Super Micro Computer - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• SMCI reported preliminary Q2 FY2025 revenue of $5.6–$5.7B, up 54% YoY, with non-GAAP gross margin ~11.9% and non-GAAP EPS $0.58–$0.60; AI-related platforms contributed over 70% of revenue.
• The company cut FY2025 revenue guidance to $23.5–$25.0B from $26–$30B and guided Q3 FY2025 revenue to $5.0–$6.0B with GAAP EPS $0.36–$0.53 and non-GAAP EPS $0.46–$0.62; management also reiterated a $40B FY2026 revenue target.
• Management cited margin pressure from product/customer mix and expedited costs and noted NVIDIA allocation and the transition to Blackwell as gating factors; SMCI began shipping Blackwell B200 HGX systems (air- and liquid-cooled) and emphasized direct-liquid cooling (DLC) leadership with expected >30% adoption of new data centers over the next 12 months.
• Compliance overhang eased: SMCI filed its FY2024 10-K and Q1/Q2 FY2025 10-Qs on Feb 25, regaining Nasdaq compliance with no restatements; however, the company disclosed late-2024 subpoenas from DOJ/SEC related to short-seller allegations and ongoing litigation.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Strong revenue growth and resilient AI demand: Q2 revenue $5.6–$5.7B (+54% YoY); non-GAAP EPS $0.58–$0.60 (+5% YoY). “Our preliminary fiscal Q2 net revenue is projected to range between $5.6 billion and $5.7 billion”.
• Blackwell ramp and DLC leadership: “We have begun volume shipping of both air-cooled 10U and liquid-cooled 4U, NVIDIA B200-HGX system.” Management expects >30% of new data centers to adopt DLC in the next 12 months.
• Strategic manufacturing and solutions: Expanded rack-scale DLC capacity (targeting 1,500 DLC GPU racks/month in the U.S.), end-to-end Data Center Building Block Solutions and on-site deployment/services as differentiators.

What Went Wrong

• Guidance cut: FY2025 revenue lowered to $23.5–$25.0B (from $26–$30B) due to delays in new technology cycles and customer/product mix, with management citing Blackwell timing and a 10-K distraction.
• Margin compression: Non-GAAP gross margin fell to ~11.9% from 13.3% in Q1; operating margin ~7.9% vs 9.9% in Q1, driven by mix and higher expedite/R&D costs.
• Working capital/cash usage: Cash used in operations ~$240M in Q2 (vs +$409M in Q1), with CFO detailing inventory reductions, payables/payments and receivables trends.

Transcript

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, and thank you for attending Supermicro's second quarter fiscal 2025 business update conference call for the second quarter, which ended December 31st, 2024. With me today are Charles Liang, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and David Weigand, Chief Financial Officer. At the end of today's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session for sell-side analysts. Additionally, the company will not address any questions regarding the delay in the filing of the company's fiscal year 2024 10-K and 10-Qs due thereafter. During today's conference call, Supermicro will address business and market trends from the second quarter of fiscal 25, including our financial outlook and operations, our strategy, technology, and advantages, our current and new product offerings, and competitive industry and economic trends.

We will discuss estimated financial results by reference to any financial results that are preliminary and subject to change based on finalized results contained in future filings with the SEC. By now, you should have received a copy of today's news release that was issued after the close of market and is posted on our website where this call is being simultaneously webcast. Any forward-looking statements that we make are based on facts and assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. Our actual results may differ materially from the results forecasted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. As a discussion of some of the risks and uncertainties relating to our business is contained in our filings with the SEC, and we refer you to those public filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K.

During this call, all financial metrics associated and growth rates are non-GAAP measures other than revenue and cash investments. This call is being broadcast on the Supermicro Investor Relations website and is being recorded for playback purposes. An archive of the webcast will be available on the IR website and is a property of Supermicro. Our third quarter fiscal 2025 quiet period begins at the close of business Friday, March 14th, 2024.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Focus on technology innovation and business opportunities. Also, we are close to the midpoint of the fiscal 2025. I will begin by reviewing some key financial highlights from the December quarter. Our preliminary fiscal Q2 net revenue is projected to range between $5.6 billion and $5.7 billion, making a 54% year-on-year increase at the midpoint. Despite some negative impacts on cash flow and market misperception due to the 10-K delay, we achieved a fairly good quarter, driven by sustained AI demand from both existing and new customers. Our growth trajectory for fiscal year 2025 remains promising. Highlighted by the beginning of our transition from Hopper to Blackwell GPU, we expect the growth in new generation platforms to accelerate as supply ramps this quarter and beyond.

We have confidence that our calendar year 2025 growth could be a repeat of calendar year 2023, if not better, assuming the supply chain can keep pace with demand. Our preliminary fiscal Q2 non-GAAP earnings was in the range of $0.58-$0.60 per share, worth $0.56 last year, representing approximately a 5% year-on-year growth. Non-GAAP gross margin was approximately 11.9%, and non-GAAP operating margin was approximately 7.9%. Margin was temporarily under pressure due to the 10-K delay disruption, the new product R&D investment and customer and product mix. In a separate press release issued today, we announced a private placement of $700 million in new 2.25% convertible senior notes due in 2028 to support our rapid business growth immediately. We have also privately amended a portion of our existing convertible notes due in 2029, with almost all investors participating in the amended notes.

This will support our growth, including Supermicro 4.0 initiatives, Data Center Building Block solution, DCBBS, and some brand new GPU platform architecture design. Before diving into the details of our operation progress, let me begin by sharing an update regarding our financial filings. Our financial team and our new auditor, BDO, have been thoroughly engaged in completing the auditor process. Based on our progress to date, we are confident that our fiscal year 2024 Form 10-K and the first two quarters of fiscal year 2025 Form 10-Q will be filed by February 25th this year. As previously stated, the special committee found no evidence to support the former auditor's reasons for resignation. However, over the past two quarters, we have added senior leaders in corporate communication, operation, finance, legal, and compliance departments.

We will continue to add more top experienced leaders to build a stronger corporate foundation for our rapid growth and expanding global business, including the CFO, CCO, and other positions. As you know, we have grown strongly. Moving on to our technology progress, we are excited to announce that our NVIDIA Blackwell products are shipping now. We have begun volume shipping of both air-cooled 10U and liquid-cooled 4U NVIDIA B200 HGX systems. Meanwhile, our NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 racks are fully ready for production as well. Utilizing our system Building Blocks, we are going to soon offer more brand new platforms for customers seeking further optimized, higher density, and even greener AI solutions. While most of the key components are ramping at a full speed, it will take some time to fulfill our current AI solution backlog. Some customers also need more time to finish their DLC data center build-out.

At the same time, we see strong new demands keep coming from enterprise CSPs, sovereign entities, and hyperscalers. We are expanding and enhancing our total liquid-cooled data center infrastructure solution, featuring the latest DLC technology. Exemplified by the xAI project, the world's largest liquid-cooled AI supercomputer, Supermicro is the disruptive leader in driving industry-wide adoption of DLC technology, which reduces customers' OPEX and achieves green computing. We expect more than 30% of new data centers worldwide to adopt liquid cooling infrastructure within the next 12 months, driven by the rapid and continual growth of AI. Green computing deserves to be everywhere in the world. Our DLC long-term investment and leadership provide a sustainable competitive edge and economies of scale far ahead of competition.

Supermicro's Data Center Building Block solution consolidated server racks, networks, storage, water tower, software management, on-site deployment, cabling, and service for an end-to-end solution. The true value of Data Center Building Block solution is to save power, reduce space, and decrease water consumption, resulting in up to 40% lower TCO for our customers, according to our detailed calculation. It accelerates new data center deployments and helps modernize existing infrastructure in weeks or months rather than quarters and years. Significantly improved data center TTD and TTO, time to delivery, and time to online. We are expanding our Data Center Building Block solution to include more than one subsystem quarter after quarter, and we have become a true one-stop shop data center partner to the whole industry. On the product front, our new Malaysia campus, sorry, on the production front, our new Malaysia campus will soon ship products to our regional partners.

Our Taiwan and European production capacity are also growing significantly. In Silicon Valley, we are rapidly expanding our manufacturing site to increase our DLC rack scale production capacity. The U.S. campus boasts an impressive 20 megawatts of power, enabling us to produce over 1,500 DLC GPU racks per month in the U.S. To better support our key partners and align with current government initiatives, when needed, we are also ready for other domestic manufacturing expansion in various regions across the U.S. This strategic expansion will ensure we meet the increasing demand for our product and service. While maintaining our commitment to our chief partner for quality, security, TCO, total cost of ownership, TTD, again, time to delivery, and TTO, time to online. To summarize, we have been a product and technology leader in the IT industry for over three decades.

As we continue to strengthen our internal operation and expand our U.S. and global manufacturing footprint, we aim to turn this progress into value for shareholders, customers, and partners. Our first-to-market advantage of delivering the most innovative AI infrastructure technology with Blackwell, coupled with exceptional product quality, service, software, networking, and security with data center Building Block solution, will continue to reinforce our partnership as the premier U.S.-based data center infrastructure solution provider. With our expanding technology leadership and today's AI trend, we believe it will result in a similar growth trend for us like 2023. With that, I'm confident we will finish this fiscal year strongly with revenue in the range of $23.5 billion-$25 billion. And I believe we have potential to reach $40 billion for fiscal year 2026.

Before passing the call to David for the financial overview, I want to thank all of our partners, customers, investors, and Supermicro team members, and express my deep appreciation for their continued support. With that, I will now turn the call to David.

David Weigand (CFO)

Thank you, Charles. Please note these numbers are preliminary and unaudited, subject to change upon completion of review by management or audit committee. And additionally, our independent audit firm has not completed its review procedures with respect to this preliminary financial information. So to start, again, we expect Q2 fiscal year 2025 revenues in the range of $5.6-$5.7 billion, up 54% year over year. Again, growth was driven by demand for air-cooled and DLC rack scale AI GPU platforms. AI-related platforms again contributed over 70% of revenue for Q2 across enterprise and cloud service provider markets.

The Q2 non-GAAP gross margin is approximately 11.9% versus 13.1% last quarter due to lower margins from product and customer mix. And you'll recall that on the Q1 earnings business update call, we guided down 100 basis points for this quarter. The non-GAAP operating margin is approximately 7.9%, which excludes $82 million in stock-based compensation expenses versus 9.7% in Q1 due to those lower gross margins. Other income and expense is approximately $8 million, consisting of $15 million in interest and other income offset by $7 million in interest expense. The tax rate is approximately 15% for GAAP and 17% for non-GAAP. GAAP net income will range from $315 million to $325 million, and non-GAAP net income $375 million to $392 million. Non-GAAP net income excludes $63 million in stock-based compensation expenses, net of the related tax effects of $19 million.

GAAP diluted EPS is approximately $0.50-$0.52 versus prior guidance of $0.48-$0.58. Non-GAAP diluted EPS is approximately $0.58-$0.60 versus guidance of $0.56-$0.65. We expect a GAAP diluted share count of approximately 636 million and a non-GAAP diluted share count of 647 million. The closing inventory was approximately $3.6 billion versus $4.9 billion last quarter. CapEx was $28 million. Cash used in operations was approximately $240 million versus cash generated from operations of approximately $409 million in Q1. Supermicro began the second quarter with approximately $2.1 billion in cash and recorded approximately $320 million in GAAP net income for the second quarter. Cash was provided from lower inventory and other sources totaling $1.5 billion, and then the company used cash to pay down accounts payable by $1.2 billion.

We realized higher other receivables from purchase rebates and prepaid inventory of $484 million. We had increased accounts receivable of $335 million. We also reduced our bank loans by $346 million net, and we incurred capital expenditures of $28 million and had other uses of cash totaling $87 million. This resulted in a reduction in cash during the quarter of $660 million, thereby ending the company's second quarter fiscal year 2025 with $1.4 billion in cash at the end of December. Now, I want to point out we've continued to prudently manage our working capital, and for the month ended January 31st, 2025, we ended with approximately $2 billion in cash. Turning to the balance sheet and working capital metrics compared to last quarter, the Q2 cash conversion cycle was up to 104 days versus 97 days in Q1.

Days of inventory was 78 days compared to the prior quarter of 83 days. Days Sales Outstanding for Q2 was 47 days versus 42 days last quarter, while Days Payables Outstanding was 21 days compared to 28 days last quarter. In a separate press release issued today, we announced a private placement of $700 million of new 2.25% Convertible Senior Notes due 2028, and we privately amended our existing $1.7 billion Convertible Senior Notes due 2029. The company is reconfirming that no previously issued financial statements require a restatement. The company, however, made certain adjustments to the preliminary unaudited results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024 that it had announced on August 6th, 2024.

The adjustments recorded in the results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 include an increase in net sales of approximately $46 million and an increase in the cost of sales of approximately $96 million, which included a charge due to an increase in inventory reserves of approximately $45 million. There was also an increase in operating expenses of approximately $5 million. Until the company's fiscal year 2024 financial statements are filed, the company is required to reassess its accounting estimates for financial reporting. The charge for inventory reserves results from an unanticipated decline in the market value of certain components that were held in the company's inventory or on non-cancelable purchase orders at the end of fiscal year 2024.

Collectively, these changes resulted in a downward adjustment to the previously announced preliminary unaudited fiscal year 2024 and fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 GAAP and non-GAAP diluted net income per common share of approximately $0.09. That's based on a post-split diluted shares outstanding basis. The foregoing adjustments are to previously announced preliminary unaudited financial results, and as such, they do not constitute a restatement. For the third quarter of our fiscal 2025, we are expecting net sales in the range of $5 billion-$6 billion. We expect the GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin to be approximately 12%. We expect GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses to be up approximately $17 million sequentially, and GAAP and non-GAAP other income and expenses to be a net expense of approximately $12 million.

We expect GAAP net income per diluted share of $0.36-$0.53, and non-GAAP net income per diluted share of $0.46-$0.62. The company's projections for GAAP and non-GAAP net income per diluted share assume a tax rate of approximately 10.7% and 12.7% respectively, a diluted share count of approximately 642 million shares for GAAP, and a diluted share count of approximately 653 million shares for non-GAAP. The outlook for Q3 of fiscal year 2025 GAAP net income per diluted share includes approximately $65 million in expected stock-based compensation expense and other expenses, net of related tax effects of approximately $17 million, which are excluded from non-GAAP net income per diluted share, so again, I want to point out revenues for the trailing four quarters are between $20 billion and $21 billion.

For the fiscal year 2025, we are updating our revenue guidance from a range of $26 billion-$30 billion to a new range of $23.5 billion-$25 billion. We're very happy to announce that the company has raised money through the issuance of new bonds, and we will continue to improve our liquidity as our growth requires it. I want to end by saying that the final financial results reported for this period may differ from the results reported here based on the review by BDO, our new independent registered public accounting firm. We expect to complete our fiscal year 2024 audit by the February 25th filing extension date that we have been granted by Nasdaq. Michael, turn it back to you.

Operator (participant)

Clearly, we'll now take quick questions. Again, if you would like to ask a question, it is star followed by one.

Our first question comes from Michael Ng with the company Goldman Sachs. Michael, your line is now open.

Michael Ng (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good afternoon. Two questions for me if I could. First, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the $40 billion fiscal 2026 revenue outlook. What informs your confidence there? If you could shed any light on backlog or pipeline or product roadmap that is informing that outlook, that would be great. Thank you.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah, I mean, our product line continues to grow. We have industry-standard product line plus lots of super set, including some confidential product under development. And we have customer engaged with us for those projects. So this year, even 10-K today, we grew about 60%. Last year, we grew 110%. So the coming year, fiscal 2026, at this moment, we believe at least we will grow 65% at least.

So that's, I believe, a very conservative estimate issue. And plus in production capacity. I mean, USA now, our utilization rate only about 55%. Taiwan utilization rate only about 60%. Malaysia utilization rate is still about 1% only. So there are lots of room to grow for us. Great.

Michael Ng (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, Charles. And just as my second question, I was wondering if you could talk about the mix of Blackwell and Hopper servers in the quarter, not looking for anything specific, but was it different than what you may have expected? Was Hopper stronger? Was Blackwell affected by any supply chain constraints? Thank you.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah, we have both already, right? Hopper has been a very mature product, H200, for example. And then Blackwell, we have GB200 fully ready in production. And then for B200 HGX, we have a 10U Air-cooled fully ready for production.

And then 4U DeepCool fully ready for production. We already accumulated some good volume backlog, back order, and continue to see lots of new orders coming. So I believe we do not share the detail about the percentage, but basically, for sure, more and more customers like to have a B200 and GB200. But we have all of them ready.

Michael Ng (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you for the thoughts, Charles. Appreciate it.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah with the company Loop Capital. Ananda, your line is now open.

Ananda Baruah (Stock Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, you guys. Thanks for taking the questions. And congrats on what's a pretty solid print and delivery of news here. The first is just on gross margins. Dave, what's a good way to think about June Q gross margins in the context of your guide?

And then just sort of the second one there, this is the second part of my first question. I have a follow-up question as well. What's a good way to think about gross margins through the Blackwell cycle? This is obviously a key question for people, and they want to remove the concern off the table that there could be material margin pressure through the Blackwell cycle. So those two, and then I have a follow-up. Thanks.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah, thank you for your question. For sure, when product becomes mature, like H100, H200, then we had to face price competition strongly. But for Blackwell, doesn't matter GB200 or B200, for sure, whenever they are new product, our margin will become much better.

Especially talking about liquid cooling, we believe DLC or overall liquid cooling market share will grow all the way to 30% or even more in the next 12 months. In terms of liquid cooling, in the last 12 months, I believe we offered a majority of global liquid cooling. When faced with Blackwell opportunity, most of the customers like to go for liquid cooling, I believe we have a much better position. Can I just throw a point on there? Hey, look, let me just add that while many are focused, hey, I'll take it. Ananda, most of us are focused on the gross margins, rightfully so, but don't miss the critical point that we're driving operating margins above our targets, and that translates into shareholder value.

David Weigand (CFO)

Ananda, this is David.

One thing I would add is if you look back, if you look back to what happened with H100, as Charles mentioned, Supermicro was the ones that had the company that had a stable platform, which became a market leader. And so that helped our margins as they crept up to 18.8%. Now, of course, we're targeting. We said we target 14%-17%, but the question is, to your point on Blackwell, what will the competition be able to deliver? And I think that's going to be a big indicator of margins. We feel like we're in pretty good position because we've already been. Yeah.

Ananda Baruah (Stock Analyst)

Yeah, appreciate that. Appreciate that, guys. And then the follow-up is just on the rev guide. Charles, the $40 billion. So a couple of things. You mentioned calendar year 2025 could be similar to calendar year 2024, which was about 40% growth.

So that would suggest maybe $8 billion on average in the September, December quarter of revenue. And then the at least $40 billion for fiscal 2026 would then suggest maybe at least $12 billion on average the March and June quarters of 2026 fiscal year. So is that sort of what you're talking about? And then what gives the confidence, I guess? What's the thought process underpinning that $40 billion and those kinds of rev quarters? And is it GPUs as well as custom ASICs as the TAM opens up? So just kind of a customer question there as well. Thanks. That's it for me.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Again, whenever there are new technologies, we have a good chance to grow, right? Kind of like this time, Blackwell, right, and kind of DLC liquid cooling.

And again, we have a much higher capacity ready for DLC cooling compared with the market. And last year, we grew 110%. And this year, basically, we will grow about 60-something %. Right? So next year, fiscal year 2026, I believe 65% is a very conservative estimation. And personally, I hope we can grow more than that, but that's to be conservative.

Ananda Baruah (Stock Analyst)

Thank you. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you. Good.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Samik Chatterjee with the company J.P. Morgan. Samik, your line is now open.

Samik Chatterjee (Senior Equity Analyst)

Yep. Thanks for taking my question and have a couple of questions as well. Maybe just to start off, Charles, I think the last time you mentioned, which was in 2024, that we could expect sequential revenue increases in the medium term on a quarterly basis.

When I sort of look back at it in hindsight, it looks like what derailed that sequential growth to some extent was the product transition from NVIDIA in going from one product generation to another, which also drove some change in customer behavior. As you're thinking about the revenue target here for $40 billion for fiscal 2026, I mean, is there an underlying assumption that you won't see a similar customer behavior change towards the next generation product as NVIDIA goes through a transition again in that timeframe, or is there something that I'm missing in that sort of overall product transition that we should expect from your GPU supplier? And then a quick follow-up.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. I mean, for calendar 2025, for example, I believe we should be pretty able to repeat 2023 history. In 2023, H100 launched, and we are ahead of competition. So we grew very well.

In 2025, calendar year 2025, we are facing the same opportunity now, except before our old air cool, and now it's deep cool. And in terms of liquid cooling, especially DLC, we have a major market share, and we have a huge capacity, 1,500 racks per month capacity ready. And we already have many customers already approved their liquid cooling data center and getting ready to deploy in high volume. So once Blackwell in volume production, I believe we will have a strong growth. And now we are just preparing, diligently preparing all our logistics, including system enclosure, thermal solution, for sure, GPU supply from our vendor, NVIDIA. So we are well prepared. And once logistics are ready, we are ready to ramp up our growth. Okay. Maybe Charles will follow up on that. Yep. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Plus, I mean, we are spending more effort in Asia and Europe now.

In 2023, 2024, most of our market in the USA, but now our team in Asia and Europe is becoming much more ready, much stronger to grow market share in Europe and Asia as well.

Samik Chatterjee (Senior Equity Analyst)

Got it. Got it. And Charles, I'll just follow up with a question that I'm getting from investors today after the print, which is, when we look at that sort of $40 billion revenue target, how confident are you about achieving that revenue target with the current customer engagements that you have relative to what you need in terms of additional customers and new customer engagements to get to that revenue that you're targeting? If you can share your thoughts on that, please. Thank you.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. In the last few years, our growth has been very strong, except 10-K interruption, right? So in the last four months, five months, we suffered a 10-K impact.

So our growth a little bit slowed down. But we will fix 10-K filing very soon, and cash flow won't be a problem anymore. So product is strong. Capacity here, customer is ready. So I believe $40 billion forecast is a relatively conservative estimation.

Samik Chatterjee (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thanks for taking the question. Yeah. Thank you for your question.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Ruplu Bhattacharya with the company Bank of America. Ruplu, your line is now open.

Ruplu Bhattacharya (Director)

Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is on gross margin. Overall, do you think industry margins are now under secular pressure given more competition from other AI server manufacturers? And is liquid cooling really a competitive advantage which you can charge more for, or is that also becoming commoditized since it looks like everyone seems to be offering their version of liquid cooling?

Charles Liang (CEO)

So David, how are you thinking about the long-term gross margin range for your business? And I have a follow-up on revenues.

David Weigand (CFO)

Certainly. So what I would say about gross margins are that, number one, what we count on, Ruplu, is being the first to market with the very best solutions. And so right now, we have shipped GB200, for instance, and we're very confident in its quality as a product. And that's really what helps to drive good margins. So it's not just liquid cooling. It's stable systems that have high quality, high reliability, and also really the best performance. So I think that our abilities in liquid cooling were already demonstrated in the prior quarters. And it's really our data center Building Block solutions, which give us a plan for the future.

And so we have a lot of things planned for the future, but data center Building Block solutions are one of those where we offer a lot more solutions for the complete data center at all levels. So again, we haven't changed our target margin. And yes, there is competition. There's always going to be competition. But I think that if you look at how we've performed historically and our ability to engineer in all the latest technologies, I think that's our moat. That's our advantage. Yeah. Let me add that a little bit.

Ruplu Bhattacharya (Director)

Okay. Thank you. I mean, the DLC, yes. Go ahead.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. DLC, everyone talking about they have a DLC solution. But how many competitors really have a DLC deployment in high volume? I guess it's very minimal. Last year, I believe we shipped at least 60% of our worldwide DLC solution.

So that means those are competitors indeed. They are ready, but they haven't had experience yet. And talking about data center Building Block solution, not many providers are able to provide on-site deployment and on-site cabling, on-site servicing. And now with DLC, with 150 kW per rack or even more power per rack, I believe the on-site deployment cabling service becomes a very important value to customers. And we are a company that has exactly all our experience, all our success stories.

Ruplu Bhattacharya (Director)

Okay. For my follow-up, if I can ask, as new efficient AI models like DeepSeek come about, how are you thinking about the impact on your business? And as we move from training to inference, what is Supermicro doing to further penetrate the enterprise vertical?

I know you have enterprise customers, but for those enterprise customers who don't have a large engineering presence, what is your strategy for attacking that customer base as well as for sovereign customers? Thank you for taking my questions.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Okay. So for DeepSeek, I mean, for sure, the software can always be more efficient quarter after quarter. So we know that. But industry's expense pretty depends on financial plan. So I believe the market size won't shrink because of DeepSeek. And in terms of enterprise, we have been in the enterprise market for more than 10 years. And our team in enterprise has been much stronger than before ever, especially with our service team, management software, and end-to-end data center solution. I believe it's the right time for us to grow quickly in the enterprise segment.

Ruplu Bhattacharya (Director)

Okay. Thanks for all the details. Appreciate it.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Nihal Chokshi with the company Northland Capital Markets. Nihal, your line is now open. All right.

Nihal Chokshi (Stock Analyst)

Thank you. Quick question here. Can you tell us whether or not backlog is up year-over-year for the December quarter?

David Weigand (CFO)

So we don't generally give out backlog figures, Nihal. But what we can say, though, is that backlog tends to follow the chip cycle. And so when you have new chip solutions coming out, you'll see backlog start to build as solutions become dependable and reliable. And then they'll tail off as the products mature. And so with the expectation of some of the new chips coming out, we believe that you'll see growing backlog industry-wide.

Nihal Chokshi (Stock Analyst)

Got it. Thank you. And then I apologize in advance. This question is going to sound a little bit turgid, but Charles, you characterized the $40 billion target as 60% year-over-year growth.

Given that fiscal year 2025 is going to be around 60% year-over-year growth and likely impacted by the 10-K delay, therefore, 60% year-over-year growth for fiscal year 2025 is potentially conservative. But I mean, is historical year-over-year growth really a good indicator of future demand? Have you looked at the actual pipeline of demand and said, "Yep, we believe that this is how big the pipeline is, and this is a reasonable conversion rate, and therefore, $40 billion is indeed very reasonable"?

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. Very good question. From both, I mean, we validate the business from all different dimensions, right? I mean, from our historical growth, last few years, we have been growing more than 60% year-over-year, basically, except this year, right? The current year, because of 10-K delay, and we have some cash flow constraint. So we may grow only about 60% or 60-something.

But other than that, I believe, looking forward, next few years, our growth should be every year should be more than 60%. And second, from customer demand, from customer backlog, from customer commitment, sales commitment, looks like $40 billion is a relatively very conservative target.

Nihal Chokshi (Stock Analyst)

Great. Thank you. And if I might squeeze one more in, I'm sorry, but I'm not quite getting what you mean by data center Building Block architecture. Can you give me a concrete example as far as what does that mean? Is it basically the cooling tower design or something else? Can you put a little more concreteness behind that?

Charles Liang (CEO)

Okay. It's very conventional, but I'm happy to share. I mean, it's like our rack scale Building Block solution. Customers want to build in their rack. We have everything for them. Same thing, customers want to build their data center.

We will have everything for them. And today, we offer more and more key components. For example, liquid cooling, all kinds of liquid cooling pump, right? And water tower, right? Dry tower, water tower. And then all kinds of. A little bit too new to share. I mean, anyway, all the people build a data center need those key components. We try to provide all of them, including software, including management tool and experience. So I hope customers can one-stop shop with Supermicro to build their data center, make their data center time to market much quicker and also cheaper, lower cost, right? And quicker to build their data center. And that's power consumption. And better quality, right?

Nihal Chokshi (Stock Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from John Hewan Jin with the company CJS Securities, Inc. John, your line is now open.

Jon Tanwanteng (Analyst)

Hi. Thank you for taking my question.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Charles, I was wondering if you could break down the factors that were maybe, David, driving the reduction in the 2025 revenue guidance. How much is maybe pricing related? How much do you think is related to delays or availability of Blackwell and the impact on Hopper demand? And then maybe how much was related to your 10-K and maybe customers not feeling so great about doing business with you until that's filed?

David Weigand (CFO)

Yeah. I would say, John, that probably the biggest factor was just the delay in new technology. Because when you think about it, we were all set to go. We were all set to ship with liquid cooling. We were ready. But the problem was that not everything else was. So that was certainly a huge impact. I think, obviously, 10-K delay was a distraction.

But it's more about technology for us because we count on being early to market. And so that's what creates the big jumps that we have, the kind that took place last year from Q3 to Q4 when we went up $1.5 billion in one quarter. But remember, we finished the four quarters that ended June 30th at $15 billion. And now here we are two quarters later, and now we're at a trailing four quarters of over $20 billion. So we have the dynamic to accelerate really well when the technology is there that customers want. And I think if you look at all of the spending predictions and intentions that are out there, you can see the money being put in place to spend money on data centers and on data center solutions. And that's why we're here.

Jon Tanwanteng (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Then can you talk about your capital needs and cash flow expectations going forward as you start getting into quarters where you may be generating $8 billion in revenue, $12 billion in revenue, as implied by that $40 billion target?

David Weigand (CFO)

Yeah. So we're working on a number of different fronts to raise additional capital, which we just did with some of our, actually, the investors that put money into us previously with our bonds. So they came back and provided additional capital for us. So we've always said we want to use our balance sheet as we can to generate additional funding for our growth. But just like we're preparing on the engineering side, we'll also prepare on the capital side.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. In terms of leverage, our inventory and AR against the loan should be available very soon for us.

David Weigand (CFO)

Yeah.

We have a very unlevered balance sheet, as you know, right now, because we paid down a lot of some of the bank debt. And so we've paid down a lot of accounts payable. And so we have a very healthy balance sheet.

Jon Tanwanteng (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Aaron Rakers with the company Wells Fargo. Aaron, your line is now open.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director)

Yeah. Thanks, guys, for taking the questions. Most of them have been answered or asked and answered, but I've got a couple here real quick. So first of all, Charles, I just want to make sure I'm clear. Blackwell and the product cycle, are you shipping the GB200, the NVL72 today? And/or if not, is that a significant factor as far as volume shipments in your current quarter guide? And I've got a few others.

Charles Liang (CEO)

GB200 NVL72, our position is similar to other competitors, right? So we have a solution already ready. Now, once we have support from NVIDIA, we can ship anytime, right? And other than that, our B200, indeed, I believe, is some of our advantage because we have all different kinds of optimized platform, especially for 4U DLC. We have lots of demand there, and we are ready to ship in volume about now. And DLC has been last year alone. I said DLC has last year, Supermicro alone, we shipped more than 3,000 racks to the market. I believe that's about 70% of the whole market, whole DLC market last year. So we have a much better experience, much better solution.

So when customers are looking for GB200, for B200 liquid cooling, I believe we are in a much better position than the industry's average, for sure.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director)

Yep. That's perfect. And then my second question is really on gross margin. Apologize to ask again on this topic, but can you walk us through the variables that drove the sequential change in gross margin this last quarter? And I guess the other thing is that, Charles, you mentioned some of the utilization rates in the U.S. and Taiwan. Hypothetically, let's say that you're at, I don't know, pick a number, 70% or 75% utilization rate. How much of an impact would utilization rates have on gross margin? How do we isolate that impact?

Charles Liang (CEO)

We did not provide that, but basically, for sure, the impact may be 20, 30 points.

David Weigand (CFO)

Yeah. Yeah.

In the past, we've said if we can manufacture in Asia, we predicted that we would be able to save one to two points on the margin, Aaron. But back to, let's see. And then you had another question on gross margins to walk you back through Q2. And because, again, we forecast back in November that we would be down 100 basis points. And that was because of the customer mix and products that we saw shipping out. Remember, we're working on more end-of-life products, which have become more competitive as customers are waiting for the new platforms by all the different technology companies to come out from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA. So there is, of course, more people that are offering solutions.

But as Charles mentioned, going into the B200s and the GB series, this is going to be perhaps a different game. And so that's my commentary on how we got to the change in margin. And we had some extra expenses as well because we're spending more on R&D right now, and specifically in buying some of the advanced chips as we refine our engineering and production to get ready for what we consider will be very large shipments coming up. Yep.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you, guys. Yeah. On-site deployment, cabling, and service. That will be another differentiation with other competitors.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Quinn Bolton with the company Needham & Company. Quinn, your line is now open.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to follow up on the GB200, NVL72 question.

Just sounds like you guys are ready to go, but the biggest gating factor is just support from NVIDIA. Do you guys have a forecast from NVIDIA when you think you're going to start to see supply of the GPUs so that you can ship the NVL72 or is visibility still pretty low on availability of the GPUs?

Charles Liang (CEO)

We already proved pretty much everything. And now just waiting for and we are at some allocation, some volume. But the volume demand is way much bigger. So we are waiting for more allocation. So that hopefully very soon we can ship in a much higher volume. Got it. So it's just waiting for the allocation, sounds like, is the gating factor.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

Got it. Thanks. And then maybe just a follow-up longer-term question, Charles, on this DeepSeek impact on the industry.

Certainly sounds like we'll get more deployment of AI models, which probably says we get more inferencing to the extent that you see more inferencing infrastructure put in place. It's probably more fragmented. I assume that that's good for Supermicro because it's less concentrated, probably more variability of systems. But can you spend a second on whether you think a shift towards inferencing is a positive for the business? Is it neutral? Is it negative? Thanks.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah. It's very positive. When inferencing becomes more popular, becomes a worldwide trend, right? I mean, before, I mean, they may have 300 buyers basically. But with inferencing getting popular, AI getting popular, I believe very soon there will be thousands of companies need to buy AI equipment or service.

So we are very happy to see the market size is growing and many more customers are asking for a product, asking for total solution. And with our application optimized nature, Building Block solution, we are able to service a variety of customers in different verticals. So that's another advantage we will have.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

Thank you, Charles.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from George Wang with the company Barclays. George, your line is now open.

George Wang (Stock Analyst)

Oh, hey, guys. And thanks for taking my question. Hey, Charles. Can you talk about kind of your current pipeline just in terms of the mix of sovereign AI, just especially versus three months ago? Can you kind of talk about whether you're seeing an incremental kind of pipeline build from the sovereign AI of the world?

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yes. It's also increasing.

I mean, before, most of the demand was USA and some other large countries only. But now, yes, we see many more countries going to build their own AI infrastructure, especially for sovereign AI and inferencing as well. So the demand is kind of worldwide now. And it's a very exciting moment to see the AI boom continue to be popular worldwide.

George Wang (Stock Analyst)

Just a quick follow-up, if I can. As we potentially head into the GB300 era later this year or 2026, the supply chain chatter of most of the open standards as NVIDIA kind of potentially unbundle the supply chain. So that could potentially add more customization. So maybe directionally, can you talk about the implication to Supermicro, especially for the margin? Do you think that you can add a bit more customization, hence more margin, as we head into GB300, or it's non-material?

Charles Liang (CEO)

Yeah.

Technology is always unlimited. People always come up with some idea and some demand for different vertical, for different applications. So we never feel our engineers have nothing to do. So always live in our engineering manpower. So even today, we still continue hiring engineers very aggressively worldwide. So there are lots of room to optimize for different customers, different product lines, different verticals, and especially for inferencing, right? So I see lots of room to differentiate. And especially when we get into a data center Building Block solution, now we are growing our marketing team to a data center infrastructure. So to provide the whole solution for people who need to build a data center. So I see our marketing team also faster growing.

David Weigand (CFO)

Thank you. Jayla, we're out of time. Thank you for attending the Supermicro conference call, and we'll catch up with you soon.

Charles Liang (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and enjoy the rest of your day.