Semtech - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY26 delivered net sales of $251.1M (+22% YoY) with GAAP gross margin 52.3% and adjusted gross margin 53.5%; adjusted EPS was $0.38, above S&P Global consensus of ~$0.371, and revenue slightly above ~$250.1M consensus, reflecting disciplined execution and improving demand. Values retrieved from S&P Global.*
• Adjusted operating margin expanded to 19.0% (vs. 12.2% YoY), and adjusted EBITDA margin to 22.1% (vs. 16.1% YoY), supported by mix and opex control; data center net sales hit a record $51.6M, +143% YoY.
• Management guided Q2 FY26 net sales to $256M ±$5M, adjusted EPS $0.40 ±$0.03, adjusted gross margin ~53.0% ±50bps, and adjusted EBITDA $56M ±$3M; end-market view: infrastructure up, high-end consumer up slightly (seasonal), industrial flat to slightly down (LoRa moderation).
• Balance sheet and cash metrics improved: adjusted net leverage ratio below 2x; operating cash flow $27.8M and free cash flow $26.2M; net debt fell to ~$396.2M with further term loan prepayment ($10M in Q1, +$15M to date in Q2).
• Stock narrative catalysts: sustained FiberEdge momentum and expected LPO/ACC ramps in 2H FY26, plus Q2 guidance above prior run-rate; offset by near-term CopperEdge “air pocket” and LoRa moderation from elevated Q1 builds.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Record data center net sales of $51.6M (+143% YoY) driven by FiberEdge strength; CEO: “We expect our data center business to be a sustainable growth driver”.
• Margin expansion: adjusted gross margin 53.5% (+370bps YoY) and adjusted operating margin 19.0% (+680bps YoY); CFO noted adjusted net interest expense fell to $5.0M from $11.2M on debt paydown.
• Strategic progress in AI connectivity and optics: CopperEdge ACC qualification across multiple hyperscalers and enterprises with expected volume ramps before year-end; LPO TIAs securing “lion’s share” with compliant drivers, targeting Q4 ramps.

What Went Wrong

• CopperEdge demand gap at the anchor customer led to near-term revenue softness; management expects reacceleration with diversified customers and use-cases by Q4 FY26.
• IoT Systems & Connectivity margins faced mix pressures and a non-recurring tailwind that benefited Q4 but not Q1; Q1 gross margin for ISC down vs Q4 due to module/router mix and prior one-time benefit.
• Anticipated LoRa moderation in Q2 from project-based builds in Q1; management targets a ~$30–$35M quarterly LoRa run-rate near term.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Semtech Corporation's first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Lin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Operator. Good day, everyone, and welcome. In addition to Hong Hou, President and Chief Executive Officer, I'm thrilled to be joined by Mitch Haws, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Many of you know Mitch, given his breadth of semiconductor experience at AMD, Skyworks, and Freescale, and now Semtech. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mitch.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Mark. I'm very happy to join the Semtech team and look forward to engaging with all of you in the months and quarters ahead. Today, after market close, we released our unaudited results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, which are posted along with an earnings call presentation to our investor website at investors.semtech.com. Today's call will include various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects, which comprise forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release and see slide two of the earnings presentation, as well as the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K for a number of risk factors that could cause our actual results and events to differ materially from those anticipated or projected on this call. You should consider these risk factors in conjunction with our forward-looking statements.

Unless otherwise noted, all income statement-related financial measures will be non-GAAP other than net sales. Please refer to today's press release and see slide three of the earnings presentation for important information regarding notes on our non-GAAP financial presentation. The press release and earnings presentation also include reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. With that, I will turn the call over to Hong.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Mitch. Welcome aboard. Good afternoon, everyone. We reported Q1 results with net sales, adjusted gross margin, adjusted operating margin, and adjusted diluted earnings per share, each above the midpoint of our guidance. These results illustrate the resiliency of our business and offer another proof point of our operational excellence. Semtech's Q1 ended on April 27th, so we closed the last month of the quarter during an extremely turbulent period, but we successfully navigated through dynamic tariff policies. Superb coordination among our operations, sales, and compliance teams was instrumental in mitigating the tariff situation for Semtech and our customers, facilitating a stable flow of product across the global semiconductor supply chain. I extend my heartfelt thanks to these teams and recognize their efforts in helping us achieve our Q1 results and support our conviction for the quarters ahead.

Semtech's Q1 results also reflect our focus on core priorities, including portfolio optimization, strategic investment in R&D, and driving margin expansion. While uncertainty in the market may impact the timing of some of our portfolio optimization initiatives, we have strong conviction that we can operate these businesses to grow the top line, expand profit margins, and improve overall financial metrics. We believe this will create more value for our shareholders. Moving to our end markets, for Q1, infrastructure net sales were $72.8 million, up 5% sequentially and up 30% year-over-year. Net sales for data centers were record $51.6 million, up 3% sequentially and up 143% year-over-year. Our expectations for a short-term demand gap in Copper Edge remain consistent.

That said, we expect our data center business to be a sustainable growth driver, especially given recent indications of capital expenditure growth by hyperscalers, as well as from innovations in our copper and optical portfolios. AI data centers face critical power and thermal challenges, which will grow exponentially as compute workloads increase. Our analog solutions are well-suited to address these challenges. CopperEdge enables a significant paradigm shift in connectivity, delivering the signal integrity and reach extension needed for next-generation AI clusters. Compared to DSP-based options, CopperEdge reduces power consumption by over 90% and also enables significantly longer reach than the direct-attached copper or DAC cables. At OFC, we demonstrated a number of CopperEdge-driven ACC applications, all with a bit error rate well below acceptable ranges. At 1:60, we successfully run traffic across a 3 m 27-gauge cable using two 24-gig SIRTI supports.

Our launch application at our Oncre customer last year was a 1.1-meter cable, so this demonstration highlighted the high-performance capabilities and the reach of our CopperEdge ICs. At 800 gig, the dominant read of data center traffic, we demonstrated an extended reach 5-meter ACC connected to a Broadcom Tomahawk 5 switch. A prospective customer requested this configuration for use as a replacement to DAC cables. Also connected to the Tomahawk 5 switch was an ultra-thin 3-meter 30-gauge cable that had significant benefits in airflow and bending radius, both characteristics valued by rack architects. We remain closely engaged with our CopperEdge Oncre customer for applications in their future generation racks. In addition, hyperscalers, switch vendors, and cable manufacturers continue to show interest in CopperEdge ACCs.

We have delivered ACC cables for testing and qualification to multiple customers and expect meaningful design wins at hyperscalers and enterprise customers, leading to volume ramps before the end of this fiscal year. On the optical side, our LPO demonstration at OFC generated significant interest, and our expectation of deployments in the second half of this fiscal year remains unchanged. We are pleased that the feedback from our customers indicates Semtech TIA for LPO offers superior performance, and we believe we are winning the line share in TIAs. We also released our LPO laser drivers last quarter and are generating design traction at multiple module suppliers. Moving to our high-end consumer end market, net sales for Q1 were $35.4 million, flat sequentially and up 3% year-over-year. Net sales in consumer TVS were $24.5 million, in line with our outlook for Q1, and up 2% sequentially.

We expect a pattern of smartphone unit ramps fairly consistent with the past years, with an increase in the second quarter and a successive increase in the third quarter. Within consumer TVS, we believe our innovation continues to result in increased content. I'm pleased to highlight the expanded design activity of Surge Switch, a system-level protection device across a number of manufacturers and platforms. Surge Switch has the capability to simultaneously address an expanded dimension of threat from ESD, or electrostatic discharge, or EOS, or electrical overstress, across a wide operating temperature range. Finer process geometry in advanced nodes for IC fabrication has increased the demand for the type of rigorous off-chip system-level protection offered by Surge Switch. For our person sensing products, we have discussed use in smart glasses, an application we believe has a strong potential to be a next-generation AI interface platform.

We have a growing field of opportunity and are actively engaged with a broad range of customers on both existing designs and on new launches. In smartphones, Percy addresses increasingly stringent specific absorption rate, our SAR standards, and is currently deployed on devices at the most leading manufacturers. Percy offers meaningfully lower power, improved sensitivity, and best-in-class noise rejection. Percy's use of Semtech's novel packaging expertise also results in a smaller footprint, thus allowing us and our customers to develop slicker form factors. Moving to our industrial end market, for Q1, industrial net sales were $142.8 million, down 3% sequentially, in line with our outlook and up 24% year-over-year. Within the industrial end market, net sales of LoRa-enabled solutions remained strong at $38.9 million, up 5% sequentially and up 81% year-over-year. Demand supporting new product launches and deployments remained robust.

We recently announced that Sonova, a world leader in innovative healthcare solutions, chose Semtech as a technology partner to create an ultra-small, ultra-low-power wireless radio and power management IC. LoRa technology highlights Semtech's deep expertise in ultra-low-power RF, with a clear match for battery-operated devices, including hearing aids. Robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles are also an emerging market for LoRa. LoRa's ability to operate in dual-bands, 2.4 gigahertz, and ISM frequencies offers enhanced bandwidth, which is well-suited for these applications. In addition, LoRa's modulation scheme, now paired with multiple protocols, provided the capability of LoRa Plus, allowing manufacturers to extend the end applications, including safety, security, as well as smart building. Our IoT systems hardware business recorded Q1 net sales of $63.5 million, down 8% sequentially, but within expectation of our outlook and up 31% year-over-year. Bookings in the first quarter for this business increased for the seventh consecutive quarter.

Pipeline also increased substantially in Q1, attributable to both the inclusion of a significant China-based competitor on a sanctioned list and the strong indications of a broader market recovery. We expect continued growth and improved profitability in our IoT cellular portfolio based on stronger pipeline and bookings. Growing 5G adoption reach, particularly in North America, is benefiting our hardware business, with the current deployments utilizing the first- and second-gen modules. In Q1, we launched two third-gen 5G modules, a cost-optimized solution supporting broader 5G adoption for value-focused applications, and a performance-optimized solution supporting 5G advanced to enable next-generation edge-based AI applications. IoT connected services net sales were overall stable for this largely recurring revenue business. Our connected service business is a great example of Semtech's deployment of AI tools.

As an example, anomaly detection highlights abnormal network activities and notifies our operating center, and we believe these improved detection capabilities have prevented security incidents for our customers. In summary, we have made significant strides in strengthening Semtech's financial foundation over the past year, which allows us to sharpen our focus on improving profitability and investing in innovation and capabilities that position us for long-term business growth. Our Q1 results reflect disciplined execution. At the same time, we recognize that there is still much work ahead of us to fully unlock the value of our unique technologies and to deliver sustainable long-term returns for our shareholders. We must continue to solidify a winning culture, accelerate innovation, and leverage our technology leadership and execution, all of which position us to deliver enhanced value to our shareholders with increased revenue and expanded margins.

I now turn the call to Mark for additional details on our financial results and our outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Mark? Thank you, Hong. For Q1, net sales were a record $251.1 million, above the midpoint of our outlook and up 22% year-over-year. We do not believe our Q1 net sales reflect material pull-ins due to tariffs. Net sales trends by end market, reportable segment, and geographic region are included on slide 16 of the earnings presentation. Adjusted gross margin was 53.5%, up 30 basis points sequentially and up 370 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted net operating expenses were $86.6 million, below the midpoint of our outlook. Adjusted operating income was $47.6 million, resulting in an adjusted operating margin of 19%, up 680 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $55.4 million, up 68% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 22.1%, up 600 basis points year-over-year.

Adjusted net interest expense was $5 million, down sequentially from $11.2 million. The decrease was primarily reflective of a full quarter of savings from our Q4 debt paydown. We recorded other net non-operating expenses of $2.8 million, substantially reflective of foreign exchange revaluation losses. This amount stemmed from a weaker US dollar, most notably in the month of April. We recorded adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.38, up from $0.06 a year ago. Operating and free cash flow for Q1 were $27.8 million and $26.2 million, respectively, and these amounts reflect variable compensation payments in Q1. At the end of Q1, net debt sequentially decreased $14.8 million to $396.2 million and comprised of approximately $171 million in term loan and $382 million in convertible notes, offset by $156 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Along with debt reduction, strong business performance contributed to an adjusted net leverage ratio below 2 as of the close of Q1. We continue to prioritize debt reduction with a $10 million term loan prepayment in the first quarter and an additional $15 million to date in the second quarter. On our revolving credit facility, I am pleased we successfully amended the facility to increase our total borrowing capacity by $117.5 million for a total revolving credit facility size of $455 million. No financial covenants or material terms were modified as part of this amendment. As of today, the revolving credit facility remains undrawn except for previously outstanding letters of credit, totaling about $3 million. Now turning to our second quarter outlook, we currently expect net sales of $256 million, plus or minus $5 million, up 19% year-over-year at the midpoint.

We expect net sales from our infrastructure end market to increase sequentially, including growth in data center. We expect net sales from our high-end consumer end market to be up slightly, reflective of typical seasonality. We expect net sales from our industrial end market to be flat to slightly down, with moderation in LoRa offsetting growth in our IoT cellular business. Based on expected product mix and net sales levels, we expect adjusted gross margin to be 53.0%, plus or minus 50 basis points, a 260 basis point improvement year-over-year at the midpoint. Adjusted net operating expenses are expected to be $87.5 million, plus or minus $1 million, resulting in an adjusted operating margin at the midpoint of 18.8%, a 460 basis point improvement year-over-year.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $56 million, plus or minus $3 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint of 21.9%, a 310 basis point improvement year-over-year. We expect adjusted interest and other expenses net to be $5.5 million, reflective of leverage-based pricing on our term loan that reduces our interest rate, another benefit of our lower leverage ratio. We expect an adjusted normalized income tax rate of 15%. These amounts are expected to result in adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.40, plus or minus $0.03, based on a weighted average share count of 90 million shares. Thank you, Mark. We can now turn the call back over to the operator for the question and answer session. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your headset before pressing the Star keys. Due to the interest of time, we ask that you ask only one question and one follow-up. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Please proceed. Hey, guys. Wanted to start off with a question on the cellular module business. I was, I guess, a little surprised to see that down, I think, after six quarters of increased bookings and Q1 being the seventh quarter.

I wondered if there was anything specific to call out in the cellular module business in April. Thank you for the additional gross margin disclosure in today's press release, but it does look like the gross margin on the cellular modules also came in down meaningfully both quarter on quarter and year-on-year. I just wondered if you could explain what happened on the margin side of the cellular module business in the first quarter. Yeah. Quinn, hi. Thank you for your question. Yes. From our Q4 guidance, we expected some level of seasonality on our IoT system product. You are right. This business is experiencing pretty significant tailwind, as I provided during the prepared remarks, because of the sanctioned list for our competitor based in China and also the exit of U-Blox from the IoT cellular business. This tailwind is very evident from our booking activities.

We do expect this business is going to be revenue is going to be accelerating in the quarters forward. Q1 was a little low, and we expected that from the guidance of the Q4. Quinn, just to address gross margins, this also came in with an expectation. We had guided a little bit lower gross margin, or we expected a little bit lower gross margin from the ISC business. Within this business, you also have a little bit of mix between modules and routers affecting the gross margin that we reported. You saw a mixture of more to modules away from routers, and that's why it came in lower than, say, the prior quarter or prior year. That's correct. There is also a one-time event on the inventory on the module side.

That is kind of like impacting the overall IoT system margin adversely. That is a one-time event. Got it. There was a write-off of obsolete or excess inventory in that, something like that, that was a further drag. Actually, Quinn, it was more in Q4. We had a little bit of a tailwind that did not recur in Q1. Okay. Thank you. Oh, we will get back in queue. The next question comes from the line of Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna International Group. Please proceed. Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Mine is just around AI connectivity. It sounded like there was some progress here, maybe on the Copper Edge side with engagements and revenue by the end of the year. Perhaps you could expand on that and just more broadly talk about where we are in visibility around AI connectivity for you guys overall. Yeah.

Chris, thank you for that question. Our CopperEdge product, we trailblazed that product into the market through the engagement with the anchor customer. Since then, we have reached out to more than 20 customers and have very close engagement with many of them. It is really very encouraging to see that they finally recognize the unique advantage that ACC offers compared to AOC or AEC in terms of low power consumption, low latency. A number of them are taking our product prototype samples for qualification and testing. The use cases are going in for a scale-up of the ASICs interconnect and also for scale-out, especially the first level of the switch fabric from NIC to top of the rack. Our demo at OFC is used out by CINNET and really shows and gives a lot of confidence for our customers.

They come in, see, and kick the tire, wiggle the cables, and see the bit error rate well below the acceptable limit. For, say, 200 gigabit, they could see our product can transmit over 3 meters with a 30-gauge cable. That is really very desirable. As I said, we expect a number of the customers we are engaging is going to be finished their qualification and start ramping by Q4 this year. Excellent. Thank you, Hong. My second question is around LPO and optical more generally for you guys. If you could describe what you are seeing there in terms of TIAs, drivers for maybe regular optical, and then for LPO and how that might ramp through the year, that would be great. Thank you, guys. Yeah. Thank you. As you know, the Semtech TIA is considered the gold standard for the industry.

For traditional retimed, all LPO, all TIA has been designed in almost in every module manufacturers. LPO coming out of the OFC, you know that MSAs, they finalize the specification. Now the suppliers, the customers, the cloud service providers, they're all on the same sheet of music and having the same expectation on performance. There's no longer any argument. Now it's really about the timing and what platform they started deployment. This is tremendous progress compared to a couple of years ago, as you know, this industry and tracking for a long time. We're seeing 800 gig LPO links, or 100 gigabit per second, is going to be used first by multiple cloud service providers. We're designed in for our TIAs. Our driver is a little bit late compared to our competitor, but we released the last quarter.

Our driver, because of late reduction, did incorporate the specific requirement that MSA dictated or authored. I would say our driver is a fully LPO compliant driver, and we are working with multiple module manufacturers in incorporation and qualification. That will bring additional revenue, I would say, by Q4 this fiscal year. In general, our FiberEdge product had a pretty broad application, different data rates and different applications. We are benefiting from the increased CapEx spending of the industry, but also, I believe, we're gaining some market share. That will continue to be a driver for our data center and overall revenue growth. Thanks for the color, Hong. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Please proceed. Yeah. Hey, guys. Welcome, Mitch. Good to talk to you again. Hong, I had a quick question.

I was curious if you could talk about your data center business, the core business, excluding futuristic outlook for LPO and maybe ACC, just your plain vanilla core data center business, how you see that business trending over the next, call it, six to twelve months. Then I had a follow-up. Good. Thank you, Harsh. You know that we disclosed there are air pockets in demand on ACC from the anchor customer. The very fact that we delivered sequential growth in Q1 versus Q4 on our data center product is due to the strength of our FiberEdge product. The LPO certainly is in a design win stage. It has not contributed to meaningful revenue yet.

Based on the booking activities and based on our conversation with our customers, we hold a strong conviction for the second half of the year that the FiberEdge and the plain vanilla, as you put it, PMDs, we call it physical media devices, will continue to experience growth, maybe accelerated growth. I'm really optimistic about that. Great. Thank you, Hong. I was curious about LoRa. LoRa, I think in your guidance, Mark, you said LoRa will be off a little bit. This is coming on the heels of some very strong growth over the last several quarters. You talked about some new end markets, automotive, robotics, hearing aids, etc. I was curious if you could help us understand why LoRa is going to be off just a little bit.

Is it just small stuff like timing or just coming off of hot growth, or is there something else? When do you see these new markets materializing? I'll get back in line after this. Sure. Thanks for the question, Harsh. So LoRa in Q1, we reported $38.9 million, up from $37.1 million in Q4. Very nice sequential growth. Last quarter, we were guiding LoRa into the, call it, the $30 million-$35 million range. That's where we believe the market will kind of fall out in the next few quarters. We do believe that in our first quarter, there was a little bit of additional build. We've said that LoRa has some project spend. Also, we had a customer build additional units in anticipation of a product launch.

That's where LoRa is. We believe that LoRa next quarter will be coming down a little bit, but still quite a strong business. $38.9 million is still up 81% year over year. Understood. Thank you. Yeah. Harsh, just on LoRa, we do expect a comfortable $30-$35 million quarterly run rate. As Mark said, we disclosed a medical customer is ready to launch new product. In Q1, there are some additional orders from them to support a new product launch. Understood. Thank you, guys. The next question comes from the line of Timothy Arcuri with UBS. Please proceed. Thanks a lot. I also wanted to ask about the update on AI connectivity. I assume that CopperEdge pretty much is zero in July and October, and then it sounds like you get a pretty big step up in fiscal Q4 because of all these engagements.

Is that the right way to think about it? Tim, that's a good question. We talked about the air pocket in demand due to the platform change with the anchor customer. That is unchanged, but we continue to engage with them for future generation, either, well, in both cable form and chips on board type of linear equalizer applications. That relationship continued to be very tight, but the demand from them was a lot lower than we early expected. The engagement with other customers for the application of the CopperEdge product is really very, very exciting and encouraging. There are four or five different applications, and use cases go beyond just the scale-up interconnect between different racks, are materializing, and some of them are completing the qualification and just waiting for the deployment in their next-generation platforms.

We do believe the revenue from other customers will come in Q4 timeframe and start ramping from there. Thanks a lot. Mark, can you talk a little bit about? I mean, this is kind of a nit, but revenue's up like $5 million sequentially and gross margin's down 50 basis points. Is that just mix? Yeah. Semtech is largely mix dependent. The guide reflects what we believe the current mix will be. 53.0% in Q2, it's a 260 basis point improvement. In our press release, in our earnings presentation, we do now break out our semiconductor products groups. That consists of our signal integrity and our analog, mixed signal, and wireless segments. We brought that disclosure in from our 10Q. We felt it'd be helpful for investors to see it also in our earnings release and our earnings presentation.

So within semiconductor products, it was 63.7% gross margin, up 720 basis points year over year, but largely mix dependent. Thanks a lot. The next question comes from the line of Joe Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed. Great. Thank you. There was a line in your prepared remarks. You sort of said uncertainty in the market may impact timing of some of the portfolio optimization initiatives. Can you just talk about what you mean by that and kind of it does not sound like you guys are overly impacted by tariffs. What kind of uncertainty is that creating for you? I see. So, Joe, thank you for the question. What I mean by that is not about the tariff-related, but it is just the overall macroeconomic uncertainties. As you know, the deal flow and people thinking about strategically is probably got a little bit deferred.

We continue to hold our strategic initiatives as a high priority. Because the overall industry got distracted and focused on how to mitigate the tariff risk, the activities on the strategic initiative are going to be delayed. That is what we mean. We do provide more visibility in our gross margins from our earnings release so that you can see that we own the business, and as long as we own it, we will continue to work hard to improve and deliver better results. That is the best way to create shareholders' value. We control what we can control. We cannot do much on things we cannot control. That is the macroeconomic environment. Got it. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Torres Vanberg with Stifel. Please proceed. Yes. Thank you. And welcome on board, Mitch. Thank you.

Hong, I had a question about the Percy Proximity Sensor for the glasses. You talked a little bit about that, but how should we think about that business ramping? Would that happen second half of fiscal 2026, or is that going to be more of a fiscal 2027 event? That's a good question. We're really excited about the Percy product. As you know, traditionally, that product has been designed for the SAR standards, specific absorption rate reduction. It comes in really handy due to its low power and high accuracy and also the noise rejection capabilities for smart wearables. I bought a Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. It was absolutely phenomenal. It's just taking pictures and recognizing different locations and doing the translation in real time. We're seeing probably five, six other customers we are engaging for similar devices.

From the get-go, I think cumulatively, we have supported over a million smart glasses using this gesture control capability. Just imagine how many wearable devices it can have out there and using the smart glasses as an AI interface to link into the infrastructure. We are very excited about that market perspective. We do believe, again, the second half of this year, there are going to be more than Meta jump on that bandwagon to provide smart glasses. Yeah. That is great color. As my follow-up, and specifically on LoRa, you mentioned the medical customer or perhaps customers. Is this still only going to be the hearing aids, or are you seeing LoRa perhaps penetrate other types of medical applications? For now, it is just the hearing aids we are talking about. I would not be surprised that people start using LoRa for other medical device applications.

The beauty of that is just the very low power consumption and very robust connectivity. For example, the robotics is a new application, and that now is being proliferated pretty widely and using the LoRa to interconnect different robotics and robots to build a network. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Torres. The next question comes from the line of Cody Acree with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed. Yeah. Thanks, guys, for taking my questions and congrats on the progress. Guys, could you talk about your expectations for seasonality into the second half across your various markets? Yeah. Hey, Cody, thank you for the question. The seasonality for our TVS product, that's a high-end consumer, we know that it's coinciding with the smartphone release schedule. Other than that, I think the seasonality, at least for the next two, three quarters, we don't see the obvious seasonality.

We do see industrial side, the broader market recovery. We see in the data center side, everyone was concerned about the CapEx spending in the AI area, but now many of the CSPs and also the industry participants in the broader ecosystem all show the strong confidence that the second half, the CapEx spending is going to be accelerating. We're seeing that from our booking activities. LoRa side is the only one I wouldn't call it a seasonality, and it's just this project-based spending of they need more material for Q1. But the end nodes numbers are increasing, and we are shipping records number every quarter. We're creating a new record for number of end nodes. The new applications being discovered and new product, our Riggi offers LoRa Plus. What does LoRa Plus mean? In addition to LoRa Protocol, we support other RF protocols.

The significance for that, for example, BLE, the Bluetooth Enhanced, is that some applications, they wanted to use LoRa, but they wanted to have the backend compatibility on their installed and deployed base. What this compatibility of LoRa Plus allows us, allows the integrators to offer a product, offer the backend compatibility with the existing protocol, but going forward, they can take advantage of the LoRa protocol. LoRa Plus is still, to us, LoRa-centric. That will unlock a range of new applications. I feel that even though the Q2 revenue compared to Q1 will be slightly down, that's not a seasonality. Excellent. Thanks for the help there. Just thoughts on your gross margin and OpEx drivers in the second half and what kind of trends can we expect? Hey, Cody.

I think we've talked about product mix between our three end markets that will largely drive our gross margin into the second half. For OpEx, just note, for gross margin and OpEx, we're only guiding out one quarter. For OpEx, I believe we're making some very good investments in R&D. We continue to focus on project spend and monitoring our project spend with R&D. That has not changed quarter over quarter. We believe we have some great opportunities in front of us. Other areas of OpEx growth, we're kind of filling out our commercial team, and that commercial team is like a technical sales force, right? That team allows us to get some better information, better information exchange with our customers, and better aligns our R&D spend to what our customers need. All right. Thanks for the help.

The next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed. Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. And Mitch, great to be back in touch and having you on board the Semtech team. Guys, I wanted to start just by getting a better understanding of what you're expecting within data center in the back half of the year. It seems clear that we've got two significant things happening. We've got AI connectivity that seems to be coming up and coming back on multiple customer wins away from your key customer. We've got LPO that's starting to ramp up. The question is, can you help us dimension those two items as we exit the year, which will be the bigger driver?

As you look at the arc of what's happening with these, can you help us by characterizing what we should expect as those programs go from initial ramps to more meaningful volume? Thank you, Craig. Yeah. As you know, we have a pretty broad product portfolio for data center connectivity. We got FiberEdge, which is the TIA and the drivers. We got CopperEdge with a linear equalizer. And then we got TriEdge as a CDRs and basically integrated with PMD. This diverse portfolio does help us even when we experience a little bit of air pocket in CopperEdge with the anchor customer. The growth in FiberEdge and the TriEdge overweighed the drop or the decrease in demand on the CopperEdge.

As I said, we expect a lot of good things happening in the later part of this fiscal year with more than the anchor customer demand for CopperEdge. That is going to materialize. LPO, that is incremental opportunity, is going to materialize. When the customers start deploying 1.60 optical transceivers, they are likely to use drivers for lasers and modulators. Because traditional 100 gig or below, they could use an integrated driver from DSP to drive EML. It looks like the performance, in order to get a link very robust, they need external drivers. That is incremental opportunities for us. If I have to take a step back, look at the FiberEdge, it is a strong product line in itself, provides a very high level of demand. When this tailwind starts coming in, playing in, that is all incremental on top of it.

The FiberEdge, we benefit from, as I said, the CapEx spending from the CSP side. I believe we're gaining some market share in there. You get a strong growing base, and you get three incremental opportunities superimposed on top of it. This really feels like a broader portfolio to help to mitigate the exposure on the air pocket we described before. Very broad-based as we exit the year and participation from three key parts of the portfolio. The follow-up question was around a product that you spoke to in your prepared remarks on. You talked about Surge Switch as being an integrated product that is more system-level protection.

I want to understand what types of products is that getting designed into, and how does the dollar content for that product compare to what we would typically expect with protection, and how should we think about that product's ability to drive visible growth within that part of the business in high-end consumer? Thank you. Yeah, Craig. On Surge Switch, you're right. It is an integrated device. It provides additional protection and additional features. We've launched this in multiple customers. System-level design does require a lot more customer intimacy. We're very happy with the amount of engagement that we have with customers. It does have some noticeable or some improvement in ASPs. Again, I think Semtech's TVS products are not just commodity-type products. We've already been enjoying or deserving, I should say, higher ASPs based on our technology.

Surge Switch, though, it protects against electrical overstress in addition to electrostatic discharge over a wider temperature operating range. That is the benefit that our users get when they design in Surge Switch. Also, it is kind of like they used to protect the Type-C connectors. Now the Type-C is used everywhere. It is not only in the smartphone. It is in the automotive. It is in the telecom, in many different charge ports. The Surge Switch just provides a lot more robust protection capabilities. Okay. It is nicely semi-expansive for you over time. Exactly. Yeah. Got it. Thanks, guys. Thank you. The last question will come from the line of Scott Searle with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

Hey, maybe to just follow up quickly on the data center front, I was wondering if we could get calibrated if we put LPOs to the side starting to ramp up in third and fourth quarter and some ACC traction starting by the end of this year and ramping into fiscal 2027. The portfolio outside of that, what sort of normalized growth rate do you think we should see over the next couple of years? It sounds like in the near term, we're starting to see FiberEdge continue to drive that. I'm wondering if you could help us understand what that normalized expansion looks like and your comfort level that customer inventories are at a pretty good level so that we do not see any sort of air pockets or big drawdowns in the next couple of quarters in the so-called core data center before we get to LPOs and ACCs.

Great. Thank you, Scott. The normalized growth rate, I think we can track basically all the research reports on the CapEx spending. For a number of market research reports, they even call out more specific optical transceivers. As I said, our data center product, the main thing is FiberEdge. If you track the volume increase of data center transceivers, I think our growth rate should track that pretty well and probably higher than that. The LPO adoption will bring incremental capability, incremental revenue for us because of the driver, because the premium on TIA side. CopperEdge, right now with the anchor customer, it is not zero, but it is lingering until the next generation. With other customers, it is going to start contributing meaningfully in Q4 and ramping in the next fiscal year.

The TriEdge product, which is a CDR, we designed with the major CSPs for reasons beyond our control. They delayed the deployment, and now they seem to be resuming. That is why it gives us a strong conviction that all these factors compounded together. I do feel barring the rapid adverse change of the tariff policy or something else beyond our control, we do feel the second half of the year, we are very well positioned. Okay. Very helpful. If I could conclude just on the solar module front, seasonally down quarter, gross margins with utilization under a little bit of pressure. Given Quectel's headwinds within the North American markets and increasingly, I think, in European markets, what we are seeing with the exit of U-Blox as well.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the bookings, when you would expect that to inflect, and we start to see that more in the P&L, and realistically, what target gross margins could look like in that environment, given that some of your competitors are going to be facing pretty high bars in terms of tariff headwinds. Thanks. Hey, Scott, I'll take that one. As we reported, we've had seven consecutive quarters of bookings growth. I think that's long-term kind of sustainable bookings. We did have a down quarter in Q1, but again, that was in line with our expectations, and we guided for Q2, the IoT cellular business to increase in revenue. Gross margins, we should see step-ups in gross margins. We are managing this business for margin expansion along with our other businesses. Great. Thanks so much. Thank you.

This concludes the question and answer session, and I'd like to turn the call back to Mitch Haws for closing remarks. Thanks, Joe. That concludes today's call. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.