Monolithic Power Systems - Earnings Call - Q1 2025
May 1, 2025
Executive Summary
- Q1 2025 revenue was $637.6M (+2.6% q/q; +39.2% y/y) and non-GAAP diluted EPS was $4.04; both were modest beats vs S&P Global consensus ($633.4M revenue; $4.00 EPS). Strength came from Storage & Computing (+38% q/q), while Enterprise Data declined sequentially with ramps expected in 2H25. Estimates data marked with asterisks below are from S&P Global.
- Q2 2025 guidance: revenue $640–$660M, GAAP GM 54.9–55.5% (non-GAAP 55.2–55.8%) and GAAP opex $189–$195M; gross margin midpoint down ~20 bps on mix conservatism, not tariffs or pricing.
- Cash generation was strong (OCF $256.4M), cash and short-term investments rose to $1.03B; inventories increased (146 days on current-quarter revenue), positioning MPS to support ramps.
- Management emphasized broad-based design-win momentum (AI/data center, notebooks/memory, auto) and reiterated the shift from chip supplier to silicon-based solutions provider; 400V rack-power modules are sampling now with material revenue expected in 2026.
What Went Well and What Went Wrong
-
What Went Well
- Record revenue $637.6M; Storage & Computing up 38.1% q/q on strong memory and notebook demand; Automotive up 12.9% q/q (third straight quarter of double-digit sequential growth).
- Non-GAAP gross margin held 55.7% (flat y/y), and non-GAAP operating margin 34.7% (up 1.6 pts y/y); broad-based execution across markets.
- “Our proven, long-term growth strategy remains intact as we continue our transformation from being a chip-only, semiconductor supplier to a full service, silicon-based solutions provider,” said CEO Michael Hsing.
-
What Went Wrong
- Enterprise Data fell 31.8% q/q and 11.2% y/y; ramps are expected in 2H but timing remains outside MPS’s control.
- Q2 gross margin guided down ~20 bps at midpoint due to product mix; management explicitly said no direct tariff or demand impact is assumed in the Q2 guide.
- Inventory days rose to 146 (current-quarter basis) and 143 on next-quarter basis, up sequentially; non-GAAP operating expenses increased q/q and are guided higher in Q2.
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Welcome, everyone, to the MPS First Quarter 2025 Earnings Webinar. My name is Genevieve Cunningham, and I will be the moderator for this webinar. Joining me today are Michael Hsing, CEO and Founder of MPS; Bernie Blegen, EVP and CFO; and Tony Balow, Vice President of Finance. Earlier today, along with our earnings announcement, MPS released a written commentary on the results of our operations. Both documents can be found on our website. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that in the course of today's presentation, we may make forward-looking statements and projections within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risk and uncertainty.
Risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements are identified in the Safe Harbor statements contained in the Q1 2025 earnings release and in our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K, which can be found on our website. Our statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update this information.
Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Bernie Blegen.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Thanks, Gen. Good afternoon, and welcome to our Q1 2025 earnings call. In Q1, MPS achieved record quarterly revenue of $637.6 million, slightly higher than the fourth quarter of 2024 and 39.2% higher than Q1 2024. This performance reflected the ongoing strength of our diversified market strategy, consistent execution, continued innovation, and strong customer focus. Let me call out a few highlights from the first quarter. On our March 20th Investor Day, we showcased MPS innovation across a range of areas, including new opportunities in robotics, automotive, data center, building automation, medical, and audio. In Q1, storage and computing segment revenue increased 38% quarter over quarter on strong demand for both memory and notebook solutions. We continued to win designs across all major enterprise data customers, with revenue ramps expected in the second half of this year.
Finally, Q1 2025 automotive revenue increased 13% from Q4 2024, the third consecutive quarter of sequential double-digit growth. MPS continues to focus on innovation, solving our customers' most challenging problems, and maintaining the highest level of quality. We continue to invest in new technology, expand into new markets, and to diversify our end market applications and global supply chain. This will allow us to capture future growth opportunities, maintain supply stability, and swiftly adapt to market changes as they occur. Our proven long-term growth strategy remains intact as we continue our transformation from being a chip-only semiconductor supplier to a full-service silicon-based solutions provider.
I will now open the webinar up for questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, Bernie. Analysts, I would now like to begin our Q&A session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the participants icon on the menu bar and then click the raise hand button. Our first question is from Tore Svanberg of Stifel. Tore, your line is now open.
Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)
Yes, thank you, Gen, and congratulations on a strong quarter, especially during this environment and especially the cash flows. First question is on enterprise data. It did come in line with expectations, but you talked about some second-half design wins ramping. Should we infer by that that this is sort of the low point for enterprise data this year?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
At this time, we feel, of course, when we're close to our second half of the year, we feel a lot better. Overall numbers can be better. At this time, we're not forecasting how good is good. We have a lot more confidence than at the beginning of the year.
Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)
Great. Yeah, go ahead, Bernie.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
I think it's important to say that we're engaged with many different programs, either that we have the design wins or the qualification. So it's very broad-based. But as Michael says, while our visibility is improving, clearly the improvement is second-half weighted.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. That's a good comment. We do win many design wins and customers design it in, and we're just waiting for the ramp.
Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)
Great. Can I ask a follow-up?
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, go ahead.
Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)
Yeah, so that's my follow-up. Michael, I know over the last decade or so, you've been working really hard to diversify globally, whether it's R&D centers, manufacturing partners, and so on and so forth. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about those efforts, especially given the current tariff environment, and how are those efforts really impacting your position right now?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah, that's a good question. Started 10 years ago, we start to emphasize you have a local manufacturing for local customers. The U.S. was out of China. It started, particularly started the last couple of years. Right after pandemics, the volumes, we almost doubled, more than doubled volumes. We need to expand the fab capacities and the serendipities, and we all expanded in the outside of China. At that time, the inside of China was full. Now they give us a very good position for outside of China for supplying the U.S. side, as well as the inside China. Now we're in a much better position now.
Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)
Great. Thank you for that. Congrats again.
Tony Balow (VP of Finance)
Tore, the only thing I'd add, in addition to the supply chain, the diversification approach has really been on the front end as well around R&D. As we've been looking both the design and the supply, that's really been a hallmark of the strategy over the long haul here.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah.
Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)
Great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Quinn Bolton of Needham. Quinn, your line is now.
Quinn Bolton (Senior Analyst)
Thank you. I'll offer my congratulations as well on the strong results and outlook. I guess, Bernie, Michael, maybe a follow-up on Tore's question just on enterprise data. I think you came into the year thinking enterprise data could be anywhere from flat plus or -20%. Sounds like you feel a little better about the business now. Wondering if you might be able to sort of tighten up that range on enterprise data. Then specifically, one of your large customers, it sounds like there may have been a platform change. I think some investors are concerned that that platform change on their next-generation GPU could have an impact on your share. Wondering if you might be able to address just your thoughts about how you're positioned in shares as you come into the second half of the year.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
We were told by many customers we offer a breadth of product that meets our customer needs. We don't comment on specific customers. The matter of fact is we don't know which of our customers' projects are going to ramp or are changing, as you said, and changing the schedules. These are out of our concern. We don't know. It's their decision. We have enough product. We can meet their demand. We feel better because our customers recently qualified many of our products from the IC levels to module levels. They passed many rigorous testings, and they feel good about it. We see some, we feel good about it. We expected to have a ramp. At this time, we're not going to forecast what's a half a year.
In the past, -- we said last year, we said this year could be a flourish in our numbers. Let's see. Let us deliver numbers. Hopefully, it's better than we expected.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. I think that Michael is right that we have increased visibility because the design win and the qualification process is down the road another month. Still, as far as when the actual product ramps occur, it is outside of our control. While I think that we feel more confident overall, the timing as far as the plus minus against the range, let's leave it wide open for right now.
Quinn Bolton (Senior Analyst)
Got it. Maybe a follow-up question just, Bernie, on the second quarter guidance. Looks like gross margin ticks down by about 20 basis points at the midpoint. Wondering if you could just sort of address that. Is that just sort of makeshift within the product groups? Are you starting to see either tariff costs and/or pricing pressure? What accounts for the slight drop in gross margin in the second quarter? Thank you.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Sure. There's not a specific event that we're pointing to. We're just saying that there's a mix of different things that may or may not be inside of our control. We are just being basically 20 basis points more conservative.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. Overall, all the new products we release will have higher margins. The higher volumes, the margins are lowered. We are not going to intend to operate much below our corporate average. That's our goal.
Tony Balow (VP of Finance)
We stay within the range.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah, we stay with our model. Yeah.
Quinn Bolton (Senior Analyst)
Perfect. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Ross Seymore of Deutsche Bank. Ross, your line is now.
Ross Seymore (Managing Director)
Hi, guys. Congrats on the resulting guide. Thanks for the question. Bernie, in the first quarter, you had a very wide and divergent performance by segment to get you still to upside overall. Just wondering if there's any large segment moves in your second quarter guide, any kind of big divergent moves that you'd like to highlight.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
No. Actually, the range of variance for all of the groups is plus minus 5 percentage points. Actually, we're seeing very narrow change sequentially. It's worth commenting there that I believe that if we were heavily influenced by pull-ins, for example, we might have seen a more dramatic falloff in a particular market segment. When we look against particularly year over year, our strength is fairly broad-based with enterprise data, as we've talked about, still looking for the ramp in the second half of the year.
Ross Seymore (Managing Director)
Got it. I guess that leads to my second question, which was going to be something you kind of just touched on, which is the tariff side of things. I know you talked earlier about diversifying your manufacturing, and Tony mentioned about diversifying the R&D side of things. As far as the pull-ins, push-outs, any sort of different behavior from your customers, I've been surprised how little of that has been admitted to or has actually occurred by some of the other analog companies. I just wondered what you guys are saying.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
If it happens there's some pushing and pull-out and pulling a pull-out and a push-out, and those are numbers small enough that we don't clearly understand. The overall number is very consistent. As you see it, Bernie mentioned that the Q1s and the computing segments and the revenue growth. That's also as expected from the previous quarters. We have a lot of design winning in those areas, and we are turning to our revenues.
Tony Balow (VP of Finance)
Ross, in that area, for sure, there's a lot of other business factors beyond just potential tariff-related pull-ins, because there's AI PC, there's the end of Win 10 support, there's gaming. There's a lot of things that are driving the good business there as well.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. The key is the diversifications. The best thing is I can't look at the numbers, and I can't have any target number that I want to analyze. Everything looks very smooth.
Ross Seymore (Managing Director)
Got it. Let's hope it stays that way. Thanks, guys.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah, you bet.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Rick Schafer of Oppenheimer. Rick, your line is now.
Rick Schafer (Managing Director)
Thanks, Gen. Congrats, guys, on the solid quarter. I guess my first question, if I could, is really on data center or server power, rack power, to be specific. You talked about your 400-volt rack power solution at Analyst Day. I think you highlighted 600 kW within a couple of years. I mean, we're seeing more in the press about even megawatt racks within the next handful of years. I was just curious if you could elaborate on the expected market opportunity or TAM there and sort of when rack power sales are expected to become material for MPS.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. Our customer asked us to pull-in, I believe, with this month. If it's not this month, next month, we deliver samples. I think it's this month. We deliver modules, each module levels, like 120 kW levels. For each module, you add it together, somewhere is about 6,000 kW to a million watt powers. We do have a product for that. We do have initial developments. Now we have samples.
Rick Schafer (Managing Director)
Michael, not to press you on it too hard, but would we see revenues, like material revenues this year, or is this more of a sample year, qualification year, and it's more of a 2026 revenue driver?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
I believe it's a 2026. We expected to have a higher good revenue come from that type of modules. At the same time, we prepare our production ramps, production qualifications. There's a lot of work in the second half of the years. We fully expected it, and we anticipated that part of a growth.
Rick Schafer (Managing Director)
Thanks for all that, Michael. My second question is really on auto. To me, I think you have several material content drivers ramping this year. You look at 48-volt transition beginning, 800-volt battery transition. You've talked about power isolation modules. I know you talked about that at Analyst Day also. I guess I'm curious, kind of a similar question in terms of how much do you expect BMS to contribute to that segment, to auto segment revenues this year? I guess I'm curious if there are any regions favored within that.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. Of course, China's model changes much faster than any other regions. We do see in the U.S. and Europe, even Korea, we're changing. Changing not only from 400 volts to 800 volts, and also from 12 volts to 48 volts. Those segments start very early. These are still early, at the very early stage. We do ship those products now to those segments. I believe all the early changes, we're all in it in every model.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. I think in automotive in particular here, because we've heard some concerns about unit volumes from North American and Chinese EVs in particular. When we look at our second half, a lot of the momentum will be design wins that we secured in previous years that are coming to market, particularly in North America and in Europe. We have really, it's a content-driven second half story for automotive.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. What you mentioned about 800 volts, 48 volts, and those probably we'll see a lot more in the 2026 and the 2027.
Rick Schafer (Managing Director)
Great. Thanks, you guys.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Joe Quatrochi from Wells Fargo. Joe, your line is now open.
Joseph Quatrochi (Senior Equity Analyst)
Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to follow up on your comments on the storage and computing segment. I can appreciate you guys are seeing some design wins ramp. I guess as we look forward here, just given the abnormal seasonality strength that you saw in 1Q, how do we think about that business kind of throughout the rest of this year?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Are you talking about seeing that? I don't know. Nowadays, being in this MPS, being a public company of 21 years. In recent years, I don't know what the seasonality is. We talk about the design wins in the memory side, in the memory part of power management. We're talking about it for the last year or two or so. I think at one time I even said it, when it will ramp up this year. We don't know. These are kind of things plus minus a quarter. The way you get it close to us, you get orders. By the end of the quarter, they don't push out. Now here's the numbers. We're not very good at forecasting the numbers, but we're pretty good at delivering numbers.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
I think a really important point here as well is how broad-based this is. We are looking at DDR5, SSD, even HDD on the memory side. Then, as Tony pointed out previously, within the notebook, there are a variety of factors that are driving that end market as well.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
CPU side, in the notebook side, CPU side, desktops, and notebook side. When Bernie mentioned all these segments, these are pretty evenly growth. Maybe memory side, the DDR5 is a little bit more than the other ones. They are pretty much consistent and evenly growth in each segments.
Tony Balow (VP of Finance)
Yeah. Joe, just relative to what Bernie said before, going into Q2, everything's plus or minus a couple of points kind of thing. You would infer from that that that segment would not see a sharp falloff necessarily in Q2.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah.
Joseph Quatrochi (Senior Equity Analyst)
Yep. No, that's helpful. I appreciate it. Maybe as a quick follow-up, looking at the enterprise data side, maybe on the non-AI segment of that market, how are you thinking about traditional server CPU demand this year?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
They're doing good. As you probably know, all these, a lot of servers had a refresh and adopting whatever the Intel's latest models. We expected that, as we said at the beginning of the last year, or year before, we will increase our market shares. Now we're pretty much in as we see, as we said it, years ago, last year.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
I think just to stay on that point for a little bit longer is that, again, much like the other areas of our business, we're seeing consistent, steady growth. It's not like a spike or a hockey stick.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
We will gain shares. In the next years, I think we're even getting a higher percentage in the server market.
Joseph Quatrochi (Senior Equity Analyst)
Perfect. Thank you.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Okay.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Gary Mobley of Loop Capital. Gary, your line is now open.
Gary Mobley (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the solid first half performance. On the topic of China, can you give us a sense of how big your business now is in China relative to local indigenous consumption? Given your China for China manufacturing supply chain, how has that and how will that position you versus your larger U.S. competitor?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
If you know our stories, a lot of design and a lot of design activities and a lot of manufacturing that happened in China 10, 15 years ago. Started 2016, we diversified not only from the U.S. before it was the U.S. and China. Started 2016, 2017, we established placing in Europe, multiple places since then. As I mentioned before, mostly our manufacturing partners that's in China, after the pandemic, we migrated out by serendipity, I said earlier. As a result, there was the capacity within China. We announced. I don't know how we engage with our competitors. If there's any concentration concentrated in the U.S. for productions or concentrated in China, in the current environment, the needle of a good. You need a really balanced. In China, particularly manufacturing for China. In the U.S., it's outside China. The same as Europe.
Gary Mobley (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. As my follow-up, I want to ask about capacity and customer order lead times. It appears as though you have almost half a year's worth of inventory on your balance sheet. You probably have infinite manufacturing availability, at least in the intermediate term.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Not quite infinite. Yeah. We have a lot. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry.
Gary Mobley (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. My question is, have you seen any sort of uptick in customer order lead times? Related, has that improved your visibility or your backlog or any of those forward-looking metrics?
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
As far as the inventory, let's take that on first off, our model is to hold about 180 to 200 days on our books. We're well below that level right now. When we look at inventory in the channel, we also see that is very lean against what we typically experience or what our model is. As far as the lead times, they're actually holding pretty well as far as what we're seeing in the supply chain. As I've commented in prior comments, in certain of our end markets, they do demand short lead times. We have to build ahead of their demand. I think, though, right now, we have a lot of flexibility. We're very well positioned regardless which way the market goes.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. If you know what, we try to, we targeted 180 days to 200 days for many, many years. Because of all the new product ramp. In Q1, I don't know if you remember, as I said, the inventory level is very low, both from our, both from the disti levels and as well as within MPS and at the very low levels. I may even say that it was an unhealthy level, too low. Overall, our strategy is we always hold more inventory than in disti. We have a better management.
Gary Mobley (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Joshua Buchalter of Cowen. Joshua, your line is now open.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
[audio distortion] I wanted to follow up on Joe's question from.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Joshua, there? You can't hear. I cannot hear you.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
Uh-oh.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Now it's better.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Nope. Now it's cutting out.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
Oh, now. Last try. Good.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
There you go. We can hear you.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. I'm sorry about that, guys. My first time on Zoom. I wanted to follow up on Joe's question from earlier on storage and compute. I totally appreciate the share gains that you mentioned, but the 38% sequential growth in what usually is a subseasonal quarter for PCs is certainly eye-popping. Are there any more metrics you can give us as to maybe content or share shifts that are going on and to give us comfort that there's not inventory build happening here? Thank you.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
In the past, we have a few eye-popping numbers. We did not surprise it. As we said, it is a pretty evenly growth in the segment, particularly a little bit more in the DDR5s, as we said a few quarters ago.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. Josh, you might recall from my comments from year-end when we were looking at the Q1 outlook. I said that there was an atypical seasonal uplift anticipated in storage and compute. Against our internal expectations, we came in within low single-digit performance to the upside. While it may be counter to whatever seasonality we've experienced in the past, everything rolled out pretty much as anticipated.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. We have a okay, go ahead.
Tony Balow (VP of Finance)
As you said, Josh, just remember that storage compute, you heard Michael say it before, it's growth from both the memory side as well as the notebook side. It's not all notebook-driven. That might apply to your seasonality question.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
On desktop, we have always, particularly in the last couple of years, and the market is very dynamic. You see one segment popping up, the other one segment not so much. In the last couple of years, you see more. This quarter is storage and the compute. Last quarter, I don't know, it's auto. Last quarter, auto model. Before was the--
Tony Balow (VP of Finance)
Enterprise.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Enterprise. We keep running like a circle.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you for the color. I wanted to follow up on enterprise data also. You mentioned the increased confidence versus three months ago. Is that coming from your biggest customer in that segment, or is that more confidence in some of the newer platform wins that you expected to ramp in the second half? Within that, are lead times still measured in weeks? When would you expect, I guess, to have more visibility onto the share in enterprise data?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Do it in quarters. We circle back. No, we feel as the time as a closer to the second half, we feel better. As always. And we have a more clear visibility.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, that's exactly right. We've talked about this in the past. It's not just the main customer, but some of our other customers are operating with shorter lead times. As a result, we feel very good about the design wins, the qualifications. As I mentioned earlier, it's really the timing of when they expect to ramp. Even within that, we're getting increasingly more confident.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Oh, yeah. You're talking about large customers, small customers. When we're looking at all these, they all can be very big.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
They can all be big.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
They all can be big. Yeah.
Joshua Buchalter (Equity Research Analyst)
Congratulations on the results. I apologize for my technical difficulties again.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
No, thanks, Josh.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from William Stein of Truist. William, your line is now open.
William Stein (Senior Analyst)
Great. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Two topics. I wanted to hit on tariffs, and then I wanted to hit on some growth opportunities. On the tariff side, people have asked a bunch of different questions, but I wonder if you'd help us understand if there are any direct, as in unit costs and unit pricing impact that's influencing your Q2 guidance, and is there any indirect or unit demand impact influencing your Q2 guidance?
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
No to both questions.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yes.
William Stein (Senior Analyst)
Okay. At the Analyst Day, you showed some pretty unique products for a semiconductor company, these sort of finished full-up products. As I recall, there was a sonogram. I think you threatened to list that on Amazon, if I recall. Also, building automation, you had audio amplifiers. I can't imagine that these are contributing meaningfully to revenue. I wonder what your customer, either established customer or emerging customer reaction was to this. Did you see anything worth noting that could drive future demand that we'd want to think about?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
All I try to do is, as Bernie said earlier, we want to have a silicon-based solution company. I want to monetize our know-how. For examples, building automations, the box we did it. You add a lot of chicken shit stuff in the box. We sell a lot of sub-$0.50, a lot of products. We add it together, and we put some software, most of our products. It's the programmables. Now we're making MCUs. We put it all together. It can be a very good viable solution sell for a lot higher dollars. Same as ultrasound areas. These to me is very interesting. We can leverage our know-how sell instead of sell dollar--$2 parts. Now you start to sell thousands, ten thousand dollars stuff. Our customers, sometimes they are related to our customers.
Our customers, they buy, we're talking to a different level of people. We're not talking to engineers anymore. We want to have cooperating with large companies. We have those solutions. You can sell, you can buy the entire solution. You can have it as a white box. You label it. Another way is you buy our modules rather than a chip. It just takes much of an effort from their hand. We do things because we do silicon. We do silicons, and we know that we can know the module levels. We stretch it out a little bit with adding more software. It's the entire blown systems. Depending on the level of our customer's interest, we can engage with them in the chip levels, in the module levels, on the system levels. We just want to provide more. That's our know-how.
We leverage our know-how, leverage on the silicon. I contacted several very, very large companies. They're the leader in the area. There's much, much welcomes to these kind of solutions. They want to work with us. They want to work with us. This is at the very beginning. That's kind of things we're transforming a company from a silicon only to a solution company. These are the ones. I think that's how we from a silicon to module, we grow out of the silicon company. From a module, we probably stay in the module level. We are never going to sell blinds in the shades and air conditioning. These are still in the module levels.
William Stein (Senior Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Chris Caso of Wolfe. Chris, your line is now open.
Chris Caso (Managing Director)
Yes, thank you. Our first question is with regard to the power for some of the custom AI projects this year. Could you detail how significant that is for the enterprise data segment this year? Maybe some idea of what the content is on that as compared to the largest customer in that segment.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
When I look at the opportunities, particularly with AI, the products are only getting higher power, and they're getting smaller footprints. It is that area of innovation where we can help lead our customers to their end solutions in a way that our competitors aren't. Right now, the market has been dominated with really one main customer. Now, as we see the second half of the year in particular, there is going to be a number of new market entrants. They are all with the same formula.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Including a big and small.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
The small looks like going to be a big. The dollar content is in half years, a year, a few hundred million dollars. It's $500 million-$600 million. It's not unthinkable for half years.
Chris Caso (Managing Director)
Got it. As a follow-up question, maybe I'll dig into some of what you talked about on the confidence on the enterprise data as you go through the year. I guess maybe a little more detail of the why you feel a little more comfortable now as compared to where you were at the beginning of the year. Is it simply a matter of qualifications where you're now qualified on platforms that you may not have been qualified on at the beginning of the year? Is it more confidence with regard to market share on those? Just a little bit of what is driving the confidence for the year as compared to where it was 90 days ago?
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
The year is a half a year there. Now it's a half a year, almost a half a year later. You'll feel the bad or feel good. It's all going to happen as we're getting closer. We see the result as we expected it.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. I say that we've got more positive data points that we can look at. Still, how that converts in the year, that's why I mentioned earlier that we're operating within a range of outcomes.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. We always, one thing we're good at in the past, we're also pretty good at it, as we said.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah.
Chris Caso (Managing Director)
Got it. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is from Jack Egan of Charter. Jack, your line is now open.
Jack Egan (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I was hoping you could talk a bit about the margin outlook for some of the new accelerator ramps in the second half and into 2026 and 2027. Is there really a structural difference in the margin profile for those products going into custom ASICs and TPUs versus GPUs, whether better or for worse? I mean, really just any similarities or differences as to how that kind of long-term trajectory plays out would be helpful.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
I wouldn't say that there's a structural change. Now, you have individual opportunities that could be plus or minus. This market, but there isn't a fundamental change in our margin model because of it.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. MPS operate, we want to operate well within our model. Our model, we're at the lower end. We are very much aware of that. What we want to do is we're not going to high volumes, low margin business. Doesn't matter what area. All these new products, I said earlier, we release so we all have higher margins. We want to stay on the best performance. We're not competing on the price.
Jack Egan (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. Got it. Thanks. That's helpful. I guess for my follow-up, as it kind of relates to just the broader analog cycle across end markets, if you kind of strip out Monolithic's new design wins that are ramping and share gains, are you seeing any signals that end demand broadly in maybe some of the more downtrodden markets is starting to increase? I mean, I'm not sure if you can really separate those factors out, but if you're looking at markets like automotive and industrial, is there anything that gives you confidence that maybe those markets are actually turning around?
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
I think for MPS, it's impossible to strip out the revenue ramps from new products. I know that we've had a competitor or two that have announced that they've seen a bottoming out or potential improvement. Again, our story has to do with the new product revenue ramps. In particular, we've talked a lot about the second half as far as enterprise data. I don't want to ignore all of the other opportunities in all of our other end markets. We feel very well positioned regardless of the macro for both the second half of this year as well as the momentum we're carrying into 2026.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. If you know the history, for 21 years as a public company, we only have one year, 2010. The year we did not grow, we missed $3 million. Every year we grew.
Jack Egan (Equity Research Analyst)
Right. Okay. That's super helpful. Thanks so much.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Okay.
Operator (participant)
Our last question is from Kelsey Chia of Citi Research. Kelsey, your line is now open.
Kelsey Chia (Senior Analyst)
Hi, Michael and Bernie. Thanks for taking my question. I'd like to dive deeper on the gross margin side. It seems that legacy wafer pricing is trending down. Also, you're talking about new ramps in enterprise data and auto. Is there room for gross margin expansion going forward in the second half?
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Of course, there is room for gross margin expansion.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
For second half, no.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
That's the second half.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
Yeah. We're not going to increase the price to our customer. Okay. For next year, that's very possible.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah.
Kelsey Chia (Senior Analyst)
Right. I also like to tap into on the communications end market. I believe that segment is also benefiting from the AI infrastructure buildouts. I believe on the optical module side, could you provide more color on those applications? Also, when can we expect, can we expect sort of a similar ramp to these enterprise data, the second half uptick for this year?
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Sure. It was interesting because the way we look at our communications market is we have obviously the network telecom exposure. We have the router, wireless modems. More recently, we have optical fiber optics. I would say that when I look at the last two quarters and the outlook for Q2, it has been very balanced. It has not been weighted by any one component. That is what we are seeing. We already talked about that as far as storage and computing and in automotive in particular.
Kelsey Chia (Senior Analyst)
Okay. Thank you.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. All right.
Operator (participant)
This concludes our Q&A session. I'd now like to turn the webinar back over to Bernie.
Bernie Blegen (EVP and CFO)
I would like to thank you all for joining us on this conference call. I look forward to talking to you again during a second quarter 2025 conference call, which will likely be held in early August. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Michael Hsing (Founder, Chairman, President, and CEO)
All right.
Operator (participant)
Okay.