Axcelis Technologies - Q1 2023
May 4, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Axcelis Technologies call to discuss the company's results for the first quarter. My name is Leeway, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session towards the end of this conference. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mary Puma, President and CEO of Axcelis Technologies. Please proceed, ma'am.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thank you, Leeway. With me today is Kevin Brewer, Executive Vice President and CFO, Russell Low, Executive Vice President of Global Customer and Engineering Operations, and Doug Lawson, Executive Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Strategy. If you have not seen a copy of our press release issued yesterday, it is available on our website. Playback service will also be available on our website as described in our press release. Please note that comments made today about our expectations for future revenues, profits, and other results are forward-looking statements under the SEC's Safe Harbor provision. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to the risks inherent in our business. These risks are described in detail in our Form 10-K annual report and other SEC filings, which we urge you to review. Our actual results may differ materially from our current expectations.
We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2023 earnings call. In March, we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the founding of Axcelis. As we pass this milestone, and as I pass the leadership baton to Russell, I'm happy to report that Axcelis is in a great place. We have a solid balance sheet, the strongest product portfolio in our 45-year history, and an excellent team of employees, suppliers, and customers. We are well-positioned for future growth and profitability. Exiting the first quarter of 2023, demand for the Purion product family remains extremely strong, especially in the high-growth silicon carbide power segment. Revenue for the first quarter was $254 million with earnings per share of $1.43.
Backlog set a record at $1.27 billion, with quarterly bookings of $298 million, driven by Purion demand and strength in the power market. For the second quarter of 2023, we expect revenue between $255 million and $260 million, gross margin of roughly 42%, operating profit of around $55 million, and earnings per share of $1.44-$1.48. At the beginning of this year, we expected 2023 revenue to exceed $1 billion. We are now forecasting to beat that estimate by $30 million, exceeding $1.03 billion. This represents revenue growth of approximately 12% in a year in which overall wafer fab equipment is expected to decrease by over 20%.
In the second half, in addition to stronger revenues, we expect significant margin expansion driven by mix and improved costs. The mature process technology market continues to be an area of strength for Axcelis, with 89% of first quarter system shipments going to mature foundry logic customers and 11% to memory customers composed entirely of D-DRAM. The geographic mix of our system shipments continues to be distributed globally and representative of spending patterns in each geography. In the first quarter, China accounted for 45%, the U.S. 17%, Korea 14%, Taiwan 4%, Europe 2%, and the rest of the world 18%. The power device market continues to drive our growth during this industry downturn. We are actively engaged with all customers in this high growth market segment, winning business from new customers and expanding our footprint at existing customers.
We expect over 55% of our system revenue in 2023 to come from this segment, with greater than 50% of total power device system revenue coming from silicon carbide applications. In addition to significant pull for our Purion M SiC tool, we also see increasing adoption of Purion H200 SiC and Purion XE SiC systems. As a result, we expect revenue from silicon carbide customers to be spread relatively evenly across the Purion Power Series product family. Purion Power Series products for silicon carbide have been designed to support the technical challenges facing our customers as they ramp to high volume in support of their automotive customers. Axcelis is the only ion implant company that can deliver complete recipe coverage for all power device applications.
The full Purion Power Series family of products allows customers to optimize their fabs for high volume manufacturing and to continuously improve their power device performance. Axcelis is considered by power device customers to be the technology leader and supplier of choice, providing the best product family and manufacturing capabilities. This means that using Axcelis tools provides the lowest risk path to high volume manufacturing required to support aggressive fab ramp plans. Axcelis places significant value on enabling our customers to succeed in this exciting market by providing differentiated product performance and a high level of customer satisfaction. Although our memory and advanced logic customers are experiencing a downturn, Axcelis continues to stay close to them to support their installed bases and understand their technology and manufacturing needs.
It is during downturns that there is an increased ability to collaborate with our customers to expand opportunities for Axcelis during the next upturn. We have multiple evaluation systems in the field and many customer engagements designed to increase our footprint in these market segments. As the industry exits this downturn, Axcelis will experience significant growth as these traditional semiconductor segments recover. This, combined with continued strength in the power and mature markets, will drive Axcelis to our $1.3 billion model and beyond. Now I'd like to turn it over to Kevin.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Thank you, Mary. Good morning. We are pleased with our first quarter 2023 financial results, and are excited about our full-year revenue, which is now expected to exceed $1.03 billion, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 12%. Looking at our first quarter, revenue finished well above guidance due to solid execution and continuing strong demand for Purions. Q1 revenue was $254 million, with systems revenue at $195.2 million and CS&I at $58.8 million. Strong bookings and quoting activity for systems in the power segment continued in the quarter, which supports our expectation that greater than 55% of revenue will come from this market in 2023.
CS&I revenue will fluctuate quarter to quarter, but should be modeled at approximately $245 million for 2023, and $300 million in our $1.3 billion revenue models. Q1 gross margin finished at 40.9%, slightly lower than guidance due to CS&I being a lower % of total revenue. We expect margins to improve to approximately 42% in Q2, but still remain under pressure caused by higher material costs and mix. We are forecasting a significant gross margin improvement in the second half of the year as costs improve and we move to a more favorable product mix. This should allow us to achieve our full-year gross margin target of approximately 44%. We remain laser-focused on margin improvement and have numerous initiatives underway to lower the cost of goods and drive higher sales of Purion product extensions.
This allows us to target gross margin at greater than 45% in the $1.3 billion model. Turning to operating expenses, the first quarter ended at 20.7% of revenue and better than our guidance. We expect OpEx to be relatively flat in the second quarter at approximately 21%. As always, we will continue to tightly control spending while investing in areas of the business that support business growth, solidify our technology advantage in the specialty market, and increase our footprint in memory and advanced logic markets. Additionally, we will continue to invest in our employees and the infrastructure required to achieve our financial models. One example of infrastructure investment is our new state-of-the-art logistics center in Beverly, Mass., located just a short walk from our headquarters. The facility is scheduled to open this summer and provides centralized logistics and flex manufacturing capacity.
We also plan to further ramp our Beverly and Korean operations as capacity needs grow, but we are comfortable at this point that we have the initiatives underway that support our $1.3 billion model. We ended Q1 with $445 million of cash equivalent in short-term investments, and generated $34.6 million of cash from operations. In the quarter, we repurchased $12.5 million of stock, and have returned over $145 million of cash to our shareholders while curtailing share count growth. Axcelis has the rare opportunity to grow revenue and profitability during a significant industry downturn. This is a result of a strong product positioning in the power device market and continued strong execution in a challenging environment.
We also look forward to continued growth in memory and advanced logic as the overall semiconductor market recovers. Once again, I want to thank the entire Axcelis team for their continued outstanding performance. I also want to thank our supply chain partners for their hard work supporting Axcelis and our customers for their confidence in Axcelis to deliver. I will now turn the call back to Mary for closing comments.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thank you, Kevin. As I did last time, I will end this call by outlining the Axcelis business thesis, which supports over $1.03 billion in revenues in 2023 and $1.3 billion over the next few years. It is based on the following five key points. First, the implant TAM has more than doubled in the last few years, with mature market segments representing greater than 60% of the total TAM. Second, power devices and image sensors are highly implant-intensive, and the general mature nodes have increasing implant intensity, peaking at 28-nanometer. Third, high-value Purion product extensions were designed to optimize power and image sensor device manufacturing, uniquely positioning Axcelis to benefit from high growth in the mature process technology markets. Fourth, Purion product differentiation has propelled Axcelis to implant leadership in these high-growth specialty device market segments.
Fifth, we have strong long-term customer relationships, and a fundamental cultural desire to win by making our customers successful. I have worked closely with Russell and the rest of the executive team to develop and execute the strategy I just outlined. Axcelis will continue to execute this strategy as Russell and I transition into our new roles. I have great confidence that Axcelis will continue to be a leading capital equipment supplier to the semiconductor industry. I want to thank our employees, suppliers, customers, and investors for your past support, and I hope that you will continue that support into the future. With that, I'd like to open it up for questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you so much, presenters. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one and one on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to withdraw your question, press star one one again. Please press star one one to begin. Our first question comes from the line of Thomas Diffely. Your line is now open.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Materials today, are they back to kind of pre-COVID or pre-inflationary levels? Are we at a consistently higher rate than we were, say, two years ago?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
I only got half of that question. I don't know if Doug or Mary, did you get the whole thing?
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
No.
Russell Low (EVP of of Global Customer Operations)
No. Tom, can you re-repeat it?
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Is that better?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. Yeah. I.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Oh, okay.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
There was kind of a delay, Tom, so I missed the first part. If you wouldn't mind.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Okay. My part. Just on the gross margin front, when you're getting into new contracts and looking at the materials on a go-forward basis, are prices back to kind of pre-COVID or, you know, levels they were a couple years ago, or are we at a permanently higher level, that's just a fact of business today?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
That's a good question. They're certainly getting better. I think getting back to pre-pandemic levels is gonna be difficult in some areas, while there's others where we have more opportunity to change suppliers, for example, and some of the commodity level things, there's a little more opportunity to get the cost out. I guess the good news right now, Tom, is we are starting to see favorable costs coming in on material, which should start hitting us in the back end of the year in Q3, Q4, which is why we feel comfortable taking the margins, you know, back up on a full year basis to about 44%. As you know, that suggests we've got to get 300-400 basis points better in margins in those last two quarters.
Based on mix and based on what we're seeing with current supply chain costs and using up some of the high-cost inventory that we've had, which has been the other problem, you know, we feel comfortable getting back, you know, and hitting our full year gross margin. I guess, you know, a quick summary is some things are probably never gonna go back to where they were, but there's opportunity through supply chain rationalization to get, you know, get costs back down and maybe even better on some pieces of this.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Okay. Following up on that, when you look at your logistics center that you're opening this summer, will there be a material impact on the model as far as, you know, increased cost structure goes, before that? Ultimately, do you expect, you know, that to decrease the cost going forward, or just it's more just to increase the efficiency of, you know, making sure things get out the door on time?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. I mean, we have that. We have the cost of that in the models. When we talk about the full year gross margins and full year OpEx at approximately 20.5%, that's in there, Tom. The reality of it is we have a lot of random buildings all over the place where we're storing material right now, which has a lease cost with it. You know, when we initially open, you know, we're gonna have some duplication. Over about a six-month period to maybe as far out as nine months, these other locations, the leases run out. The net impact of it is going to be favorable, both from an efficiency point of view and, you know, from the ability to have everything in one location.
We're gonna have a lot of robotics and very sophisticated material handling in this new facility. We're gonna exit several buildings that are scattered around the Beverly campus, in surrounding communities right now, once this thing is up and running.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Sounds like it'd be a good place for an analyst meeting.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
It will. We can give you a ride.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Last question from Mary. When you look at the non-mature markets and non-power markets, you know, memory and high-end logic, can you just talk a little bit about how you're positioned to take advantage of the recovery in the industry when it happens over the next couple of years?
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Sure. As I mentioned in the script, we're working very closely with our memory customers right now to qualify both new Purion tools and additional recipes. Obviously, things are slow right now, but as things do improve, we expect to be able to leverage the work that we're doing right now to actually increase our business at our existing customers and make, you know, some additional headway, even with some customers where we haven't been particularly strong in the past. In terms of advanced logic, you know, we've talked about this at length. We continue to work with all the major advanced logic customers to find opportunities, particularly where Purion is differentiated, where we can bring that differentiation to improve their cost of ownership and their device performance.
That is ongoing, and we also have talked about how we have recently placed a Purion Dragon into an advanced logic customer. That is an evaluation system that is going extremely well, and we expect that to result in more business. We've also recently closed on an evaluation for a Purion H for advanced logic, and we expect that to grow into additional business in the future as well. Nothing really has changed, Tom, in terms of what we're focused on. We're focused on just meeting our customers' requirements, not only in terms of their install base, but also in terms of their emerging technology and manufacturing challenges.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Tom, one other thing, just to note is, so the things Mary's talking about are the things that will drive us to that $1.3 billion model. As memory recovers, as we continue to make deeper penetrations into advanced logic, that combined with continued growth in mature markets and power are what drive us to the $1.3 billion model.
Thomas Diffely (Managing Director and Director of Research)
Great. Thanks, Doug. Thank you three. Appreciate it.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Yeah. Thanks, Tom.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis of B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions this morning. Mary, I just wanna start by congratulating you on the transition. You've had a remarkable career and really transitioning at a spectacular place in terms of where Axcelis is over that arc. With that said, let me just start with the first question. As I was talking with investors through the quarter, but especially through March and April, there was a lot of concern about some of the things they were seeing in the automotive market, and it seems like a lot of your prepared commentary really addressed the company's momentum.
Can you just talk about whether you did see any order movement as you went through March and April or even very early May to date, and any signals that may be coming out of automotive related to potentially slowing EV uptake or anything else?
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thank you very much, Craig. It's been a pleasure working with you. We have not seen any significant changes at all, particularly in the mature process technology area related to power devices. I mean, there are always minor shifts here and there depending on fab readiness, but we haven't seen anything move out. In fact, if anything, you know, our customers are basically, in some cases, asking for more. They're asking for more, and they're asking for it more quickly. I think that that's a very positive sign. Russell and I had dinner last night with a major player, a customer who produces power devices, and that was really the gist of the conversation, that things are going extremely well. You know, they're looking for additional capacity.
There are all sorts of things going on with new fabs that are currently being announced and built. We do not have any data points right now that indicate that there's an issue. I, and I know people in particular sometimes worry about China, but China's very strong right now, particularly in the power device area. That is a definitely a growing area, you know, for investment for those customers. Right now, everything seems fine. We haven't seen any significant changes.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
That's really helpful color. Thank you. The next question is really related to the new $1.03 billion-plus view for calendar 2023. Thanks for, thanks for providing that update. The question is this, if I incorporate the first quarter results and 2Q's guide, it could imply flattish sequential trends in the back half. That seems to fit with some of the, some of the larger companies that we've heard from this reporting season to date. I'm just wondering, without providing guidance, could you just provide some qualitative color on how you see the back half of the year?
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Well, I'll take that, Craig.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Thanks, Kevin.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
I guess, I'll start by saying we did say we expect to exceed 1.03.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Right.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Doesn't mean there couldn't be more there. You know, it's, you know, right now that's a 12% year-over-year growth as we said. Mary just talked about this continued strong demand.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
I'll also say our book-to-bill in the quarter came back up to 1.5, and I think last quarter it was 0.99, so it was one, roughly. You know, things are still on a positive side for us, Craig. You know, doesn't mean there can't be more of that, but at this point, this is what we're comfortable with. You know, with the record backlog that we have, right now, and customers clamoring to wanna pull things in, you know, we're, we'll do our best to try to exceed that 1.03.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Great. I'll just finish up with a question that's related to that, Kevin, but it goes back to some of the prepared comments on gross margin. Acknowledging that the back half means a 300-400 basis point rise from here, but with some of the issues working out prior higher cost inventory, it would seem to suggest that more of the step up would be in the fourth quarter than the third, just given the underlying cost dynamics that are at play. Is that a reasonable way to look at things?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. We're gonna stay incremental improvement. We obviously have to come up quite a bit in Q3, but it will be incremental as it comes through in the back half. Again, based on everything I see right now with the mix and the cost profiles we have, we should get very close to that 44%, which considering kind of the hole we dug ourselves starting out, you know, full year will be good. I think that's the other point I'll make too. You know, I always tell people, look at Axcelis' gross margins on a full year basis because so much can move quarter to quarter, but I honestly always look at full year.
Everything we do with programs to make things better, we're looking at a full year average. Yeah, so I would, you know, you're gonna have to step it up a little bit in Q3 though to get there, but it will be incremental. Then, you know, back to your prior question, you know, any revenue growth would probably be the same way. You know, it'd be incremental, you know, as the quarters come on, if things grow beyond the number we put out there.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Got it. Kevin, Mary, thank you very much for the help, and congratulations.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yep.
Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
the very strong execution.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Thanks, Craig.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thanks, Craig.
Operator (participant)
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab of Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.
Christian Schwab (Managing Partner and Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. Congrats on another solid quarter. Mary, as we're looking at China, you know, we've heard from, you know, Applied Materials and Lam and others talk about the significant investment that's going on in the mature nodes, a lot of that obviously power. And, you know, kind of the strategic shift to align domestic production with domestic demand, which looks to be maybe a three to four year endeavor at least. Are you guys very optimistic about that type of market, or are you just happy with the strength today and watching it closely?
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
We are very happy with what we're seeing right now in the mature process technology area. You know, we've talked many times about how we have leadership in implant, in the mature process technology area, and we've talked about power devices, and we've talked about image sensors, and that all holds true. We believe that this strength will continue on into the future. Right now there are still new fabs being announced. There's a lot of new construction. There's capacity expansion, and we expect that to continue on. What I actually expected you to ask me about is if we had, you know, seen any change in some of the export control regulations, and we have not seen anything there.
Things continue to flow for us from a licensing and export control standpoint. We continue to monitor that extremely closely. At this point, you know, believe that that situation will continue, that things will continue to be positive. We're very bullish about China right now.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Hey, Christian, this is Doug.
Christian Schwab (Managing Partner and Senior Research Analyst)
Yep.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
The other comment I'd like to make is that, you know, China represents one of the largest opportunities for electric vehicles. You know, government incentive programs and so forth have pushed that country to last year it was over 30% of new cars sold were EVs. So there's a lot of activity in the supply chain, which is where we play with the silicon carbide devices. So we are very optimistic over the next few years for that to continue.
Christian Schwab (Managing Partner and Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. Every day I read about somebody else getting more funding from somebody in China to add to their capacity that, extremely strong target market. On that is a great, you know, segue, you know, not only in China, but listening to the, you know, the large automobile manufacturers and who are getting more and more ambitious goals about the number of shipments that they expect to ship, or cars delivered, if you will. Is the every three years doubling of silicon carbide wafers, you know, what are the puts and takes of that, where that, you know, three years from now we could look at that, or two years from now, and say that that was probably too conservative?
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Well, we're still... You know, that's the data that we've got right now. We'll, we'll be relooking at that. There's certainly lots of people have been telling it in one-on-ones that we're being conservative there. The numbers vary all over. There's a lot of variables depending on EV adoption rate, depending on the types of devices that are built, depending on the yields, depending on the ramp of 200mm versus 150. There's a lot of variables, Christian, that go into the equation. So, you know, we're very comfortable with the doubling every three years, and we'll revisit that, you know, probably over the next six months.
Christian Schwab (Managing Partner and Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. All right. Great. No other questions. Thank you.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you.
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton of Needham. Your line is now open.
Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
For Quinn, and congrats on the continued success. For my first question, as more power devices and autos shift to silicon carbide, what do you expect the impact to be on the traditional silicon power device market over the coming years? Will it still be a growth segment for some time, or do you see an inflection point where that market will decline? Thanks.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Quinn, I'll take that one. We expect silicon market to continue to grow. You know, the power solid-state power applications do continue to grow, and there's lots of places where the silicon is better than IGBT, and a lot of places where silicon carbide, and there's lots of places where gallium nitride. There's, you know, three viable solid technologies that really depend on the application. What we expect to see is silicon carbide will probably dominate the auto end over time, although there will be applications for silicon in auto. And then silicon carbide will start to make some growth in other areas, in energy, for example, as cost comes down, you know, as a result of volume driven by the automotive side. And then, you know, silicon has lot...
You know, just silicon is always gonna be a less expensive substrate. You know, there's lots and lots of silicon. That's always gonna be a consideration. We expect growth in both. If you look at the trends that we've got in our presentation, you can see silicon carbide is currently overtaking in terms of the amount of implant tools, but silicon continues to be very, very strong.
Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Thanks. very helpful. For my second question, could you provide any color into the CMOS image sensor market? Is the ongoing weakness mostly driven by the consumer inventory corrections? I guess through your conversations with customers, are you seeing any signs of a demand recovery in this segment?
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Yeah. Let me take the first part of that anyway. The slowdown in image sensors certainly is driven by the consumer market, so by primarily by phones. As that turns around, we would expect that that business as a whole turns around. The thing that's going on right now is, you know, we've got the XEmax out there in evaluation. We've got one system that's already in production. The customers are prepping for the turnaround and their more advanced devices, you know, for the next phase. The other piece that's big for image sensors is all the ADAS stuff, and that continues to be strong.
You know, when you look at, you know, the folks, that have announced in the last week or so, auto continues to be strong, and image sensors are a piece of that. We would expect that image sensors turn around pretty strong as the consumer market turns around, Quinn.
Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)
Thank you. One, one more quick one, if I may. How much of the margin improvement in the second half is a function of a mix shift to high energy versus the alleviation of some cost headwinds? Any additional color there would be helpful.
Douglas A. Lawson (EVP of Corporate Marketing and Strategy)
Yeah. I mean, I'm not really going to break that out, but what I would tell you is that, you know, supply chains has been a constant problem for us, you know, for the last, you know, year and a half. Assuming that that's a good chunk of it's probably not bad. You know, as you know, from our investor presentation, high energy does carry better margins than high current. I think in Q1, when we did the guidance, we talked about a bigger mix of high current, for example. That is part of it. The other thing that's in there as well is on the freight side of things. We are seeing improvements with freight.
As the supply chain has continued to recover, it's allowed us to, you know, not be doing overnight shipments or air shipments and getting back into containers and getting stuff, brought in at much lower cost, methods, and then even container shipments from, you know, coming from Asia, for example. They're probably I don't think they're back to where they were pre-pandemic, but they, you know, they were up 4 or 5x. They're probably up 2x right now. There's a lot of pieces coming, starting to come through.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
The last thing really was, we had mentioned on the last call too, that we had quite a bit of higher priced inventory. That's burning through, and starting to be replaced with, you know, newer inventory.
Russell Low (EVP of of Global Customer Operations)
Awesome.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
When I give you a %, those are.
Russell Low (EVP of of Global Customer Operations)
Yeah. No, dude, no worries. No worries. I appreciate the color.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, no problem. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of David Duley. Your line is now open.
David Duley (Senior Research Analyst)
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Mary, I just wanted to echo Craig's comments. Congrats on a great run and we're all very happy shareholders. First question from me is Kevin, I guess the math works out. You're kind of guiding the first half gross margins at 41.5%. To get to 44%, you're gonna have to average 46.5% in the back half of the year. That's just the way the math works out. My question there is, would that be the starting point for gross margins of... in calendar 2024? Is there any reason to think that we would have a dip back down in gross margins?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
I mean, we have our, we have our $1.3 billion model out there. You know, if you, if you look at kind of the pieces of gross margin, we always say CS&I is very accretive, right? As we grow to $1.3 billion, you know, CS&I will not grow as fast, systems will grow faster, which, you know, in reality, if those margins aren't as good as CS&I, that puts a little pressure. I don't think I'm prepared to say anything, Dave, beyond that, you know, we have a $1.3 billion model that suggests, you know, at least 45% gross margins. As you know, we've, you know, we've made a lot of improvements on gross margins over the years.
It continues to be, as I always say, an area where we're laser focused on. I think, you know, you know, I've got, I've got deep hands into the business too when it comes to margins. I'm constantly looking for ways with the team to find, you know, how we can make things better. If we can do better, we'll do better. For now, you know, we're trying to get back to that 44%. It's hard for me to say even in Q1, right? I don't know what the mix is gonna do necessarily, right? That's why I always say look at the full year. Don't hold me quarter to quarter, but we'll on a full year basis, we're gonna get you to where we say we're gonna get.
David Duley (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. Then kind of as a follow-on to an earlier question, you know, either on the 12% revenue growth that you have this year or the 39% revenue growth you had last year, how much of that comes from units increasing and how much of that comes from ASP increases?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
It's mostly all units. We haven't. I mean, as you know, we have. I guess if you're asking, I mean, the product extensions have higher ASPs, which helps our margins, but, you know, it's not like we're out getting a lot. We're not getting price increases on products we've been selling, for example, right? It's really, it's units. We're shipping more systems, we're shipping more CS&I. Yeah. That's the simple answer.
David Duley (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay.
Russell Low (EVP of of Global Customer Operations)
Yeah. I mean, we announced that we had shipped the 500th Purion system earlier, in the year, system shipments have certainly increased dramatically.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yes.
David Duley (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. As far as the backlog goes, or actually not the backlog. There was a big increase in deferred revenue, both sequentially and I think year-over-year, it's up like 2.5 times. What's the reason behind that?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
The simple answer is we are getting a lot of prepayments. You know, we've got $445 million of cash at the end of the quarter, with short-term investments included. We have a, what I will call a meaningful amount of prepayments. Probably the biggest thing moving that, Dave, is the fact that prepayment balance continues to increase on systems. The other piece of it is, as you know, we're shipping more tools, and there is a piece of the revenue that gets hung up until the install is complete, so that's growing. I would say the most significant reason why we popped over the last few quarters is coming through on a prepay basis, and then it's hung up in deferred revenue.
David Duley (Senior Research Analyst)
Just so I understand the accounting of this, the prepay, are they giving you the full cost of the system? Is it a deposit or are customers trying to secure future capacity? Just the nature of these payments?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. We're with certain customers, we're requiring money down. It's typically not the full payment, but in some cases it could be the value of the material that goes in the tool. You know, if I look at the cost of my tools, 85% of it's material, the rest is labor and all the other stuff. You know, we wanna make sure that if somebody decides they don't want the order, we're not left hanging with material. It's, you know, a sizable chunk of money in some cases. This is not with all customers. This is with maybe customers where we don't have a strong relationship. They may be newer customers.
They may be in a particular region, where we wanna ask for that. We haven't had any problems with people, you know, kind of ponying up and putting money down, so.
Russell Low (EVP of of Global Customer Operations)
All right, thank you.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Okay, thank you, Dave.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thanks, Dave.
Operator (participant)
Thank you so much. Your next question comes from the line of Mark Miller from The Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.
Mark Miller (Senior Equity Analyst)
Let me also add my congratulations on the continued exceptional performance, and very good luck on your new position. I just wanted to follow through. You mentioned you closed a Purion H eval during the quarter. Do you expect to close any other evals by the end of the year, and do you expect these evals to lead to additional orders?
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
We have six evals out in the field right now. If you take a look at where they are and the types of equipment, I think about half of them, Mark, will close in 2023. Then the other three will bleed into 2024. A lot of that is just based on, you know, the timing of when they were shipped and also the development that we're doing with the customers out in the field. You know, basically, e-evals can either close prior to a 12-month period, which is, you know, the exception rather than the rule, and then they can bleed even a little bit over a year, depending on the work that we're doing with that customer. The answer is yes, we expect the evals to turn into, you know, additional business.
We have a Purion M right now under evaluation for a DRAM application at a customer that has multiple Purion types, and we do expect that to turn into additional business. We have an Purion XEmax out at a customer right now. It's a new customer, and that should also turn into new business. Two Purion Hs are out there. One is a new customer, and one is a new high current customer. They have other types of Purions. The Purion XE that's out in the field is also for a general mature type of application, but it's a new high energy penetration. That customer has other types of Purion tools.
Finally, the Dragon, the Purion Dragon, which I mentioned earlier, is out for evaluation at for Advanced Logic. That's at a customer that has multiple types of Purions. Some of these customers are new, but most of them are actually customers that are just adding additional types of Purion products to their portfolio. I mean, we really wouldn't put the evaluation unit out there if we didn't expect it to be successful and to turn into future repeat business.
Mark Miller (Senior Equity Analyst)
Thank you for all the color. Your taxes came down and tax rate came down this quarter. What should we think about for taxes for the remainder of the year?
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
I'm glad you asked that, Mark, 'cause I'm gonna get asked by a lot of people. What I would tell you is, you know, I continue to model things at 15%, but I'm gonna help you out in Q2 and tell you that I'm modeling at 13%-14%, so, you know. I always kinda leave it at 15. You know, the biggest reason why, you know, we're not paying the corporate tax rate, of what is it, 21, 22? 21, I guess, is because a lot of our shipments go offshore, so there's a FDII deduction. I think we pay 13% on shipments that go offshore. That's why I always kind of build at 15. You know, there's R&D tax credits coming in.
There's things with stock comp expense, and that impact it from quarter to quarter. Use 13 or 14 in Q2. Probably gonna need to get to the numbers and, you know, I'll just, as the year goes on, as I feel comfortable, you know, maybe I'll take it down. I'll tell you personally, in my models, I just leave it at 15% in the Q3, Q4 right now.
Mark Miller (Senior Equity Analyst)
Thank you.
Kevin Brewer (EVP and CFO)
Yep.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thanks, Mark.
Operator (participant)
Thank you so much. Sir, ma'am, you have no question at this time. Again, to ask a question, please press star 11. This concludes the Q&A portion of the call. I will now turn the call back over to Mary Puma, who will make a few closing remarks.
Mary Puma (President and CEO)
Thank you, Leeway. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. We have a busy investor calendar in the coming months. In May, we will be at the B. Riley 23rd Annual Institutional Investor Conference in L.A. and the Craig-Hallum 20th Annual Institutional Investor Conference in Minneapolis. We will attend four conferences in June: the TD Cowen 51st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in New York City, the Stifel Cross Sector Insight Conference in Boston, the Needham Virtual Automotive Tech Conference, and the William Blair 43rd Annual Growth Stock Conference in Chicago. In July, we will be attending the CEO Summit in San Francisco and conducting additional investor meetings at SEMICON West. We hope to see you at one of these events. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, presenters. This concludes the presentation. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. You may now disconnect. Have a.