Good day ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Fabrinet's Financial Results Conference Call for the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2020. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question-and-answer session and instructions from how to participate will be provided at that time. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Garo Toomajanian, Investor Relations.

Thank you operator and good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Fabrinet's financial and operating results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, which ended March 27, 2020. With me on the call today are Seamus Grady, Chief Executive Officer and Csaba Sverha, Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on the Investors section of our website located at investor.fabrinet.com. Please refer to our website for important information, including our earnings press release and investor presentation, which includes our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation. I would like to remind you that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements about the future financial performance of the company. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. These statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation and we undertake no obligation to revise them in light of new information or future events except as required by law. For a description of the risk factors that may affect our results, please refer to our recent SEC filings in particular the section captioned Risk Factors in our Form 10-Q filed on February 4, 2020. We will begin the call with remarks from Seamus and Csaba followed by time for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Fabrinet's CEO, Seamus Grady. Seamus?

Thank you Garo, and good afternoon everyone. Before I discuss the details of our results, I would like to tell you about how we are handling COVID-19. We are very fortunate that COVID-19 has not impacted our ability to keep our factories running globally. Needless to say, we greatly appreciate the extraordinary efforts of our employees and their families our suppliers, and of course, our customers for their continued dedication and hard work during this challenging time. We've taken great measures to ensure the safety of our employees and their families and we are pleased to report that we are operating at 100% capacity and that our employees are well. Extreme flexibility, decisive response to the crisis, excellent leadership and teamwork together with excellent partnerships with our customers and suppliers helped us make immediate changes to our build schedules and operating protocols to meet the volatile demand resulting from the crisis. We came to know about the COVID-19 issues from Casix our factory in China in late January. The information received from our staff during the Chinese New Year was very disconcerting as the virus was reported to be similar to the SARS virus of 2003. We immediately implemented all of the measures taken in our China factory across all of our factories starting the first week of February. We continued to enhance the measures as recommended by the CDC, the World Health Organization, local and federal governments of the regions where we operate as well as based on our own research on the subject. The measures include monitoring body temperatures of all people entering the factories, cutting down on visitors, banning visitors from regions heavily hit by the virus, mandatory social distancing, frequent washing of hands, wearing face masks, stopping large group meetings, providing disinfectant in all areas of…

Thank you, Seamus and good afternoon, everyone. I will provide you with more details on our financial results for the third quarter and our guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020. Total revenue in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 was $411.2 million within our guidance range and slightly below our record second quarter performance as anticipated. Recall, that in our last call, our revenue guidance incorporated an $8 million to $10 million impact from COVID-19. During the quarter, we have demonstrated our extreme flexibility to produce financial results that were within our guidance changes even though the actual impact on revenue from the pandemic was $12 million to $15 million or $4 million to $5 million more than we originally anticipated. Non-GAAP net income was $0.92 per share, which was at the lower end of our guidance range, even after the greater-than-expected effects on both revenue and expenses that Seamus discussed. Now turning to the details of our P&L. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release and investor presentation which you can find on our website. Seamus described a number of extraordinary efforts we are going through during COVID-19 to remain operational, while also keeping our employees safe. Combined with the revenue impact, gross margin was below our target range at 11.2% in the third quarter. Non-GAAP operating expense was $12.2 million in the third quarter flat with Q2. As a result, non-GAAP operating income was $33.7 million and non-GAAP operating margin was 8.2%. Taxes in the third quarter were $1 million and our normalized effective tax rate was 2.4%. With revenue streams coming from more advantageous tax jurisdiction, we now expect our effective tax rate to be below 5% for the full year. Non-GAAP net income was $34.8…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from John Marchetti with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Thanks very much. Seamus I was wondering if you could talk a little bit as we're looking out here to your fourth quarter guide about how you see some of the different segments playing out here. Telecom clearly seemed to slow here a bit. You saw some uptick in datacom in the March quarter and then you talked a little bit about the weakness in lasers that may be likely. Just curious if you can give us some qualitative comments on what you're seeing out there across those three markets and what's kind of embedded in that guide for 4Q.

Yes. Thanks John. I would say datacom as you say we see it being -- continue to be pretty resilient pretty strong. I think the pretty insatiable demand for bandwidth around the world is evident even more so now. The three Fabrinet folks on the call here we're all dialing in from different parts of the world. And I think everyone is probably dialing in from somewhere. So, the demand for datacom products just continues to be very strong. Telecom, overall, we think the demand is solid. We did have an inventory correction and we have an inventory correction this quarter. But we think inventory correction aside the underlying demand is actually quite resilient. Industrial and automotive I suppose are the two -- I'm sorry, lasers and automotive. Obviously everyone knows automotive. Nobody is buying cars right now. So, the demand for the automotive products we make is -- we expect to continue to be quite soft for a while. And industrial lasers similar. I think it's probably flat I would say for industrial lasers and really subject to what happens post-COVID. If the world economy starts to take off again we have some very good customers and some very good products we make for those customers. But like I said, I would say datacom quite strong; telecom the underlying business is quite strong notwithstanding the inventory correction we saw with one of our customers. And then automotive continues to be -- will continue to be a challenge for a couple of quarters. And industrial lasers, we think will be slightly flat. The good news is I suppose the optical communications products the ones that we see being quite strong make up 75% of our revenue. So, we're going to continue to see strength in the segment that makes up the vast bulk of our revenue.

And then Seamus if I can just follow-up on that inventory correction. You mentioned the $15 million hit to the fourth quarter guide. What was it in the actual third quarter? And did it relate to some issues with older inventory that wasn't able to be eaten up? Did it have anything to do with some of the new systems-level stuff that's been transferred over? Just curious if you can give us some additional color there. Thank you.

Yes, I think the -- we're not going to break out the exact number let's say of the inventory correction in Q3. There's a combination of a number of factors there. Obviously, the COVID impact we've sized and that was really a function of piece part availability. We did have some churn in the quarter where we had lack of demand for certain products and that was replaced by increases in demand for other products. And then the inventory correction that you mentioned. The inventory correction we did have it factored in when we issued our guidance earlier in the quarter so we were aware of it. And it's really to do with I suppose a customer who has surface -- we call it good inventory -- finished goods inventory that they're looking to burn off. Of course when they're burning off surface inventory it means they don't need to buy as much of the new stuff that we make for them. So, overall, we don't see it as indicative of any longer-term trend. We think it happens from time-to-time. We have to take the roof with this move John with the customers. Sometimes their demand goes through the roof and they can't get enough and then sometimes they have too much and they have to correct. And as we know when inventory gets built up over a few quarters, it takes more than one quarter to correct it. So, it's really just a function of an inventory correction with one particular customer as opposed to any kind of big industry trend or anything like that.

Thank you.

You're welcome, John.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Troy Jensen with Piper. Your line is now open.

First off congrats on the nice results gentlemen.

Thank you, Troy.

Seamus, maybe for you or Csaba. I guess, can you talk about customer concentration 10%? I guess, I would love to get an update on Infinera and how the Coriant business is stacked up and then maybe Cisco the new project you guys talked about and then the Acacia business?

So -- okay, a lot of questions there. So customer concentration as we had indicated I suppose as the year was going along we've indicated, we expect to have more than one 10% customer. I think we're still on track to have more than one 10% customer. The Infinera business the Coriant business that has been -- the transfer has gone very well. We've ramped those products and are continuing to ramp actually other products that have maybe come our way from -- that were built with other contract manufacturers that are being moved to us. So I would say that has gone very well. The Cisco transfer, we're really in the planning stages at this stage. There's nothing meaningful in terms of the revenue in Q3. We're really in the planning stages. And we see that unfolding probably over the next I would say six to nine months, we see that transfer unfolding. It will take a little bit longer than the transfer we did with Berlin, because that was a different situation. The operation of Berlin was closing down, so we were on a kind of a measured mile. We had to get the transfer done very quickly. You asked about Acacia, yes, the Acacia business. Again, we're a key supplier to Acacia. Obviously, we're very happy with that relationship. But as regards sizing it as a 10% customer, you'll have to tune in for the Q4 call, I'm afraid. I would say we're very happy, I would say with -- obviously with all of our customers, but how each of them are tracking we're very happy with that. And we feel we're on track I would say to -- hopefully when we report out on our Q4 results we'll be hopefully reporting on a little bit less concentration and let's say more than one 10% customer at that point.

Great. Okay. Perfect. And then Seamus, I dropped off for a bit. So I'm sorry, if this was addressed. But the 400G business, did you say it was down 41% sequentially? And could you just touch on that?

It was. And again, I suppose that's to a large extent, the comments around the 400G reduction and the comments around the inventory correction are similar root cause I would say there. Again, we don't see any particular overall trend. So again, sometimes with newer programs the demand can be quite choppy, when you get a spike in demand for kind of next-generation products that can taper off and then come back again a couple of quarters later. So again, we don't see it as again indicative of any overall trend. But yes, so that was a 40% -- I think we said a 41%, if I'm correct reduction in 400G.

All right. Last one for me and I'll cede the floor. But you mentioned datacom being strong. Just curious, is it across all product segments in datacom or QSFP28, QSFP56 stronger than others?

Yes. It's across -- I mean it's across multiple product lines. I think the demand for bandwidth is going to drive a lot of demand. At the same time, we are hearing comments on some of the big hyperscale guys that their ad revenue was down again because people are working from home. And so their ad revenue is down. So that may soften the demand. But so far we've seen it hold up pretty strong. Again, we're not really the if you like best people to tell you what the big macro trends are. We just really go by the forecast we get from our customers. And certainly, the sense that we see is that the demand remains quite strong. Our silicon photonics business was up 5% from the second quarter and up 21% -- sorry almost 21% of revenue. And then QSFP28 and QSFP56 grew 7% from the second quarter and 17% from a year ago to about 12%. And again, 100-gig continues to be very strong. So the 400-gig comment really when you're building the newer next-generation products the demand is -- if you like zoom out and look over a long period of time, it's very good but there does tend to be some intra-quarter choppiness from time-to-time. But I would say overall we think datacom remains quite strong.

All right. Well, understood and good luck, gentlemen.

Thank you. Thank you, Troy.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Henderson with Needham. Your line is now open.

Thanks. So if you were able to get all the parts that you needed and you didn't have production issues, would the revenue guidance and the fact the most recent printed quarter have been higher. Or in other words is the demand outstripping capacity and ability to procure?

Yes. And I would say, overall yes, if you look -- and I'll let maybe Csaba give a bit more detail in a moment. But if you look at our quarter just ended, we reported $411 million, which actually already contemplated the inventory correction from the customer that we talked about. We also had contemplated about $8 million to $10 million of COVID impact, which ended up being a little bit higher. So if you take -- we contemplated $8 million to $10 million of COVID impact. The actual impact was $12 million to $15 million. If you add those to $411 million plus let's say an additional $5 million from COVID, you get to $416 million. So we would have been at about $416 million. And within that there's a lot of churn. So a lot of churn, churn meaning certain SKUs were no longer required and other SKUS we have to go get the parts for. And then for the quarter we just guided so we've guided $370 million to $400 million. If you just do the math and pick the midpoint of $385 million there, the COVID impact of $25 million to $35 million, again if you take the midpoint of that you have $30 million. And then the inventory correction, we've sized at about $15 million. So we would be at about -- again taking the midpoint of the guidance plus the midpoint of the COVID impact and the inventory correction, you'd be at about $430 million. So, yeah, we -- demand is resilient, we believe it's really a question of our ability to get the parts. But we have a lot of confidence in our team and in our customers and then our suppliers to turn cartwheels and do what's necessary to get the parts to make sure we satisfy the customers' demand.

Right. So I just wanted to make sure that that was all supply chain and not demand related. And I think you were pretty clear on that. The second question is the inventory correction, is that exclusively in the telco side of the business?

Yes.

And once we clear that inventory out, should we assume then that the normalized rate of demand would be in fact that $25 million to $35 million higher, and therefore, looking out sequentially into the back half of the calendar year that kind of the baseline is what you report plus that inventory correction? I mean, to be blunt about it, virtually every other company that's printed so far whether it's MACOM, whether it's Inphi, whether it's Acacia this afternoon after the close, whether it's NeoPhotonics have seen much stronger numbers than you're guiding towards.

Yeah. I think that's a fair assessment Alex. You'd be in the ballpark with the assumption you made there. It's an inventory correction again where our customer has built up maybe a little bit more inventory than they'd like. But it's the right thing for them to do. They should burn off what they have before they order new, which is just that we have this one quarter. And we do think it's a one quarter, we don't believe it's going to drag on. We do expect it to get back to normal levels in the September quarter and beyond.

One more question if I could. Clearly the economic situation in Thailand has changed quite dramatically. I think you've gone from probably the strongest currency in that region to probably one of the weakest ones over the last three months. Can you talk a little bit about how you expect that to play out through your numbers? Shouldn't that be a pretty nice offset to some of the costs as we get into the back half of the year? It sounds like it probably will cause your margins to improve beyond the guide for this year. Is that the way to think about it?

Yeah, hi, Alex this is Csaba. I'll take this question. So let me answer with the three aspects that we are seeing in the Thai baht devaluation. So, obviously, one of the things is the market-driven devaluation of Thai baht, which we have started to see starting from February. The other aspect of that is our hedging policy that, as we have communicated, we are usually entering in a quarter, with 100% hedged for the current quarter, 50% hedged for the next quarter, and 25% hedged in that situation for the following quarter. And also, the third factor is our hedge accounting that we have implemented this quarter. So all these three factors are – if you look at our Q3 numbers, we pretty much eliminated the exchange rate impact from Thailand this quarter by the sheer nature of hedging in place. So therefore in the March quarter, we haven't seen any significant impact from the currency devaluation. And also, as we are looking into our Q4, as we have had pretty much 50% hedged the situation by the time we started off this quarter, we will not see significant tailwinds from Thai baht this quarter. Obviously, we are buying forward the contracts every week. So we anticipate to see meaningful impacts from our fiscal Q1 2021.

Right. And just one last question on the tax line, I was a little confused. You said – you gave the full year tax commentary being below 5%. But, are you also looking for the fourth quarter to be below 5%? I think it was obviously well below that in the March quarter.

So, our March quarter has been about 2.4%. It has to do with our revenue from the different tax restrictions. So, we anticipate this to go up back in normal situation for Q4. But the overall tax rate for the year, we anticipate to still stay below 5%.

So, it ought to be in the 5% to 6% range in the June quarter then?

It's going to be below the 5% range, I would say.

Just the June quarter is below 5%?

That's correct.

Okay. I got it. Thanks.

Thanks, Alex.

Our next question comes from Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Hi, guys. This is Joe Cardoso on for Samik Chatterjee. My first question, I was just curious to see what you guys – your expectation and/or visibility was relative to recoveries across the different markets that you play in?

Hi, Joe, I think as we talked about earlier, I think the markets remain pretty strong. The markets, we serve are – remain pretty resilient. We think datacom is remaining resilient. We think telecom is resilient, albeit with one inventory correction that we've called out. Aside from that, we see it being pretty resilient. Industrial lasers we think is still pretty strong, but it's just probably a little bit flat based on the macro situation. And then automotive, who knows I suppose when that will recover. But it's a small part of our overall revenue. But I think automotive is going to continue to be impacted for a while until global economies open up again. So I would say the majority of the markets we serve, we feel very good about. We feel the demand is strong. We have – we're in the right – we're serving the right industries and we think we have just the best customers in those industries. So we're pretty – touch wood, we're feeling pretty confident, Joe.

Got it. And then just relative to the headwinds you're baking in for COVID and the inventory corrections you gave us the top line number. What are you guys expecting in terms of an EPS headwind there?

We've guided the EPS. I'll let Csaba – we've guided the EPS. We've quantified the revenue impact, let's say for COVID and inventory corrections. We're not going to break out let's say the EPS impact for COVID, or anything like that. It's a pretty dynamic – it would become a kind of a meaningless number, Joe to be honest with you, because we have a lot of challenges that, we just have to deal with in terms of changing demand the churn, we talked about and also the component supply situation and the expenses we incur to continue to maintain – to keep all of our employees safe, which is our first priority. So there are several elements to it, if you like. There's mix. There's component supply constraints, we have to deal with. And then there's the expenses of keeping all our employees safe. But we haven't broken out, and we don't plan to break out, let's say the EPS impact of COVID. Csaba, anything you want to add to that?

No. I think you summarized it very well, Seamus. So Joe, obviously, when we have put together our guidance, it's obviously incorporating the impact not only on the top line, but on the EPS as well. So that's our guidance reflecting the revenue range, which obviously have a consequence on the EPS as well which is included in our guidance.

Got it, guys. No problem. And then just one last more -- one last question for me. Just on share repurchases, you guys spent roughly $20 million this quarter. Just wondering if that was more of a function of the macro backdrop and the company being more opportunistic. Or is the company considering that as a future potential avenue to drive more shareholder value going forward?

I would say, it's both. So as part of our capital allocation strategy Joe, we -- I would say, it's both. I would say, this past quarter we were opportunistic when we saw the share price. We felt it was a good time. Again, we're subject to open window constraints and all that stuff. But we felt it was a good time to repurchase some shares. And we're committed to making sure we return value to the shareholders. And obviously share repurchase is a key part of that strategy. Whether or not we'll continue to do that we don't -- obviously we don't preannounce. We announced after the fact. But we have -- at this stage, we have about $42 million, Csaba is that correct, remaining in our share repurchase authorization as we enter this quarter.

Yeah. Yeah, we have $41.5 million.

Okay.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Joe.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good afternoon.

Hi, Tim.

A couple of questions. Hi, Seamus. So, if we look at the inventory correction you mentioned as having been kind of factored into your outlook for March, a couple of questions on that. One, should I assume that we kind of see that in the decline in 400-gig and above revenue in the quarter to some degree? And two, with regard to the outlook for June, is it a matter of that perhaps taking longer than you might have initially expected or kind of growing into a bit of a larger headwind throughout the quarter? Or how would you, I guess, compare your outlook on that now versus when you started -- or guided the last quarter?

Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head Tim. I think the last quarter, yeah, you're right in the 400-gig and above number that largely explains that situation. And then for this quarter, I wouldn't think it's longer than we anticipate -- it's very unusual -- when one of our customers has to do an inventory correction, Tim, as you'd appreciate inventory builds up over a long period of time. And correcting excess inventory or surplus inventory, it takes a little bit of time. And in this case, it's kind of a couple of quarters that the customer is taking to burn off that surface inventory. It's actually a good thing. It makes them healthier and stronger as they do that. But we do believe from our discussions with the customer it's a two-quarter situation. So last quarter, you can see the impact there last quarter. And then this quarter, we've sized it at about $15 million. And then we expect to be back to normal levels of business with that customer in the September quarter. So, I don't -- we don't see -- we don't envision it dragging on longer than the June quarter.

Understood. And getting back to your estimated kind of pandemic impact or what have you, I guess, I just want to come back to it. And I might imagine -- you talked about continued demand strength in datacom. Should we take from that that you expect datacom revenues to rise? Or are you kind of portioning the supply chain impact that you're calling out across segments relative to kind of where they would have been on the one hand? And then, I assume there's actual economic or virus-related demand destruction in places like auto and maybe other where you might have normally or just as a result of the demand impact guided down. So, I guess I'm trying to kind of parse out between supply and -- supply constraint-driven impact and what you consider to be actual demand impact in that $25 million to $35 million range.

I would say the vast bulk of the COVID impact we've called out is supply related as opposed to demand disruption. The only real demand disruption, we've seen is in automotive, which is a small part of our revenue. Aside from that we haven't really seen any demand disruption. It's mostly to do with, let's say, supply constraints. And in some cases the supply constraints are a function of this demand churn that I talked about where we think we're going to be building products A, B and C for a particular customer. And we end up having to park A, B and C and build products D, E and F. And so we have to scramble to get the parts and get the components for those. So it's -- but I would say the underlying demand is quite strong. And the majority if I had to kind of parse it out the majority of the COVID impact we've called out this quarter is primarily I would say supply components, supply related. That's our biggest challenge. The two biggest things I suppose that maybe keep me awake at night are -- are we going to be able to get all the parts to make sure we satisfy what the customers need and how do we make sure we keep -- we continue to keep all of our employees safe. They're the two biggest challenges for us for the next while I would say until COVID is behind us. And the impact on the component shortages it's unusual. It's not like -- let's say, previously if you go back a couple of years ago we had like the MLCC shortages or from time to time we get DRAM shortages or whatever it might be. This is completely different. This is a function of -- primarily a function of where you have lockdowns in place in particular countries and suppliers have to operate at 50% or implement social distancing in their factory that they can only bring in half of the workforce. So it just takes time for those suppliers to be able to respond to that and maybe bring on additional shifts and run over the weekend to increase their output. So -- and it's spread across many I would say many commodities. It's not specific to any one commodity. So yes the challenges are great this quarter but that's why we're here. We're here to solve those problems.

Got it. If I could squeeze in one last follow-up. And I wonder if that -- the overall kind of logistical issues play any role in kind of increasing challenges for onboarding Cisco and whether you continue to expect that they could represent I won't say another but up to above the 10% customer in your fiscal 2021.

I think -- I mean generally, we don't talk about kind of specific customers. But just on the Cisco transfer, I would say hopefully not 10% because it's an existing set of products that are already being manufactured by another supplier. So the supply chain is positioned. It's not like a completely new product that we have to go off and set up the supply chain. It's an established family of products with an established supply chain. So we're quite optimistic, I would say about the onboarding of that business. But it will take an additional -- I think it will take about 6 months to 9 months. The end of the calendar year I'd say is -- probably timing-wise is a good bet. But whether that results in Cisco becoming a 10% customer or not we have to wait and see. But yes, we're quite happy with if you like how we're diversifying our customer mix. Obviously, Lumentum is our number one customer and I would say will continue to be for some time. But the other is in contention if you like. As we've talked about before obviously, Infinera is one. Cisco is one. Acacia is a significant customer for us. So we are quite happy with how we're diversifying our mix of customers.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Seamus Grady for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Thank you all for joining our call today. We're pleased to have met our guidance in the third quarter during a very dynamic business environment. Our success is a direct reflection of our core strategy to operate a very agile and flexible business that lets us respond very quickly to shifting environments and we look forward to speaking with you again in the future. Until then, goodbye and stay safe. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.