Good day, and welcome to Navitas Semiconductor Q3 2023 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And finally, I would like to provide all participants, this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Stephen Oliver, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Investor Relations to begin the conference. Stephen, over to you.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Stephen Oliver, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Investor Relations. Thank you for joining Navitas Semiconductor's Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. I'm joined today by Gene Sheridan, our Chairman, President, CEO and Co-Founder; and Ron Shelton, our CFO and Treasurer. A replay of this webcast will be available on our website approximately one hour following this conference call, and the recorded webcast will be available for approximately 30 days following the call. Additional information related to our business is also posted on the Investor Relations section of our website. Our earnings release includes non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures with the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our third quarter earnings release and also posted on our website in the Investor Relations section. In this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements about future events or about the future financial performance of Navitas, including acquisitions. You can identify these statements by words like we expect or we believe or similar terms. We wish to caution you that such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from expectations expressed in our forward-looking statements. Important factors that can affect Navitas business including factors that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements are described in our earnings release. Please also refer to the Risk Factors sections in our most recent 10-K and 10-Qs. Our estimates or other forward-looking statements may change, and Navitas assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other events that may occur except as required by law. And now over to Gene Sheridan, CEO.

Thank you, Steve, and thanks to everyone for joining the call today. As we continue our mission to electrify our world with next-generation power electronics, I'm pleased to announce another record quarter for Novitas as our gallium nitride and silicon carbide technologies continue to displace legacy power silicon in traditional markets and enable and accelerate new energy markets. Our Q3 revenues increased to $22 million, up 22% quarter-on-quarter and up 115% from Q3 of last year. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin also continued to increase for the fourth quarter in a row to 42.1%, up from 41.5% sequentially and up from 38.4% in Q3 last year. We also remain confident that we will more than double revenues in total for 2023 as compared to 2022. Just yesterday, Navitas' dramatic growth stories was recognized for the second year running by Deloitte, including our company in their Fast 500 list, with annual revenue increasing over 2,000% in just three years, Navitas is one of the fastest growth tech companies. In addition to our strong financial performance, it's a very exciting time at Navitas as we're launching four major new technology platforms in the second half of this year. Our GaNSafe technology launched last quarter set the new benchmark in our industry as the world's most protected, most reliable and highest performance GaN power semiconductors with advanced protection, higher power capability in cool operation, GaNSafe breaks the glass ceiling that has prevented gallium nitride from entering the high-power high-reliability markets for a decade. Now applications from AI data centers and solar inverters to EV powertrains and traction drives can benefit from this high-speed feature-rich technology for higher power density, higher efficiency, robust reliability, faster charging and lower system costs. We are also launching our Generation 4 Ganfen tapered ICs, which are our…

Thank you, Gene. In my comments today, I will first take you through our third quarter results, and then I'll walk you through our outlook for the fourth quarter and some of the market dynamics we're seeing. Revenue in the third quarter of 2023 was again well above our guidance, growing 115% year-over-year and 22% sequentially to $22.0 million. The beat was driven primarily by continued strong growth in the mobile market and initial mass production for a major Tier 1 onboard charger customer. Our results were tempered somewhat by macroeconomic factors impacting high-end consumer and fuller markets. Nevertheless, we continue to see strong positive indicators for revenue growth over the near term and long term. Our pipeline continues to grow and has added a new record, and we continue to experience strong bookings as evidenced by entering the fourth quarter nearly fully booked. Before adjusting expenses, I'd like to refer you to the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations in our press release earlier today. In the rest of my commentary, I will refer to non-GAAP expense measures. Gross margin in the third quarter increased to 42.1% from 41.5% in the second quarter of 2023 and 38.4% in the second quarter of 2022. Gross margins in the quarter were at the higher end of our guidance due primarily to excellent yields exceeding our internal targets, which we believe already leads the industry. Third quarter total operating expenses were $17.9 million, comprising SG&A expense of $7.4 million and R&D of $10.5 million. This is in line with our guidance. And as we've discussed in the past, as revenue scales, we are investing in our business in a disciplined manner as we focus on growing profitability. Putting all this together, the loss from operations was $8.7 million compared to a loss from operations…

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton of Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Hey, guys, congratulations on the results. I guess maybe, Gene, it sounds like you're going to give us a lot more detail on the four new platforms. But wndering if you might be able to just kind of give us some direction for GaNSense, GaNSafe, the Gen-3 SiC and the bi-directional, what end markets are these platforms targeting? Are there specific target end markets for each platform or do these platforms kind of address most of the end markets you're targeting?

Yes. Great question, Quinn. Yes, the GaNSafe and Gen-3 Fast silicon carbide are both targeting higher power, more industrial markets. So in general, you'll see them going into data center solar, energy storage, EV and industrial markets. GaNSafe Half-Bridge, the Generation 4 GaNSafe Half-Bridge that we're just launching is very targeted on mobile and consumer at the higher power range, 100 watts to maybe 500 watts. Bi-directional GaN, the fourth platform, that's the newest it's technology announcement, so the actual products we'll be launching next year. And it's such a groundbreaking thing, we're still debating and discussing all the different applications it might go into. It could be anything from mechanical circuit breakers being displaced by semiconductor ones, very fast, very efficient, very reliable. It could be into AC to AC motors, which are huge in industrial and appliance markets and others. So it's pretty far reaching, and we'll be exploring that further with customers as we launch the products next year.

I guess I wanted to sort of ask a question on bidirectional. I thought at least in concept of Fed, it tends to be the bidirectional in nature, right? And so what -- can you give a little bit more detail what's unique about the new bidirectional GaN fab that you've developed? Just a little bit more color would be helpful.

Yes, yes, definitely. So a number of power semiconductors can be bidirectional in flowing the current. The problems are not bidirectional and blocking the current. So if you truly have a circuit that requires you'll be able to block in both directions, with silicon, whether it's an IGBT or a super junction or even existing GaN and silicon carbide, you have to put them back to back. So one can be blocking one direction while the other one is flowing the current and vice versa. So you end up doubling up the components. And if you want the same performance, we're actually doing this all monolithically with a single chip. And if you want performance, the way the kind of math or performance works out, it could be replacing not only two back-to-back, but even four back-to-back for the same performance with a single chip and a fraction of the size, cost and the great energy efficiency and speed you get with gallium nitride.

Got it. Thank you. I’ll jump back in the queue.

Yes. Thank you, Quinn.

Your next question comes from the line of Jack Egan of Charter Equity Research. Your line is o pen.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. So regarding the in-sourcing of Epitaxy, the different types of epi reactors for silicon carbide kind of come with a set of trade-offs, regarding throughput and epi uniformity. So I was just curious about your primary rationale for in-sourcing Epitaxy. Was it largely just increase throughput and prevent any bottlenecks from developing or does in-sourcing actually give you more control and improve yields or quality or anything like that?

Yes, great question. I think there's a number of benefits you just touched on most of them, right? But I think I'd put cost, number one. I think epi has matured to the point that we can bring this in-house with a little bit of help from the equipment supplier, and we've hired a top industry expert in epi, that's done this for two other suppliers. So we think we've got the capability to do it. And number one is the cost reduction coming from having it in-house. But then there's a bunch of secondary benefits, control over your supply chain, likely shorter cycle times, assuring ourselves of having the capacity exactly when we need it in the future, controlling quality. And even I wouldn't rule out intellectual property, different things, inventions that are going to give us fundamental advantage compared to others that are buying outsource epi.

Got it. That makes sense. And for the new GaN -- since ICs, the PR said that they're expected to contribute $10 million to annual revenue. Is all that incremental or might some of that come at the expense of growth in some of your older product areas?

Yes, that is a great question. I actually do believe it's all incremental. I'll clarify. It's $10 million annualized starting to ramp throughout next year, so it wouldn't necessarily be $10 million for the full year. But this is also emerging developing things. We've just started sampling the products in the last few months and launching it this quarter. So we expect those numbers to grow over time.

Got it. Okay. Thanks. That's helpful.

You bet.

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Moore of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could touch on your smartphone demand, maybe starting with China. You mentioned the strength there. How much of that do you think is penetration for you guys versus a recovery in that market? And kind of where do you think you stand with inventory there?

Yes, definitely. Thanks, Joe. Yes, Smartphone is obviously a very pleasant upside for us started in Q2 of this year and has gone from sort of strength to strength. It started and continues to be heavily based in China, Xiaomi and OPPO are the two that we highlighted. We traditionally had a very strong relationship with both of them, very high market share with our GaN. So it's super exciting to see this kind of upside To your question though, about where is it coming from? It's actually a classic case of this displacement technology that we have today. They don't have to ship any more chargers for their numbers to grow dramatically. We mentioned that 30% of their total number of chargers next year, we are projecting to use gallium nitride. So even if their business was flat, you could be going from 10% or 15% adoption rates to 20% or 30% driving a lot of that revenue. So I think a lot of it is just conversion or displacement from legacy silicon over to more efficient, more powerful, faster charging gallium nitride. And it's not just China. We did mention also the great success we're having at Samsung with the S23, but that's already driving second half revenue growth as well.

And I just as a follow-up, I did want to ask about the S23 win. Can you talk about what kind of penetration you might see there and how pervasive that technology could be within Samsung?

Yes. We don't have specific adoption percentages on the Samsung stuff like we do with Xiaomi, OPPO. Clearly, they're earlier stage, but I think Xiaomi and OPPO have been kind of leading the charge, if you will, for mobile charging for the last few years since candid option got started. So we see the other players in Korea and US following their -- in those sweet steps, if you will, from a GaN adoption perspective. It is being sold as I believe, an inbox or at least an optional inbox. So when you go to -- you go to buy that S-23 from our experience, the attach rates on even what we call optional inbox can be very, very high, especially when it's promoted as a GaN charger, fast charger, which I believe is adhesive.

Great. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Jon Tanwanteng of CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions and nice quarter. You guys mentioned some slowdown that you saw in particular in market solar, high-end consumer. Would you say that's a net negative for your near-term compared to where you expected it to be? Or is that being offset by these bookings and new business in other places just versus your internal plan?

Yes. We haven't -- thanks, Jon. We haven't quantified that adverse impact, but there's no doubt we could have done even higher growth rates than we're achieving today in the near-term quarters, if we didn't see some slowdown in consumer and solar. With that said, we see strength in the other markets. We see strength in our pipeline growing, both in number of customers now for projects. So despite kind of a mixed market environment out there and equip slowdowns in growth rates in some cases, we see us growing significantly faster than the market, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, I think that probably translates to 50% growth or more next year. We haven't given official guidance, but as an early indication that speaks to the strong growth despite kind of a choppier mixed market environment out there.

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then, Ron, you mentioned something about entering Q4 fully booked, is that versus your existing capacity? Or how should we qualify that comment. Just help me understand what it means to be fully booked.

Yes. So just very simply, when I say reference fully booked, as we look at our revenue outlook for the quarter end, our capacity available, it's effectively fully booked. So any guidance I gave would suggest that most of that was in backlog at the beginning of the quarter.

Got it. And then just a follow-on to that how do you improve the capacity going forward to drive that -- the growth that Gene just mentioned in the past comment.

Yeah. I could grab that one. So we mentioned early this year, maybe it was even late last year, we signed an agreement with X-FAB for a 500% increase in capacity. That obviously is a big deal that includes material and FAB capacity. And that's throughout this year and into next year. So we're benefiting today by growing not only our backlog as Ron said, but growing that capacity quarter-by-quarter appreciably throughout this year next year. In a similar way, TSMC expanded the GaN capacity and tripled it and finished that one up last year. So we're in a pretty strong position to fill. In fact, we're building -- we're shipping all we can build on GaN as well, not that we don't have the capacity, but the orders keep coming in with very short lead times. So we're constantly scrambling to try to fulfill those upside demand in Q3 and Q4.

Got it. That's great color. Thank you, Gene.

You bet. Thanks, Jon.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Quinn Bolton of Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Hey just had a quick follow-up. The earn-out liability seems to be jumping all over the place. I think it was $70 million on the balance sheet last quarter down to 30-something million this quarter. Just wondering if you might be able to help us as we think about that earn-out liability for the GeneSiC acquisition, as liability comes down, does that mean that the GeneSiC revenue outlook is negatively affected? Or what's the -- what should we be reading into kind of the GeneSiC outlook as that liability comes down?

Yeah, Quinn, good question, just as a point of clarification, with the GeneSiC acquisition there was an earn-out as part of the deal, but we're past the period where that earn-out ran. So what you see on the balance sheet today, that earn-out liability actually goes back to the IPO. And that earn-out liability goes up and down based on our stock price. So it's has nothing to do with the GeneSiC acquisition and is only related to earn-out related to the IPO.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification, Ron.

Yeah, you bet.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Lipacis from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Clarification, a couple of questions, so to the question about the mobile strength, so it sounds like that this is penetration or expansion you expanding inside of product lines of your customers, and you haven't yet seen broader handsets start to bounce up off the bottom. Is that an accurate interpretation of what you were qualifying for your growth in mobile?

Yeah. It's a good question, Mark. It's clearly adoption or conversion from silicon is the main driver. I actually couldn't quote or their total mobile charger shipments, probably Xiaomi and Oppo, of course, are in a better position to talk about, how much they're shipping and where there might be a bottom overall, but we're certainly the beneficiary of significant conversion from silicon to GaN. So it's hard for me to quantify the two, but clearly, the predominant factor is conversion from legacy silicon over to our GaN ICs.

Got you. Okay. That's helpful. And is it fair to assume that that linearity of bookings that you've kind of ramped through the quarter? And is that fair? I mean, it kind of sounds like you guys are really hitting your stride here.

What do you mean by linearity maybe? Or could you clarify?

Well, if you think about what your total bookings are for the quarter, you could have a-third, a-third, a-third or it could have ramped 20/40/50 or something like that as 20/30/50 bookings ramping through the quarter?

Yes. I mean I think it's fair to say, while we started the quarter pretty heavily booked up, as Ron said, we -- I also mentioned we continue to get sort of short lead time upside orders, especially from the mobile guys and they historically don't give you a ton of advanced notice. But we'd certainly like to be more linear. So we're building everything we can in the back of the quarter just because that's when some of these upsides orders are also coming in early in the quarter kind of within cycle time putting pressure on us to try to ramp up faster.

Got you. And then, Ron, you talked about the cash balance. How much cash would you -- do you feel like you need to have on the balance sheet to run the company. Could you talk about appetite for further acquisitions going forward? And if so, what kind of is in your sweet spot? Thanks.

Yeah, sure. Good question. Well, with respect to the balance sheet and cash, clearly, we have enough cash and have been consistent to certainly run the business to operating breakeven and execute on our epi expansion that we've talked about before. I think beyond that, our need to approach the capital markets, raise equity or debt would be tied to a transaction such as an acquisition. So today, though, we feel really good about the balance sheet and where we stand with cash, no debt. I think we're being much better with working capital and being efficient with working capital, certainly efficient with our CapEx. So -- so we're certainly comfortable with the balance sheet and where it sits today.

Fair enough. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy of Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Thanks and congratulations on the great results. And I came on the call a little late, so if I'm repeating a question, and I apologize. But have your costs come down as you've mentioned tripling the capacity with TSMC and then also there's just lots of news in the press about silicon carbide wafer substrates coming down in price. Are you able to benefit from that? And is that helping gross margin expansion?

Yeah. I think it's certainly a driver. I mean we're coming out of an environment where I think people are dealing with cost increases, right? What we saw TSMC on GaN and other places throughout the whole industry. So I don't see reversing that dramatically that quickly. I think costs are reasonably stable. I think prices are reasonably stable. So I don't think it translates into big gross margin jumps. I think where we can capitalize on cost reductions. Obviously, in-house epi is one example. The yield is getting a bit better than even we expected with the great yields that Ron talked about. We're generally going to try to use that for better pricing power to drive market share and continue the great growth and adoption rates as a general approach. But with that said, we're also committed to our margin expansion plans as we've always talked about, and we continue to balance the two.

And I guess I would assume that 4 major new tech platforms that you have are all going to be margin accretive?

Yeah, exactly. We generally expect any new products, especially big ones like these, we're going to be highly valuable in bringing our margins up, accelerating that margin expansion and delivering margins that are well above whatever the corporate average is at the time.

Okay. Great. Thanks again. Thanks and congratulations again. Here we go.

Your next question comes from Jack Egan of Charter Equity Research. Your line is open.

Hey guys. Thanks for taking the follow up. I just have one quick one. I was curious about the inventory write-off that you had in the quarter. Was that just kind of like a onetime thing? Or could it be implying that there's some risk of obsolescence with some of your products. I could see also how see how that's just the technology moving so fast that things become obsolete pretty quickly. But I'm just curious on your thoughts on that.

Yes, Jack, good question and you nailed it. You answered the question for me, Ames. So the write-off had to do with older generation Gen 1, Gen 2 product. And our customer base, as we want them to, is moving very quickly to of our Gen 3, Gen 4 and beyond products, and that's happening right now. And you try to make kind of balance that, balance that transition, and it's hard to do. And so what we ended up this quarter as we look out over the next 12 to 15 months. We had some older generation product on the books, and the right thing to do is take a reserve against it. So it's a onetime thing against those products. And again, it's something we evaluate every quarter. But that's what drove it. So it's really about a transition in next-gen products.

Got it. That make sense. Okay. well, that’s all for me. Thanks.

[Operator Instructions] And as there are no further questions, I would like to thank our speakers for today's presentation, and thank you all for joining us. This now concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.