Allegro Microsystems Inc (ALGM) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Allegro MicroSystems Q3 Fiscal 2022 Financial Results Conference Call.

(Operator Instructions)

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Katie Blye. Ms. Blye, the floor is yours.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Allegro's Third Quarter Results for Fiscal Year 2022.

I'm joined today by Allegro's President and Chief Executive Officer, Ravi Vig; and Allegro's Chief Financial Officer, Derek D'Antilio. We will review our quarterly financial performance and provide a summary of our outlook. Our earnings release and the accompanying financial tables are available on the Investor Relations page of our website.

This call is being webcasted, and a recording will be available on our IR page shortly. Please note that comments made during this conference call include forward-looking statements as defined by federal securities laws.

These forward-looking statements include projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions, and as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from our projections. Please refer to the earnings press release we issued today and other documents filed by us with the SEC, including the risk factors discussed in detail in our most recent 10-K filed on May 19, 2021.

The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information presented. The non-GAAP financial measures that are discussed today are not intended to replace to be a substitute for the presentation of Allegro's GAAP financial results and may be calculated differently than similar measures used by other companies.

We are providing this supplemental information because it may enable investors to make meaningful comparisons of core operating results and more clearly highlight the results of our core ongoing operations. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures referenced during today's call can be found in our earnings press release, which has been posted to our IR page.

I'll now turn the call over to Allegro's President and CEO, Ravi Vig. Ravi?

Thank you, Katie, and good morning, everyone. Q3 was a story of great products, accelerating design wins and strong financial performance. Demand from our customers remains very strong, especially in our target Automotive and Industrial markets. We continue to benefit from multiple tailwinds including alignment to high-growth applications, automotive content expansion and design win momentum. Our Q3 design wins in emerging growth markets in xEV, ADAS and Industry 4.0 data center are up nearly 100% on a rolling 4-quarter basis, with total design wins up roughly 25%. The momentum and mix of the wins in these areas supports the better than industry growth in our long-term target revenue model.

Now turning to Q3 results. In fiscal Q3, we overcame the COVID-related disruptions we described last quarter, and revenue was up 13% year-over-year to $186.6 million. We expect to be back on track to prior revenue run rate in Q4. Margin expansion, again, exceeded the high end of our guidance with non-GAAP gross margins at 54.8%, and we continue to make progress towards a 55% target. This year is shaping up to be one for the record books.

Now most of you saw our announcement a few weeks ago that Paul Walsh is retiring after a long and successful career in this industry. I want to take this opportunity to thank Paul again, particularly for being a partner through our strategic transformation and subsequent IPO. I fully support his decision and wish him the best.

Today, I'm pleased to introduce you to Derek D'Antilio, our new Chief Financial Officer. Derek joined Allegro in January with decades of broad financial and operating experience in semis and high tech. We are glad to have Derek onboard, he's an accomplished CFO with a strong business acumen and the financial expertise to continue where Paul left off and he's already hitting the ground running.

Now I'll turn the call over to Derek, who will provide you with more color on the financials, and then I'll share more details on the business and our outlook. Derek?

Thank you, Ravi, and good morning, everyone. First, let me say I'm very excited to be part of the Allegro team. And after my first few weeks with the company, I'm very encouraged about the prospects for the business. From what I've seen, Allegro is well positioned within high-growth markets and the company has made great financial progress. In Q3, Allegro delivered another quarter of solid financial results. Revenue, gross margin and earnings per share all exceeded our guidance. Customer backlog remains strong across all of our surrogate markets in regions and backlog continue to climb, sitting at historic levels.

Last quarter, the company expected that business would be impacted by COVID-19-related supply disruptions at assembly partners in Malaysia.

I am pleased to report that our increasingly diversified supply chain enabled us to recover supply more quickly than anticipated. And revenue for the quarter was $186.6 million, an increase of 13% over the same quarter 1 year ago and down 4% sequentially. Our sales, marketing, supply chain and operations teams have all done a remarkable job supporting our customers, particularly in Automotive. As a result of their efforts, in Q3, our Automotive revenue grew 4% sequentially to $130.8 million, representing 70% of our revenue. We continue to see strong growth in our xEV and ADAS businesses, which represented roughly 37% of our Automotive revenue in the quarter.

Our Industrial revenue was $31.9 million, representing 17% of revenue in the quarter. Industrial revenue declined 12% sequentially and was supply constrained. Our Industrial customer demand remains very strong with backlog at record levels. Other revenue was $23.9 million and represented 13% of revenue in the quarter, declining 23% sequentially. The sequential decline was anticipated based upon supply constraints, and we expect that other revenue will stabilize over the coming quarters. Once again, no single end customer represented more than 10% of our revenue in the quarter. Customer orders continue to outpace supply in the quarter, and our technology and operation teams have been working diligently to secure additional capacity.

Our TSMC ramp is well underway, and we expect our TSMC wafer receipts to double this quarter on track to plan. We are also in the process of securing long-term capacity with our foundry partners to enable growth. And we continue to bring on additional sources of back-end capacity to give us enhance flexibility. We are pleased with the progress we've made on both of these fronts. We also continue to make meaningful progress towards the target financial model.

In Q3, GAAP gross margin was 54.2%, a recent record. Gross margin continued to benefit from multiple factors, including structural improvements, good cost controls and advantageous product mix. After excluding $0.7 million for stock-based compensation expense and $0.4 million of other charges, non-GAAP gross margin was 54.8%, up 100 basis points sequentially and more than 500 basis points compared to the same quarter just 1 year ago. We remain on track to meet our non-GAAP gross margin target of 55%.

GAAP operating expenses were $65.6 million, GAAP R&D expense was $30.3 million and GAAP SG&A expense was $38 million. Total non-GAAP expenses -- operating expenses in Q3 were $59.2 million compared to $57.5 million in Q2 and were 31.7% of revenue. Operating expenses in the quarter included higher variable compensation of about $0.9 million above last quarter's run rate and continued investments in research and development. Non-GAAP adjustments include stock-based compensation of $6.9 million and $2.1 million of other charges offset by $2.7 million gain from an adjustment of a contingent consideration liability.

Non-GAAP R&D expenses were $29.3 million and non-GAAP SG&A expense was $30 million. We expect non-GAAP expenses to be up modestly in the fourth quarter. Third quarter GAAP operating income was $35.6 million or 19.1% of sales and non-GAAP operating income was $43.1 million or 23.1% of sales. GAAP net income was $33 million for the quarter with an effective tax rate of 16%. The Q3 diluted share count was 192.1 million shares and GAAP earnings per diluted share was $0.17.

Non-GAAP net income was $36.1 million or 19.3% of revenue. The Q3 non-GAAP effective tax rate was 15.9%, and we expect that to be about 16% in the fourth quarter. Our non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was $0.19, exceeding our guidance by about 5.5%. We also continue to strengthen our balance sheet in the quarter. Cash and cash equivalents in Q3 increased by $11 million over Q2 to $267 million. We generated $46.7 million in operating cash flow in the quarter, a sequential increase of $15.3 million. Accounts receivable balances were $107.4 million, and we ended the quarter with DSO of 52 days within our target range. Net inventory rose marginally to end the quarter at $79 million, an increase of about $0.8 million. Days in inventory were 83 compared to 77 in Q2, still below our target of about 100 to 110 days. In addition, inventory in the channel remains at historically low levels.

In summary, demand remains very strong. Backlog is at historically high levels, and we continue to make very meaningful progress towards our target financial model.

Now I'll turn the call back over to Ravi for additional commentary on the business and our outlook for the fourth quarter.

Thank you, Derek. Revenue in Q3 reflected year-over-year strength across our strategic product lines and end markets. We continue to benefit from multiple tailwinds, including Automotive content expansion, design win momentum and fast-growing end-markets. Fueling these tailwinds is the alignment of our R&D pipeline with emerging growth markets, which was a key part of our strategic transformation. Our investments in xMR and embedded motion control by yielding innovations that are giving us a competitive advantage, and we are seeing this translate into market share gains.

The result is accelerating new product revenue that we believe will have a positive impact on both the top and bottom line. Here are 3 examples from last quarter that will offer great proof points of our technical leadership. First, our back biased GMR solutions continue to take share from competitors, particularly in xEV, where our technology enables significant efficiency gains. We expanded our share in transmission speed sensors with 10 transmission design wins in the quarter.

Second, in ADAS we secured 25 new steering and braking design wins, including the structural motor driver at EV socket and the next-generation steering systems for the market leader in EVs.

Third, we expanded our family of 3D position sensors to include a tiny 3D ICE for both low- and high-speed motor position applications, with initial design wins in areas, such as e-bikes, factory robotics and automotive wipers, it's an incredibly versatile chip and well aligned with our strategy to expand our channel sales that go up broad market Industrial business.

Moving to end markets. In Q3, Automotive revenue was up 15% year-over-year at $130.8 million. We had another record quarter for xEV powertrain revenue. Our revenue is up roughly 60% in xEV on a rolling 4-quarter basis. This compares favorably to xEV car production growth of 49% over that period, supporting the content momentum we have in this growing market. And we believe our results would have been even stronger were it not for the Malaysia supply chain challenges we faced in the quarter.

Looking ahead, xEV car production is forecasted to grow at a 32% CAGR from 2021 to 2025. On top of that growth, we estimate xEV also has 60% more content opportunity than internal combustion vehicles. We win cars electrify, and we believe we are in a good position to take advantage of this secular growth trend. We also continue to see acceleration in the adoption of Level 1-plus ADAS systems in advanced steering and braking.

Last quarter, we launched our first-to-market high-resolution TMR wheel speed sensor, which is a key enabler of Level 3-plus automation in passenger vehicles. We're also increasing our braking system content across our product portfolios. Last quarter, we secured a significant design win with a market-leading Tier 1 supplier in Europe using our 3D position sensors in an ADAS Level 3-plus ready brake by wire solution that is modularized for cross vehicle platforms.

We continue to win within that production, and we believe we're uniquely positioned with a broad range of solutions for these ADAS level 1-plus ready system. As you know, our alignment in secular growth trends, except beyond Automotive into the Industrial and Infrastructure market. In Q3, our Industrial business was up 35% year-over-year to $31.9 million. We saw strong year-over-year results in many major categories like robotics, clean energy and EV charging infrastructure. In these areas as well as data center, we saw revenue double year-over-year. The strong growth was offset by a fall in a broad-based industrial revenue stemming from supply constraints.

Demand is quite healthy and at record levels across our Industrial business, and we expect that it will return to growth in Q4 and in FY '22 with strong double-digit growth for the year. Looking to FY '23 and beyond, we expect one of our strongest industrial growth drivers to be data center. Recent new design wins of data center are layering on top of the long-term agreements we discussed last quarter, positioning us with strong, sustained growth in the key market.

The growth has been driven, not just by data center build-outs specifically hyperscalers and 5G, but also by 3-phase fab conversions and existing service tax with the economics of conversion, both in efficiency gains and an audible noise safety are incredibly favorable.

Looking ahead, Q4 is playing out exactly as we frame the last quarter. We anticipate a return to sequential growth with revenue in the range of $193 million to $197 million to end fiscal '22, up approximately 29% year-over-year. For Q4, we expect, both Automotive and Industrial to be up sequentially and Other will be flat to down. We expect non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 54% to 55%. We anticipate non-GAAP earnings per diluted share will be in the range of $0.20 to $0.21.

Looking ahead, I believe the acceleration we're seeing in our strategic markets is a strong indicator of our competitive differentiation. We have a strong innovation pipeline, and we're in the sweet spot of the convergence of growth trends in Automotive, Clean Energy, Industry 4.0 and data center. We believe Allegro is a secular growth story and expect that our technology, content and market share expansion will be key enablers of better than industry growth.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Katie.

Thanks, Ravi. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we'll open the call for questions. Operator, could you please review the question-and-answer instructions with our participants.

(Operator Instructions)

And our first question comes from Gary Mobley of Wells Fargo.

I want to start out by asking about some of the supply constraints that you spoke of, perhaps impacting your outlook for the fourth fiscal quarter. Wondering if you can break out the contribution of those supply constraints between those factors that may be specific to kitting in your customers' supply chain and what may be specific to your own internal supply constraint considerations, such as back in testing assembly.

Yes. Just to clarify, the supply constraints that we have that affected our fiscal Q3 revenues were all specifically associated with COVID-related impacts in Malaysia. At this point, we have a general -- we continue with the general industry-wide supply demand imbalance, including wafer supply, back-end supply and test capacity that we continue to balance to our growth projections.

So we continue to ramp capacity as we stated that our TSMC wafer receipts doubled quarter-over-quarter, which gives us great momentum on the wafer front. We have secured long-term agreements and capacity with back-end suppliers. And we also continue to bring on ultimate sources to further increase our capacity. So at this point, we continue our momentum on growth. But clearly, due to our design wins and our strong tailwinds of the target markets, demand will continue to exceed supply in the near future.

Got you. I think previously, you were counting on your gross margin exiting the fiscal year '22 to be roughly 55%. Your guidance is simply a rounding error -- or a rounding issue to get you to that point. But how do you view the achievement of 55% gross margin in the context of fiscal year '23 and double-clicking on that, would you expect it to be driven more so by your production mix at your 3 different front-end fab options? Or would you expect it to be driven more so by overall product mix and ASP tailwinds?

Gary, this is Derek. Thank you. I believe the company has said that the 55% is more of a longer-term gross margin target in '24 calendar -- I mean, fiscal '24. But you're right, in Q3, we had a great gross margin quarter. And really, what drove that was sort of 2, call them, macro-trends. One is the structural improvements you've seen over the last couple of years here at Allegro, which -- gross margin is up 500 basis points over 1 year as a result of those structural improvements, and we're really seeing a lot of the benefit from that.

The second piece really is the shift, a little bit in the mix towards the higher feature content products that Ravi talked about in xEV and ADAS. So there's sort of 2 macro trends really driving that. But in the near term, as we have said here, we expect gross margins to be between 54% and 55%.

Our next question comes from Vijay Rakesh of Mizuho.

Congratulations on a great quarter and congratulations, Paul and Derek. I had a quick question on the design wins. I know you talked about design wins being up 100% as you look here. But just wondering how investors should think about revenue conversion, especially these are pretty strong growth segments with xEV, ADAS and data centers, et cetera. But how would you think through how that should translate to the revenue pipeline for the design wins?

Yes. Our design wins when we claim them are projects that are won and get awarded to us -- qualified at our customers as well as awarded to us by the customers purchasing organization. So for all practical purposes, they have a reasonable degree of assurance that they will convert to revenue. We continue to provide this data to show the momentum of the company and -- but it doesn't replace our revenue guidance that we provide.

Got it. And I know you talked about Auto, Industrial up sequentially into the March quarter. So good to see that. But you also talked about some constraints on the supply chain side in Industrial.

If you can -- can you give us some color on what they are, how are you seeing that alleviate? When do you see it alleviate?

Yes. So when we start looking at the market in general, again, our business is really fueled by the design wins that we have that are driving up our production win conversions, if you want to call it that as well as the key sectors that we're working in, which have great tailwinds xEV, ADAS as well as the broad Industrial and data center. So when we look at all of this, we see that despite the increases in capacity that we continuously generate and offer into the market, the demand levels that we experience still continue to exceed supply. And I think they will continue to exceed supply in the near future.

Our next question comes from Quinn Bolton of Needham.

Congratulations on the nice results and outlook and welcome, Derek. Ravi, I just wanted to start with sort of a bigger picture, I think, in past conference calls, you guys have talked about your confidence in growing sort of by a low to maybe mid-teen double-digit rate in fiscal '23. As you look into calendar '22, auto production versus content gains, can you give us a sense what do you think -- what are you sort of baking in, in terms of unit production increases in calendar '22 or fiscal '23 versus your expectations for continued content gains? And then I've got a follow-up.

Yes. We have seen the market data from -- an independent projections of car production. But we remain cautious in terms of the car production numbers that are currently being forecasted. We do see that the supply/demand challenges that exist today in Automotive will continue to have an impact. I think early data year-to-date from external sources has already indicated that there is an impact on car production at this point due to semiconductor availability.

So our mid-teens guidance, low to mid-teens guidance that we have provided is really factors in some cautiousness in terms of the industry car production. We'll continue to review this as the year goes on. And as supply continues to come into play, we'll relook at our estimates.

So for next comment, Ravi, is it safe to assume you think it's probably more skewed to content gains with -- take some vehicle production comes in its forecast that, that could be a tailwind to the business?

Yes. I mean the -- our business is really -- is a SAR plus 5% to 10% range number. This is something that we provided to the market over the course of the last 12 months. And we expect that, that continue in that particular direction. And we also look at it, not to forget that our Industrial business and our Other business is 35% of our overall business. That also has great tailwinds. So we do expect that there is reason for optimism, but at this point, I think we have -- the entire industry is better off being a little cautious in terms of where this growth will be.

Great. My follow-up question was just wondering if you could spend a little bit of time talking about some of the traction you're seeing on the GMR side of the business. I think you mentioned some back biased and speed sensors for transmissions. But broadly, can you say where are you seeing the greatest interest in GMR technology? Is it mostly in speed sensors? Are you seeing that technology beginning to move into the current sensing market, which I know is a big application or a big requirement in electric vehicles.

Yes. So we see GMR and TMR applicable in 4 different spaces. So what we would call is the first 1 would be just wheel and motor in coating, which is the high-density ring magnet type of products that we have announced, and we continue to see wins on those. Those are very applicable to ADAS applications, specifically in the braking area. We see the speed sensor back by -- speed sensor product that we have that serve us 2 purposes. One is they continue to cement our market share in internal combustion. But more importantly, they provide transmission manufacturers, enable them to have better solutions in the xEV space. And we see -- I think we said that we had about 10 transmission sensor wins over the quarter.

The third area that we see is in ADAS in terms of motor and coding where our TMR sensors are deposit in top of silicon offer opportunity for heterogeneous redundancy, which -- what that means is that we can provide a higher, more safer, higher integrated, more safer solution out to the market. These are currently in the pipeline and being sampled.

And then the fourth area, of course, is current sensors with TMR and then with TMR that will attack the xEV area. So we are proud to say that we have an extraordinarily broad breadth of target applications in GMR and TMR and we'll attack all aspects of the Automotive ecosystem.

And next, we have Mr. Curtis of Barclays.

I wanted to ask you, Ravi, on pricing. You talked about -- your gross margins are trending towards that 55%. But you're seeing a lot of people start to see pricing start to layer through. Maybe you can just address whether you're seeing any tailwind from pricing now and as you look to the next fiscal year?

Yes. I think what you'll find is that we have long-term relationships with strategic customers and our approach on pricing has been that we would certainly pass through being margin-neutral on ASP. So in order to make sure that Allegro can operate successfully, but not with the objective of attacking margins on a pricing perspective. So it's a long-term business. Automotive is really one that is -- as well as Industrial is one that we really focused on from a long-term perspective, long-term relationships, and we think we're great partners for our customers. So good opportunity at this point, but we are really trying to be margin neutral at this point with pricing. It is the mix that we worry about always. That's what we continually focus on. Our new businesses bring us new opportunities for margin.

And then I might have missed this, but you had been breaking out kind of ADAS and xEV as a percent of auto revenue, I think it was 35% last quarter. Just curious if you mentioned that number and I missed it.

It's 37%. So you see a slight uptick. We'll continue to see a slight uptick in every quarter in that particular number.

Our next question comes from Srini Pajjuri of SMBC Nikko.

Derek and Paul, congratulations to both of you. First, my question on TSM sourcing. I know it's early days. Just wondering if you have any longer-term in a target for how you see your sourcing mix and TSM versus UMC and Polar. And I guess the broader question is how that mix might impact. You talked about a little bit on the pricing side, but just curious as to how that mix might impact your gross margins going forward?

I mean our Asian sources certainly are more competitive in pricing than our U.S. sources is something that we have said to everybody over the last 15 months. So that's not a -- that is pretty well understood and as TSM ramps, we continue to increase the ratio of our Asian sources to our U.S. sources. So we would expect to see continued leverage in terms of the benefit from -- that these sources bring, but these sources -- it's not just a cost -- it really is a technology play for us. They're great partners, they're really capable in manufacturing, they really fulfill very well the Automotive quality requirements and supply chain requirements, the stability in production.

So there are enormous benefits to us with these sources. And we continue to look at sources, right? Our goal is to continue to support our long-term growth objectives, and we continue to either ramp these current sources or bring on new ones.

Got it. And then, Ravi, a question on the channel inventory. Obviously, the things are quite tight still on the auto side. But given if you compare about a year ago versus now, at least we are hearing the news flow is not as bad in terms of the production that factories in the world. So if you can comment on what you're seeing in terms of channel inventory at your customers. But -- and then a longer-term question, coming out of this, I guess, unprecedented supply tightness. What are your customers telling you about how they're going to manage their inventories going forward? I mean do you think the industry is going back to just in time again? Or is there any other practice that they're looking at? I just want to hear your thoughts as we come out of this supply situation, what you think the industry practices will look like?

So channel inventory for us still are at record -- at phenomenally low levels. And so when we look at our distribution inventories, they're all sitting extraordinarily low. Our -- we know that our OEMs -- direct customers rather are taking every part -- every device that we can give them and we know that we continue to participate as do most of our peers in conversations regarding expediting material and keep in lines with minds running. So we have all indications in front of us are that the key areas that are growing in the vehicle as well as in industrial, which are xEV, ADAS, even convenience areas, such as lighting, sequeling fans, et cetera. These are all growth areas. The supply is extraordinarily tight for all these growing areas as well as in industrial. A lot of it's fueled by the need for additional semiconductors into these particular solutions as opposed to ICE, which is quite stable.

So when we look at customers, we don't really see, at this point, there's a lot of conversations going on by the OEMs on how to deal with the supply chain crisis. The initial discussions have all been around how do I get more high-density digital 300-millimeter supply. But rapidly, the conversation is also going around smart power, 200-millimeter supply situations, et cetera. But while the conversations are happening, there's been a lot of conclusion at this point and how they would propose to address this.

And next, we have Natalia Winkler of Jefferies.

A quick question, Ravi, on the ADAS. Thank you so much for providing kind of some color on the growth and the proportion of Automotive. I think on automotive, the question I had was as you guys see the transition, you mentioned kind of the content increase from Level 0 to Level 1. I'm just curious, do you guys see kind of a similar uptick as you go through further levels? Is there any meaningful content increase, if you were -- once the cars are kind of transitioning from Level 1 and higher levels?

Yes. So yes, great question. So as you go to Level 1 and you go to Level 1-plus, Level 2, the more economy that you provide to the steering system, the higher the electronic content tends to get to in terms of -- from a safety and functionality perspective. So these systems have to be more dependent. And in the past, we've spoken about that at this point, steering breaking, the entire motion control of a vehicle is being reimagined in the industry as we get on to skateboard platform to electrification. The ADAS and electrification intersect is really clear. And so what you have is long-term trends on brake by wire, break on the wheel, steer by wire, steering on the wheel, movement of these motion control systems from the body into -- really on to the skateboard or to the wheel or to the drivetrain.

And all of which actually results in more independent control per wheel which requires more additional motion control systems, which will drive content. So we're -- we feel very good about the secular tailwinds as it relates to motion control in the vehicle.

Understood. That's very helpful color. And for my follow-up, I just wanted to double check. You guys put kind of a lot of focus on data center on the certain calls. Just curious if you feel like this would be the main source of growth for Industrial in the future fiscal year.

Well, we did announce last quarter that we have signed several long-term agreements. We continue to ramp our data center business. I think Katie had a great set on data center quarter-over-quarter -- year-over-year, Katie?

More than doubled.

More than doubled. So we're talking about this particular segment continuing to grow for us. And as these new projects start ramping, our design wins were up also as these projects are ramping, we'll start seeing the data center cooling really taking hold, but in addition to that, we do have this broad market motion control, also solar electrification, infrastructure associated with electrification that's driving our Industrial business and we see equal growth in the broad market area of our Industrial business. So we are pretty excited about our core strategy, which is sensing and motion control, both for Automotive as well as in Industrial.

(Operator Instructions)

And we have a question from John Pitzer of Crédit Suisse.

Ravi, I want to go back to an answer you gave earlier about pricing and basically saying that you're raising pricing only to pass along cost and the real driver of pricing for you is sort of a mix and new products. I'm wondering if you could just elaborate on the second half of that. When you think about mix, when you think about new products like GMR, when you think about the very strong design pipeline funnel. How should we -- on the outside looking in, think about pricing? And given that gross margins have been beating Street expectations, should we say that the path to your target is faster or should we start to think about the target that needs to be revised higher?

Yes. So great question, right, John. So we're not -- you're right that our pricing strategy at this point is really to try to keep our sales margin neutral in terms of where the costs are coming in. So that's a cost increase. And certainly, there is inflation going around throughout the semi supply chain. So -- but on the other hand, our long-term story is about attacking these new emerging growth segments. These segments typically offer us higher margin opportunities. And so we will continue to see some uplift as a result of these segments growing.

On the other hand, we also have -- continue to have efficiency activities, both in our back-end facility in the Philippines, but also as we bring on more additional Asian supply sources for wafers. We'll continue to see that help us with our margin mix. So to your question, we are a little bit ahead of where we probably would be on gross margin. We'd like to overachieve, I guess. And so we'll continue to push forth. And once we get closer to running stably at that mid-55%, at that 55% target that we are, we'll certainly be looking at the next step in the journey, which will be clearly a step ahead.

And then, Ravi, as my follow-on, there's sort of direct supply constraints that you have to deal with, and then there's indirect. And I'm wondering if you can differentiate between the 2 today. Is your demand being 100% limited by what you can directly supply? Or do you get the sense that customers are not completing full kits because there's deficiencies away from you? And as you address the question, I'd be kind of curious as to whether or not the current environment makes you change or rethink your strategy around CapEx and kind of how much of your supply you want to control internally versus externally.

Tough question there. So what we look at the demand that's out there. Our demand that we see is really fueled by the new products that we have in the areas that we are. Some of the examples are that our Industrial business as well as our xEV, ADAS business is certainly outgrowing the rest of our business in general. So it really kind of validates the narrative that we have that we are -- that our growth is not just the organic car production, inventory fuel growth that could be there, but it really is a growth that is focused on new projects and new wins.

We don't see inventory builds at our customers. We don't -- we see that supply challenges are going to be broad 200-millimeter, which is where we live on, certainly always has been a constraint and will continue to be challenged over the next -- over the near future. So we do see continued supply/demand challenges. Specifically, as we ramp up our 200 millimeter, we'll see it specifically really big challenge, pressure on the other end by design wins and just the growth of the target markets that we are focused on.

And I'm seeing no further questions in the queue. I will turn it back over to the speakers for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. If there are no further questions, we'll conclude the call this morning. Thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect, and have a pleasant day.