is mix, and mix is coming from new product and a big portion of it is from the Treo platform.

Great. Well, I'm afraid we're out of time, but congratulations on all the progress. Thank you.

Thanks, Joe.