Aehr Test Systems - Q1 2024
October 5, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Afternoon, and welcome to the Aehr Test Systems fiscal 2024 first quarter financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Byers of MKR Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Jim Byers (SVP)
Excuse me. Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Aehr Test Systems' first quarter fiscal 2024 financial results conference call. With me on today's call are Aehr Test Systems President and Chief Executive Officer, Gayn Erickson, and Chief Financial Officer, Chris Siu. Before I turn the call over to Gayn and Chris, I'd like to cover a few quick items. This afternoon, right after market close, Aehr Test issued a press release announcing its fiscal 2024 first quarter financial results. That release is available on the company's website at aehr.com. This call is also being broadcast live over the internet for all interested parties, and the webcast will be archived on the investor relations page of the company's website.
I'd like to remind everyone that on today's call, management will be making forward-looking statements that are based on current information and estimates and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements are discussed in the company's most recent periodic and current reports filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements, including guidance provided during today's call, are only valid as of this date, and Aehr Test Systems undertakes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements. Now I'd like to turn the conference call over to Gayn Erickson, President and CEO.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Thanks, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. Thanks for joining us today. Let's start with a quick summary of the highlights of the quarter and the continued momentum we're experiencing in the semiconductor wafer-level test and burn-in markets. Then Chris will go over the financials in more detail, and after that, we'll open up the lines to take your questions. We finished the first quarter with solid revenue of $20.6 million and non-GAAP net income of $5.2 million, the strongest first quarter in our history, which has historically been our seasonally softest quarter.
With this, we're off to a very good start to our fiscal year, and we're reaffirming our expectation to grow fiscal full-year revenue by at least 50% to over $100 million and profit by over 90% year-over-year growth to at least $28 million. During the quarter, we had record shipments of our FOX WaferPak Contactors in both revenue and units, with revenues reaching well over 50% of total revenues for the quarter. We're also very pleased with the continued stream of new designs for WaferPaks we're seeing. Our new design volume has tripled over the last nine months as we're seeing more and more electric vehicles coming online with their own specific device designs for inverters and onboard chargers. As a result, our customers are buying additional WaferPak Contactors for these new designs, highlighting the recurring revenue part of our business.
As we've noted before, our proprietary WaferPak Contactors are needed with our FOX wafer-level test and burn-in systems to contact with the individual die on the wafer and are designed specifically for a given device. As our customers win new designs from their customers, Aehr eventually secures orders for new WaferPaks to fulfill these new wins. With each new design, our customers will need enough new WaferPaks to meet the volume production capacity need for those new devices. With the increase in WaferPak designs, we've been adding resources in both our U.S. and Philippines operations to expand our already successful application and support team there. We're also continuing to add capability and capacity in the Philippines to meet the support needs of our growing installed base in Asia.
Another key highlight is that we've now received customer acceptance of both configurations of our new fully-automated FOX WaferPak Aligner, which allows hands-free operation of WaferPak handling and alignment and is available either as a standalone unit or fully-integrated with our FOX-XP multi-wafer systems. We recognized revenue for the standalone WaferPak aligners in the first quarter, and after the close of the quarter, we received customer acceptance and sign-off of the aligners integrated with our FOX-XP systems. The integrated aligners are integrated with FOX-XP systems, equipped with two key test system enhancements introduced over the last year. These FOX-XPs include our new Bipolar Voltage Channel Module option for both positive and negative gate bias, stress and burn-in, as well as our Very High Voltage Channel Module option.
The VHV channel module option, which together with our proprietary WaferPaks and new inert gas control option for the FOX-XP, enable high temperature reverse bias testing up to 2,000 V at wafer level silicon carbide and gallium nitride high voltage semiconductors that are used in power converter applications such as electric vehicle traction inverters and onboard chargers. Acceptance and production, production release of these FOX-XPs with the integrated aligners and the associated revenue recognition provide a solid start to our second quarter revenue and pave the path for revenue recognition immediately upon all future shipments of these products to the, to this customer and forecasted shipments to additional customers this fiscal year. So let me talk a little bit about our new customers. We're excited to have announced last month, yet another new customer in silicon carbide.
This is our sixth customer silicon carbide wafer-level burn-in. This new customer is a U.S.-based multi-billion dollar semiconductor supplier that serves several markets, including automotive, computing, consumer, energy, industrial, and medical markets. After conducting a detailed financial evaluation of Aehr and Aehr's FOX family of products, including multiple on-site visits to Aehr's application lab, this new customer purchased an initial FOX-NP system, WaferPak Aligner, and multiple WaferPaks for engineering, qualification, and small lot production of silicon carbide power devices. This system is also configured with our new Bipolar Voltage and Very High Voltage options that enable new advanced test and burn-in capabilities silicon carbide power semiconductors. This customer has indicated that as their production capacity increases, they intend to quickly move to our FOX-XP multi-wafer test and burn-in systems for high-volume production.
In addition to the automotive electric vehicle device market opportunity, this customer is also focusing on the enormous opportunity silicon carbide power devices in industrial, solar, and other power applications. Including this newest customer, the last two announced customers have selected our systems primarily for applications other than electric vehicles, which include industrial, solar, and commuter electric trains. This further extends our application space beyond the enormous opportunity we see silicon carbide for electric vehicle traction inverters and onboard and off board chargers. These additional applications expand our market opportunity beyond the 4.5 million six-inch silicon carbide wafers that William Blair forecasts will be needed per year by 2030 just for electric vehicles. These new applications are driving an additional 2.8 million six-inch equivalent wafers annually by 2030 to address industrial, solar, electric trains, energy conversion, and other applications.
It's also interesting to note that these last two customers did not need to see their wafers tested on our system before they moved forward to purchase from us. This need for testing before purchase was essentially a requirement with our early customer engagements, but it's clear that many of our potential new customers have become much more comfortable moving forward with Aehr, simply on our assurances that our solution will perform as committed. This allows the customers to accelerate their time to market. Having said that, we're happy to engage with customers either way. If they want to see their wafers tested first, we're happy to work with them. We have yet to lose a prospective customer after demonstrating our test and burning capabilities on their wafers.
In fact, we've never lost a head-to-head evaluation to a competitive product since introducing our FOX-NP and FOX-XP, configured with silicon carbide and gallium nitride test resources. So let me move on to our pipeline of prospective new customers silicon carbide wafer level burn-in. In the last few weeks, we've attended two international conferences in Europe, and I personally met with more than a dozen companies in silicon carbide market that are not currently using our solutions. We also met with all six of our silicon carbide customers. These face-to-face meetings included multiple meetings with one of the market leaders silicon carbide, that we've been doing a significant automotive qualification of wafer level burn-in for well over two years. Candidly, this is the longest and most extensive sales and benchmarking process I've ever experienced in my entire 30+ year career.
The good news is that we've made even more progress in the last few months, with a very large number of wafers being run at our facility, followed by multiple meetings to review the data. Based on everything we've heard, our data, our data, cost of ownership, products, including our new, fully-automated WaferPak Aligner, particularly in the integrated configuration, they're all meeting their needs. We continue to feel confident that this customer will move forward with us using the FOX-XP multi-wafer solution for their high-volume needs, including initial purchase orders and system shipments this fiscal year.
Our meetings also included face-to-face meetings with potential silicon carbide companies, who have now told us that they intend to place their first purchase orders with us over the next several months, including some that want us to ship systems, WaferPaks, and aligners to them this fiscal year. In the next few weeks, we'll also be meeting with a significant number of potential new customers, as well as end users silicon carbide devices in Asia, as we're seeing increasing activities and opportunities heating up there. I can tell you, it's a very exciting time in silicon carbide and the electric vehicle markets right now, and we've never been busier. Let me add some further color on silicon carbide market opportunity.
A recent report from UBS forecasts that the silicon carbide market will be close to $8 billion in 2025, and over 30% of that total will be industrial applications. While the primary opportunity is still serving the electric vehicle automotive market, the industrial segment represents a material amount of dollars and a significant market opportunity. The report also focuses on the progression of electric vehicle batteries from 400 V- 800 V, which is the level generally recognized by the industry at silicon carbide is mandatory to get the range and recharging speed consumers are demanding. Devices used in the traction inverters for 800 V DC battery systems actually operate up to almost 1,200 V AC.
This voltage. At this voltage, the devices will experience electrical arcing when tested at 1,200 V under normal testing environments, which creates a very real problem for conventional testers on wafer probers and probe cards. At such high voltages, the 1,200 V bias to the device will actually create an electrical arc through the air or on a wafer, even if surrounded by 100% nitrogen. This is basically how a spark plug works. However, this spark actually damages the devices permanently. Aehr's proprietary WaferPaks have individual chambers that encapsulate each wafer and allow us to control the temperature, gas makeup, and pressure within this chamber on each wafer. Our proprietary gas and pressure control option allows us to test and burn-in an entire wafer up to 2,000 V without arcing or damaging the wafer.
By contrast, other competitive systems using standard wafer probe will see arcing in as little as 900 V, which makes it impossible to do high voltage reverse bias tests and burn-in at the wafer level for devices aimed at these new 800 V battery vehicles. Per UBS, in 2023, 91% of the batteries sold in electric vehicles are forecasted to be 400 V, and only 9% are 800 V. But by 2026, UBS expects the percentage of 800 V battery cars to be above 30%, which is why it appears so silicon carbide suppliers are timing their major ramps to be in the 2025-2026 time frame.
So in the next couple of years, we expect Aehr to benefit from both an increased number of electric vehicles being sold, as well as a significant increase silicon carbide needed for our solution for those electric vehicles. We're also in extensive engagements with multiple gallium nitride suppliers. Gallium nitride is similar silicon carbide, in that both of these semiconductor compounds are considered wide bandgap semiconductors, that are able to withstand high voltage applications more directly than silicon. Gallium nitride semiconductor material has characteristics that make it optimal for lower power converter applications, such as consumer power converters, solar microinverters, and industrial motor controllers, as compared silicon carbide, that is optimal for higher power, higher voltage applications such as traction inverters and electric vehicles, trucks, trains, and converters using charging infrastructure and storage.
One of our prospective gallium nitride customers is also a company that we've been doing automotive qualification work for, for silicon carbide devices. They became very interested when we introduced them to the new higher voltage options, including the bipolar voltage for gate stress and the very high voltage for drain stress capability. They really love that we offer both a low-cost, small footprint FOX-NP for their engineering and new product introduction needs, but also a fully compatible FOX-XP system for high volume production, including a hands-free integrated WaferPak aligner. Interestingly, in this case, the gallium nitride group at this company evaluated our system and has decided to move forward with us faster than silicon carbide group that we've been working with for nearly three years. Stay tuned for more announcements on this in the near future.
We're also engaged with another large gallium nitride supplier that is already a major supplier of IGBT silicon carbide devices and has decided to move forward with an on-site evaluation. We have agreed to place a FOX-NP system on their floor for a defined period of time, and they've already ordered multiple WaferPaks that are not contingent on any evaluation terms for acceptance. We're very excited about this prospect, as well as the opportunity to showcase our capabilities to the GaN team, with silicon carbide team watching closely. This company, which is one of the largest automotive semiconductor suppliers in the world, could very likely be one of the largest, if not the largest, gallium nitride semi supplier in the world.
The gallium nitride market is another potentially significant growth driver for our wafer level solutions, particularly for automotive and photovoltaic applications, where burn-in appears to be critical for meeting the initial quality and reliability needs of those markets. Many forecasters believe that the gallium nitride device market will be larger silicon carbide, due to its much larger application space in terms of power chargers for everyday use, data centers, solar and industrial applications. While we're not yet certain how big this market could be for Aehr's wafer level test and burn-in systems, we will be working with several key players in the space this year to form a better determination. While we do expect to recognize some revenue for systems, WaferPaks, and aligners for gallium nitride applications this fiscal year, we continue to expect the significant majority of our revenue come from silicon carbide.
Now, let me move it on to silicon photonics, wafer-level, and singulated die/module burn-in market. We continue to be very enthusiastic about this market, which includes the current photonics transceiver market used in data and telecommunications, and the upcoming application of silicon photonics integrated circuits for use in optical chip-to-chip communication, which we see as a major market opportunity. As we discussed on our previous call, we received our first order last May from a current major silicon photonics customer for a new volume production FOX-XP multi-wafer test and burn-in system for use for their very high-power silicon photonics device wafers. This system is configured to enable cost-effective production test of up to nine full wafers in parallel and up to 3,500 watts of power per wafer.
The original application for this system was silicon photonics devices for fiber optic transceivers used in data centers and data and telecommunication networks. There's now been discussion about using this system for multi-chip modules embedded with processors for chip-to-chip optical communication. This customer is one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers, and we expect to receive orders for additional production systems as they increase production of these devices.
While we believe it'll be like, it will likely be several years before we see significant revenue generated from this optical chip-to-chip communications market, this order from our lead silicon photonics customer and their request for an accelerated shipping date is encouraging and provides some data to suggest that this market opportunity could happen sooner. Our FOX wafer level test and burn-in solution with our proprietary WaferPak Full Wafer Contactors are a great fit for the silicon photonics semiconductor market.
These next generation silicon pPhotonics-based integrated circuits can require up to 2x-4x as much power for full wafer test burn-in and stabilization, and our FOX new production system configuration, which can be used to test and burn-in these new optical I/O devices, expands the market opportunity of the FOX-XP system even further. The power and functionality of lasers used to transmit data are critically important to the performance of the communication channel, and Aehr solutions not only weed out early life failures, but also improve the performance of the device to what the photonics industry refers to as stabilization. During the first day or two of normal operation, the laser output characteristics change in an exponentially decaying manner and must be stabilized until the decaying stops before the final product can be tuned to meet its performance specification.
Aehr can do this across an entire wafer of fully-integrated photonics integrated circuits with embedded or attached laser emitters. These fully-integrated circuits with lasers are reportedly the highest performance and level of integration possible, which is optimal for integrating into a package, along with a microprocessor, graphics processor, or artificial intelligence processor for optical chip-to-chip communication. Aehr currently has six customers using our systems for production test of silicon photonics devices. Five use our NPs and XP systems for wafer level test and burn-in, and one uses both NPs and XP systems for engineering and production burn-in of individual singulated die and modules using our proprietary DiePaks. We're watching this market very closely and are working with some of the leaders in silicon photonics to ensure that we have the products and solutions available to meet their needs for this potentially significant market application.
To conclude, we're encouraged by the continued positive momentum we're seeing silicon carbide and electric vehicles, and also very excited about the expanding growth opportunities we're seeing in several additional markets with current and prospective customers. For the fiscal year ending May 31st, 2024, we're reiterating our previously provided guidance for total revenue to be at least $100 million, representing growth of over 50% year-over-year, and GAAP net income of at least $28 million, representing earnings growth of greater than 90% year-over-year. We look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the fiscal year. Now, with that, let me turn it over to Chris before we open up the line for questions.
Chris Siu (CFO)
Thank you, Gayn. Good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased to announce another strong quarter for Aehr Test Systems after a record fiscal 2023. On today's call, I'll summarize our results for the fiscal first quarter. We exceeded the consensus on both our top and bottom line. First quarter revenue was $20.6 million, up 93% from $10.7 million in Q1 of last year. Strong demand for our WaferPaks contributed to a significant year-over-year increase in revenue in the first quarter. WaferPak and DiePak consumables revenue accounted for 55% of our total revenue in the first quarter, compared to just 5% of revenue in the prior year quarter. As we have noted before, customers typically purchase our FOX systems ahead of WaferPaks and subsequently stagger purchases of WaferPaks.
We're seeing continued momentum for new wafer pack designs with existing and new customers to meet their customer and market requirements. Non-GAAP net income, which excludes the impact of stock-based compensation, was $5.2 million, or $0.18 per diluted share for the first quarter. This compares to non-GAAP net income of $1.3 million, or $0.05 per diluted share in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. Bookings in the first quarter were $18.4 million, up from $15.2 million in the preceding Q4, and down slightly by 4% from $19.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. Included in our Q1 bookings are announced orders for additional wafer pack contactors of $16 million from our silicon carbide customer.
Backlog as of quarter end was $22.3 million, up 14% from a year ago, with $1.7 million bookings received primarily from a new U.S. customer that we announced previously. In the first four weeks of the second quarter of fiscal 2024, we now have an effective backlog of $24 million. GAAP gross margin for the first quarter came in at 48.4%, up from 42% in Q1 last year. The increase in gross margin reflects a favorable product mix of higher-margin WaferPaks. Also contributing to the increase in gross margin in the first quarter was the overall higher revenue level compared to Q1 last year. Operating expenses in the first quarter were $5.9 million, up 45.8% from $4 million in Q1 last year.
The year-over-year increase is primarily due to previously noted increased headcount-related expenses to support our worldwide sales and marketing efforts and our R&D programs. Our investments in sales and marketing staff continue to have a positive impact on expanding our customer engagement and marketing reach to support revenue growth. The increase in R&D is primarily due to costs associated with development programs for augmenting features and performance of our new automated WaferPak Aligner, which enabled new advanced tests and burn-in capabilities silicon carbide and gallium nitride power semiconductors on the Aehr FOX-XP wafer level test and burn-in systems. The first order for our standalone automated aligner was shipped during Q4 fiscal 2023, and was accepted by our customer in the first fiscal quarter.
We continue to invest in R&D to enhance our existing market leading products and to introduce new products to maintain our competitive advantages and expand our applications and addressable markets. Turning to the balance sheet, we continue to generate healthy cash flow and finish the quarter with a strong cash position. Our cash and cash equivalents increased to $51 million at the end of Q1, up 6% from our total cash, cash equivalents, and investments balance of $47.9 million at the end of Q4. We generated $3.9 million in operating cash flow during the quarter, while also investing in inventory to support our growth strategy in fiscal 2024. We have zero debt and continue investing our excess cash in money market funds or short-term investments to take advantage of favorable interest rates in the current macro environment.
Interest income earned in the first quarter was almost $600,000, compared to $121,000 in the first quarter last year. In Q3 of last year, we announced an ATM at-the-market offering of up to $25 million in shares of the company's common stock on the open market. We received gross proceeds of $7.3 million on the sale of 209,000 shares in fiscal 2023. We did not sell any shares during our fiscal Q1. As of the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2024, the remaining amount available under the ATM offering was $17.7 million. It is our expectation that we will sell shares against this ATM offering during this fiscal year, at times and prices that are most advantageous to our shareholders and to the company.
Now, turning to our outlook for the current fiscal 2024, that ends on May 31st, 2024. We continue to believe in the company's growth trajectory as our differentiated products and technologies continue to attract and win new customers who desire more cost effective and more efficient wafer-level test and burn-in solutions. As Gayn mentioned, we are reaffirming our previously provided guidance for full-year total revenue to be at least $100 million, representing growth of over 50% year-over-year, and GAAP net income of at least $28 million, representing earnings growth of greater than 90% year-over-year. Lastly, looking at the investor relations calendar, our annual shareholders meeting will be held on Monday, October 23, at the company headquarters here in Fremont, California, at 5,00 P.M.
If you're interested in attending, we appreciate an RSVP if possible, so we can plan for attendance accordingly. Please feel free to contact myself or Jim Byers of MKR, our Investor Relations firm, to let us know. We will also be participating in a couple of investor conferences in the next few months. On November 16th, we'll be participating in the Craig-Hallum Alpha Select Conference taking place in New York. On December 12th, we'll be back in New York to participate in the 12th Annual NYC Summit. We hope to see some of you at these conferences. This concludes our prepared remarks. We're now ready to take your questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Operator (participant)
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Christian Schwab, Schwab with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.
Christian Schwab (Associate Analyst)
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Gayn, on the gross margin in the quarter at 48.5%, with WaferPak's at greater than 50% of revenue, I would assume the gross margin would have been a little bit better than that. Is there something going on there for that?
Chris Siu (CFO)
Yeah. If you remember historically and actually consistently, our aligners have been amongst our lowest margin products. They are fully our IP, but we have contracted to have them completely built external to our facility here. I wouldn't call them pass through, because it's not that, but they tend to be on the lower end of the margin. We had a couple of aligners, the automated aligners in there, and that kind of offset that by a couple few points, I think. As our business increases and we start to see it candidly, as we see more companies or more customers wanting to actually do an integrated aligner with every system, you know, that will have some, but generally overall, it still sort of normalizes our systems level margins.
I think that's where if you went through the math, that's where that came from.
Christian Schwab (Associate Analyst)
And then, as far as mix on a go forward basis, you know, should, you know, would you anticipate the remainder of the year returning back to north of 50%, or is that going to be tremendously mix dependent quarter-to-quarter?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah, no. So that's right. So we're still targeting 50% and above as a margin for the year, and that's what we're looking at.
Christian Schwab (Associate Analyst)
Okay, great. And then regarding, you know, future orders from different customers, you know, and I think you talked about, you know, meeting with your six current customers and 12 new customers. You know, just as we think about, you know, backlogs of support, you know, the $100 billion of revenue, when should we assume, you know, potentially your third major customer coming in, as well as numerous other customers? I think you said over the next few months, you anticipated that. I'm just trying to get a color for that.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
We're trying to do our best to give you, you know, kind of plenty of heads up on those. I will, you know, tell you that our ability to guess the customers is not perfect either. Just a little bit, so of our current six customers, we, I mean, more than half of them, certainly our top two largest customers, we're expecting orders for both bookings and shipments during this year. I think more than half of the six customers are all going to have bookings and revenue ship within the year. Then a number of new customers as well. We kind of alluded to both with the GaN related and the large benchmark. You know, I'm feeling really good. It's kind of hard to put our finger on it.
We probably shouldn't tell you exactly when they're going to come in anyhow, but we're certainly trying to give you enough hints. I mean, we, I think everybody, and we're certainly clear here, you know, you know, a $24 million backlog, with what, $20 million in the bank. We've got a lot of turns and a lot of turns expected this year to do the $100 million, and we don't expect to finish the year with zero backlog either. And for those that have come and seen our facility, and we're always really pretty open about that. And if you haven't planned it, if there's no other excuse to come for our shareholders' meeting besides a glass of wine and hors d'oeuvres, you can come out and see our manufacturing floor. But it is billowing right now.
That is, you know, where a lot of the inventory is going, et cetera, in anticipation of this. You know, our lead times candidly continue to be world class, at shorter than anybody else, while we continue to increase capacity.
Christian Schwab (Associate Analyst)
That's great, Gayn. Thank you for that color. As far as you know, the new customers, then I know you've talked previously about having multiple customers this year at 10%. You know, so obviously it probably appears, you know, we have at least 2%, but, you know, should we anticipate 3% or 4%, or is it just too early to tell?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
No, we're still, Chris and I were just going through that this morning again. Right now we're right at 3% or 4%. There's, you know, we certainly believe 3% and the 4% there's like, I think there's like 4% or 5% that are all in the 3%-6% that anyone might be able to poke their head up or something. So I mean, from a diversity, you know, we're all excited because of how many customers, but let's not kid ourselves, we don't have hundreds of customers and never will in this space, but we'll definitely have a much more diverse number of customers, which is nice. But, we'll stick to the 3%-4%. I don't, it's not clear how we would get to 5% necessarily, but we might have.
You know, we don't call out the 5% customers, but we might have a good chunk of those, too.
Christian Schwab (Associate Analyst)
Great. I don't have any other questions at this time. Thanks, Gayn.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Okay, thanks, Christian.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from Jed Dorsheimer with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Hi, Jed.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
Hey, Gayn, and Chris. I guess, first question, I just wanted to dig in, Christian touched on it and, but just on the WaferPak Aligners, the standalone that were recognized in the quarter, versus the, and congratulations on getting the fully integrated, systems signed off. Should I look at that as, as taking your, you know, the effective backlog and subtracting the bookings so that the quarter would have been $6 million greater, had those signed off in the, in the quarter? Is that the right way to look at that, or, you know, how would you suggest that?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, I, as we got a little closer, we kind of anticipated that. We didn't get really specific. We weren't even sure that the second one was going to book. Just, I won't get into all the ex, wouldn't have scored for revenue. You know, I guess theoretically, we could have pulled in one, and the other one was already in our plans, whether we told you or not, in our second quarter. I mean, between the two of them, I think it's closer to $8 million or so.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
Got it. To be clear, you sold these integrated systems of that, of those two systems at the same customer, which I think Chris mentioned is a U.S. customer, that the aligners were recognized in the August quarter, but the rest of the two systems went into September. I just want to make sure I have that correct.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
No, and I, you're, I'm not sure everyone else is going to be able to follow along with it. The way our revenue recognition works, which is very consistent with the industry, and we're always very open, is that when we have a brand-new product, that, you know, that has never been accepted or released into production with a customer before, we will not score revenue on it or anyone like it until candidly, the first one is accepted, and I won't get into perfunctory and all that, but it turns out the first customer shipments were of what we call standalone aligner, and it went with our, to our lead customer, who has been accepting XPs all along. So the only thing deferred, if you will, was the revenue for those two aligners. So when they accepted, they were just the two aligners.
The weird thing is, on the second lead customer, second large customer that had the systems, the XP and the Aligner were bolted together. And so we, and the XP also had those new enhancements. So Ken, our previous CFO, and Chris was on board as well. We drew a circle around those and said the whole thing isn't accepted until it's all accepted, which is a little weird, but basically, once the Aligner was accepted, then the XP and the Aligner was all accepted at the same time, and in that case, both of them triggered.
Chris Siu (CFO)
Yeah, so.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
They're both released and working now.
Chris Siu (CFO)
Yeah. So, so to add to that, so that means going forward, whether they're manual auto aligners or integrated aligners, we don't need to wait for.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Or whether they have the new options or anything, it just ships and score.
Chris Siu (CFO)
Revenue when we ship going forward.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
Well, that's better than I expected. So, nice. I guess, second question is just on this long, courtship with this, potential, large customer. Any more details on sort of, you know, I know it's, it's the longest in your history, Gayn, and three years sounds like a long time for that process. Is there any more details you can provide on sort of what is, you know, is the next step, you know, a large order? Is that what we should expect? And, I ask that, kind of also in the context of your capacity.
As you're adding these customers, you know, I know you've talked about low lead times, but if you saw, you know, a large 20, 30, 40, whatever that number system type order, I would assume that that changes things in a good way.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, you know, even if customers talk about ordering lots up front, my experience has been it's normally met with, you know, one or a small number of systems, say, for production to begin with, and then a little bit of absorption. That might change here because they're running out of time. I mean, and they've done way more evaluations than I've seen in the past, so I think that has a chance to collapse itself. There's also engineering systems involved, et cetera. So I'm not sure I want to perfectly carve it because I might end up being wrong. But, you know, engineering systems, first production systems, quantities, perhaps we may get quantities with longer lead times because it's, it's getting pretty serious with companies now.
You know, they're putting real capital in place, putting fabs in place, making commitments to these very significant ramps that are happening in the automotive guys in 2025, 2026, and I don't think they want to be cut short. So, you know, my message, I guess, to my customers listening, I mean, we are able to ship more than anybody else. You know, we literally can ship, you know, up to call it, 50, 80, 100 testers, call it wafers or blades of capacity a month. You know, we are shipping more per month than the combined number of installed base of every other competing alternative has ever shipped. But there's still a scenario where, you know, please get your orders in, so that we can continue to make sure that we can address everybody's needs.
But, you know, I, I just reiterate, obviously, we're expecting significant amounts of orders in the fiscal year to be able to turn, to make $100 million and end without, you know, zero backlog. And, we're sticking to our guns there.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
Got it. Last question for me, just on Chris, on the 300 basis points decline in gross margin. You answered this question, which that Christian asked in terms of mixed shift or the new you did, but operating margins dropped by 500 basis points. Is there something else that drove this, the incremental 200, or is that just the aligners that in mixed shift that contributed the the extra op contraction there?
Chris Siu (CFO)
Yeah, it's really primarily on the aligners that, you know, decreased the margin there.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
Okay. Um.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah. You know what? I'll tell you what. Let me, I'm going to give a little bit more color. We hadn't talked about this. In our agreement with respect to the CM that was building these things for us, we actually had some NRE charges in there. They're not necessarily directly tied to cost of sales, but they were timed with the timing of it. So the first units actually have a higher incremental cost to us than I think the ones going forward now. I think the first four or five units had that. So anyhow, that, it was worse than would be expected, if that helps.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
It does. Sorry, one last one.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Sure.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
What percentage was your largest customer in the quarter?
Chris Siu (CFO)
Its number one customer is 88%. It's very high.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
88%?
Chris Siu (CFO)
Yep.
Jed Dorsheimer (Group Head of Energy and Power Technologies)
Great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question is from Dylan Patel with SemiAnalysis. Please go ahead.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
Hey, thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about how I think through the number of wafers per tester, right? So, you know, there's all the various different configurations that you've sort of options you've had for various different customers. You know, some people want to do the Bipolar Voltage Channel Modules, and some people want to do high voltage, some people want to go negative. I'm curious, can you sort of outlay how to think through, you know, what is the test time for these various systems, for various options?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
Then, you know, sort of how many, how many, can be tested per FOX-XP, right?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Okay.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
You know, because some of these are nine per system versus 18. And yeah, I would love to hear, you know, that sort of rationale.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
All right. Well, as I describe this, I simply want you to listen in terms of just the simple math, because mostly what I'll describe is the simple math. But obviously, the piece is, well, what is, you know, customers A, B, and C's test time? And I want to give a little bit of color on that when I'm done. From a simple math perspective, the NP systems have two wafers. They're usually used for engineering, and if you want to do small lot production, you can test two wafers at a time. So if your test time was 24 hours, you would get two wafers per day off of that. If your test time, or call it, call it cycle time, is 12 hours, you could get four wafers a day off of that.
The XP, which is fully compatible blades, which are effectively each tester uniquely can test a wafer, has either nine or 18. Following the same math, you would either get nine or 18 wafers a day at 24 hours, or two times that at 12 hours, or four times that at six hours. I'm not trying to be coy, but that's the way of thinking about the capacity off of it. Now, the real debate is, and the discussion is, Well, what's the test time? Well, if you get into what's called the bathtub curve of reliability, and that should inven, if you go type in bathtub curve and reliability, you can find all kinds of articles out there that talk about it.
Basically, when a device is first manufactured, all semiconductor devices, as soon as they are functionally good, they have a likelihood of failure at that point in time. And as time goes on, the likelihood that they fail actually decreases. This was observed a long time ago and is very consistent across all semiconductor processes. So what that looks like is the likelihood of failure drops as time goes, and then at some point it stops dropping, and it's the bottom of the bathtub curve. You know, 20 years from now, they start failing again, and that's the other end of the bathtub curve. What's important is, depending on the expectation of the customer or the application, is whether or not the failure rate upon shipment is good enough.
If it is too high, you do things like stress and burn-in, which is what we supply, to decrease and move it down the curve. The higher the quality, the more screening or burn-in you need to do to move it down the curve, and that is generally energy and time. So an example we tried to use, in certain applications, like the inverter of, of the automobile, probably the most highest reliability requirement out there, because on an inverter it might have 12 or 24 chips in a single module, or, you know, 48 in a single inverter on the Tesla, for example, and Tesla Plaid has three of those, so they have 144 chips in there. The requirement is none of those 144 chips fail during the whole life of the car. Okay?
There's also chips, say, somewhere else in the power inverter up in the, in the onboard charger, there's only three chips, so those three chips have the same requirement. They can't fail in the life of the car, but there's only three of those versus 144. So by the very nature of that, the onboard charger, perception-wise, could be burnt in less if you want to, quote, "get away with it." This was a huge topic at the conferences last, the last two weeks in Europe at the Power Semiconductor and the Executive Summit on Power Semiconductors, and reliability was a huge discussion, and that is, What is the reliability requirement of the automotive space? Last week, was it Hyundai had a recall of cars.
The cars were 2015 and older, and they had to recall 3.5 million cars because 22 cars had some brake leakage event that caused a fire and 22 overheating. They had 44 cars out of 3.5 million that had an event, and they're recalling 3.5 million cars that are over ten years old. Okay? What is the failure rate, okay, for an EV that's going to last 10 years or longer? If you said, "Well, 44 out of a million is not bad." 44 out of 3.5 million required every one of those cars to be recalled. You know, we get into this whole discussion, and I get kind of passionate about it, like, what's the right number? You know what? Companies don't all have the same expectations of quality.
We get a pretty frontline view. I can tell you, sometimes it upsets me. I don't, you know, not everybody's the same. Here's my opinion, I wouldn't drive a car that had less than 12-24 hours of burn-in on silicon carbide, okay? I wouldn't do it. So, it's important. That's why we use these numbers. Today, we have said burn-in times on average across the industry are more than 20-12 hours, and we think over time, they will get down to that. We will see. But it's going to be the car manufacturers that dictate that. And I can tell you, we've met with a number of them, and we're meeting with more in the next two weeks. They are very opinionated about what's needed. I've never heard one of them not demand a high level of burn-in for their automotive parts.
Now, that's very clear in the automotive space. So enough of my high horse here, Dylan. Sorry to, I lit you up like that, but, I hope that gives you some clarity.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
That, that's great. And then I kind of wanted to clue in on a question or a statement that you had in the sort of the prepared remarks, which was, you know, you're seeing more electric vehicles with their own specific design for inverters. Are you saying that like, you know, like XYZ, you know, major auto OEM will want a specific inverter design from, you know, their supplier, and then that's gonna require a different chip design or different device design than someone else? Or I assumed that, you know, everyone would have pretty similar designs for their inverters. Would that mean that there's more sort of XPs or WaferPak Aligners? Or WaferPak per because of this? Yeah.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah. I know more than I can share, but I still don't think I know everything in this space around this. But yeah, people with seemingly the same power are dictating specific requirements of the chip size. It gets into thermal trade-offs, voltage trade-offs, power trade-offs, acceleration trade-offs, how much power you have on hand, what kind of efficiency you have. And so I'm actually kind of surprised that even the same automotive supplier will dictate multiple different flavors, and then the next automotive guy won't buy the same ones. So I'm sure it drives our customers crazy because I'm sure they'd way rather everybody buy one. There's probably some element where they don't want to commoditize it either, though. I mean, if they all made exactly the same chip, well, then, you know, maybe the customers would commoditize everything faster.
The net is for us, there is more and more WaferPak designs. I know I said, and specifically call automotive, but candidly, a lot of the new industrial designs, there's a much broader array of those, too, and that's, those designs have been increasing, too.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
So in the past, I think it might have even been like a year ago, you mentioned that sort of, you know, you'd expect people to change WaferPaks maybe every two to three years or designs every two to three years. Is that, do you think that still remains the case, or do you think that people will have to have more WaferPaks relative to, you know, say, an XP can fit 18 or nine of them, they might have more than that 18 or nine because there's three or four different designs across their three or four major customers, and then they might have to switch them out more often. I'm just trying to, you know, get a, get a feel of that.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah. I’m pretty sure I would have said, because I remember this, I probably was probably saying three or four years. I think two to three might be aggressive, but we weren’t sure. We know like in memory, for example, every 18 months to 24 months, the wafer, the probe cards are all swapped out. That’s probably the most extreme. Generally speaking, automotive lasts longer, but the issue silicon carbide is it’s in this sort of infant phase where people are going, phase, you know, gen two, gen three, gen four, gen five. They’re going from 150 to 200 millimeter. As those happen, there’s more evolution.
To me, you know, if you can look at it over 15 years, my guess is there's more activity in the next five to seven years than there will be in the back half of seven years. But for sure, we're going to see customers with more than one wafer pack per blade, like on an 18 blade or 18 tester XP. You know, you, if you ask me in three years to what I think, I bet you there, for every wafer pack that's in the system, there's a couple on the shelf. That wouldn't shock me for just how they will do it to meet customer demand.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
Okay, thank you so much.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Thanks, Dylan.
Operator (participant)
Once again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question is from Larry Chlebina with Chlebina Capital. Please go ahead.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Hi, Gayn.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Hey, Larry.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Sorry, I'm looking at my notes. When do you expect a follow-on order from the recently accepted fully automated XPs? They use those machines almost four months. Wouldn't they be needing some more capacity here soon?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
They're gonna need more capacity soon. How's that?
Larry Chlebina (President)
Yeah, no idea. No idea.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
I think they're gonna buy more systems, and we're gonna ship them within our fiscal year. Yes.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Okay. And then the three-year long development company that you referred to, that you said they were gonna go with, GaN first silicon carbide. is that, is that what I heard? Is that correct?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
I kind of stitched myself into a little bit of a. I didn't give myself much wiggle room. It appears that way, yes.
Larry Chlebina (President)
And if it goes that way, would you expect them to start with an NP first and then progress to an XP, or they jump right to an XP? Do you have a sense of that?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Yeah, I would think it would be an NP first. Yep.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Okay, on the optical I/O, the customer that asked for accelerated delivery, should we sell for our model plan on fiscal year, fiscal year Q, you know, the February quarter? I think you spelled out that it was gonna be in the calendar first quarter, but does that mean, should we assume that it will definitely happen in the February quarter fiscal?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
I don't know yet. I mean, they had originally.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Q3.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
They had originally talked about, and we acknowledged the order for Q1, which could have been through a March shipment. Recently, they're like, you know, the sooner, the better. So we're actually trying to pull it in.
Larry Chlebina (President)
And so you're in charge of that. We should figure the February quarter, then?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
That's what we're working on. But I, they're listening, too, so we're trying our best to pull it in. It's awesome. I mean, it's coming along really nicely. There's a couple of things that we're still working through from a, you know, qualification and some thermal uniformity and things, but the system's being built up. We're actually building it in the integrated configuration. It will not be docked to our new aligner, but it can easily be docked to it. So it's being configured in the new configuration that will allow it for, to just be rolled up against the new Aligner.
Larry Chlebina (President)
So it can go in a fully automated fab. Is that what you're.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
All they have to do is buy the Aligner, and we can bolt on a 300 mm front end on this thing, overhead transport or robotics, and it's fully SEMI integrated into a high-volume manufacturing floor.
Larry Chlebina (President)
That sounds really exciting. You know, we've seen articles written that Taiwan Semi is pursuing something similar, optical I/O. And would they be sneaky enough to be accessing your XP? You placed an XP in Taiwan at an OSAT. Would they be accessing that machine to do their stabilization and reliability testing versus coming to you directly?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
You know what? I, it's funny, sometimes when you ask me a question, I'll just ignore you, but I, they are not right now. I don't want people to be left with the opinion that they are. I think, you know, the, the folks. It's pretty, it's pretty interesting. We're trying to read up, and we're talking to, you know, key players in the space. You know, AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA have all been sort of pounding this drum, and seems like it's been picking up on this. TSMC and GlobalFoundries, in particular, want to play. They want to be a part of this. You know, it's very interesting when you start thinking that, that it's not just the chip to chip that makes, uh, silicon photonics.
In the chip itself, there's photons firing around inside on big bus planes that are transmitting these, you know, multi-gigabyte buses. It just, you know, what semiconductors will look like in a decade versus what they are now is gonna drastically change based upon silicon photonics. For us, not only are processors burnt in in general, by the way, but, you know, our focus has really been on this product, has been on the burn-in of the fiber optic transceiver, the integrated laser. You know, there's also burn-in opportunities, and this is, as you know, because, you know, you've asked a lot of questions over the quarters. You know, a lot of the play with bringing out the new aligner was not just silicon carbide.
You know, silicon carbide guys and the GaN guys are delighted by it, but that really wasn't. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you we started this project before we really saw silicon carbide take off, and we did it because the mainstream wafer-level burn-in for processors, automotive microcontrollers, and memory, we think for sure it's just too high volume. You can't be handling WaferPaks and walking them between a cart and a thing. So, that's what we did for it. We're thrilled to death, and the system is working. The systems are working really well. We're getting really good feedback. We got another customer in here today. I know that's teasing, and they're super impressed with it, and, you know, we're just pretty proud of it. I guess we're nerds, right?
Larry Chlebina (President)
Another customer, did you say, for what market?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
I didn't say that.
Larry Chlebina (President)
No, I know. How did you describe them? I'm sorry. I missed it.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
I just said another customer that's in here looking at it, and they're very excited, and they gave us some really good feedback.
Larry Chlebina (President)
I thought you mentioned what market they're in. So, you know, obviously Taiwan Semi would be serving AMD and NVIDIA. That's why I was asking. You know, I know you mentioned in the past that they're interested in it, and I would think it would come through Taiwan Semi. That's why I was interested in that. So you kind of led me to my last question. As you stated, the XP was developed initially for memory. The lack of the automation held it back. Now that it's fully accepted and it's in the marketplace, when are you gonna get an evaluation tool to our big U.S. memory maker that's planning on building several fabs in the U.S.?
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
As we've alluded to, and we are serious about it, we are, you know, actively pursuing the memory space again. We have had conversations and design reviews, not with everybody, but some of the folks that are candidly closer proximity, but not only, on it, and that continues on, including with some meetings over the next few weeks. It's a little awkward, but, you know, shareholders need to sort of understand, we actually have financial bonuses tied to every executive on the staff to get into memory. That includes me and every one of my staff members. They are multi-year plans. They're, you know, but, you know, we're always getting into memory. That has been my passion. That's what the tester was originally designed for, and we're not giving up.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Good. Well, you're the memory guy, so you're gonna make it happen.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Thank you, Larry.
Larry Chlebina (President)
So, hey, great to see the progress. Hopefully, hopefully, you exceed your goals. Looks like it's possible if all, everything comes together, so we'll be, we'll be paying attention.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Thanks, Larry.
Larry Chlebina (President)
Take care, you guys.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
The next question is a follow-up from Dylan Patel with SemiAnalysis. Please go ahead.
Dylan Patel (Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst)
No question at this time. Sorry, I mashed the phone.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
It's okay.
Operator (participant)
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Gayn Erickson for any closing remarks.
Gayn Erickson (President and CEO)
Thanks, operator. I really appreciate everybody for joining us on the call again and spending an hour with us. And, as always, we make ourselves available as much as we can. I will tell you, we are traveling like crazy right now, but we're trying our best to get to everybody. We do have our shareholders meeting on the 23rd. They're generally like a lot of shareholders. They're not that exciting or anything, but we do have them here. We will be here with executives to do Q&A, and we typically will throw a smock on you and walk you through the manufacturing area. So if you can and wanna join us, just give us a heads up, and we'd love to meet you there. And with that, we'll turn it back over and take care.
We will all talk to you next quarter. Bye-bye.
Operator (participant)
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.