Silicon Motion Technology - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Silicon Motion Technology Corporation's Q1 2024 Earnings 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, at which time if you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press dial 11 on your telephone keypad. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding trends in the semiconductor industry and our future results of operations, financial condition, and business prospects. Although such statements are based on our own information and information from other sources we believe to be reliable, you should not place undue reliance on them.

These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual market trends and our results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in this forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, continued competitive pressure in the semiconductor industry and the effect of such pressure on prices, unpredictable changes in technology and consumer demand for multimedia consumer electronics, the state of any change in our relationship with our major customers, and changes in political, economic, legal, and social conditions in Taiwan. For additional discussion of these risks and uncertainties and other factors, please see the documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements which apply only as of the date of this conference call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to hand you over to the interim Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Jason Tsai. Please go ahead.

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Silicon Motion's Q1 2024 financial results conference call and webcast. Joining me today is Wallace Kou, our President and CEO. Wallace will first provide a review of our key business developments, and then I will discuss our Q1 results and outlook. Following our prepared remarks, we will conclude with a Q&A session. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you of our safe harbor policy, which was read at the start of this call. For a comprehensive overview of the risks involved in investing in our securities, please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For more details on our financial results, please refer to our press release, which was filed on Form 6-K after the close of the market yesterday.

The webcast will be available for replay in the investor relations section of our website for a limited time. To enhance investors' understanding of our ongoing economic performance, we will discuss non-GAAP information during this call. We use non-GAAP financial measures internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We have therefore chosen to provide this information to enable you to perform comparisons of our operating results in a manner similar to how we analyze our own operating results. The reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial data can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday. We ask that you review it in conjunction with this call. With that, I will turn the call over to Wallace.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Thank you, Jason. Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a good start to 2024. We delivered sequential revenue growth ahead of expectations, achieved gross margin at the high end of our guideline range, and exceeded our operating margin outlook. Our SSD controller business was better than expected, primarily driven by demand from two of our flash maker customers. We continue to improve our pricing in the quarter, which is driving the steady improvement in our gross margin and profitability. Our results this quarter reinforced our leadership position in controller technology, and our products continue to be in high demand as our customers recognize how important our technology, innovation, and service are to their business. While broader macro-environments remain uncertain, I'm pleased by our team's execution this quarter.

We are taking the right steps to efficiently navigate market dynamics, remain steadfast in delivering the product and solution our customers need, and focus on continuing growth and improving profitability across our platform. Let me start now with an overview of NAND market and dynamics we are seeing today. We have seen NAND flash prices continue to increase since late last year and more recently. I've seen flash makers gradually increase utilization in their fabs, but more meaningful capacity increase from the build-out next generation NAND fabs isn't expected until next year. Demand remains robust, especially with Chinese handset OEMs as well as with enterprise and data center storage markets, while PC demand has been steadily increasing. All of this will continue to drive NAND flash prices higher throughout this year.

We are seeing some near-term pricing fluctuations in the channel SSD market that may cause some uncertainty with our customers that are more focused on the retail aftermarkets. But demand for our controller for PC OEM SSD remains robust, especially with our flash maker customers. Our leadership in controller technology continues to drive stronger demand across the board with our customers. It's becoming clearer each day that our experience and expertise with QLC NAND is a defining differentiator that has resulted in significant wins with flash makers and other customers across all product categories. As the 3D NAND layers continue to increase, managing QLC NAND becomes even more challenging and continues to require more sophisticated controller technology to ensure high data retention and reduce read/write endurance issues.

Our Advanced LDPC and the 3D RAID technology are the best in class to protect data during high-speed data transfer between the controller and the NAND and operate on the wide temperature range. We can deliver controllers that enable a no-compromise high-performance and low-cost solid-state storage solution incorporating the latest generation of QLC NAND. Especially with the rapid adoption of AI, whether it's in edge devices like PC and smartphone or in the data center and enterprise storage, QLC storage devices are becoming increasingly central to AI applications and growth going forward. OEMs no longer need to choose between high performance or lower cost. With QLC, especially the upcoming 2 terabit monolithic QLC NAND, they are able to have high sequential read performance, high density, and lower-cost solutions to meet their ever-increasing AI compute and storage requirements. Now let me start with our SSD controllers.

We are seeing strong traction with our new PCIe Gen 5 8-channel controller we taped out last year. This is the first 6-nanometer 8-channel PCIe Gen 5 controller available in the market, and we are winning at virtually every top module maker in addition to our three flash maker customers. The results from our early testing have been very good. This is a premium product that will be ideally suited for high-end notebook and desktop AI PC, as well as for gaming and workstation PCs that offer unparalleled performance with ultra-low power consumption. In addition, we have a strong pipeline of design activity with several flash makers for PCIe Gen 4 SSD using their next generation TLC and QLC NAND. These deliver high performance, high density, low-cost SSD, ideal for rapidly growing AI PC markets.

Beyond the PC market, we also have automotive-grade PCIe Gen 4 controller wins with two of our flash maker customers that will ramp with the leading electric car platform next year. We also expect to tape out our dual-port PCIe Gen 5 controller for the automotive market next year for several of our flash maker customers to further our leadership in the market. We are confident that our broad-based SSD controller solution will continue to scale this business meaningfully this year and into 2025 as many of these new products and platforms begin to ramp. Moving to our eMMC plus UFS controllers, we have successfully taped out our first UFS 4.0 controller in the Q1 and are on track to start qualification with this new controller in the H2 of the year.

We also continue to see stronger-than-ever demand for our UFS 3.1 and 2.2 controllers, especially to support new generations of low-cost NAND. In addition to several top module makers serving the smartphone market, we start ramping up a new flash maker customer for UFS 3.1 and 2.2 this quarter, and this customer is expected to ramp with our UFS 4.0 controller next year. While the smartphone market has predominantly used TLC NAND, we are now seeing increasing interest in QLC NAND, especially in mainstream handsets, where OEMs can offer higher density without significant increase in cost. We are collaborating with one of the leading handset OEMs directly for a QLC UFS solution that is expected to come to market later this year for their mainstream smartphone.

We expect the demand for QLC UFS products, especially in mainstream and entry-level 5G smartphones, will continue to increase as this higher-density, low-cost UFS solution will be required to drive adoption of AI beyond the premium segment of the smartphone market over the next few years. In addition, we are seeing significant traction with our eMMC and UFS controllers in the automotive market as well as in commercial, industrial, and other connected and smart devices. This non-smartphone application accounts for more than 40% of the overall eMMC plus UFS market today, with the market for automotive applications growing faster than the smartphone market. We are working with several flash makers and building eMMC and UFS controllers for these customers, especially for the automotive market, and expect this to scale meaningfully in the next years to come. Now let me turn to our MonTitan platform.

As we have talked about before, the enterprise and data center storage markets are a tremendous opportunity that we believe we now have a truly differentiated solution with MonTitan to scale with the flash makers and storage solution enablers, as well as directly with data center and enterprise customers. Based on market data from Gartner and IDC, as well as our own analysis, we anticipate the market for enterprise SSD for both enterprise storage and data centers will grow by more than 50% to approximately 75 million units by 2027. But more importantly, the market for PCIe Gen 5 SSD is expected to increase more than five times to more than 60 million units in 2027.

QLC-based SSDs are expected to account for nearly 30% of the total petabytes in 2027, up from less than 10% in 2023, representing a huge growth opportunity that we are uniquely positioned to lead. Our first MonTitan PCIe Gen 5 controller will manage TLC or QLC NAND on a single platform, enabling a similar transition and adoption of QLC NAND with enterprise and data center storage applications long term. I'm excited to announce that we have won two tier-one customers in the Q1 for the MonTitan PCIe Gen 5 controller, one in the United States and one in China, that are expected to begin ramping later next year. We continue to sample with more than a dozen additional customers expected to secure more wins throughout this year. We are on track to begin mass production late this year and ramp more meaningfully next year.

Our early success here has been our ability to differentiate with our high-performance and power-efficient controller that supports more NAND, including TLC and QLC for high-capacity SSD, than any other platform in the market today. Building our patented performance and power-shifting technology, we enable our customers to dynamically adjust for peak performance versus low power consumption depending on the various workload requirements to achieve the best result. We are seeing inbound interest from the world-leading data center providers because of our ability to deliver high-density, high-performance, low-cost TLC and QLC SSD for the increasingly data-hungry AI compute and storage needed.

Given our proven track record of managing more QLC NAND than any other vendor in the market over the past decade, we can leverage our unparalleled experience and expertise with QLC into the MonTitan controller platform to build SSD solutions that can effectively displace a portion of nearline HDD with high-capacity nearline SSD. These solutions offer a lower TCO compared to legacy HDDs due to their smaller form factor, higher storage densities, lower power consumption, and higher reliability and resiliency. We see an incredible market opportunity here to differentiate with our MonTitan platform and deliver solutions that are critical to the further build-out and adoption of AI in the enterprise and data center, driving a multi-year growth cycle for the company. Overall, I'm excited by a strong start to 2024 and the achievable opportunity on our horizon for the rest of the year.

Beyond our strong results, our underlying business momentum continues to accelerate as we add more products and more wins to drive a sustainable long-term growth of our business. We continue to see very strong traction across the board with the controller we are bringing to the market and have greater confidence that our strategy to diversify beyond PC and smartphones aims to create new opportunities in the enterprise and automotive markets. We'll soon scale meaningfully with our tier-one customers. We are very proud of this, and it gives us good confidence in our pipeline, our ability to serve our current and new customers to drive long-term growth. Now let me turn the call over to Jason to go over our financial results and outlook.

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Thank you, Wallace, and good morning, everyone. I will discuss additional details of our Q1 results and then provide our guidance.

Please note that my comments today will focus primarily on our non-GAAP results unless otherwise specifically noted. The reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP data is included with the earnings release issued yesterday. In the Q1, sales increased, excuse me, sales decreased 6% sequentially to $189 million. SSD controller sales increased slightly by 0%-5% sequentially. eMMC and UFS controllers declined 10%-15% sequentially. SSD solutions sales decreased 5%-10% sequentially. Gross margin in the Q1 increased to 45%, reflecting both better mix and higher ASPs. Operating expenses in the Q1 were $62.5 million, $1 million higher than the prior quarter, primarily due to higher R&D expenses to support our technology leadership. Operating margins in the Q1 were 12%, down from 13.8% in the Q4.

Our effective tax rate in the Q1 was 16%, an increase from the 2.3% tax rate in the Q4, primarily due to a tax reversal benefit we had in the Q4. Earnings for ADS were $0.64, down from $0.93 we reported in the Q4. Total stock-based compensation, which we exclude from our non-GAAP results, was $3.2 million in the Q1. We had $349.3 million of cash, cash equivalent, and restricted cash in short-term investments at the end of the Q1 compared to $369 million at the end of the Q4. Inventory increased sequentially in the Q1 to $253 million from $217 million in the Q4 to support revenue growth in the Q2 and the rest of the year. Let me now turn to our outlook.

As Wallace mentioned, the continuing success we are seeing with flash makers is providing more clarity around the improving fundamentals of our business. We're seeing strong demand in smartphones, and coupled with improving demand in PCs, our design wins for this year are well positioned to drive better growth than we had anticipated just three months ago. While the strength we are seeing with our current products, as well as the increasing interest in MonTitan products, we are prudently increasing investments in R&D, primarily through higher headcount to support increasing programs we are engaging with our customers. Now let me turn to our Q2 outlook. Revenue is expected to increase 5%-10% sequentially to approximately $199 million-$208 million. We expect eMMC and UFS sales to increase, and SSD controller sales will be stable sequentially.

Q2 gross margins are expected to continue to improve and be in the range of 45%-46%. Q2 operating margins are expected to improve and to be in the range of 16.5%-17.5%. Q2 effective tax rate to be approximately 19%, and Q2 stock-based compensation dispute-related expenses in the range of $2.5 million-$3 million. For the full year 2024, we are increasing our outlook given the strong momentum we are seeing from our customers. Revenue is now expected to increase 25%-30% sequentially to approximately $800 million-$830 million. Gross margin is expected to be in the range of 45%-47%. Operating margins are expected to be in the range of 14.7%-16.7% as we further invest in our technology leadership.

2024 tax rate to be approximately 19%, and 2024 stock-based compensation and dispute-related expenses in the range of $30 million-$32 million. With a strong start to the year and the building momentum in our backlog, we expect to see sequential revenue growth and profitability improvements throughout the balance of the year. For operating expenses, we taped out our new 6-nanometer UFS 4.0 controller in the Q1 and expect to tape out our 6-nanometer PCIe Gen 5 4-channel SSD controller in the Q3. We expect our operating expenses to decline sequentially but to increase again in the Q3 to support the technology leadership investments we continue to make. We have accelerated some R&D hiring, especially in our MonTitan enterprise controller group, to support the opportunities we are seeing with our sampling customers as well as the increasing amount of inbound interest. This concludes our prepared remarks.

We will now open the call to your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Mehdi Hosseini from SIG. Please ask your question, Mehdi.

Mehdi Hosseini (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yes, thank you for taking my question. Two follow-ups. First, Wallace, can you give us an update or review some of the key milestones determining your penetration into the enterprise segment with the PCIe Gen 5? I think in the past, you have talked about evaluation in the of 2024 and vision by 2025. Where are we with those milestones?

And then for Jason, what are your thoughts on the longer-term growth and operating margin targets?

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Thank you, Mehdi. We see a very strong momentum for demand for MonTitan. Q1, we had two tier-one customer design wins, one from the United States, the other from China. We also have some ongoing module-maker design. That's why we start to see some revenue by end of 2024 become meaningful in 2025. But the two tier-one customers will ramp by late 2024. But we had announced our goal to win minimum two tier-one in the U.S. and two tier-one in China. It's on track. We might have more than what we really can support, but we believe 2025, late 2026, will be much more meaningful sales revenue growth for our MonTitan business, for enterprise.

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Mehdi, in terms of gross margin and profitability, certainly, our goal is to continue to gradually improve our gross margins. We believe we can return back to our historical gross margins level by early next year. Then in terms of operating profitability, again, as we scale our revenue, as we see our gross margins further improve, we believe we can continue to improve long-term operating profitability and get back to our historical range of 25%+ as well. We don't have a specific guidance around timing at this point, but certainly, as we continue to execute and deliver, we expect to get closer and closer to that target each quarter.

Mehdi Hosseini (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. Given the mix in your revenue, could you hit the 25% operating margin at a lower revenue run rate?

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Look, I think if you take a look at our products today, our revenue, our SSD controller business, those SSD controllers tend to be above corporate average gross margins, while our eMMC and UFS controllers are below corporate average gross margins. There is certainly a number of growth factors in both of these businesses, but typically, what we've seen historically is that SSD controllers account for anywhere from half to two-thirds of our business in any given period, and eMMC and UFS account for about a quarter to a third in any given period. So we don't see that percentage changing much. And certainly, if we see automotive or MonTitan becoming a bigger portion of revenue, then that could skew our gross margins to be better than what historical average has been.

But it's too early to say what those long-term targets are yet, given that we have yet to scale those products meaningfully.

Mehdi Hosseini (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Mehdi. Our next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton from Needham & Company. Please go ahead.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I didn't catch you. Was that Quinn from Needham?

Operator (participant)

Yes, it is. Please go ahead.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Oh, perfect. Okay. Sorry, you cut out there when you announced the name. Hey, Wallace. Hey, Jason. Congratulations on the nice results, and particularly on the MonTitan wins. Wallace, wondering if you might try to size the opportunity for us for MonTitan for Silicon Motion in 2025. Is this something that you see contributing tens of millions of dollars as the two tier-ones ramp next year? Could it try to help level set us on what's a reasonable expectation for MonTitan revenue next year?

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Yeah. We mean the two tier-one customers would ramp in late 2025. It would probably be more meaningful in 2026. But we believe the enterprise controller revenue will be around meaningful 2026 or 2027. Meaningful means it's at least a 5%-10% of our total revenue.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Perfect. And then I think you commented in the script but also in the press release about increasing backlog and visibility. I guess I'm kind of wondering I guess I would think the NAND controller space would typically be a pretty short sort of lead-time business because the market can change pretty quickly. How far does your backlog extend? Do you have pretty good visibility now into the H2, or is your backlog shorter-term in nature and really only covers, say, 90 or so days?

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Yeah. So our backlog, we obviously have some long-term customers, especially with our NAND makers, where we have much better clarity on what their demand profile looks like over a longer term. These are rolling forecasts, and we do get updated on that pretty regularly. So it does vary. Depending on the end markets they're serving, if they're serving PCOEM customers, there's certainly a little bit better visibility there. But I would also point out that from an inventory management standpoint, it does take us about three months to get products in and out of our manufacturing partner's door. So we do need that advance notice in order to build inventory to support those upcoming products, those upcoming sales, those upcoming ramps, especially going into the back half of the year where demand is typically stronger.

We need to make sure that we've got adequate inventory to support that revenue growth.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

I may add a comment. If we are able to increase our annual sales guidance, would it mean we have better visibility for the H2 of this year?

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. And then lastly, Wallace, you mentioned the price, the NAND price, sort of fluctuations might cause some perturbations in the retail SSD market. Just wondering if you could sort of expand on those comments. Is it just the pricing is coming up pretty quickly, and that could create sort of lower demand temporarily in the retail channel, or were you trying to imply some other behavior? Thank you.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Well, I've seen the current situation like this, the NAND makers have pretty high confidence because demand from data center and enterprise is very, very strong.

So that's why they definitely continue to see the supply shortage going to increase the wafer price, and we see it going to increase gradually throughout the whole year. However, for certain channel markets, the demand for SSD is not that strong as the wafer price increase. That's why some fluctuation. But overall, we see it stabilized, and we see the demand for our controller is still strong and stable. So I think primarily because a lot of our module customers have acquired quite many inventory last year, so they can balance for their cost.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Quinn. Our next question goes online from Craig Ellis at B. Riley Securities. Please ask your question, Craig.

Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)

Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions, and congratulations on the very strong start to 2024.

Wallace, I wanted to start with a higher-level question for you that helps put into context what you're seeing with NAND OEM controller outsourcing. So if we take a look at where we are today and compare it to January and early February, can you talk about the incremental design wins that you've seen with NAND OEMs that would ship in 2024? And it seemed from your prepared commentary that you're also being actively engaged with some 2025 projects. So the question is, what have you seen in the last three months that impacts this year's revenues, and what are you seeing that kind of starts to give you at least project visibility for 2025?

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

I think that the three years don't really have major changes.

But we really start to see the NAND makers; they all focus on profitability, having every NAND maker have their own strategy and how to really invest their CapEx for the equipment. But we are definitely working, even seeing from last year, for several 2025 OEM projects covering Client SSD for UFS, for automotive eMMC, automotive PCIe, portable SSD, multiple projects with individual NAND makers. So they're quite busy, and our MonTitan also working with quite a few; we have 2 major design wins for tier-one customers. We have several in the process in qualification and engagement. So we are quite busy this year, and we are pretty confident in our design pipeline for 2025.

Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)

On that MonTitan point, to follow up Mehdi and Quinn's questions, it seemed like you were saying if we look in 2027 at market projections with TLC, where you have just an amazing history with product development and performance, that that part of the market would be about a third of the market or maybe 25 million units. The question is, given your history with the technology, given the solution you've developed, what might be a reasonable share position that investors could look at, even if it's a fairly wide range, for 2027, Wallace?

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Yeah. We cannot comment regarding our market share for 2027, but I can give you certain guidance regarding why MonTitan lately gets tremendous traction and interest from the tier-one customer. The main reason is because the AI cloud and AI server demand is very, very strong.

We see many tier-one customers from the U.S. and China. They really try to explore the QLC-based SSD for enterprise storage solution because QLC-based will be cheaper and can build a much bigger capacity. We see so many demand for 32 TB of higher density for future SSD. That will be suitable for AI data process, especially sequential read and low latency. Because we have a very, very strong position and know-how in QLC so that we get a tremendous interest from customers to engage with us for qualification and joint development, that's why we see that trigger the stronger demand than usually processed. When we receive, especially for 2-Tb monolithic QLC, they become the main, main product to enable the future nearline SSD to replace a portion of HDD. We are very happy we can be part of it.

Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)

That's really helpful color.

And then, Jason, if I could follow up with one for you before hopping back in the queue. Appreciate the point on revenues rising sequentially through the year. Any color, as we look at the year's progression on how mix between SSD controllers and eMMC, UFS, and some of the other segments might play out, even if high-level? Thank you.

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Yeah. I mean, look, I think we anticipate growth this year from both of those segments. Obviously, eMMC, I think we obviously had a much more difficult year for eMMC and UFS last year, given where inventory levels were in the smartphone market. So I think you'll see certainly stronger year-on-year growth, given that it was a bit more depressed last year. SSDs were a bit more stable.

And so while it'll still grow, it's not going to grow at the same growth rates as we expect to see with eMMC and UFS this year. But overall, again, the percentage of our business for SSDs and eMMC, UFS kind of typically stay in those bands that we talked about earlier, and we don't see that changing anytime in the near future.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

I think let me add some comment. We definitely both Client SSD and mobile eMMC, UFS will gain market share this year. However, our mobile controller eMMC, UFS, last year, the base is smaller. So we have much bigger momentum to gain market share in mobile controller.

Craig Ellis (Director of Research and Senior Semiconductor and Capital Equipment Analyst)

Really helpful color, guys. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Craig. Our next question will come from the line of Suji Desilva from Roth MKM. Please ask your question, Suji.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah. Good morning. Good morning, Wallace and Jason, congrats on the progress here and the strong start to the year. Sticking on MonTitan and the AI opportunity, if it is supporting AI, do you have a sense of whether it's supporting inference or whether it's supporting training or traditional cloud instances? Any specific color on those programs and where you're seeing traction?

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

You asked a very good question, but naturally, we really don't know. I've seen that SSD today is not helping any for compute for AI, but it's supporting it for storage. Storage, I think, fundamentally is real data. I believe when you really see the upcoming Flash Memory Summit in August in Santa Clara, you're going to see many NAND makers and enterprise SSD suppliers going to tell you what exactly they see regarding supporting AI and associated. Definitely it's related to inference, also related to training process.

Also, it's really regarding the swapping between the LLM model and doing the different application running. So I think the storage have a specific performance requirement, and there's certain features we can add, especially for edge devices because they have limited DRAM density. SSD, mobile, UFS, they have many, many technologies we can help in the AI application.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, Wallace. And then my other question is on the smartphone market. I heard you guys talk about an OEM that is trying to insource the controller effort versus using a merchant controller. I know some of the flagships have been doing that for years, but curious if that's a trend you're seeing or if that's an exception and what that impact might be for SIMO in terms of opportunity.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

So it's very, very good that we see the momentum from some smartphone makers.

They are considering adopting QLC into the mobile solution. I think that you can see Samsung had to work with one of the leading smartphone makers in the last two years and bring the solution into the market since Q4 production last year. We're very happy to work with one major leading smartphone maker for QLC projects, and we believe this will be in production by later this year. This is going to bring a real momentum. I think a lot of the players in the smartphone segment, they're looking for how to bring the flagship model into the AI smartphone because everybody's looking for very high performance and how to maintain low power and to support different LLM models. But in the other area, many, many smartphone makers also bring the mainstream smartphone into the AI arena.

So this is why we see the leading smartphone makers try to increase the density, but without increasing the cost. And that's why QLC becomes the best candidate. And so many smartphone makers, we believe, are going to try to explore the potential opportunity to bring the UFS with the QLC solution and to try the market. And I think eventually, they'll become the key to enable AI smartphone from the flagship to mainstream and beyond.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

All right. Great. Very helpful color. Well, it sounds like you guys are well positioned. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Suji. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Bryson from Wedbush Securities. Thank you for asking that.

Matt Bryson (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. I have a few. So on the enterprise SSD side, we've seen substantial demand for 32 TB and 64 TB SSDs recently.

I guess it sounds like what you're doing with your technology is enabling QLC, so allowing other vendors beyond, say, Solidigm with their QLC solution to address this market with those capacities and higher capacities. Historically, there hasn't been a ton of success for third-party controller vendors in the enterprise market. I mean, do you see your advantage around QLC as enabling that opportunity for you so you can get some success in this market? Is that correct? And have you seen more momentum over the last 3, 4 months when it appears like these high-capacity SSDs have all of a sudden started to see incremental demand?

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

I will say Silicon Motion will be the first inbound QLC for enterprise SSD. Definitely, we are the leader for client SSD with QLC.

But because lately, we got tremendous demand, but also because all NAND makers are going to have a QLC available in the market. And I believe all NAND makers are going to have a 2-Tb QLC in monolithic by late 2025. That's why that triggered the strong interest from hyperscaler data centers and server leaders who try to potentially adopt QLC for the upcoming strong demand for AI server, AI cloud services. So because QLC by nature, it builds for nearline SSD, it'll be much more attractive for nearline HDD from data asset point of view. So with Silicon Motion, because our controller can work with all NAND maker QLC, so we are in a very unique position for the customer to directly work with Silicon Motion and to use it as a different NAND supplier.

So I cannot say we are better than NAND makers, but we think we are in a very unique position to enable the trend to adopt QLC into enterprise SSD. Got it. Wallace, it sounds like you're working with all of the different customers out there in the sense you've talked about hyperscalers, OEMs, module makers. I guess my question is, can you characterize what those first two customers who've selected a solution, which bucket they'd fit into in the OEM? We cannot comment on customers until they really announce the name. But one tier-one U.S., one tier-one China, we believe by the end of the year, we have two more to add on the list.

Matt Bryson (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Awesome.

And then I guess my last question is I know this has kind of been asked, but just in terms of the TAM on both with that enterprise product, but also in the automotive market, can you characterize what you see those two TAMs as being versus your more traditional markets in UFS, eMMC, and SSD controllers?

Jason Tsai (CFO)

In terms of the enterprise TAM, obviously, from a unit volume perspective, it's not going to be nowhere near as big as the PC market or the smartphone market, right? But however, ASPs for our MonTitan product are certainly several multiples higher than our client SSD controllers, margin certainly better than corporate average. So it is a big opportunity, even though the unit volumes are much smaller compared to PCs and smartphones.

On the automotive side, again, total number of cars shipped today is a lot smaller than in either of those other markets. But what we're seeing now is multiple storage requirements, multiple storage devices required per car to run things like not just the infotainment system, but the ADAS, the sensors, the cameras. All those things require individual, independent storage solutions that significantly balloon the size of the number of units. I don't have that number handy. We can get back to you on that one, Matt, but these are certainly much higher, more sticky engagements that we would be going into as opposed to the PC and smartphone.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Let me add a comment regarding automotive. As you know, SMI have a two-dimensional approach to expand our automotive visibility. One is a direct controller. The other are Ferri product line. For controller, we have engaged three NAND makers.

And for PCIe, also as well as the UFS and eMMC development, I think some are in production today. We have two makers going to production with PCIe Gen 4, and we also have a new eMMC with a NAND maker. For Ferri, it's based on our own solution and engage with automotive customers. And we already win, which we had said with Toyota and Honda, also including China BYD. So we have multiple design wins in the pipeline. We believe we will grow our automotive business very, very strongly from 2025.

Jason Tsai (CFO)

Thanks for all the color, and congrats on the good core.

Matt Bryson (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, Matt. Thank you. Just a reminder to ask a question, please, press star 11 on your telephone keypad. All right. I'm showing no further questions, so now I'll turn the conference back to the President and CEO, Mr. Wallace Kou, for closing comments.

Wallace Kou (President and CEO)

Thank you, everyone, for joining today and for your continuing interest in Silicon Motion. We will be attending several investor conferences over the next few months, as well as the Computex Conference in Taiwan in June. The schedule of this event will be posted on the investor relationship section of our corporate website, and look forward to speaking with you at this event. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Goodbye for now.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.