Super Micro Computer - Q2 2023
January 31, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning. My name is Devin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Super Micro Computer Inc. Fiscal Q2 2023 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question at any time, again, press star followed by one. Thank you for your patience. Mr. Michael Staiger, you may begin the conference.
Michael Staiger (Senior VP of Corporate Development)
Good afternoon, and thank you for attending Super Micro's call to discuss financial results for the 2nd quarter, which ended December 31st, 2022. With me today are Charles Liang, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and David Weigand, Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have received a copy of the news release from the company that was distributed at the close of regular trading and is available on the company's website. As a reminder, during today's call, the company will refer to a presentation that is available to participants in the investor relations section of the company's website under the Events and Presentations tab. We've also published management's scripted commentary on our website.
Please note that some of the information you'll hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, other income and expenses, taxes, capital allocation, and future business outlook, including guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2023 and the full fiscal year 2023. There are a number of risk factors that could cause Super Micro's future results to differ materially from our expectations. You can learn more about these risks in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, our most recent 10-K filing for fiscal 2022, and other SEC filings. All these documents are available on the investor relations page of Super Micro's website. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Most of today's presentation will refer to non-GAAP financial results and business outlook.
For an explanation of our non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to accompanying presentation or to our press release published earlier today. In addition, a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results is contained in today's press release and in the supplemental information attached to today's presentation. At the end of today's prepared remarks, we'll have a Q&A session for sell-side analysts to ask questions, and I'll now turn the call over to Charles.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'm pleased to announce another outstanding record result for Super Micro. Driven by contribution across our diversified customers and end market and strong product, no single customer contribute more than 10% of our revenue. This is the eighth consecutive quarter of outstanding growth that effectively double our annual revenue. Let me share some key highlights for the quarter. First, revenue for the second quarter of fiscal year 2023 totaled $1.803 billion, up 54% year-over-year, above our guidance range of $1.7 billion-$1.8 billion.
Our fiscal second quarter non-GAAP earnings per share grew over 271% year-on-year at $3.26 compared to $0.18 a year ago, far exceeding the high end of our guidance range of $2.64-$2.90. This great achievement is made possible by our much improved operational and financial discipline, including our Taiwan campus that contribute lower operation and production costs. With the increase of AI applications, our Rack Scale Plug and Play total IT solutions and GPU-based systems continue to be strong contributors with more than 100% year-on-year growth. Storage products are also gaining significant traction with 41% year-over-year growth as we continue to grow market share.
We are mindful that many of our partners and customers have become increasingly more cautious, with respect to macroeconomic headwinds, and we are prepared to deal with this uncertainty as we always have in the past. The strength of our products and business fundamentals keeps us confident in our ability to continue gaining market share from competition, even in the traditional slow Q3 quarter. We expect the headwind may persist in the first half of calendar 2023, but we believe our business will recover quickly in the second half of the year as our new Sapphire Rapids, Genoa product, and H100 product lines start to ramp up in high volume.
Let me say that our fiscal year 2023 revenue year-over-year growth should be in the middle 30% compared with last year without changing our business plan for strong growth in the coming years. For fiscal year 2024, we are targeting year-over-year revenue growth of at least 20%. We continue to see new customers increase demands for energy efficient, large-scale plug-and-play solution across the tier-1, tier-2 data center ecosystem, as well as other enterprise customers. Some of them are highly interested in our liquid cooling at the rack and system level for their green computing HPC data center and cloud installation. In addition, our continuous investment in software, switch, and service are plain evidence to our total IT strategy as they grow.
Our Silicon Valley and Taiwan campus continue to optimize their large-scale production process, ready to deliver L10, L11, and L12 systems in volume with software, networking, and service. Our U.S. facility still have a 40% capacity, while Taiwan still have 50% capacity headroom to grow for the next one to two years to accommodate a stronger growth in the near and medium future. Our recently broken ground Malaysia new campus will start to contribute even better profit margin through economical scale with our more and more new high volume customers. I'm very glad that the lower operation and production costs from our new Malaysia campus will be ready in just four to five quarter away. When the time gets tough, customers are looking for tangible value from the IT investment.
With the power requirement raising, with each new generation of technology, now up to 400 W on a CPU and 700 W on a GPU, we are seeing the true value of our green computing efforts. We are at both high ambient temperature operation and liquid cooling support for the new portfolio to reduce environmental impact, cooling related infrastructure cost and OpEx. We are happy to see many more cloud total solution customer speeding up their deployment with our green computing methodology. Many of them have already saved tens of millions of dollars in electricity costs as a direct result. We expect them to grow even faster by the coming quarters and years as we deliver superior performance per watt and per dollars through new generation of product.
As I have shared in the past, when the IT industry adopts our green computing solution or develop green solution like ours, it's possible to save close up to $10 billion in electricity costs per year, which is equivalent of eliminating about 30 fossil fuel power plants and equating to preservation of up to eight billion tree for our planet. As we approach the second half of our fiscal 2023, we see opportunities for diversified growth across more large data center, enterprise, AI, machine learning, storage, cloud, 5G/telco, and IoT markets. Our online B2C and B2B programs have finally started to ramp up and offer the convenience and quicker service of direct support from Supermicro to many customers around the world. With all our online automation and intelligent database driven tools, we see many new customers.
They are really happy to order from our new platform. 24-hour round-the-clock service, real-time response, and precise communication, cost efficiency are just some of the advantage this program offers. With our industry's most intensive product portfolio supporting the recently launched Intel 4th Generation Scalable Xeon processor, Sapphire Rapids, 4th Generation AMD EPYC Genoa processors, and NVIDIA H100 Hopper GPUs, we are confident to maintain and enhance our market leading growth momentum in the coming quarters and years. Unlike the last few generations' steady product ramp-up, we currently see many more customers taking samples and shipping units of this new solution. This demonstrates our customer base is strongly expanding now. We expect them to become a significant revenue stream by the June quarter, and more so in the September quarter and beyond.
With market excited for the latest innovation from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and Supermicro, we remain optimistic that the demand will expand as new architecture developed for AI, metaverse, Omniverse, and IoT edge applications will be strong in the foreseeable future. We have better than expected December quarter. With new generation of product in strong position now, it will generate more demand, especially with our Rack Scale solution. Along with our getting stronger software, switch, and service offerings. Our potential to gain market share has never been stronger than today, despite the macroeconomic headwind. With our strong cash position today, and especially low PE, we have allocated $200 million of stock buyback program. We continue to emerge as one of the largest global supplier of total IT solutions with market share gains. We are a Silicon Valley company focusing on bringing innovation and system technology.
Our efforts has saved our customers' OpEx tremendously. With our 50% still available capacity in Taiwan and soon coming more cost efficient campus in Malaysia, we continue to expect 20% to more than 50% year-over-year growth for the coming years. We remain on track to reach our long-term growth objectives of $20 billion annual revenue in the long run. Now I will pass the call to David Weigand, our chief financial officer, to provide additional details on the quarter. David.
David Weigand (CFO)
Thank you, Charles. I'm pleased to report Q2 fiscal 2023 revenues of $1.8 billion, up 54% year-on-year and down 3% sequentially. Revenues were at the high end of our initial guidance range of $1.7 billion-$1.8 billion and our recently updated range of $1.77 billion-$1.8 billion. Our year-on-year revenue growth continued to be driven by new and existing customers widely adopting our GPU AI systems and rack scale total IT solutions, which contributed to solid gross margins and record operating margins. In fiscal Q2, we had good growth in our two largest verticals, the enterprise channel and OEM vertical. I'm sorry, the enterprise channel vertical and the OEM appliance large data center vertical, which demonstrated the resilience of our business model.
AI/GPU accelerated computing solutions represented more than 20% of our revenues over the past four quarters and is a significant growth opportunity based on our wide range of AI/GPU platforms. We achieved Q2 revenues of $1.8 billion with no customer representing more than 10% of revenues. We recorded $970 million in our enterprise and channel vertical, representing 54% of Q2 revenues versus 45% last quarter. This was up 29% year-over-year and up 15% quarter-over-quarter. The OEM appliance and large data center vertical achieved $766 million in revenues, representing 42% of Q2 revenues versus 50% last quarter. This was up 172% year-over-year and down 17% quarter-over-quarter.
Our emerging 5G/Telco/Edge/IoT segment achieved $67 million in revenues, representing 4% of Q2 revenues versus 5% last quarter. Systems comprised 92% of total revenue and was up 68% year-over-year and down 3% quarter-over-quarter. Subsystems and accessories represented 8% of Q2 revenues and were down 24% year-over-year and up 2% quarter-over-quarter. On a year-on-year basis, the volume of systems and nodes shipped, as well as the system node ASPs increased due to product and customer mix. While on a quarter-on-quarter basis, the volume of systems shipped increased while nodes shipped and system node ASPs decreased, again, due to product and customer mix. Taking a look geographically in fiscal Q2, the U.S. market represented 61% of revenues, Asia 18%, Europe 17%, and the rest of the world 4%.
On a year-on-year basis, U.S. revenues increased 71%, Asia increased 16%, Europe increased 45%, and the rest of the world increased 98%. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, U.S. revenues decreased 15%, Asia increased 23%, Europe increased 33%, and the rest of the world increased 33%. The Q2 non-GAAP gross margin was 18.8%. That was unchanged quarter-over-quarter, and it was up 480 basis points year-over-year due to price discipline, lower freight costs, and leverage from higher factory utilization.
Taking a look at operating expenses, Q2 OpEx on a GAAP basis decreased by 4% quarter-over-quarter and increased 8% year-over-year to $122 million. On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses decreased 7% quarter-over-quarter and increased 5% year-on-year to $109 million. OpEx decreased sequentially due to higher NRE and marketing credits that we received from the new platform launches. The non-GAAP operating margin was 12.8% for the quarter versus 12.5% last quarter and 5.2% a year ago, as we benefited from lower operating expenses.
Other income and expense was approximately $8 million in expense, primarily consisting of $6 million in foreign exchange losses as the dollar weakened during Q2 and interest expense of $2 million as compared to an $8 million FX gain and $4 million of interest expense last quarter. Interest expense decreased sequentially as we reduced our short-term credit lines. This was partially offset by increased for interest rates. The tax provision for Q2 was $30 million on a GAAP basis and $34 million on a non-GAAP basis. The GAAP tax rate for Q2 was 14.3% and non-GAAP tax rate was 15.3%. Our tax rates were lower sequentially as we benefited from some favorable discrete tax benefits.
Lastly, our share of income from our joint venture was a loss of $1.4 million this quarter as compared to a loss of $0.9 million last quarter. We delivered strong Q2 non-GAAP diluted EPS of $3.26, which was up 271% year-over-year and down 5% quarter-over-quarter and exceeded the high end of our original guidance range of $2.64-$2.90 and our recently updated guidance of $3.07-$3.22. Our EPS outperformance was attributed to our ability to maintain gross margins, manufacturing efficiencies, and higher NRE and marketing credits. Turning to the balance sheet and working capital metrics compared to last quarter, our Q2 cash conversion cycle was unchanged at 95 days versus Q1.
Days of inventory was 99, which was down by 1 day sequentially due to a more stable supply chain. Accounts receivable increased sequentially by $32 million, while accounts payable decreased sequentially by $225 million. Days sales outstanding was down by one day quarter-over-quarter to 38 days, while days payable outstanding came down by two days to 42 days. In fiscal Q2, we generated positive cash flow from operations of $161 million versus $314 million in Q1. Our operating cash flow continued to benefit from strong revenues and margins and an improved supply chain. We note that Q1 operating cash flow benefited from $70 million in customer prepayments recorded as deferred revenues.
CapEx was $10 million for Q2, resulting in positive free cash flow of $151 million versus positive free cash flow of $303 million last quarter. The closing balance sheet cash position was $305 million, while bank debt was reduced to $170 million as we paid down $80 million in short-term debt during the quarter. We did not buy back any shares during the quarter and have $200 million in share repurchase authorization until January 31st, 2024. Our board will determine the timing and amount of share repurchases. Turning to the outlook for our business. We continue to watch the global macroeconomic situation. As the supply chain disruptions have eased and the industry transitions to new platforms from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA during 2023. We anticipate normal...
a return to normal seasonal patterns. For the third quarter of fiscal 2023, ending March 2023, we expect net sales in the range of $1.42 billion-$1.52 billion. GAAP diluted net income per share of $1.75-$2.02, and non-GAAP diluted net income per share of $1.88-$2.14. We expect gross margins to be down 30-40 basis points due to macroeconomic conditions. GAAP operating expenses are expected to be $139 million, which includes approximately $12 million in expected stock-based compensation and other expenses that are excluded from non-GAAP diluted net income per common share. GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to increase in Q3 due to lower R&D, NRE credits, and higher personnel costs.
We expect other income and expenses, including interest expense, to be a net expense of approximately $3 million and expect a nominal loss from our joint venture. The company's projections for GAAP and non-GAAP diluted net income per common share assume a GAAP tax rate of 15.9%, a non-GAAP tax rate of 16.9%, and a fully diluted share count of 57 million for GAAP and 58 million shares for non-GAAP. We expect CapEx for the fiscal third quarter of 2023 to be in the range of $11 million-$14 million.
For the fiscal year 2023, ending June 30, 2023, we're maintaining our guidance for revenues from a range of $6.5 billion-$7.5 billion, GAAP diluted net income per share from a range of $8.50-$11.00, and non-GAAP diluted net income per share from a range of $9.00-$11.30. The company's projections for GAAP annual net income assume a tax rate of 19.2% and a rate of 19.8% for non-GAAP net income. For fiscal year 2023, we are assuming a fully diluted share count of 57 million shares for GAAP and 58 million shares for non-GAAP.
The outlook for fiscal year 2023 fully diluted GAAP EPS excludes approximately $33 million in expected stock-based compensation and other expenses, net of tax effect, that are excluded from non-GAAP diluted net income per common share. We remain confident in our long-term outlook for robust revenue growth and profitability, driven by our leading-edge new platforms, design wins, market share gains, and engagement with significant new global customers. Michael, we're now ready for Q&A.
Operator (participant)
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Nehal Chokshi with Northland Capital Markets.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Yeah. Thank you, and congratulations on the strong results, especially gross margin, and the guidance that implies a very resilient gross margin. Dave, you did mention that you're expecting 30 basis points of the quarter-over-quarter downtick due to macro pressures. I mean, that's a de minimis amount. Can you discuss why only that amount?
David Weigand (CFO)
Nehal, our margins are holding up. We expected, you know, a downtick, last, you know, in this Q2, but it didn't happen. We're still allowing for a downtick just in case we have to sharpen our pencil on some particular deals. Otherwise, you know, our prices and margins are holding up.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Can you talk about why you think your margins are indeed holding up in what appears to be a pretty quickly deteriorating macro environment?
David Weigand (CFO)
Well, you know, we have customers that are, that have pushed out orders, certainly, Nehal, but, that we still bring value to our customers, and that value is, has not diminished. In fact, with, all of the new designs that are coming out, it's, you know, we believe it's increased.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Got it. That's great. Then you're maintaining your fiscal year 2023 guidance despite outperformance in the December quarter, and you're providing at least March guidance that's above my expectations. How should we be reading that implied June quarter guidance, basically? Should we be, you know, if we take it to low end of the fiscal year 2023 guidance, you could be looking at a pretty dire gross margin situation within June quarter. Is that the correct interpretation?
David Weigand (CFO)
No, I would say, Nehal, that really we don't want to update our guidance. We're confident in our guidance and in the ranges that we've given. Really, we're just, we're watching the macroeconomic situation, but we remain confident in our basic business fundamentals and in our values and the values that our products bring.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay. Just to be clear, there's no reasonable basis for believing that gross margin would drop to the low end of your what's arguably a failed target model of 14 and something percent in the June quarter or lower. Is that correct?
David Weigand (CFO)
We right now, we don't see any degradation of our gross margins, as I mentioned. We feel like we remain confident in our ranges, and we don't believe this is a time to update them.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Got it. Then Charles made a comment that he expects fiscal year 2023 revenue to be, I think, at least 30% year-over-year growth or mid-30%, but your overall fiscal year 2023 guidance range is still a pretty large bracket. How should we be reconciling these two things here?
David Weigand (CFO)
Well, I think that number of the, of mid-30s, that still falls within the range, right, Nehal?
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Absolutely.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah. That, so I think that's some indication.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay. All right. I'll pass the mic. I'm gonna get back into line.
David Weigand (CFO)
Okay.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital.
Ananda Baruah (Senior Equity Analyst)
Hey, guys. Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. Yeah, just a few if I could. Maintaining, actually, I think, slightly raising the midpoint of the fiscal year guide, March is below where Street is. The implication is June is above where Street is. Is it really just a matter of, you know, kinda Street like we are, and I think I'm part of this, sort of had mismodeled March to the low side and subsequently are also mismodeling June? Well, you mismodeled March to the high side, and we're mismodeling June to the low side? Just to clarification. Just your thoughts on that, and I have a couple follow-ups. Thanks.
David Weigand (CFO)
Sure. Again, I'll kind of go back and we're, you know, because things have been changing, you know, economically, and we've. You know, we had some, we've seen some push-outs, not cancellations, again, pushouts. We feel like we shouldn't be adding more details on our Q4 or annual guidance. Really, we feel like the guidance ranges that we gave allow for, you know, where we think performance will land. To give more specificity to that at a time when, you know, details are not easy to, are not as clear to see, we think is the wrong way to go.
Instead, we're giving, you know, good guidance on what we see in the, in the quarter ahead. Again, we're still comfortable with our annual guidance.
Ananda Baruah (Senior Equity Analyst)
This sounded, I think I believe Charles, I believe Charles mentioned, and actually just please clarify this for me if this is, if this is inaccurate. Something about, you know, kind of macro softer, but recovery in the second half of calendar year 2023. If I heard that accurately, is that to say you guys envision the first half of the calendar year being, you know, sort of, the softest part of macro for you? You, and you also made comments, Dave, about return in calendar 2023 to seasonality. First half is the soft spot. Second half, you guys think sort of normal seasonality plus, quote-unquote, recovery begins, and that dovetails into your fiscal year 2024 outlook. Contextually, I just wanna ask, is that, is that foot with how you guys are thinking about it?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. The macroeconomic headwinds for sure is some concern to everyone now. Other than that, indeed, our demand are still pretty strong, especially as you know, Intel just announced Sapphire Rapids, AMD Genoa, and NVIDIA Hopper H100. We have very strong product available. This time we saw a customer very aggressively asking for sample, for early seeding. We believe that this will bring a big growth. However, the really big growth in volume should be in about summer or even after summer timeframe. Long term, we have a very strong confidence, especially after summer. Before summer, depends on the macroeconomic headwind. We try to be more cautious.
Ananda Baruah (Senior Equity Analyst)
Very helpful, Charles. Charles, last one for me. I believe you mentioned potential for more large data centers in the second half of calendar 2023. Did I hear that accurately? Are those incremental data centers, if I heard it accurately, and any more context you could provide around that? Thanks.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. I mean, as you know, we start to approach a large account since maybe one year ago. We continue to gain interest from those CSP and large account. That's why we increased Taiwan capacity for lower production cost to support those large account. We even start a big campus in Malaysia. The goal is to increase our production capacity and lower our operation and production cost so that we are able to support those large account with reasonable profitability. We continue to gain some engagement and interest from large account around the world indeed. Also at the same time, we also start to engage with lots of mid-size account, especially goes through B2B and B2C.
We are engaging with a much broader customer base now.
Ananda Baruah (Senior Equity Analyst)
Very helpful. Thanks a lot, guys.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Mehdi Hosseini with SIG.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yes. Thanks for taking my question. Couple of follow-ups. It seems like the price decline in the December quarter has more to do with the mix and assuming that the OEM and large data center mix went down from 15th September to 42% in December. In that context, my question to you is: How should I think of the mix in the March quarter, and how will that impact unit and ASP trends?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
In March quarter, because of the market headwind, we still try to be cautious. After summer, our feeling become much stronger, because a lot of good product, lots of engagement from large account, middle-sized account, and even small, a lot of small account.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Charles, just I wanna make sure I understand. Would the mix of revenue from OEM and large data center decline again in the March quarter?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yes.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Probably. I would ever say, yeah.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
I also want to understand how you see the ramp of these three different CPUs. you've historically been a close partner of Intel and NVIDIA. How long in advance do you actually procure those components in advance of building the boxes? How much of an inventory commitment or working capital commitment do you have to make before the actual high-volume manufacturing takes place?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Indeed we have a very close partnership with all of our vendor. In this area, I believe we are similar to the industry standard or slightly better. David, you may add something about it.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah. You know, many things have improved recently, as you know, on the supply chain side. We used to have to procure further in advance. One of the reasons our inventories have come down, one of the reasons our cash flows have increased and, you know, by the way, we had net income the last two quarters of $360 million. We had free cash flow of $454 million. Again, the reason for that is you know, we had to invest less money in inventory. Our ability to produce more products is faster now because we can buy, you know, later in the cycle.
To your point on the, on the timing, some of it's gonna dependent on when in the quarter, our customers are taking, the bulk of their products. If we have, you know, if we have early quarter, shipments versus late quarter shipments, that can affect the timing of our inventory and accounts payable.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. Okay. Then one last question from me on the balance sheet, especially with the Malaysia facility coming online. Are you still targeting like a $45 million of CapEx for fiscal year 2023 or more or less?
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah. Fair question. We're gonna add in for Q3, we're adding in $4 million of CapEx for Malaysia and we'll add $9 million in our Q4 for Malaysia. That'll be $13 million for the you know, for our fiscal second half. This is gonna be an investment over, you know, over several years. The we'll make another $13 million in the first half of of fiscal 2024. You know, that's not that's giving you a little more insight on that investment.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Should I assume that just the maintenance CapEx after the Malaysia is what, $8 million-$10 million a quarter?
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah, that's correct. To your question, yeah, you can maintain the 45 and just add in the figures that I just gave you.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
Operator (participant)
Our final question comes from Nehal Chokshi with Northland Capital Markets.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Great. Thanks. I get to bat lead off and clean up. Awesome. Relative to seasonal patterns and excluding the 21.9% customer from the September quarter, how did the business actually perform in the December quarter then?
David Weigand (CFO)
The December quarter was, you know, an outstanding quarter on, in every respect. From, you know, from, free cash flow, you know, inventory, all the metrics were strong, you know, cash position. You know, as you mentioned, customer, you know, no customer concentration. We, you know, we feel we had a really good, a really great quarter.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay, great. I mean, my interpretation here is that the core business, excluding that 120+% customer from the September quarter, was up more than seasonal. Is that a correct interpretation?
David Weigand (CFO)
Well, we always have customers that will take, you know, when we have design wins, Nehal, we'll always from quarter to quarter, we'll always have, you know, shipments, large shipments to customers. Sometimes it's according, you know, sometimes they change their forecast, and we ship a little bit more in one quarter than another. We can't, you know, we can't control that always. As we said, as the supply chain has improved, that was, you know, that dynamic was felt a lot harder during the supply chain crunch. Now that we've returned to a better supply chain, therefore, that's why we feel we'll return to more normal seasonalities.
That can always be altered by a new design win that we get, in one quarter or over two quarters.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I mean, in 2022 we have some large account, but in this fiscal year 2023, now we are adding more larger account. We are growing in more larger account and more middle-sized account and also B2B, B2C. Indeed our customer mix is becoming much more diversified, much more healthier, and for sure the volume will be bigger. That's why we expand to Malaysia for really lower cost operation in the campus.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
And presumably, this diversification with the larger customers is coming on the higher margin plug-and-play rack scale products. Is that correct?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
We hope so.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Yeah.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Anyway, that's. We feel we still have lots of room to add more customer. Once we have a higher capacity in USA, Taiwan, Malaysia, our plan is to add lots of more customer.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay. Great. Is there a particular vertical that you guys are seeing the pushouts from that you were talking about for the September quarter, Dave?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Large data center, right.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
The pushouts were not in large data center.
David Weigand (CFO)
He was saying that they were in large data center, but, you know.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
In the large data center. Okay.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Got it. Okay. All right. Very good. For the March quarter, you're guiding to an 18% QOQ decline in revenue. There is clearly obviously some seasonality with March quarter. Then there might be, I guess, ongoing pushouts from the large data center customers, and then there's also a macro element. Are these the three major elements that are driving that 18% QoQ decline? Could you potentially help parse out what rank order these three drivers here?
David Weigand (CFO)
Nehal, if you look back, pre-COVID, our typical Q3 decline was 12%. Okay? That was during the time of normal seasonal patterns. During COVID, you know, there was a different dynamic of course, because supply was scarce. We think as we return to a normalized supply that we will have this kind of seasonality.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay. Then as far as the potential runoff of the large customer versus macro, any input as far as what's the driver there as far as the above the 12% typical QoQ decline?
David Weigand (CFO)
Well, we're engaging with new customers, you know, all the time. You know, we're not looking to be declining, in fact, you know, just the opposite. While we will have some seasonality, as in a stable supply chain, we still have our growth plans that are intact and that we remain confident in.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay. All right. Great. My last question here is, did I hear correctly that there's a new buyback that was implemented? Something about $200 million buyback. Can you just clarify that?
David Weigand (CFO)
No, that's the, that's the existing, already approved buyback.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Got it. Okay. Now that you guys have worked yourself back to a net cash position with a strong free cash flow that you've highlighted over the past two quarters, is it reasonable to expect that you guys are gonna put that back to work now?
David Weigand (CFO)
Well, of course, it's up to.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
The buyback back to work.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah, it's completely up to the board. It's completely up to the board, but I think it's certainly reasonable.
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Okay. Great. Oh, we got one board member here. Charles, your thoughts?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Pardon?
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Your thoughts on utilizing the buyback?
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
You know, as what I said, PE is so low and cash flow is strong. Why not?
Nehal Chokshi (Managing Director)
Very good. All right. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
We have a question from Mehdi Hosseini with SIG.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yes. Just a quick follow-up, just clarification. David, did you imply or did you say that the 10% plus customer that you had in September quarter of last year is gonna come back, or you're gonna have another 10% plus customer in the coming quarters? The color.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Also was very confusing.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah. Mehdi, the 10% customer we had, a year ago, September, is a, is a different customer. Okay?
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yes.
David Weigand (CFO)
the 22% customer that we had in September, in the recent September quarter, again, a different customer, did not constitute 10% of our revenues in Q2.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay.
David Weigand (CFO)
Did I clarify that?
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Sure. just as a follow-up.
David Weigand (CFO)
Yeah.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Do you expect that particular customer to come back? Is that what the confidence behind the June quarter is?
David Weigand (CFO)
Well, you know, we have, so.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Indeed, with our new product, indeed, a very strong offering. We expect any time we will have a more new large customer or old customer coming back. It's always very high possibility, and we are working with them very closely. Still, the partnership become stronger ever.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
It's very dynamic.
Charles Liang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. There's some dynamic, yes.
David Weigand (CFO)
We thrive on repeat business.
Mehdi Hosseini (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Thank you for clarification.
Operator (participant)
There are no further questions at this time. With that said, concludes today's conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation.