Blayne Curtis

Steve said the September pricing impact is small because increases take effect late in the quarter and customers pulled orders forward; the full effect lands in December.

Eric said OpEx rises ~$15M sequentially at the guidance midpoint as quarterly employee bonus programs return in the upcycle, but plans can be modulated each quarter.

Eric and Brian declined to give data center percentages but cited huge YoY growth in the Data Center Solutions unit and strong digital power-control demand.

Steve highlighted memory strength as serial EEPROM competitors shift capacity to flash/NAND. Microchip gaining share with internally produced EEPROM. FPGA strong from A&D and industrial. Eric clarified licensing benefit won't repeat in March but still guiding 6.2% growth.

Eric explained the 100% gross margin licensing revenue not repeating in March is a headwind that offsets expected inventory reserve decline. Despite this, midpoint guidance shows improvement from 60.5% to 61%.

Steve confirmed the framework: as charges decline, gross margin improves dollar for dollar. Product gross margin at 67.4% is ahead of long-term 65% target. Eric noted inventory reserves never go to zero and there will eventually be a benefit from selling through previously written-off inventory.

Steve explained charges persist because year-over-year sales have been negative, keeping the trailing 18-month sales comparator low. Starting December quarter, YoY growth turns positive, which should accelerate write-off reductions. The weak December quarter delayed progress.

Steve clarified lead time extensions are already occurring in pockets where lead frames, substrates, or subcontractor capacity are constrained. He urged customers to maintain 12-16 weeks of backlog.

Steve confirmed September backlog started higher than June and turns requirement is roughly the same, supporting confidence in guidance.

Steve explained the China-for-China strategy needs rework because rules changed from assembly-based to fab-based origin. Communicating to Trump administration that rules incentivize moving out of U.S.

Steve argued competitors are closer to full recovery so Microchip should be gaining share from here. Expressed confidence in share gains.

Steve highlighted 53% trough gross margin is still above many competitors. Deferred detailed inventory depletion modeling to March 3 investor call.

Steve cited megatrend design wins outpacing non-megatrend and noted customer engineers are back to new designs after two years focused on shortage mitigation.

Ganesh identified A&D and AI data center as consistent areas of strength while noting December quarter headwinds from holidays and extended customer shutdowns.

Eric confirmed salary restoration adding ~$8M sequentially and expects further increase in March from full-quarter effect.

Thad quantified lead times extending from ~27 to ~32 weeks with orders inside lead time and escalations, signaling a healthy demand environment.

Trent said exits are neutral to gross margin today since business is near corporate average. Exiting because of margin pressure and pricing pressure ahead. No headwind to utilization.

El-Khoury bullish on AI DC but not guiding specifically. Trent added Q1 AI DC revenue expected to grow high teens percentage-wise, indicating trajectory.

Trent clarified AI data center inside four walls is in Other. Energy storage and infrastructure supporting data centers is in Industrial.

Trent said Q4 guide is in line with normal seasonality. Auto and industrial both down low single digits. Other bucket up mid-to-high single digits. Seasonal patterns are positive sign.

Trent expects disti inventory to stay around 10 weeks, within 9-11 week sweet spot. No material change expected.

El-Khoury said ISG shifting from volume human-vision to high-value machine vision for ADAS. Trent clarified $50-100M ISG exit is inclusive of 5% total, not incremental.

El-Khoury said all regions expected down, with Q4 growth driven by China. Recovery depends on consumer confidence after Chinese New Year vehicle inventory clears.

Trent clarified exit would happen gradually over multiple quarters, market-dependent. Would keep the business if margins remain healthy.

Management credited Gen 5 durability plus Gen 6 higher attach at 64 Gbps and new inference use cases, and expects the retimer cycle to continue into Gen 7.

CFO said Scorpio becomes the largest product line by year-end with high-radix configs layering in the second half and X exceeding P.

Management cited AWS and AMD public UA Link endorsements for 2027 and framed NVLink Fusion revenue as comparable to a switch opportunity.

CFO attributed the beat to breadth across all three product lines and successful customer deployments versus conservative guidance.

CFO said P-Series volume launched ahead of plan and continues to grow, with X-Series high-volume in 2026, exceeding 10% of revenue for the year.

Management framed scale-up as a rich near-term Aries/Scorpio X opportunity dovetailing into a multibillion-dollar UALink opportunity.

CFO gave a clear margin path, ~74% in H1 trending toward the 70% long-term model depending on hardware mix.

Explicitly refused the like-for-like pricing question and redirected to the general gross margin driver list.

Gave a specific CapEx intensity range and emphasised lab investment and footprint densification over raw capacity adds.

Tim confirmed Reliant strength came from both multinational and China customers. On NAND shape, Doug said it's probably a little bit second-half weighted.

Doug clarified that September China strength was driven by domestic Chinese customers while multinationals stayed relatively steady quarter-over-quarter.

Tim cited only 7% of DRAM bits being HBM in 2025 as evidence of a long runway, with Akara conductor etch winning in an expanding DRAM market.

Tim said customers are not rethinking plans given the short timeframe since tariff announcements, with most investments being multiyear technology-driven commitments.

Management framed the NAND upgrade tailwind as a 2025 story without pinning timing within the year, pending better visibility early next year.

Hock confirmed the Singapore substrate fab deploys starting fiscal 2027 and addresses a key supply bottleneck, but the answer was brief.

Hock affirmed a very substantial dollar commitment and conceded some source diversity at Google, but gave no specific value.

Hock confirmed >$100B refers to silicon content, XPUs, switch chips, DSPs, in 2027.

Hock confirmed customer four (Anthropic) is a full system sale including Broadcom's networking components, certified final system, not chip-only.

Hock said scale-up is rapidly standardizing on Ethernet for Broadcom's hyperscale customers.

Hock confirmed both XPUs and networking were growing, with networking stronger in H2 FY2024 and new 3nm XPUs ramping in H2 FY2025.

Jim said OCS applications are widening from scale-out to scale-up, which led Coherent to double its TAM to over $4 billion, with demand stronger than 6-12 months ago.

Anderson confirmed more of the 6-inch benefit is ahead, and that 1.6T is also beneficial to gross margin as new data rates typically carry better margins early in lifecycle.

Anderson described broad-based demand across pump lasers, ZR/ZR+ transceivers, line cards, amplifiers, and systems, with LTAs in place. Multi-rail expected to layer on top starting first half calendar 2027.

Jim confirmed EMLs are primary constraint. Significant improvement Q1 to Q2 with still some constraint. InP supply expected to improve sequentially throughout next calendar year from both internal and external sources.

Jim clarified all InP is for internal consumption, not sold externally. Qualification for line expansion is straightforward once initial production qualified. Customers motivated to accelerate qualification.