Cohu - Earnings Call - Q4 2024
February 13, 2025
Executive Summary
- Q4 2024 revenue was $94.1M, within prior guidance, but down 1% sequentially and 31% year over year; GAAP EPS was -$0.46 and non-GAAP EPS was -$0.15.
- Gross margin was pressured by a $2.1M inventory reserve charge, reducing Q4 GM to 41.9% GAAP (41.8% non-GAAP) and costing ~4 cents of EPS; absent the charge, GM was in line with guidance.
- Management guided Q1 2025 revenue to $97M ± $7M, lower than earlier commentary calling for ~10% sequential growth, due to ~$7M of shipment pushouts; Q1 GM ~44%, OpEx ~$49M, tax ~$3M, net interest income ~$1.3M.
- Strategic initiatives advanced: first HBM inspection shipment with repeat order, entry into SiC die-level burn-in, and the Tignis AI/process-control acquisition to drive software growth, positioning medium-term margin expansion toward ~50% as software scales.
What Went Well and What Went Wrong
What Went Well
- Systems revenue increased sequentially in Computing, Industrial and Consumer during a seasonally slow period, while recurring revenue remained 62% of total, supporting cash flow resilience.
- HBM and SiC vectors progressing: first HBM inspection system shipped with repeat order; management targets ~$7M HBM and ~$5M SiC in 2025, plus $10–$15M from a Diamondx automotive win, implying $25–$30M incremental revenue drivers.
- Operating expenses came in below expectations for Q4 (non-GAAP OpEx ~$45.3M) due to lower labor costs and higher vacation utilization; cash and investments remained strong at $262.1M.
- “We are expanding our analytics offering with Tignis, creating the opportunity to potentially grow software revenue at an annual rate of 50% or more over the next three years…” — CEO Luis Müller.
What Went Wrong
- Gross margin miss: Q4 non-GAAP GM 41.8% was ~220 bps below guidance due to a $2.1M inventory reserve for slow-moving customer-specific inventory; non-GAAP EPS was a -$0.15 loss.
- Revenue headwinds: declines in Automotive and Mobile as customers work through inventory corrections; overall revenue -31% YoY vs Q4 2023 ($94.1M vs $137.2M).
- 2025 Q1 outlook reduced from earlier commentary (≈10% sequential growth) to $97M ± $7M on shipment pushouts (~$7M deferred across 2025), tempering near-term recovery expectations.
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Cohu's fourth quarter 2024 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Jones, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Good afternoon, and welcome to our conference call to discuss Cohu's fourth quarter 2024 results and first quarter 2025 outlook. I'm joined today by our President and CEO, Luis Müller. If you need a copy of our earnings release, you may access it from our website at cohu.com or by contacting Cohu Investor Relations. There's also a slide presentation in conjunction with today's call that may be accessed on Cohu's website in the Investor Relations section. Replays of this call will be available via the same page after the call concludes. Now to the safe harbor. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements reflecting management's current expectations concerning Cohu's future business. These statements are based on current information that we have assessed, but which, by its nature, is subject to rapid and even abrupt changes.
We encourage you to review the forward-looking statement section of the slide presentation and earnings release, as well as Cohu's filings with the SEC, including the most recently filed Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Our comments speak only as of today, February 13, 2025, and Cohu assumes no obligation to update these statements for developments occurring after this call. Finally, during this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release and slide presentation for reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Luis Müller, Cohu's President and CEO. Luis?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Hello, and welcome to our quarterly earnings call. Full year 2024 revenue was about $402 million, as Cohu's main market segments are crossing the chasm of a downturn. On the other hand, the full year non-GAAP gross margin of 45% demonstrates the value of selling differentiated products and optimizing our manufacturing cost structure. Fourth quarter revenue was within guidance range, but gross margin was impacted by an inventory reserve charge of $2.1 million. Jeff will get into more details on these later. Revenue for the quarter was split 62% recurring in the balance systems. Systems revenue increased sequentially in computing, industrial, and consumer segments, although offset by declines in automotive and mobile, where customers are working through ongoing inventory correction.
Estimated test cell utilization at the end of December increased one point quarter over quarter to 73%, driven by OSATs that improved two points to 76%, while IDMs closed the quarter at 70%. We see our traditional IDM customers at different stages in the cycle, and OSATs benefiting from the strength of fabless customers aligned with data center and network infrastructure. As mentioned last quarter, Cohu entered the memory and silicon carbide power semiconductor markets with orders for HBM inspection and die level burn-in. We shipped our first HBM inspection system and received a repeat order early in first quarter that we expect to ship in the middle of this year. Growth prospects in HBM look positive, with the potential to deliver $7 million of revenue this year as we support HBM3E and a new HBM4 product ramp later in the year.
We're working hard to align new Cohu products to compute applications, mainly positioning the company to capitalize on the growth in the data center market and later opportunities with AI at the edge. Our interface product team had a design win for testing 800G switches used in next-generation data centers and cloud computing. These are high-bandwidth devices that accelerate AI/ML workloads with stringent signal performance requirements in test. We're excited to see our products gaining traction across various data center applications, spanning memory, network infrastructure, and compute. Turning to our software platform, we are strong believers in the value AI will bring to semiconductor manufacturing, with opportunities to optimize yield and productivity. Just last month, the CFO of TSMC made a comment during a public interview that 1% productivity improvement has the potential to drive $1 billion of value for their business.
Putting this a bit in context, the global semiconductor process control market is believed to be about $2.6 billion today. We estimate that the potential total available market for data analytics for process control, data visualization, connectivity, and predictive applications in the back-end semiconductor manufacturing segment to be about $600 million, which accounts for third-party and in-house developed solutions. We're pushing to establish Cohu as a main player in this area, focusing primarily on back-end manufacturing and our current customers' spending on the software stack. In the fourth quarter, we qualified Cohu's DI-Core and received the first PO to optimize visual inspection yield for a U.S. headquartered semiconductor manufacturer with operations in Asia. Customers continue to subscribe to our software solutions, adding to our critical recurring revenue stream in an area that we expect can generate substantial growth over term.
In line with this strategy, last quarter we announced the definitive agreement and early this year confirmed closing the acquisition of Tignis, a provider of artificial intelligence process control and analytics-based monitoring software. We believe there is an opportunity to grow Cohu's software revenue at an annual rate of 50% or more over the next three years as the industry seeks solutions to optimize yield and productivity using AI-powered process control and data analytics solutions. As our core automotive, industrial, and mobile customers continue to navigate an inventory correction, we're committed to growing Cohu in 2025 with customer design wins and SAM expansion driven by new product investments targeting data center and edge AI applications. Let me now turn it over to Jeff for further details on last quarter results and next quarter guidance. Jeff?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Thanks, Luis. Before I walk through the Q4 results and Q1 guidance, please note that my comments that follow all refer to non-GAAP figures. Information about the non-GAAP financial measures, including the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations and other disclosures, are included in the accompanying earnings release and investor presentation, which are located on the investor page of our website. Now turning to the Q4 financial results, revenue for the quarter was within guidance at $94.1 million. Full year 2024 revenue was $401.8 million. Recurring revenue, which is largely consumable-driven and more stable than systems revenue, represented 62% of total revenue in Q4 and 65% of full year 2024 revenue. During the fourth quarter, one customer in the automotive market accounted for more than 10% of sales. However, no customer accounted for more than 10% of sales for the full year 2024.
Q4 gross margin was 41.8%, about 220 basis points lower than guidance due to a $2.1 million charge to our inventory reserve for old, slow-moving, customer-specific inventory. Excluding the impact of the inventory reserve, gross margin was in line with guidance. Full year 2024 gross margin was resilient and higher than model at 45%. Operating expenses for Q4 were lower than guidance at $45.3 million, driven by lower labor costs due to replacement and new hire delays, as well as higher vacation utilization than forecasted. Fourth quarter non-GAAP operating loss was approximately $6 million. Q4 interest income, net of interest expense, and a small foreign currency gain was $2.3 million. Q4 pre-tax income consists of foreign profits combined with a loss in the U.S. The Q4 tax provision of $3.4 million reflects tax expense on foreign profits, but no tax benefit from the U.S. loss due to our valuation allowance against deferred tax assets.
Non-GAAP EPS for the fourth quarter was a $0.15 loss. The $2.1 million inventory charge accounts for approximately $0.04 of EPS. Moving to the balance sheet, overall cash and investments decreased by $7 million during Q4 to $262 million due to $2 million used in operations, debt repayment of $2 million, and fourth quarter CapEx of approximately $3 million. CapEx for full year 2024 was approximately $11 million, lower than prior years and primarily driven by facility improvements in the Philippines and Germany supporting operations for our interface and automation businesses. Cohu had zero share repurchase activity in Q4. Through the end of Q3 in fiscal 2024, we had repurchased approximately 915,000 shares for $27 million, which exceeds our goal to offset share dilution from our equity compensation plan of approximately 500,000 shares per year.
Overall, Cohu's balance sheet remains strong, supporting investment opportunities to expand our served markets and technology portfolio in line with our growth strategy and returning capital to shareholders through our share repurchase program. Now moving to our Q1 outlook. Recent customer requests to delay Q1 shipments to later in 2025 have impacted our initial view of first quarter revenue. As a result, we're guiding Q1 revenue to be approximately $97 million, ±$7 million. First quarter gross margin is forecasted to be approximately 44%, benefiting from Cohu's differentiated products and our stable, high-margin recurring business, which adds resilience to profitability and provides consistent cash flow through industry cycles. We expect gross margin to increase again when our revenue recovers with a broader semiconductor device market recovery and with better absorption of our factory's infrastructure costs.
Q1 operating expenses are forecasted to be approximately $49 million, about $4 million higher than Q4. Nearly half of the quarter-over-quarter increase is due to the addition of Tignis, a provider of artificial intelligence process control and analytics-based monitoring software. The balance of the increase is due to higher labor costs quarter-over-quarter, including the implementation of a delayed merit increase across the employee base and the typical reset of employer payroll taxes that are unique to Q1. For the rest of 2025, operating expenses should be approximately $48 million per quarter when revenue is approximately $100 million. As revenue grows to about $130 million, operating expenses are projected to increase to approximately $50 million per quarter. We're projecting Q1 interest income, net of interest expense, and foreign currency impacts to be approximately $1.3 million at current interest rates.
The Q1 non-GAAP tax provision is expected to be approximately $3 million because of tax on foreign profits without benefit from the U.S. loss. Until the markets recover, we expect a similar tax provision profile as we navigate through this cycle. The basic share count for Q1 is expected to be approximately 46.6 million. And that concludes our prepared remarks, and now we'll open the call to questions.
Operator (participant)
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from a line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities. Craig, you may be on mute.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Yeah, thanks for taking the question and appreciate all the detail on the new businesses that are coming into the model. I wanted to start my questioning there. So, Jeff, you said that Tignis, and I apologize if I pronounced it wrong, but you said that would be about $2 million of OpEx in the quarter. The question is, is there any revenue associated with that OpEx? And if not, when would we expect that business to be earnings per share breakeven as we think about its ability to grow with that 50% CAGR you outlined?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Yeah. So, hey, Craig, it's Tignis, T-I-G-N-I-S. And last year's revenue was sub $1 million, likely to be the same this year. We're expecting healthy growth rates over the next few years, but at the moment, probably right around a million or sub $1 million for 2025. So it's going to take a few years for it to get to the breakeven point.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Got it. Then, Luis, if I wanted to hone in on the revenue impact this year of some of these incremental drivers, I think in the deck we identified that the high bandwidth memory opportunity could be around $7 million. If we look at software all in, Tignis and DI-Core, how big could that be? Then the silicon carbide market expansion, the single chip burn-in capability that you've identified recently, how big could that be this year? How big are these new drivers as we think about 2025 and 2026?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
So if I take 2025, Craig, like I said, HBM about $7, the silicon carbide about $5, so tallying up to $12. We think, as Jeff mentioned here, software about $1, $13. And then I think I got to top it off with the Diamondx win at an automotive customer that we talked about in the last two quarters. That is likely to be $10 million-$15 million. So I think if you put it all together, we're looking at sort of $25 million-$30 million incremental this year from these new either SAM expansion or design wins. And I would expect those to accelerate in 2026, but I wouldn't have a number to give you at this time on that.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Yeah. And if we look at those together, Luis, and thanks for the color on that, if we look at them all in, is that a mid-$40 millions gross margin that we should be thinking about? Would it be higher than that? I think down the road in a couple of years, it would be higher with software growing, but how do we think about the gross margin on that incremental business this year?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Yeah. Hey, Craig, I would say high $40 milllions, then ultimately growing to $50 million as software grows.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Okay. Nice. And then lastly, if I could, guys, as we look at utilization levels across some of the end markets, ANI is the closest to that somewhat magical 80% threshold at 75%. The question is, is ANI on its way up towards 80, or is it actually drifting lower just given some of the comments we've heard from bigger U.S.-based analog companies over the last month?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Sorry, Craig, clarification here. What do you mean by ANI?
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Auto and industrial for the.
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Oh, okay.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Yeah.
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. You're correct. Auto industrial continues to be the one that's sitting at the highest plateau. Nevertheless, it continues to be the customer base, particularly in the analog space, that has the highest inventory correction yet to be digested. Some of these customers are talking about another two quarters of digestion, another one seemingly three quarters if you look at the numbers. In the meantime, while mobile is sitting at a lower level, there's some dynamic happening between Android and iOS that I think is going to drive some incremental business. I guess I'm not going to pick a side here to say it, but in one of those in particular that we expect to see some leverage on the business for us starting in the middle of this year.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Got it. Thanks, guys. I'll hop back in the queue.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from David Duley with Steelhead Securities.
David Duley (Analyst)
Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you just remind us you just referred to the Diamondx win of $10 million-$15 million in 2025? Could you just elaborate on the application again and how you won? What was the key parameter for you winning that business?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Sure. Well, starting from the end here, the key parameter to winning that business is ultimately cost of test. It's being able to do their portfolio of devices, which spans power semiconductor applications, microcontrollers, and there is also a PMIC group that's separate from power. In the moment, we're addressing two of the three groups, hoping to be able to extend it to the third group. So it's sort of a cost of test differentiation. And I guess, like I said, two of the three groups is what we're addressing today.
David Duley (Analyst)
Okay. And then in aggregate, I think you've had a few years now of declining year-over-year revenue. When would you expect there to be some sort of turn, either driven by new products or recovery in the end markets? What's your best guess at this point for your recovery?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Guessing the market is the toughest part of it all, as you understand, and people seem to always indicate that it's six months away is the turning point, so we're not at a position of necessarily guessing the market nor sitting idle on it, so what we've been working on is to expand our penetration in segments that have, at the moment, higher growth, which would be particularly things associated with data centers that we haven't had a lot of exposure in the past. HBM is one example. We have other activities that hopefully we can talk through in the coming quarters this year.
The software investment is perhaps more of a long-term play than necessarily a material 2025 investment, but we see many of the factories driving automation and optimization, whether it's yield or productivity, that could be benefited by predictability, which in essence becomes the use of AI models or machine learning models sometimes. They're different, but in both cases, software. So our focus right now is pivoting to areas that have both near-term opportunity for growth, but as well as long-term opportunity for growth. In the meantime, the market is going to do what the market is going to do. And the primary analog segment of the market, which is mostly automotive industrial, continues to be depressed. There's still inventory digestion happening. We keep looking at our customers' reduction of inventory quarter over quarter and where are they relative to trend lines.
So it's very likely that at the current pace, we'll see another two quarters before our customers in that segment turn the corner from a general market perspective.
David Duley (Analyst)
Okay. And then as far as when you start to see recovery in the revenue line, you gave us some nice numbers, Jeff, about what we would expect for operating expenses going forward at higher revenue levels. What would you expect maybe at those same revenue levels the gross margins to be?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
So when we're hovering around $100 million, gross margin will be somewhere in the 44%-45% range. Then as we migrate up to $130 million, we're expecting to be about 46.5% on gross margin.
David Duley (Analyst)
Okay. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from a line of Ross Cole with Needham.
Ross Cole (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you for taking my question. I was wondering if you could verify the different segment revenues for 2024 and then provide your latest assumptions on the segment revenues for 2025 and maybe rank order them if possible? Thank you.
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
So Ross, are you talking about all of 2024 and projecting all of 2025?
Ross Cole (Equity Research Analyst)
That would be great if possible, yes.
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Yeah. Well, yeah, we don't have. We've got the historical data on 2024. Just we don't have that perspective yet on 2025, so let's see. We look at systems revenue by market. So I'm going to give you those percentages for 2024, and we were 9% was automotive, 6% was industrial, 11% mobile, 4% consumer, 3% compute, and 2% for IoT.
Ross Cole (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. Thank you. And I was wondering if you could possibly rank order these in terms of your best guess for 2025?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Yeah. I think at the moment, as Luis said, auto and industrial has probably the most inventory to work through at the moment. But if we're looking at second half, I believe the indications or the projections at the moment would be that automotive and industrial begin a recovery followed by mobile.
David Duley (Analyst)
Great. Thank you. And if I can ask one more quick question. I remember previously you had shipped a couple of tools for HBM and SiC wafer test. Could you confirm if you're planning on recognizing the revenue for these in the first quarter or if that's more of a second quarter opportunity?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
The HBM is a Q1 revenue recognition.
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
First tool.
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Yes, the first tool, one tool in Q1. Die-level burn-in is the other one you referred to, which is further, perhaps, second half of 2025.
Ross Cole (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate the color.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from a line of Robert Mertens with TD Cowen.
Robert Mertens (Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, this is Robert Mertens on for Krish Sankar. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess first, I believe you had mentioned earlier that some of the strong order flows in the September quarter sort of gave you confidence to look beyond the December guide into March, expecting that quarter to be up sequentially maybe around 10% or so. There's some trying to parse out that commentary in the new low single-digit guide. Is this new outlook primarily just because of some of those customer order push-outs that you mentioned earlier on your prepared remarks? And if so, would that be something you would expect to come back in the June quarter? And I have one follow-up.
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Hey, Robert. The answer to your first part is yes. It was due to a recent push-out of tools out of Q1. So we have the orders. It's the actual shipment date that has been delayed. Now, it's not necessarily Q2. It's throughout 2025. It's about $7 million. So again, it's spread through the balance of the year.
Robert Mertens (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. And then just another quick follow-on question. In terms of the new Neon and high-level burn-in test opportunity with High Bandwidth Memory, congrats on securing another follow-on order. Would the growth in this emerging business for you be primarily driven just by scaling that success with this initial customer, or are you currently working on getting other tools, potentially tool acceptances with other major memory suppliers, or do they tend to go internally or have sort of incumbent suppliers themselves that would make it harder to gain business there?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Yeah. Robert, it's kind of both. The numbers that I quoted to the first question in terms of what you expect for 2025, we're essentially scaling with the first customer orders that we got for these new tools. But we absolutely are working on advocating for these tools and promoting them, selling them to other customers that could benefit from what these tools can do. But none of that is accounted for in the numbers that I referenced on the first question today.
Robert Mertens (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. I got it. Thank you. It's very helpful.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from a line of Brian Chin with Stifel.
Denis Pyatchanin (Equity Research Analyst)
Good afternoon. This is Denis Pyatchanin on for Brian, thanks for letting us ask a few questions. So in light of the ongoing inventory control in the industry and fab utilization cuts that we've seen recently, how stable do you believe that the $60 million run rate is for your services and spares recurring revenue?
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
It is stable. It's proven to be stable historically. It's not immune to the downturn, and we can see that in the numbers, but it probably has about a third of the volatility of systems, so the utilization of equipment in customers' facilities has remained pretty steady, so we would expect our recurring revenue to also remain fairly steady.
Denis Pyatchanin (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. And I think you were previously somewhat more positive on a mobile RF test. Has this changed? I think you'd mentioned a little bit earlier on this call that you think mobile will recover after industrial automotive. Did I understand that correctly?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
The general market could be after. There are some dynamics, as I mentioned earlier, between sort of Android, particularly in the Android market space, on certain customer share gain and transitions of devices that could be beneficial for us on the second half of the year or sort of starting the middle of the year, so to speak, but overall, the mobile market is still projected to be sort of a low single-digit growth this year. I think more of the dynamics in between customers could be more interesting.
Denis Pyatchanin (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. And then as my last question, it looks like industrial saw a little bit of strength, that the systems revenue might have finished at a high for 2024 in the fourth quarter. Can we expect industrial to stay at this level, or will it kind of maybe bounce around a little bit around this $8 million-$9 million mark?
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Industrial has the potential to actually come up ahead of automotive as we see it today. We'll see how that plays out in the next two quarters.
Denis Pyatchanin (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from a line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Yeah. Thanks for taking the follow-up question. Guys, I wanted to go back to the software business and just understand how you plan to execute that in a little bit more detail. Can you focus on the selling motion that you plan to implement in that business? Is DI-Core and Tignis, is that going to sell out as a complement to new systems? Does it sell into the install base as an enhancement to existing systems? Is it both? Just help us understand a little bit more how you plan to go to market and therefore how we can expect you're going to start to accrue sales and grow that high-margin business. Thank you.
Luis Müller (President and CEO)
Yeah. Good question, Craig. The DI-Core that we do today, it really has two branches, okay? It has a vision inspection branch on the software that is using neural network for vision technology. And that branch will stay pretty much as is. I don't think of Tignis getting much involved on that branch at the moment, or at least not the initial plans, okay? There's a second branch in DI-Core that is using machine learning for fault detection and predictability for equipment maintenance. So the intention there is to leverage on Tignis artificial intelligence software to give continuity to the DI-Core to products outside of the Cohu umbrella. So we would like to expand our DI-Core predictive maintenance capability to serve more than just Cohu products in the broader semiconductor back-end space.
That is an area that Tignis should be able to augment what we're currently doing with DI-Core and go much broader. Separately, Tignis itself has a solution that is being used for front-end manufacturing that has nothing to do with Cohu's current markets. We don't intend to shut that down. In fact, we intend to see Tignis continue to evolve there and sort of back up what they're pursuing at the moment and provide the necessary infrastructure and resources that they need to be successful in more in the general process control market. To summarize, Tignis' own growth factor is going to stay, and we intend to back it up. And at the same time, we plan on leveraging Tignis technology on our DI-Core PDM tools for the backend so we can go broader and beyond Cohu-owned equipment. I hope that was clear.
Craig Ellis (Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)
Got it. Yep. That's helpful. Thank you, Luis.
Operator (participant)
That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Jeff Jones for closing remarks.
Jeff Jones (VP of Finance and CFO)
Thank you for joining today's call. We really appreciate your participation, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Have a good day.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.