Supermicro (SMCI) Q1 2027 earnings call transcript

Transcript, summary, guidance, and what analysts pressed on from the Supermicro call on November 3, 2026.

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Held
November 3, 2026
Length
1 h 1 min
Tone
Positive0.55
Analysts
5
Words
6,920
FY27 revenue target
$72 billion to $82 billionabout 12% above prior target
FY27 AI-related revenue
70 to 80%based on current backlog
Q1 delayed deployments
approximately $2.3 billionscheduled for earlier periods
Q1 underlying revenue
approximately $17.6 billionexcluding delayed deployments
Inventory and production cycle
74 daysdown from about 100 days
Cycle-time target
50 daysover coming quarters
December rack capacity
more than 8,000 racks per monthincluding over 4,000 DRC racks
Starting cash
$6.9 billionmanagement cited strong funding position

Summary

Management framed the quarter as evidence that DCPBS is improving customer demand, margins and delivery economics, while component shortages constrain the outlook.

  • $2.3B$2.3B of revenue reflected deployments delayed from earlier periods; management said similar catch-up should not recur at the same magnitude.
  • 12%~12% gross margin was described as a stabilizing foundation, with diversification intended to expand margins further.
  • Inventory and production cycle time fell to 74 days from about 100 days over three quarters, with a 50-day target.

Guidance

  • 12%$72B–$82B fiscal 2027 revenue target, about 12% above the target given one quarter ago
  • 80%70–80% of fiscal 2027 revenue expected from AI-related solutions, based on current backlog
  • 12%~12% gross margin range described as the business’s current foundation
  • 50 days inventory and production cycle-time target over coming quarters
  • More than 8,000 racks per month production capacity targeted by December, including over 4,000 DRC racks

What analysts pressed on

  • 01Customer commitments and pipeline visibility: management cited strong orders and improving visibility across customer sizes and geographies, but gave no committed-volume share.
  • 02Prepayments and working capital: management expects customer prepayments to continue supporting funding needs, citing improved cash conversion efficiency.
  • 03Gross-margin trajectory: management called ~12% a foundation and said diversification can expand margins, but did not quantify quarterly margins.
  • 04Deferred deployments: management said unusually large delayed deliveries had been released and similar catch-up should not recur at the same magnitude.
  • 05Supply constraints and growth composition: management identified key-component shortages, said demand exceeds availability, and excluded significant second-half ASP growth.
  • 06Capital needs and financing: management said it has no equity-raise plans and would assess debt-market options if funding opportunities arise.

Notable disclosures

  • 44%44% of quarterly revenue came from one large data-center customer, versus 28% for fiscal 2026 overall.
  • 49%Two customers represented 49% and 17% of quarter-end accounts receivable, respectively.
  • $3.1BDays sales outstanding improved from 59 days to 36 days, while deferred revenue rose approximately $3.1B, mostly from customer prepayments.
  • Management said the fiscal-year outlook excludes significant second-half ASP growth despite rising component costs.
  • New CFO Mark Long named transparency, working-capital management and capital-structure optimization as priorities.

Risks raised

  • Key-component shortages, including GPUs, are extending delivery timelines and limiting revenue conversion.
  • Data-center readiness for large deployments makes the timing and pace of second-half revenue uncertain.
  • Customer concentration is elevated, with one customer accounting for 44% of quarterly revenue.
  • Component-cost increases can occur more than quarterly, but management’s outlook assumes no significant second-half ASP growth.

Tone: Positive 0.55

Management expressed strong demand and confidence in share gains and cash capacity, while emphasizing supply shortages, deployment timing and customer concentration.

Who spoke

Company

  • Michael StagerSenior Vice President of Corporate Development
  • Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
  • Mark LongChief Financial Officer

Analysts

  • Katherine MurphyAnalyst, Goldman Sachs
  • Ananda BaruahAnalyst, Loop Capital
  • Joseph CardosoAnalyst, J. P. Morgan
  • Ruplu BhattacharyaAnalyst, BofA Securities
  • Unidentified AnalystAnalyst

Full transcript

Analyst questions are marked with a bar. Timestamps are into the recording.

Prepared remarks

00:02

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jen and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Super Micro's first quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings call. Joining us today are Charles Liang, founder, president, and chief executive officer, Mark Long, chief financial officer, former chief financial officer, David Wiegand, and Michael Stager, senior vice president of corporate development. 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. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. Michael Stager, you may begin your conference.

00:52

Michael StagerSenior Vice President of Corporate Development

Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon and welcome to Super Micro's conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 2027. As you heard with me today, our Charles Liang, founder, chairman, chief executive officer, Mark Long, chief financial officer, and former chief financial officer, David Wiegand. By now, you should have received a copy of the press release from the company that was distributed at the close of regular trading and is available on the company's website. Our calls being webcast live on Super Micro's investor relations website and will be available for replay until the conference call. Later to discuss your financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 27. The content of today's call is Super Micro's property. It can't be reproduced or transcribed without our prior written consent.

During this call, we may make forward looking statements based on current expectations, including with respect to our business plans and performance ongoing market trends and future financial results. These are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties and our actual results may differ materially. For discussion of factors that could affect our future financial results in business, please refer to the disclosure in today's earnings release. Our most recent form, 10K and Q, and the reports that we may file on form 8K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All of our statements are made as of today, November 3, 2026, and are based on information currently available to us, except as required by law. We assume no obligation to update any such statements.

During this call, we will discuss non-GAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of these non-GAP financial measures to GAP financial measures and our prepare remarks, which is posted on our website. Our second quarter, fiscal 27, quite period. Begin to the close of business Friday, December 11, 2026.

With that, let me turn the call over to Charles.

02:37

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Thank you, Michael, and thank you all for joining us today. Following fiscal 2026, where we nearly double our annual revenue, fiscal 2007 is off to a record start. Q1 revenue reached $19.9 billion, between the high end of our pre-alencement and where ahead of our original outlook of $15 billion. This is a greater achievement, and it shows more and more customers, putting forward our AI and IT total solutions. Most importantly, our data center building block solution, DCPBS, central to this growth, driven it, customer trust and preference, enhancing our profitability and creating a sustainable long-term shareholder value. Over 30 years, simple records focus have always been on delivering optimized total solution matter to our customers. We will continue to leverage our engineering technology, global resource, and the manufacturing capacity.

With high-ear to accelerate customers' deeper image. Moreover, I'm glad that not just large cloud and new cloud, small cloud company, company and organization across enterprise, storage, IoT, and both country and corporate storming verticals, relying on and adopting stable Michael's total solution every day. We have executed our commitment to drive higher, bottom-line, profitability in Q1. Now, again, growth margin expanded by 330 basis points year over year to 12.8%. This expansion was driven by a hair seal customer mix across enterprise AI and IT accounts.

By first, product mine built on our system building blocks and growing revenue contribution from our high-armaging DCPBS mode, including our DCPBS hardware, software, and unique service stacks. This directory aligns with our strategic low-map to build a sustainable, our digital growth margin model by delivering superior technology innovation faster TTM and TTP faster time to market and faster time to deployment and total solution value proven over more than two years. In real world, cosmetic agreements, DCPBS delivers four key values that non-traditional server OEM and overseas CM can match.

First, optimize TTP time to delivery. By delivering factory tests, brother and player, drug scale systems, and DCPBS building blocks complete the solution, including data center management software directly to customer side.

Second, optimize TTO time to online for shortening live compute readiness on quarters two months and four than two weeks. And third, DCPBS maximize the system uptime through building blocks that eliminating thermal power, software, and service bottleneck. And number four, lower TCO by slashing energy consumption and facility time to accelerate and improve data center probability. Whether our customer are building gigawatt scale AF factory or deploying rapid single container part solution, Superman does DCPBS have built AI infrastructure faster, better, cleaner, and at a lower cost to our customers. Because optimized hardware alone cannot run an efficient AI data center. Managing thousands of the core GPU work require intelligent real-time software orchestration, super cloud composer, SCM, delivers SIMDs, drug scale management, and full-of-stack hardware facility integration, super micro data center manager, SDM, provide concrete power and thermal control from individual know up to full building infrastructure for end-to-end hardware lifecycle management.

And our super micro operation manager, suite, featuring director and developer console modules, enable experimental model and token as service, with ease for error and and agentic AI workloads.

Attaching SCM, SDM, and SOM directly to our DCPBS portfolio, reminets, software, regimen, patient, for our customers, while driven higher value software and tech growth. Furthermore, SCM enhanced co-home service now features AI-driven new course diagnosis, significantly improving data center uptime, and given our customer complete operational confidence. Equally, critical to our total solution advantage is our new expanded global data center service organization. Here, our on-site deployment teams, backed by our D-engineer, and weir train post deployment service staff, work directly alongside customer teams through TR service offering to efficiently maximize cluster uptime. By using automated elementary, our service team continuously monitoring thermal power delivery and non-hairs in real time to solve a potential problem before they close time time, while our dedicated on-site engineer enters the deployment validation and immediately hardware maintenance.

This proactive, high-touch service model, user, people customer trust, drive high value, recurring service revenue, and for fear, our highest commitment, bringing complete peace of mind to our customers through high-quality infrastructure total solutions. To realize this, I'm a match, please, our solution efficiency. Our global manufacturing footprint and scale, advancing rapidly. We are actively expanding our physical footprint with major projects underway in Silicon Valley and Taiwan. That will add meaning of square feet of fully automated production space and our active service bandwidth.

Furthermore, we are accelerating our containerized data center production in Asia and USA. Our global manufacturing and service network put us on track to produce more than 8,000 order orders, most powerful racks per month, including over 4,000 DRC racks by this December.

On the technology firm, she will make a continuous to lead the market across major city platforms. We are among the first to market shipping in India, very open, and we are 72 racks with our DCPBS and DRC2. We recently had also launched the NVIDIA lubin and Vera lubin CPU rack, and they are ready to ship now as well. By the way, our optimized DSX part solutions are also commuted for AMD, MS-RFT and MS-RFT-5x platform, a good demand momentum now still, as we advance to TUS and MI-450 total solutions. Additionally, we are progressing in tier GOM 6 plus, but from alongside our new AGI CPU-based solutions, optimized specifically for a gender care market. At the same time, we continue to expand our comprehensive age and IoT product portfolio while consistently lowering our storage product line, bringing real-time complete package of influencing capability directly to the intelligent age.

These new products accelerate our strategic focus on enterprise customers as companies expand the tool for scaling the model, enterprise data governance, and high suitable inferencing workload. We recently announced several major strategic patternal ships, combining ship o-michos, DCPBS, with the orders deep in technology company, including Cisco, NetApp, Nutanix, and others. With addition on a T01 partnership community, we are embedding ship o-michael DCPBS footprint deeply into the orders most trusted enterprise. I know some investors and market experts have recently raised questions and concerns about AI capital expenditure efficiency and return on investment. Let me be clear. Supermichael is uniquely positioned to thrive in this environment.

For over 30 years, we have been focusing on the server and storage industry right here in the United States, longer than almost all of our competitors. Building a mature, well-established, domestic manufacturing and engineering footprint, that our competitor simply had to match. This ship U. S. heritage and combined with our unique DCPBS hardware, software, and service total solution, directly sold over the ROI challenge for our customers, by optimizing TTP, time to delivery, TTO, time to organize, and computing uptime, and energy efficiency. Whether our customers are building massive T01, AI factory, or people in enterprise-identical AI workload, ship o-michael and ensure their capital investment can work into revenue faster and more costly recently than anyone else would believe.

We are dreaming stone internal at this point, solute continuous operational optimization, factory automation, and skill development, solute technology, process, refinement, and training. We have successfully reduced our inventory and production turn a long time from about 100 days to 74 days, over the past three quarters.

Looking ahead, our target is to further streamline our inventory and production cycle down to 50 days over the coming quarters. It's not easy, but we believe we will achieve it. This ongoing efficiency optimization will continue to strengthen ship o-michael's cash flow, working capital cycle, and drive higher on the bottom line of profitability.

Doesn't matter how competitive the market gets, more customer will allow the ship o-michael TTPBS that include data center and hardware, management, solarware, and end-to-end data center services. Now, let's turn to our outlook for a future year, 2027. While overall demand and our growth momentum remain very strong across every firm. We must be recognized that key components shortage continue to impact delivery time night across the IT industry, even GPU.

New customer program and strategic ecosystem partnership are ramping strongly, but we want to remain prudent about some key components ability and volatile pricing. Based on what we see today, we are anticipating our fiscal 2027 revenue target will be in the range of 72 billion to 82 billion. That is about 12% higher than the target we said one quarter ago.

Before I turn the call over, I want to highlight a few important leadership update. First, we are pleased to welcome a long, long time industry technology leader, Sasha Krishna Pura, to our both of directors, bringing deep data center operational experience and expertise to support our scary.

Second, my senior theory thanks to David Wager for his six years of CFO leadership during our period of massive growth. We look forward to his ongoing support and contribution in optimizing our operation to a much bigger scale.

Finally, I'm delighted to introduce Mark Dom, our new CFO, who's a dedicated, I guess, 30-40 years. Thank you, and financial leadership will be a strong path for our next phase of growth. Now I will change what I call to Mark.

19:37

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

Thank you, Charles, and good afternoon, everyone. This is my first call with you, so let me take two minutes before we get to the numbers. I've spent much of my career in technology infrastructure finance, including as Chief Financial Officer of a public company in this industry. What brought me to Super Micro is that the hardest part is already built. Deep engineering advantage, a real lead in liquid cooling and rack scale integration, and a key position in the largest infrastructure build-out of our careers.

What the company needs now is financial capability that matches its engineering and operating capabilities. I'm excited to join Super Micro at this pivotal time and look forward to helping Charles and the team continue to deliver an expanding portfolio of innovative solutions to a growing global customer base, including some of the largest, most demanding customers who are shaping the future of the AI era. To do that will require continued financial discipline, transparency, deeper engagement with stakeholders, working capital management, and capital structure optimization, which will be my areas of focus. Now to the quarter, total revenue was $19.9 billion of 298% year over year and 79% sequentially. That is above our guidance range of $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion and above the preliminary range of $18.5 billion to $19.5 billion we provided on October 20.

As Charles noted, approximately $2.3 billion represented deployments, originally scheduled for earlier periods due to customer and data center readiness. Excluding that, underlying revenue was approximately $17.6 billion. AI solutions contributed approximately 71% of revenue compared with 59% in Q4. Based on our current backlog, we expect AI related solutions to represent approximately 70 to 80% of revenue for fiscal 2027. Enterprise and channel revenue was $4.9 billion for 25% of revenue. Up to 229% year over year and down 12% sequentially.

OEM appliance and large data center revenue was $14.7 billion for 74% of 321% year over year and 167% sequentially, driven by production rents on several large AI data center design ways. The 5G, telco and edge segment, while still small and relative terms grew significantly both year over year and sequentially. By geography, the United States represented 80% of revenue.

You're up 11%, Asia 6% and the rest of the world 3%. The United States grew 771% year over year and 103% sequentially. While the US remains the largest market for large scale AI data centers, we are seeing growing momentum in other regions as large customers expand globally and governments and enterprises plan and fund significant AI data centers in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In the quarter, one large data center customer represented 44% of revenue compared with 28% for fiscal 2026 as a whole. In our 10Q, you will also see that two customers accounted for 49% and 17% of accounts receivable at quarter end. I want to provide more context for this.

Concentration at this level is a consequence of the scale at which AI infrastructure is now being built. A single deployment today can exceed our total quarterly revenue from just one year ago. We expect concentration to stay elevated while these build outs run and to moderate as our enterprise and sovereign businesses grow. What matters alongside the concentration is the quality of the exposure.

So let me give you that. Deferred revenue increased by approximately $3.1 billion during the quarter. An overwhelming majority of which reflects customers paying in advance of delivery.

Days sales outstanding improved from 59 days to 36 days. We recorded no material credit losses in the quarter. On large deployments, we frequently require deposits and often build against delivering milestones. We evaluate counterparty credit before committing manufacturing capacity and critical components. And we maintain a $1.8 billion receivables purchase facility that gives us flexibility on both cash timing and credit exposure. We have declined business in this market. On terms, we were not comfortable with. And in the current environment, I expect we will continue to make that choice. Non gap gross margin was 12.8%. That is 200 to 240 basis points above our guidance range of 10.4% to 10.8%. And 330 basis points above the first quarter of last year.

On a gap basis, gross margin was 12.7%. It is also down 480 basis points from the 17.6% we reported in Q4. And I want to take that apart because a single factor explanation would be misleading. The key factor in impacting gross margin was the Q1 AI revenue mix, which increased from 59% in Q4 to 71% in Q1. The customer and product mix within our Q1 business was weighted toward large scale AI deployments, which carried lower gross margins than the more diversified enterprise and channel business. Benefits from tariff relief and lower inventory reserves during the quarter were largely offset by certain lower margin deferred revenues, which were recognized during the quarter. I want to be precise about one point, because I know how the mix figures can be read.

The sequential decline is not evidence that AI platform revenue lacks margin. It reflects which customers took delivery in which for the clearest way to see the underlying trend is to look at the last two quarters together, which neutralizes the deferral timing. Across Q4 and Q1 combined, revenue was approximately 31.1 billion dollars and non gap gross margin was approximately 14.5%. For the same two quarters a year earlier, revenue was approximately $10.8 billion and gross margin was approximately 9.5%. On that normalized basis, revenue nearly tripled and gross margin improved by roughly 500 basis. We continue to demonstrate significant operating leverage.

Revenue proved 298% year over year against an 89% increase in non gap operating expenses. Gap operating expenses were 477 million, up 67% year over year and 5% sequentially. Non gap operating expenses were $384 million, up 89% year over year and 8% sequentially. The sequential increases reflect higher head count costs and research and development spending as we invest in multiple new platforms for AI data center and enterprise applications. Non gap operating margin was 10.9% compared with 14.3% in Q4. Here too, the two quarter view is more useful one.

Across Q4 and Q1 combined, non gap operating expenses were approximately 741 million dollars for about 2.4% of revenue and non gap operating margin was approximately 12.1% compared with roughly 5.4% for the same two quarters a year earlier. We intend to keep investing in R&D field service and our global footprint and we expect operating expenses to keep growing well below the rate of revenue. Other income and expense was a net expense of $34 million consisting of $49 million of interest expense and other expense offset by $83 million of interest expense on our convertible notes and revolving credit facilities. The tax provision was $435 million on a gap basis and $455 million on a non gap basis with an effective tax rate of 21.4% on both bases.

I would like to expand on some points made in the last earnings call regarding earnings per share because our capital structure now has a moving part that I do not think is well understood. We calculate earnings per share using the two class method which reflects the mandatory convertible preferred stock we issued in Q4. That instrument carries a fixed dividend of approximately $75 million per quarter and converts to common stock in June 2029. Between now and then of the dividend and the allocation of earnings to that participating security reduce earnings available to common shareholders this quarter by approximately $312 million in aggregate. The absolute earnings per share were $1.75 against guidance of 89 cents to 98 cents.

Non gap diluted earnings per share were $1.81 against guidance of $1.01 to $1.10. Gap basic earnings per share were $1.92. Now the working capital which I think will help explain key elements of how we operate of this. Our cash conversion cycle improved from 149 days to 97 days. A 52 day improvement in a single quarter. At our Q1 revenue run rate that difference represents roughly $10 billion of working capital the business would otherwise have needed to fund. The cash flow statement shows we used $434 million of cash in operations on 19.9 billion of revenue. For all of fiscal 2026 we used $6.8 billion on $39.1 billion of revenue. Capital expenditure in the quarter was $47 million.

So free cash flow was negative $481 million against negative $7 billion for fiscal 2026. Let me break down the 52 days including both the positives and the areas for potential improvement. Days of inventory improved 45 days to 74. Days sales outstanding improved 23 days to 36. Up by faster collections and by customer prepayments. Days payable outstanding moved against us from 29 days to 13 which consumed roughly $3 billion and reflects timing of payments to suppliers in a supply constrained environment. The largest single driver was customer prepayment. Deferred revenue increased approximately $3.1 billion in the quarter. Accounts receivable grew $3.6 billion and inventory grew $2.5 billion to support the revenue ahead of us and prepayments funded most of that bill.

We expect the cash conversion cycle for the current quarter to be within the band of plus or minus 10% versus Q1 which enables us to appropriately manage our working capital while also executing against attractive market opportunities. We ended the quarter with $6.9 billion of cash and cash equivalents, bank borrowing and convertible notes total $8.6 billion for net debt of $1.7 billion compared with $1.2 billion at the end of June 4th. Inventory was $15.1 billion up from $12.9 billion built to support the revenue we expect in coming quarters. We are in compliance with all covenants at quarter end.

On capital structure more broadly we are starting from a strong foundation. The $5.6 billion we raised in June was raised specifically to fund the working capital behind the orders we are now delivering. As we identify high quality growth opportunities we will optimize our capital structure to support them and we will do that in ways that fortify the balance sheet without taking on unnecessary costs. That means matching the duration and the form of our funding to the working capital and the assets it supports and being deliberate about when and whether we access markets. I will be transparent with you every quarter about dilution, securities and available capacity. We ended the quarter with a record backlog providing stronger visibility for the current quarter and the remainder of the fiscal year.

Turning to guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2027 we expect net sales of $19.5 billion to $21.5 billion and gross margin of 12% to 12.5%. We expect gap diluted earnings per share of $1.59 to $1.83 and non-gapped diluted earnings per share of $1.66 to $1.90. That assumes gap operating expenses of approximately $455 million including approximately $102 million of stock based compensation which is excluded from non-gapped. We expect other income and expense including interest expense to result in a net expense of approximately $58 million. Gap and non-gapped tax rates of approximately 21% and gap diluted share count of approximately $753 million and a non-gapped diluted count of approximately $769 million. Preferred dividends of approximately $75 million and capital expenditure of $70 million to $80 million.

For the full fiscal year we are raising our revenue outlook to $72 billion to $82 billion from $65 billion to $72 billion. We expect full year gross margin of 11.8% to 12.2%. Let me connect that to the quarter we just recorded. Key one included approximately $2.3 billion of ketchup from prior period deployments. So underlying revenue was approximately $17.6 billion. The full year range does not assume that ketchup repeats. It does assume continued sequential growth in underlying demand and it reflects materially better visibility into customer deployment schedules than we had 90 days ago.

Our business continues to strengthen and momentum in building for fiscal 2027. Although we are dated by supply constraints and data center readiness and we are focused on disciplined execution, credit-worthy county parties and expanding our higher margin revenue streams.

A margin I want to be straightforward about what the full year range implies. With q1 at 12.8% q2 got it to 12 to 12.5%. The full year range implies gross margin in the second half below the first half. That is a mixed effect. We expect AI solutions to move toward the upper end of the 70 to 80% range as the large deployments in our backlog ship and those carry lower gross margin than enterprise and channel verticals. Within each category we expect margins to hold or improve.

What governs the range is not demand and it is not our ability to build. It is the pace at which customer facilities become ready to receive what we have already manufactured and the availability of key components. The finding constraints on AI build-outs across this industry right now are land power and data center shelves. We have better visibility into that than we did and we will update you as the year progresses.

Let me close where I started. This was a quarter of strong growth with high quality customers. Revenue nearly quadrupled year over year. Gross margin came in well above our guidance and customer prepayments funded most of the working capital needed to deliver in. Behind those results is a broad and innovative portfolio from DC, BBS, RAC scale and liquid school systems to enterprise storage edge and software that positions us for the most demanding workloads and the widest range of use case in the AI building. My focus going forward is the one I described at the outset. Financial discipline so the growth is profitable growth, transparency so that you can see how this business works from quarter to quarter including the timing effects that moves our number.

Deeper engagement with all of our stakeholders, working capital management, building on the improvement in our cash conversion cycle this quarter and a capital structure optimized to support high quality growth from a strong foundation. I'm looking forward to meeting many of you over the coming months. Michael, we are ready for questions.

Questions and answers

40:10

Michael StagerSenior Vice President of Corporate Development

Great, Jan, let's pull for questions. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.

40:51

Your first question comes from the line of Katherine Murthy with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open, please go ahead.

40:57

Katherine MurphyAnalyst, Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you for the question and great to connect. First, I want to ask just about the raised revenue outlook. Understand that land power and data center shelves are the binding constraints here, but wanted to understand in your full year outlook and then in your pipeline, what share of those projects do you have line of sight into the off takers and the committed volume there? And then I have a solid question. Thank you.

41:21

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, I mean, as you know, the power and even GPU, some components shortage, right? But because our solutions outperform the industry and service have a customer view the data center quicker and also keep their computing power up time much better. So indeed, we continue to gain more customer and gain much share. So we feel pretty optimistic for a continued share growth.

42:02

Katherine MurphyAnalyst, Goldman Sachs

And then as a follow up, could you talk more about the customer prepayments in the quarter and how we should think about that continuing to support your working capital efficiency going forward? Is that something we can expect in the value that DC BBS and the market share gain strategy that you've talked about?

42:28

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, as you know, I mean, now cash flow will be tied to a lot of companies. But as a sugar Michael, because we have a better total solution, again, our DCBBS that attract a lot of customer. able to pay us on time. And we feel very distorted to continue to grow our business.

42:56

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

Marie, may I add something? Yeah, I think the, you know, the advantage as Charles pointed out is really around the quality of the customer base. So very large credit worthy customers who, you know, pay very quickly. They provide, you know, very strong cash flow for us. But the broad customer base is providing more prepayments. And that discipline enables us to fund a lot more of this working capital. And, you know, I think you should expect that to continue. So, you know, we feel like we're in very good position. The company has done a lot since they raised capital in the summer. And since the cash conversion cycle has improved. So working capital efficiency has has gone up substantially.

43:53

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, as we can share, we improve, we improve our business in terms of cash flow in two areas. One is we improve inventory and production turn around time from about 120 day to now 70 day. And we believe we will be able to continue to improve that production and immediately turn around time. Second phase. Second point, day on time, or even pay a quick turn that on. So we are very sorry in this area.

44:43

Your next question comes from the line of Ananda Perua with Loop Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

44:48

Ananda BaruahAnalyst, Loop Capital

Yeah, thanks guys for taking the question. Congrats on the progress and Mark, welcome. I have, yeah, too, if I could, I guess the first one, Mark is just on the growth margin and the way to think about the dynamics that are layering in through the balance of the fiscal year. Correct me if I'm wrong here. I actually have to hit the midpoint of your guide.

While down in the second half of the year, sort of flat around 12 percent of the next three quarters. So correct me if that's wrong. And then really the question is, is you talked about AI mix off, you know, sort of, you know, being a factor in there. What could you share a little bit about inside of the AI, AI customer base? Like, what are the moving parts on the margins? I think Charles in the past has talked about improvement in AI margins, you know, sort of in the go forward. And just interesting to note, you know, what the dynamics in play are there as you go through the rest of the fiscal year inside the AI margins.

And I have a quick follow up. Thanks.

46:04

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, I just share in last three quarter or four quarter our production time and also our production quality year way dramatically improve. And that make our turn a long time quicker and make a customer happier because of a better TTT and better TTO have a customer time to all nine. So customer appreciate that. Plus our DCPBS software and service may have a customer folder and better quality customer. We continue to get more customer, especially including the enterprise agenda as well. So, oh, those are positive impacting our business. Yeah.

46:55

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

And I did just to kind of build on what Charles said, in terms of the guide for the year, what you're seeing is, you know, we have good line of sight. And now the business is stabilizing and kind of has this foundation in this 12% gross margin range with romance. We continue to diversify our customer base and our product sets to expand those gross margins further. So, you know, the precise modeling, you know, you're relatively close on your original question. But, you know, for us, then the visibility is very strong. And as Charles pointed out, the gross margin across all of our customer categories hasn't improved. That's really the important thing. And this is a function of what Charles was talking about in terms of our great engineering, our great product set, and the execution of the team.

So, you know, we feel like we're in a very good position at, you know, this scale. And we see enormous opportunities going forward.

48:21

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, like our PCPPS, like our PCPPS, we provided not just data center building product solution, hardware components, but also software also have a customer kind of a keep up time. So, almost become one of our business mode.

48:51

Ananda BaruahAnalyst, Loop Capital

So, customer like our product more and more customer like our and the quick follow up is what's the reasonable expectations for opportunity with the CPU business, you know, just with all the structural tailwinds as you go through the fiscal year here. And that's it for me, thanks.

49:19

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, as you know, our genetic AI is getting really popular. So, we're getting lots of customer, including a lot of enterprise customer. They are buying our CPU base solution, including our Intel CPU base AMD, including our Nvidia Verra, our Nvidia Verra solution is ready, and including our solution. So, we see a much stronger CPU demand now, and looking for work.

49:53

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Cardoso with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

49:59

Joseph CardosoAnalyst, J. P. Morgan

Hi, thanks for the questions here and Mark, looking forward to working with you. Maybe just for my first, if I could, you know, it sounds like in your prepared remarks, you're not including any more catch up or deferred deliveries in the guidance, but I guess maybe first question here is just, can you just clarify if there are still deferred deliveries that are remaining and just not embedded in the outlook? And then the second portion of that question is more as we kind of strip that out of the numbers, you're still kind of implying the moderation and growth coming into the second half of the year versus the first maybe can you just walk us through the dynamics that are influencing that?

And if it has anything to do, maybe with the concentration with your largest customer here, maybe fading going into the back half, and then I do have a follow up. Thank you.

50:45

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

Yeah, I think the key point about deferred revenue historically, kind of looking back, was that there was, you know, this set of deliveries and deployments that had been delayed. And they have been carried over from prior quarters. In, you know, a typical quarter, you will have some revenue recognition based on deliveries, and you may have one or two deployments that are delayed. But, you know, those were, that was a larger than typical amount of revenue that had been deferred. And when that was released, that caused, you know, a number of things. Revenue went up. And as we mentioned, that was margin diluted on an overall basis. But going forward, we don't expect the same types and the same magnitude of delayed deployments through the deferred revenue.

And most of the deferred revenue is either customer prepayments or, you know, we have our service and software revenue that, you know, we typically defer over a number of periods.

52:10

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, the good thing is, you know, since we introduced DCPPS, some of our customers and some of even our internal people, they can't use. So that's why they kind of have a certain argument about when to recognize. But now, our DCPPS is a much more true business. So not just our internal people, not familiar with our DCPPS, and customer understand which service they buy, which services they've been by. So we should not cover that. So since it is getting much clear, much more true. So that way I have our deferred revenue program. Yeah.

53:01

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

And the second question regarding guidance and flying moderation in growth in the second half, what you're really hearing is just our sort of range of expectations based on the supply constraints and, you know, trying to gauge where the data center readiness for large deployments will land us. But as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, demand remains extremely strong, and especially the interest in the DCBBS product portfolio.

Nope.

53:46

Joseph CardosoAnalyst, J. P. Morgan

Got it. Very clear. And then maybe as my second one, just build tailing off of that a little bit. And maybe this is a two-parter as well. But, you know, you're talking about maybe shortages here going into or kind of the supply tightness, I guess, in terms of the total ecosystem. Can you maybe just touch on what's the most binding constraint as you think about the 2Q and second half out? Is it largely associated with the GPUs or is it other elements on the component side? And then the second question is just more around, obviously, within this backdrop of shortages pricing has obviously been a strong element in terms of pass-through. Anyway, you can kind of help us think through, as we think about your 27-outload time, actually the growth is being driven by units as opposed to cost pass-through.

Thank you.

54:35

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Very good question. I mean, the reason why we have a conservative number for any new revenue, 72 to 82 billion, because we are considering about some key components shortage and also a medical economy. So if that component shortage won't be a big issue, and if the medical economy is a health, then for sure, our second half will be much bigger than our first half. So we offer a show, and that's why we are very optimistic to see our second half have a much better performance than first half. And even as of the case, 72 to 82 billion becomes very, very conservative.

Yeah.

55:24

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

And I think your point about the growth in ASTs really driven by the cost of key components that has been going up sometimes more than quarterly. Our outlook does not for the second half does not encompass significant growth in ASPs. So again, we have a relatively conservative approach there, and we're really looking at the details of customer deployments, you know, what they need, which product sets, what our production capacity is, and kind of how to manage that. And as Charles pointed out, our demand far out strips the availability of key components.

56:27

Your next question comes from the line of Ruplu Batacharia with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

56:36

Ruplu BhattacharyaAnalyst, BofA Securities

All right. Thanks for taking my questions and Mark, congrats on the roll, and I look forward to working with you. Maybe I'll ask you my first question. As you look out over the next 12 months, do you think Super Micro has enough cash and cash flow to self-fund the investments that are needed to support the strong growth that you're seeing? What would cause you to raise more capital? And do you have a preference for debt versus equity? And I have a follow-up.

57:02

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Very good question. As you know, by the end of the last quarter, our cash is 6 billion. We never have so much cash in the bank. So indeed, the cash flow at this moment, we don't worry. Even in the second half, continue to grow stronger if the medical economy is healthy. Our cash flow is in much strong position than before ever. Right.

57:39

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

Yeah, as Charles pointed out, I mean, starting with $6.9 billion of cash puts us in a very good position. As we mentioned, our working capital efficiency has gone up. Our ability to fund our working capital needs through our focus on high-quality customers and customer prepayments. That puts us in a great position so that we can optimize our capital structure. We can think about trade-offs if we have very attractive opportunities that require incremental funding. We have our $1.8 billion working capital facility and we have the opportunity to access other markets. As you point out, both the credit and equity markets, at this point, we don't have any plans to consider equity raises. As far as the debt markets, I think we would look at what was available and how it would best position the company for continued success and provide us with the right leverage structure.

59:12

Due to time constraints, we'll be taking one final question. This question comes from the Your line is open. Please go ahead.

59:21

Unidentified AnalystAnalyst

Hi, guys. It's Brendan Rogers on for George. I guess just a question on what's changed in your conversations with customers in the last 90 days in order to get this better visibility. Is this a feature today's market like customers are extending the forecast timelines that they're giving you or is this sort of more of a shift in how you're managing the business?

59:44

Charles LiangPresident, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Yeah, as we mentioned, we have a strong pack of orders. We have a choice to select HRC customers and customer quality is very important to us, so we have a chance to select from some point of view.

1:00:16

Mark LongChief Financial Officer

Yeah, and I think as Charles pointed out, we are getting better visibility from a number of our customers, some very large, some moderately large, and we're getting visibility across geographies and so. And the growth of the enterprise business is another factor that will provide enhanced visibility and stability to our overall revenue stream.

1:00:56

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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