Earnings Labs

Microchip Technology Incorporated (MCHP)

Q1 2007 Earnings Call· Fri, Jul 21, 2006

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to this Microchip Technology Q1 and fiscal year 2007 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Microchip's Chief Financial Officer Mr. Gordon Parnell, please go ahead.

Gordon Parnell

Management

Thank you and welcome everybody to our Q1 2007 Conference Call. During the course of this conference call, we will be making projections and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution you that such statements are predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We refer you to our press release of today as well as our 10K for the fiscal year ended March 31st 2006 and our 8-K current reports that we have filed with the SEC that identify important risk factors that may impact Microchip's business and results of operations. In attendance with me today are Steve Sanghi, Microchip's President and CEO and Ganesh Moorthy Vice President, Advanced Microcontroller and Memory division. I will comment on our Q1 performance, reviewing geographic data and discussing balance sheet and cash information, and Steve will then give his comments on the results, outline our guidance for the September quarter, and update other pertinent matters regarding our business. We'll then be available to respond to specific investor and analyst questions. Let’s begin with net sales, our net sales for the June quarter were at record levels of $262.6 million up approximately 6.2% from net sales of $247.2 million in the immediately preceding quarter and up approximately 20.2% from net sales of $218.5 million in the prior year’s Q1. In our earnings per share this is the first period that Microchip has adopted FAS 123R. We have included additional information in our press release and will continue to furnish additional data to assist investors during this transition period. Non-GAAP income excludes the affect of the adoption of this accounting standard providing comparability to prior GAAP results. Our non-GAAP net income for the June quarter was at record levels of $81.4…

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Thanks you Gordon and good afternoon everyone. Today I would like to reflect on the results of the June quarter, comment on the product line, update you on our distribution strategy and finally discuss the guidance for the September 2006 quarter. All of the figures in my comments will be prior to share base compensation expense in order to do a fair comparison to prior quarters. The figures with share base compensation expense are all available in the press release. I’m extremely proud of our continuing excellent execution in delivering yet another record quarter in every respect. Microchip has passed an extremely important milestone with net sales of record $262.6 million; Microchip for the first time is above a $1 billion run rate. This also concludes a year long internal program at Microchip called April Touchdown 2006, the primary goal of Touchdown 2006 was to drive Microchip pass the $1 billion mark. Net sales also exceeded the high end of our prior guidance. Our gross margin of 60.36% was also a record and was up 26 basis points sequentially, our operating profit was another record 36.4%, earnings per share was $0.37 and set another all time record, and we also generated a record free cash flow of $136.5 million in the June quarter. So now I shall talk about the product line, first, Microcontrollers. Microcontroller business grew a very robust 8.2% sequentially and was up 21% over a year ago quarter. Our Flash Microcontroller business was even stronger and grew by 12.2% sequentially and up over 46% over a year ago quarter. Flash Microcontrollers now represent over 60% of our Microcontroller business. Another interesting fact is that OTP Microcontrollers which is a majority of our non Flash Microcontroller business was also up 2.6% sequentially and it was down only 4.5%…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. We will take our first question from Michael Masdea from Credit Suisse.

Muhammed Siraj

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Hi, this is Mohammed Siraj calling in for Michael Masdea. Could you discuss if you have seen any change in customer mentality especially looking in the June month or even first couple of weeks of July?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We have not seen any change in customer mentality. Our July bookings month to date, are actually very strong so we are continuing the strength of bookings we have seen into June, and continuing into July.

Muhammed Siraj

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Got it. And maybe a follow up question, could you discuss; why are you bringing in lead times, I guess especially in this environment? What was the driving force behind the light shortening in lead-time this quarter?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Our lead times never went out. We have substantial manufacturing capacity, because of large amount of capacity available in our FAS4, so to this entire cycle of lead times basically it has been three to five weeks, so the lead times are not coming in they never went out.

Muhammed Siraj

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Never went out, okay, got it. And then just the final question. Looking more long-term, are you seeing any activity in the 32-bit microcontroller market, and if so is this is an area you see Microchip having interest in? And if so, when do you think you would see more activity in that area?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Our dsPIC products, our 16-bit products, in many cases have significantly higher performance than some other prevailing 32-bit microcontroller architecture. For example, our tPIC24 architecture and the dsPIC architecture have 50% higher performance in mid-speed compared to 7. So Microchip today is winning significant designs into the marketplace, which without for Microchip, would have gone into a 32-bit architecture. So we believe we already have a very, very competitive solution to many of the 32-bit products in the marketplace with our dsPIC and PIC24 architecture.

Muhammed Siraj

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Okay, thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Tore Svanberg from Piper Jaffray.

Tore Svanberg

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Yes, good afternoon. Can you talk a little bit about your bookings trends? You mentioned July had started quite strongly. How about the linearity in the actual June quarter?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Gordon…?

Gordon Parnell

Management

You know, I think booking trends you know, we operate a 4/4/5 model in terms of our monsoon bookings performed pretty much in line with that. There was nothing exceptional in any of the ones that would take -- that would have any issue with linearity. And that obviously helps to project on to our revenues being linear as I mentioned during my comment.

Tore Svanberg Piper Jaffray

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Okay and you mentioned the mix issues in the 16-bit business that will lead to some pretty strong growth here in the September quarter. Can you just add a little more color on that, please?

Gordon Parnell

Management

You know, we have 65 products in production today and you know, we only started about a little more than two years ago shipping products into that 16-bit, so many of the products are quite new although we have some sense into where the demand will come from because of the design wind pipeline. You know, however -- all these products are very compatible, they all work on the same architecture, they use same C-compiler, the pin-out is very compatible, so customers during their design very often move around and change their design from one product to another product looking for slightly different features or slightly lower cost or whatever. So we usually build the product to a mix of forecasts, which really comes bottoms-up from the sales with three to five weeks’ lead-time. You know, you are largely keeping those lead times because you usually get the mix right, we always get the mix right usually, but on brand new products where you do not have a lot of history and with a small size of the business, customers can relatively come in a different product then you have thought. So we suffered from mixed issues. A lot of that have already been shipped into July and some of that will be shipped into the balance of the quarter. If we did not have those mix issues, we would have achieved about 25% sequential growth on 16-bit microcontrollers last quarter and we brought it up to investors’ attention so you see the real design in momentum in growth and opportunity in our 16-bit business and see it at 25% level for the last quarter rather than 10%. The mixed issues have largely been addressed. There are lot of additional new products coming into production this quarter, so there is always a risk, but I think we are over killing it this time and should not suffer from the similar issues again.

Tore Svanberg

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Great. And then just finally, those seemed like you expect slightly lower terms this quarter than last. Is that because of the summer months or is it just pure conservatism?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Where do you get that?

Tore Svanberg

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Just thinking about your backlog being up and your bookings already being strong and with 4% growth it just feels or sounds like you did expect summers to be a little bit less this quarter, I could be wrong.

Gordon Parnell

Management

You know the prior quarter the book to bill ratio was 107 and 101 here and so you know, it turns us somewhere in that same range, give or take.

Tore Svanberg

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Okay, that’s all, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Next we will hear from Chris Caso, Friedman Billings Ramsey.

Chris Caso

Analyst

Thanks. Just as a follow up to that question, you made a comment that you took a bit of a conservative view towards the September quarter guidance in light of the macro condition. Could you kind of explain a bit; if you are expecting a similar amount of terms for the next quarter you know, how are you being conservative with the guidance? Could you just clarify it in a little bit, and then in terms of your customers either by their words or their actions, are they giving you any reason to be conservative other than you know, just we all reading in the papers everyday?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We are getting no such guidance from our customers or our distributors. We are just being conservative because there are a lot of you know, macro kind of talk we are hearing and a lot of response we are getting from investors and analysts and response to other company’s numbers and just general talk, we believe the investment community is determined to cause a problem even if there isn’t one, at least we don’t see any problem in our business.

Chris Caso

Analyst

Okay. So is that to mean then when you are providing guidance you did assumed the full level of bookings when you provided your guidance or are you assuming less terms? Just clarify …?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We internally ruled out better than what we guided, but we were conservative.

Chris Caso

Analyst

Okay, that’s fair. And then just with regard to the positive that you guys talked about n the analog space, could you give us some insight as to you know, why you’d see that in the analog space and why not in the microcontroller? Is that a function of different end markets between your analog businesses and your microcontroller businesses?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

The analog business was up 48% over a year ago. The quarter before it was up like 52% over a year ago, it was up about 16% or 17% sequentially. I am just recalling some of these numbers, so many time you have any business going on at such a torrid pace, you can always have few customers get ahead and they take a pause, so it’s really driven by that. Our microcontroller business is growing very steadily, was up sequentially 8.2%, 21% over a year ago quarter so we didn’t really see any pause in the microcontroller business driven by that. Also, microcontroller business is much large you know, it’s a huge business with nearly 50,000 customers, so they’re much, much diversified than the analog businesses today.

Chris Caso

Analyst

Okay, fine. And just one final one, with regard to the size of the 16-bit market, I don’t think you guys -- don’t want to quantify that in the past. I guess, any guidance you can give us in terms of the size of that business relative to microcontrollers?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We are not willing to break it out soon.

Chris Caso

Analyst

Okay, thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeff Rosenberg from William Blair.

Jeff Rosenberg

Analyst · William Blair

Good afternoon.

Gordon Parnell

Management

Hello Jeff.

Jeff Rosenberg

Analyst · William Blair

I guess I just want to ask about the inventory trends, bringing them down five days or so for quarter. Does that reflect any change in your strategy in terms of the rate of ramp in your production or the way you are tying to manage margins you know, through any correction of whatever point we might see one?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

What I like investors to look at is this you know, the center pulling offer inventory range over the last many, many years has been right around here about 101 days where we were last quarter and the distributor inventory is sitting on the lower end of the range of 1.9 to 3.3, so if you combine the channel inventory plus Microchip inventory together, they are less than the middle point of the inventory. So first of all, I do not understand where all the inventory concerns are coming form. And number two, our inventory has been steadily declining, so if you were to ramp up factories harder where the inventories were not declining the gross margins will even be higher. We are still producing record gross margins while the inventories are declining. So essentially what we are trying to do is get the inventories a little bit more than the midpoint, last quarter they were in the midpoint, get it a little bit more lower and then start to ramp the factories to the point where the inventories do not decline, essentially keep up, build as much as we feel.

Jeff Rosenberg

Analyst · William Blair

And have you adjusted that level of ‘ramp it all’ from where you -- I mean, or has it been pretty stale. I guess, you have been bringing inventories down to pretty consistent level, but if you have done anything in terms of your planning differently than what you were thinking a quarter ago?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

You know, we ramp every quarter. Every quarter we are producing more products than the prior quarter, but every quarter despite the ramp we have been producing product less than what we have been shipping. That’s why the inventory has been declining and I think Gordon guided that the next quarter our inventory drops again from 101 days to 95 days. So at that point in time we are coming to the point where almost the inventory is right. So you know, basically during this quarter, it will be -- and I mentioned we are putting things in place to essentially ramp harder where the inventory does not decline anymore after that, maybe decline a little bit, but not much.

Jeff Rosenberg

Analyst · William Blair

Okay. And then the follow up I want to ask you was just if there is any color commentary on the relative strength of the different regions and the weakness, not weakness, but the much lower growth in the Americas versus Asia, is that just the traditional continuation of mix over to Asia or anything more that you could say about that?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Well you know, the overall activity in Asia is higher. It is a much stronger growth region I believe than in Americas or Europe, that’s one point. And second point is, like you mentioned there is a continuous transfer of designs, which are done in US and then if we go to Asia for manufacturing so it’s very, very hard to break out. I mean if you have ten customers you can do the analysis, even 50 customers you could do the analysis. For 50,000 customers it’s impossible, so we know a significant portion of that growth in Asia is because of designs in US, but we can’t quantify that.

Jeff Rosenberg

Analyst · William Blair

Okay, yeah just seemed a little bit more diversion than usual, so that there is maybe something to add, perhaps not. Okay, thanks.

Ganesh Moorthy

Analyst · William Blair

I remember Asia is coming off -- in the prior period as well in terms its growth, so you’ve got to compare that shipping period in the June or what drives the revenues in the June period versus the prior quarter also.

Jeff Rosenberg

Analyst · William Blair

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next we will hear from Simona Jankowski from Goldman Sachs.

Simona Jankowski Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Thanks, hi Steve. Just wanted to dig into your bookings number a little bit more. I think you have said your book to bill is 1.01 and then I think the 16-bit book to bill was 1.5, so I know that even through that’s a pretty small piece of your business filled out would seem to imply that the remaining business has a book to bill that maybe flatter, may be slightly bellow one, I just wanted to see that math make sense and also what that implies.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Well, without knowing exact price of 16-bit, it’s hard to do the calculation, but in generally you will be correct, yes. Our overall book to bill was 1.01 and 16-bit was 1.5.

Simona Jankowski Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

So how about bookings for the rest of the business or maybe slightly bellow 1.0 book to bill and normally your September quarter tends to be an up 5% quarter kind of historically. And I think you had mentioned earlier you had record bookings in April and May, and July started off well. Can you maybe just piece it all together and just kind of give us a sense to why the bookings are maybe a bit mismatched for the guidance?

Ganesh Moorthy

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Well Simona, I’d say -- something I have said for ten years in the history of Microchip, our business has never correlated to book to bill ratio. I will tell you periods of four, five, six quarters in a row where book to bill is 1 or slightly less than 1 and business has grown 4%, 5%, 6% sequentially. When the lead times are three to five weeks we see absolutely no reason why customer has to place a large amount of bookings in the prior quarter. Customer can give us the order today and we will ship it to them in the next three weeks. So during that environment you know, whether the bookings are 1 or 0.99 or 1.01, I don’t think it makes any difference. That’s why we don’t break out the terms anymore because it just has never correlated in our business.

Simona Jankowski

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We will take your next question from Chris Danely from JP Morgan.

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

Thanks guys. On the 16-bit mix, so Steve you are basically saying that the mix issue should be over by the end of this quarter?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

That’s correct, yes.

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

Great. And then on the long-term gross margin target of 62%, can you give us a sense of I guess what revenue or what matrix we need to see to achieve this 62%?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

I think we you know, we guided, you know couple of quarters ago we said in the next eight to ten quarters and we are basically maintaining that, so you know, you could see we were going up every quarter by you know, 20 to 25 basis points and one quarter could be little more, one quarter could be little less. We are ready to ramp our factories here with the inventory getting below than midpoint after this quarter so essentially, you should -- you know, we expect to achieve that over the next couple of years at least.

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

That’s fine and then any update on the Foundry business?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

What update are you looking for there?

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

What products or what percent of revenue Foundry is right now?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

It’s low single digits, it’s really a very small portion of the business.

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

Okay, great. And then last question you know, even though the book to bill doesn’t really matter, when was the last time your book to bill was below one for 8-bit micros, do you remember?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

No, we don’t.

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

Has it been a while or …?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

It has been below one probably in the last few quarters when we have even grown, so we have done substantial growth with less than one book to bill ratio in the past period.

Chris Danely

Analyst · JP Morgan

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions]. We will take our next question from Eric Gomberg from Thomas Weisel.

Eric Gomberg

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

Hey, guys nice result and nice job managing your inventories and the general inventories.

Ganesh Moorthy

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

Thank you.

Eric Gomberg

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

Most of my questions have been answered. Just one thing that stood out was the 16-bit development tools up by 129% sequentially; seems pretty huge. Could you talk a little about that and how that correlates to potential shipment growth of 16-bit products out of couple of quarters?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Well you know, the lead-time for developing a 16-bit product and taking into market is more like two years, it takes about two years. So the large growth of development tools does not really mean much for revenue in the next couple of quarters. The revenue that comes in the last couple of quarters is based on the work we did six quarters ago and there were substantial amount of work done six quarters ago, the backlog looks very healthy, the book to bill is extremely high on the 16-bit microcontroller. We are looking for very, very solid growth year. The new development tool simply tells you that just the party is continuing. The growth is continuing and there are more and more customers, designing with it and we are just opening a large number of new doors.

Eric Gomberg

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

Planting the seeds for ‘08 and ’09?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

What is that?

Eric Gomberg

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

Planting the seeds for ‘08 and ‘09.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Yeah, yeah, ‘08 and ‘09 yes. Very late ‘07 calendar year, but really going into early ‘08.

Eric Gomberg

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

Okay, thanks. And just on orders by geography, I think there is a lot of concern about that build up of inventory in Asia and don’t want to be a dead horse, and you had commented on overall inventory. Would you feel that there is any difference by geography, is there any difference in terms of what these or others might be holding in Asia?

Gordon Parnell

Management

No the distribution, the key categories have always been somewhat different. In Asia probably because of the matrix in their business have always tended to hold a little less than inventories and than the average. Their margins are quite lower, often they are looking to returns to earnings ratios, appropriate for their business. And while we have seen over the course of many, many quarters, the inventory moved down towards the low end of the range. We have moved down in all territories. I wouldn’t say exactly all the same page, but relatively speaking we have all behaved pretty much the same way as this tried out to be, I think improved asset managers.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

So, I think what you were concerned about is that maybe the inventory in Asia is high, but Gordon is telling you is in our case, inventory in Asia is much lower than the inventory in distribution we have seen in US and Europe.

Eric Gomberg

Analyst · Thomas Weisel

That was very helpful, thank you.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Yeah.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Harsh Kumar from Morgan Keegan.

Harsh Kumar

Analyst · Morgan Keegan

Hey guys, congratulations on a great quarter and then growth in a questionable economy, but had a kind of broader question. You are clearly taking share from other people but Steve, if I was to ask you to kind of characterize how you see the overall market maybe you can give us some color on whether you think the overall market is growing you know, your company aside?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

You know, it’s very hard to tell as we are going through the quarters whether the market is growing or not. I think we get a report that looks at everybody’s numbers at the end of the year, which gives us some reflection, but we really are not paying attention whether the market is growing or not, we are paying attention to are we growing or not.

Harsh Kumar

Analyst · Morgan Keegan

Great, thanks.

Ganesh Moorthy

Analyst · Morgan Keegan

When you look at the 8-bit microcontrollers, it seems like you know number of players which are on the top you know, one, two, three, four, five they all you know, short-term here seemed to be doing well and each may claim they’re gaining market share from the other person, but I think they are really gaining market share from the middle of the pack or the people in the low end of the pack or they’re all gaining through new applications in their respective territories. You know I believe we are growing and the latest numbers we saw from Freescale, seems like they are growing, will hear from Atmel next week, and I think most likely, we will see they are growing. Slightest decline in that segment, I saw, but it’s possible that a couple of other guys may be growing. So it doesn’t mean the 8-bit microcontroller market is growing. We have always felt for years that 8-bit microcontroller is a very good market, but somehow that growth never seemed to correlate with the SIA numbers, which has been the age-old difference. So either SIA numbers are not correct because they don’t have the data from a lot of the non-members or it’s possible that many of these companies are gaining market share over much weaker competitors, which are really at the bottom of the middle of the pack.

Harsh Kumar

Analyst · Morgan Keegan

Good, that’s very helpful. Just one follow-up, I think in the commentary guys, you might have given a 16-bit sequential growth number for September, and I might have missed that if you gave that, if you don’t mind repeating it?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Say it again …?

Harsh Kumar

Analyst · Morgan Keegan

The 16-bit sequential growth number for September?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We made 25% to 35% sequential growth.

Harsh Kumar

Analyst · Morgan Keegan

Thanks guys, great quarter.

Operator

Operator

Next we will hear from Adam Parker from Sanford Bernstein.

Adam Parker

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

Yeah. Hi, just a couple of more quick questions here. Steve, I know the markets really appreciate the dividend increases, but given as you said, the market seems determined to you know, create bad news or keep the stock low, why wouldn’t you be more aggressive with the buybacks here? I know you guys have bought your stock well in the past. Why wouldn’t you a bit more aggressive here?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Well, some of the broken records here our strategy always is to give the money back to the investors, it is their money, and if they feel their stock is cheap they can buy more stock. Stock dividends go down by the good holders of the investors who keep this for long time. We will give the money back to them and they can invest the money into the stock, if they believe it is cheap or they can be give to their investors or do whatever they like with that. You know, our goal is in general, that we believe in dividend, we do not believe in stock buyback. We buy stock only at unusual locations and last time we bought significant amount of stock was during SARS when you know, stock was selling at half the price that it sold six months later. You know, you may make an argument such time may be approaching, I hope not. But in general, our values and where our board believes strongly is to a continuous growth of dividends to give the money back to the shareholders and let them invest it.

Adam Parker

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

Well one -- I don’t know, corollary to that is as you all know your company’s fundamentals, the revenue growth, the stock and the margins are very stable among the best in the industry yet your stock itself, if you look at the standard deviation of volatility returns, is about an average or even slightly more volatile than average for broad semiconductor peer group. Why do you seem that is, do you think it is something you are doing, do you think there is something that market doesn’t get? How do you explain –- how do you think about the difference between the stability of your fundamentals and the stability of your stock?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Adam, I thought you were the analyst. I am the CEO, I don’t know. You know, I don’t understand the market. My job is to run the company, and I’m doing a damn good job at it.

Adam Parker

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

I’m not doing a good job, but I was just trying to –- that’s why I was trying to get your help.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

You know, analyzing what the stock does is neither my expertise nor my job. I deliver great results and you know, it’s now everybody else’s job to take these great results and analyze them and position it accordingly.

Adam Parker

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

But you know, I mean all of us try to look internally and say it’s only worth doing. I mean, is it something where you think you are setting your near term expectations or you are optimistic to the point where people try to play against them in the near term or is it just -- look I can’t worry about it, just deliver the good results and screw it eventually, it will take care of itself.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

I mean, it is not destroyed. I mean we are working hard. We went though a lot of conferences last quarter including yours and see a lot of investors and analysts and trying to explain the story, and I think we have explained the 8-bit story; conversion to flash microcontrollers, we are delivering that results on that. And the 16-bit story we are delivering that result from that. Analog was a little weak last quarter only 1% growth. We will come back and show you more growth there. We are delivering the margins, we are you know, making the ramp in the Fab. We have just generated record cash flow, increased the dividend again. Done all those things, but market always finds something to worry about. All quarter market has been worried about inventories. We come back and our own inventory has declined, the distribution inventory is flat. Somebody asked a question about Asia. Asia inventory is less than it is in US and Europe, and somebody else was further asking questions on the book to bill. You know, I just got this number in front of me. September quarter last year, September fiscal year ‘06, which will be September quarter last year, our book to bill ratio was 1, and in December quarter we grew 3.5% sequentially. So somebody had asked the question whether you know, have you had that cash before, so here was the quarter where the book to bill was barely one, it was only up to one and our growth was 3.5% in the following December quarter. We have done that lots and lots of different times. When the lead times are so short then book to bill and terms required don’t matter, whether people place the order on June 25th or you know July 3rd, it will absolutely make no difference. Does that help?

Adam Parker

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

Yeah I appreciate. Steve, thanks.

Operator

Operator

We will take our final question from Craig Ellis from Citigroup.

Craig Ellis

Analyst · Citigroup

Thank you, good afternoon guys. I will start just by approaching the dividend a little bit differently. Steve, you guys have done a great job, raising the dividends. The people I talked to, liked the job you’ve done with it. Can you talk about how comfortable you are continuing at the current pace in terms of that frequency with which you increased the quarterly dividend?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We have guided that we expect to generate about $500 million of free cash flow this quarter, this year. And if you look at the last two quarters, I think we are well on that pace to do that. So you know, as long as the earnings continue to rise which we are guiding towards and guiding for another $0.02 increase next quarter in earnings, we believe you know dividend is announced by the board and they are not here in the room, I believe they are comfortable with continuing to share that cash with investors. Now over time the rate of growth has to slow down -- off the dividend, you know as the numbers get larger and larger but you know we just increased it sequentially 9.3%, that’s really a pretty torrid pace.

Craig Ellis

Analyst · Citigroup

It is, and as long as there is growth in the various businesses and we will obviously at different points see cyclical dynamics in play, but if we could expect you to continue to increase the dividends is what you’re saying.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Yeah, we expect to continue to increase dividend, yeah.

Craig Ellis

Analyst · Citigroup

Okay, and then just cycling back on the 16-bit business, 20 new products in Q2, it sounds like there is going to be 10 new products in Q3, how should we think about the pace at which you want to bring out new products in that part of the business?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Well, you know, every new product development you know, doesn’t take the same time. It’s like you know they are platforms, it takes much longer to develop a platform and come up with the first -- you know, two or three products and after that you are proliferating it based on memory sizes and adding non-peripherals and stuff like that. So you know some times you are developing a brand new platform including new peripherals and other time you are proliferating existing peripherals, so don’t think of it like you know, 20 products last year, 10 products this year -- you know, like some thing is wrong. It’s just like this is you know, huge pipeline and some times people are working on tail end of releasing the products, other time they are working on the front end of developing new peripherals, new capability, new stuff that’s going to open new markets, this kind of happens all the time.

Craig Ellis

Analyst · Citigroup

But is it reasonable to think that if over the last quarter and the current quarter you are doing 10-to 20 per quarter that over time that that pace would increase or you had a comfortable pace for how you see that business over the next 18 months or so?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Well, let me see if Ganesh is comfortable giving the number about the number of new products in having production by the end of the fiscal year.

Ganesh Moorthy

Analyst · Citigroup

Yeah, our -- we are in a pace where we will have somewhere between 90 and 100 products in production by the end of fiscal year itself.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

There you go, some 65 now to you know 90 to 100 products by the end of March.

Craig Ellis

Analyst · Citigroup

Okay, thanks guys.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Welcome.

Operator

Operator

We actually do have another question from Janet Ramkissoon from Quadra Capital

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Hello Janet.

Janet Ramkissoon

Analyst · Quadra Capital

Hi guys, congratulations, another nice quarter, thanks for the dividend. Steve, just in terms of the expansion and buying equipment, is your strategy still to try to buy used equipment where you can? And given the growth in your business, when do you think you might have to visit the question of whether or not you pick up another facility, perhaps there might be an opportunity if we do have a real semiconductor downturn here?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Janet, you know first part of your question, yes we buy used equipment whenever we can. Our equipment needs are not very high here because we have largely the equipment available to what we need. We only need you know a little bit of equipment because the process which was running in fast-forward prior to our purchase was not identical to our process, it was close enough. So it’s like a 90% match so we really need a small amount of equipment here and there, but we also need -- a portion of the equipment expense is also in assembly and test, R&D and Care and other areas. So yes, we do buy used equipment wherever we can. In terms of looking at another Fab, we believe it is way too early because in the last quarter or so we have highlighted for investors our path to $1.9 billion where the two existing Fabs have current capacity of -- installed capacity of $1.4 billion. There is clean room available in our Fab4 to expand it further where the combined capacity of two Fabs becomes $1.7 billion, and we are outsourcing a portion of our product lines in, 8 bit, 16 bit analogue and all the different products which will give us about $200 million of output which will not be produced by us, but will be outsourced to professional foundries over the next five yeas, leading up to a total about $1.9 million. So I think it is quite early for us to think of any other Fab.

Janet Ramkissoon

Analyst · Quadra Capital

Okay, just on last little one if I may -- just in terms of the economy worldwide. Are you beginning to see any signs of slowdown any where or are there any particular -- you know, unusual strength in any area in your markets worldwide?

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

We are not seeing problems any where, we grew in all three geographies last quarter, in the current quarter we expect to grow in Americas we expect to grow in Asia, Europe obviously is you know, down low single digits usually in the summer quarter but Asia geography usually very strong this quarter, because the tail end of September they start to build all the products for the Christmas which has to get on the ships for -- you know six weeks journey back to US and Europe, so this is -- this should be usually a very, very good quarter and we are not seeing softness anywhere in the world driven by any of the Macro factories.

Janet Ramkissoon

Analyst · Quadra Capital

Thanks very much.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Welcome

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time, I will now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Sanghi for closing remark.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Thank you very much to all the investors and analysts who joined this call today. We will be available here for a little while, if you have questions, give us a call on the investor line otherwise we will talk to you during the quarter either at the conferences or in our road shows or other things or talk to you next quarter. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And that concludes today conference call and we thank you for joining us. At this time you may now disconnect your line.

Steve Sanghi

President and CEO

Bye-bye.