Q2 2025 Qorvo Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Doug Delieto; Vice President of Investor Relations; Qorvo Inc

Robert Bruggeworth; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Qorvo Inc

Grant Brown; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Qorvo Inc

David Fullwood; Senior VP of Sales & Marketing; Qorvo Inc

Thomas James O'Malley; Analyst; Barclays Bank PLC

Christopher Rolland; Analyst; Susquehanna International Group, LLP

Edward Snyder; Analyst; Charter Equity Research

Nicholas Doyle; Analyst; Needham & Company, LLC

Sreekrishnan Sankarnarayanan; Analyst; TD Cowen

Peter Peng; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Karl Ackerman; Analyst; BNP Paribas Exane

Presentation

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Qorvo, Inc., second quarter 2025, earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Douglas DeLieto, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Doug Delieto

Thanks very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Qorvo's fiscal 2025, second quarter earnings call. This call will include forward-looking statements that involve risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations.
We encourage you to review the safe harbor statement contained in our earnings release published today as well as the risk factors associated with our business in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC because these risk factors may affect our operations and financial results.
In today's release and on today's call, we provide both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. We provide this supplemental information to enable investors to perform additional comparisons of operating results and to analyze financial performance without the impact of certain noncash expenses or other items that may have obscure trends in our underlying performance.
During our call, our comments and comparisons to income statement items will be based primarily on non-GAAP results. For a complete reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today available on our Investor Relations website at ir.qorvo.com under Financial Releases.
Joining us today are Bob Bruggeworth, President and CEO; Grant Brown, CFO; Dave Fullwood, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing; and other members of Qorvo's management team. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bob.

Robert Bruggeworth

Thanks, Doug, and welcome, everyone, to our call. Similar to our first quarter earnings call, our prepared remarks tonight will focus on achievements and opportunities by end market. Qorvo's six end markets are automotive, consumer, defense and aerospace, industrial and enterprise, infrastructure and mobile.
Our markets are underpinned by global mega trends such as electrification, connectivity, mobility, sustainability, dedification and AI. These trends make possible new functionality and new user experiences that are made available to end users by the customers we serve and the products we enable.
Consistent with our comments at our Investor Day, in HPA, we continue to expand our defense and aerospace business during the quarter while building a broad-based business in power management. For the full fiscal year, we expect HPA will grow in the mid-teens.
In the markets served by CSG, we maintained our WiFi leadership during the quarter while investing in diverse growth businesses, including an expanding portfolio of automotive solutions and SoCs, (inaudible) matter. We expect CSG will also grow in the mid-teens this fiscal year.
In the mobile market, ACG supported a seasonal ramp during the quarter at our largest customer. As we said during our Investor Day, our largest opportunity in ACG is with this customer. They represent over half of the smartphone RF TAM and we are investing today to grow our share with them next year and in subsequent programs over multiple years.
Within the Android ecosystem, Qorvo is a leading supplier to the flagship, premium and mid-tier 5G smartphones, while the flagship and premium tiers are holding up well, the mix in the mid and entry tiers has shifted towards entry tier 5G at the expense of mid-tier 5G. In our current view, we don't expect this mix shift in Android 5G for the mid-tier to the entry tier will reverse.
While challenging in the near term, this dynamic reinforces ACG's primary strategy of investing to grow our business at our largest customer. ACG's product road map is focused primarily on 5G advanced products for our largest customer and the flagship and premium tiers of our Android customers.
Our growth opportunity and the flagship remains strong. By contrast, the mid-tier used to be approximately half of the total Android 5G volumes and has declined over the last few quarters to less than 1/3. In each of the markets we serve, our customers continue to require higher performance, greater efficiency and smaller form factor to increase functional density, enhance the user experience and extend their competitive position.
Turning to quarterly highlights. In the automotive market, we secured a V2X design win with a US-based automotive Tier 1 in support of an automotive OEM based in Germany. Production volumes for this first win are expected to ship in the current quarter. We were also selected to supply a full suite of V2X and network access device, RF products in support of an automotive OEM with production volumes also expected to ramp this quarter.
In other automotive applications, Qorvo's force-sensing touch sensors are enabling digital cockpit, climate control and the best-selling SUV of an additional automotive OEM based in Germany. For an EV OEM based in North America, Qorvo was selected to supply force-sensing touch sensors for our 2026, model launch.
We have content in this customer's current generation model and the number of placements increased in this new award. Our technology's solid surface architecture demonstrates measurable advantages over traditional buttons, both inside and outside the cabin.
In consumer markets, we increased shipments of force-sensing touch sensors in support of high-end audio headphones and expanded our touch sensor engagements in laptop track pads. We also continue to ramp our first generation battery management system for outdoor power tools and other applications. We will sample our second-generation solution later this fiscal year and target applications, including power tools and e-mobility applications, including scooters and e-bikes.
In WiFi, we offer a full portfolio of FEMs, iFEMs and filters. Our WiFi 6 shipments to consumer markets continue to grow in applications, including sound bars. Shipments of WiFi 7 also grew. The RF content opportunity is significantly higher in WiFi 7 than in previous generations, and the industry analysts expect WiFi 7 volumes to overtake WiFi 6 as soon as 2027.
In Connectivity Systems, demand for Ultra-wideband, BLE and Matter over thread was broad-based across consumer applications, including smart home, location tags, speakers and other consumer electronics. We received our first production order for our newest BLE matter, SoC from a large retailer of home furnishing products based in Europe, opening up a new addressable market for Qorvo.
By leveraging concurrent Connect technology, our SoC enables BLE, Matter and ZigBee to operate simultaneously. This ensures backward and forward compatibility given ZigBee's large installed base and the growing adoption of matter over threat, including within Smart Home and Smartphone ecosystems. Matter of a threat is a low latency, point-to-point and mesh technology that significantly upgrades the user experience versus legacy systems.
In Defense and Aerospace markets, multiyear tailwinds continue to drive our business. They include the upgrade cycle to non-terrestrial networks and for mechanical radar systems to active electronic scanning radar systems as well as continuous drivers like onshoring, the trend of one to many and system-level functionality requiring advanced RF packaging.
Design activity and D&A during the quarter was a quarterly record and diversified across markets, including terrestrial, airborne and shipborne radars, comms, space and electronic warfare. Design wins included new and existing product categories as well as new platforms and new customers.
In SATCOM, we continue to see strength in commercial communications. Qorvo has content in both the LEO satellites and the customer ground terminals with the leading satellite broadband network providers. We also have content on commercial and private jets and are helping to bring improved connectivity to air travel.
During the quarter, we were awarded a key development contract for an electronic warfare application, leveraging our station solid-state PA products. Solid-state PAs have the advantages in size, weight and power (inaudible). They are also more reliable with a lower total cost of ownership.
In Industrial and Enterprise, we continue to ramp power management solutions for enterprise SSDs to more broadly serve AI and data center applications and expand on our strong position and client SSDs for laptops.
We also expanded our engagements to supply ultra-wideband solutions and (inaudible) access points. With the inclusion of Qorvo's ultra-wideband technology, enterprise access points, service anchors, and enabling indoor navigation and other applications that leverage precision location awareness.
For smart home meter, we are developing a proprietary sub-1 gigahertz spend to support a leading smart energy ecosystem provider. In other low-power IoT applications, CAT-M and CAT-1, interest and design activity continues to build in consumer, industrial and enterprise markets.
For infrastructure markets, we introduced the industry's first 24-volt power doubler for DOCSIS 4.0 broadband and cable TV applications. This multichip module delivers more than 30% size reduction versus hybrid solutions and features adjustable DC current to optimize DC power consumption versus RF output.
We recently showcased our broadband portfolio at the SCTE Tech Expo in Atlanta, and we expect our newest solutions to build upon our leadership in DOCSIS 4.0. In the mobile market, we secured new wins at the leading Android smartphone OEM across this customer's smartphone portfolio. In the Spring 2025, flagship smartphone, we secured WiFi content and multiple 5G front-end placements in the main and secondary transmode pass.
At other Android customers, we secured additional design wins for our recently launched low, mid and high-band pad. Each LMH pad delivers a 40% savings in surface area versus prior architectures. This enables customers to leverage the space savings for other functionality, such as processing or memory.
Shipments of our [L&H] packs are expected to grow sequentially this quarter and again in March. Across Android OEMs, the adoption of ultra-wideband in smartphones represents a significant opportunity for Qorvo. During September, we built upon the design win mentioned last quarter in the Moto X 50 Ultra by securing additional ultra-wideband design wins and upcoming smartphones and types. These wins are an early indication of the trend we expect of ultra-wideband proliferating across high-volume smartphones and accessories.
Furthermore, we expanded WiFi 7 shipments across Android OEMs in support of MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 chipset, Qorvo's WiFi 7 FEMs are optimized with the Domensity-9400 to deliver flagship Android smartphones superior performance. Looking further out, we are expanding our PMIC portfolio for the mobile market beyond RF to deliver new innovations that reduce current consumption and significantly extend battery life.
We are a pioneer and leader in envelope tracking and average power tracking RF power management for smartphones, and we have been awarded a contract by a top-tier Android OEM to develop our first DC to DC PMIC for mobile phones. Our proprietary power management solutions deliver superior efficiency, and we are excited to bring our technology to flagship smartphones.
At a high level, Qorvo is investing in core strengths to drive growth with differentiated products and technologies in diverse markets. We are also executing on cost and productivity initiatives to reduce capital intensity and structurally enhance gross margin.
In ACG, we're investing to grow in our largest customer. In HPA, we're investing to grow in defense and aerospace and power management. In CSG, our growth investments are focused on automotive, next-gen WiFi and Matter and ultra-wideband SoCs.
Qorvo solves our customers' most complex RF and power challenges related to efficiency, performance and size, and we are confident in our ability to drive long-term growth and diversification.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Grant.