萊迪思半導體 (LSCC) 2019 Q3 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.

  • (Operator Instructions) I would like to welcome everyone to the Lattice Semiconductor Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2019 Earnings Release Conference Call.

  • (Operator Instructions) The replay dial-in number is (404) 537-3406.

  • The conference ID number is 9191529.

  • The replay will also be accessible on Lattice website at latticesemi.com.

  • I would now like to turn the call over to Rick Muscha.

  • Please go ahead.

  • Rick Muscha

  • Thank you, operator.

  • And good afternoon, everyone.

  • With me today are Jim Anderson, Lattice's President and CEO; and Sherri Luther, Lattice's CFO, who will you provide financial and business review of the third quarter of 2019 and the business outlook for the fourth quarter of 2019.

  • If you have not obtained a copy of our earnings press release, it can be found on our company website in the Investor Relations section at latticesemi.com.

  • I would like to remind everyone that during our conference call today, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company.

  • We wish to caution you that such statements are predictions based on information as currently available, and that actual results may differ materially.

  • We refer you to the documents the company files with the SEC, including our 10-Ks, 10-Qs and 8-Ks.

  • These documents contain and identify important risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements.

  • This call includes and constitutes the company's official guidance for the fourth quarter of 2019.

  • If at any time after this call we communicate any material changes to this guidance, we intend that such updates will be done using a public forum such as a press release or a publicly announced conference call.

  • Some financial information presented by us during the call will be provided on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis.

  • By disclosing certain non-GAAP information, management intends to provide investors with additional information to permit further analysis of the company's performance and underlying trends.

  • Management uses non-GAAP measures to better assess operating performance and to establish operational goals.

  • For historical periods, we provide the reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures that can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at latticesemi.com.

  • Let me now turn the call over to Jim Anderson, our CEO.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Thank you, Rick, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on our call today.

  • I'm pleased with the strong results we delivered in Q3 of 2019 as we achieved a new 10-year high in non-GAAP operating margin for the company.

  • Highlights for the third quarter of 2019 included: Revenue growth in line with our expectations; gross margin expansion of 240 basis points year-over-year and 80 basis points sequentially to 59.8% on a non-GAAP basis; non-GAAP operating profit for the company was 25% of revenue, a new 10-year high; and non-GAAP EPS increased 55% on a year-over-year basis.

  • Let me now provide an overview of our business by end market.

  • In the communications and computing market, revenue increased 5% sequentially in Q3 as we continue to experience strong sequential growth and year-over-year growth in this segment.

  • In computing, our revenue in servers for enterprise and cloud data centers increased sequentially, with growth driven by both our higher attach rate and ASP versus the prior generation.

  • We remain focused on increasing our content in next-generation servers by adding security functionality with our new MachXO3D product family.

  • In the communications market, we're benefiting from increased 5G infrastructure deployments.

  • Our 5G revenue increased sequentially in Q3 as we continue to expect 5G revenue to grow moving forward as the 5G wireless infrastructure build-out progresses.

  • Turning now to the industrial and automotive market.

  • Revenue declined 4.5% sequentially in Q3 as we experienced some demand softness towards the end of the quarter related to the macroeconomic climate and continued trade tensions.

  • Despite some near-term softness, we believe this segment will remain a long-term growth factor for us given the breadth of applications that we serve.

  • Long-term growth drivers include the proliferation of robotics and industrial automation, and the steady increase in electronic content in autos.

  • Turning now to the consumer market.

  • Revenue declined 4.5% sequentially in Q3.

  • This reflects continued demand softness related to macroeconomic conditions.

  • We remain focused on serving the higher-margin areas of the consumer market where our solutions are enabling customers to differentiate their products.

  • As an example, we are seeing strong adoption of our AI technology in prosumer applications for development of next-generation human presence and gesture detection.

  • I'll now provide an update on our product road map execution.

  • First is sensAI, our award-winning, low-power AI solution stack.

  • Last week, we released an update that further extends our innovation in ultra-low-power AI.

  • This new version introduces enhanced support capabilities, enabling faster inference performance and lower latency, including enhancements to reference designs for key phrase detection and human facial recognition.

  • Moving to MachXO3D, our new secure control FPGA, we recently received the National Institute of Standards and Technology's cryptographic program certification.

  • This security standard is extremely important for our enterprise customers and makes our solution even more compelling.

  • We're pleased with the accelerated and broad customer traction we're seeing with this product on next-generation server platforms.

  • We also launched and sampled our new CrossLinkPlus product in Q3.

  • Developers are using this product to enhance their users' experience by adding multiple image sensors or displays to embedded vision systems.

  • We're very pleased to sample our customers ahead of schedule, and as a result, we expect to generate initial revenue for this product in Q4 of this year.

  • Finally at our Investor Day this past May, we committed to sampling our next-generation FPGA platform in early 2020.

  • I'm very pleased to say that we are executing ahead of schedule, and we now expect to sample customers before the end of the year.

  • This new product platform based on FD-SOI technology has been architected from the grounds up for low-power operation, which enables a significant power reduction for our customers across many different applications.

  • We're looking forward to sharing more details about this innovative next-generation platform at a special product launch event planned for this December.

  • In summary, we're pleased with our strong financial results in Q3.

  • However, we're even more excited about the solid execution of our product road map, specifically the accelerated product rollouts of both CrossLinkPlus and our next-generation FPGA platform.

  • This execution fidelity is a direct result of the key strategic portfolio management and resource deployment decisions we made in late 2018.

  • Those actions drove a sharp focus across the company on delivering high-ROI products and accelerating the cadence and time-to-market for our new product road map.

  • We remain focused on executing our business strategy and product road map for sustained long-term revenue and profitability growth.

  • I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Sherri Luther.

  • Sherri R. Luther - CFO & Corporate VP

  • Thank you, Jim.

  • We are pleased to deliver revenue growth, gross margin expansion, record profitability and further delevering of our balance sheet.

  • We are making substantial progress on our commitment from our Investor Day as we move closer toward our target model.

  • Let me now provide a summary of our results.

  • We achieved third quarter revenue of $103.5 million, up 1.1% sequentially from the second quarter.

  • Product revenue growth in communications and computing helped offset a sequential decline in industrial and automotive as well as consumer.

  • Our key long-term growth drivers remain intact.

  • Gross margin on a GAAP basis was 59.4% compared to 58.7% in the second quarter, and up from 57.5% in the year-ago third quarter.

  • Our non-GAAP gross margin expanded to 59.8% from 59% in the prior quarter and from 57.4% in the year-ago third quarter.

  • This was due primarily to product cost reductions, pricing optimization and higher IP revenue.

  • We have now delivered 3 consecutive quarters of gross margin expansion.

  • While we have made meaningful progress and continue to execute, we still have a lot of opportunity ahead of us for further improvement as we work toward achieving our long-term target model.

  • Q3 GAAP operating expenses were $44.8 million compared to $45.6 million in the second quarter.

  • On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses were $35.9 million compared to $35.5 million in the second quarter.

  • As a percentage of revenue, operating expenses were flat at 34.7% in Q3 from the prior quarter.

  • R&D increased to 17.8% of revenue, while SG&A decreased to 16.9% of revenue.

  • The mix of OpEx continues to gradually shift toward our target model of R&D at 20% of revenue and SG&A at 15% of revenue.

  • Our GAAP EPS for the third quarter was up 67% sequentially and increased 100% from the year-ago third quarter.

  • On a non-GAAP basis, EPS for the third quarter was up sequentially 6% per basic share and 13% per diluted share, and increased 55% from the year-ago third quarter.

  • Accelerating cash flow generation remains a priority for the company.

  • Year-to-date, we have generated approximately $85 million in cash flow from operations, which is 4x the cash generated over the same period in 2018, underscoring our focus on cash generation.

  • We ended Q3 with a cash balance of $97.4 million compared to $122.6 million at the end of Q2.

  • At our Investor Day, we detailed our plan to actively delever the balance sheet.

  • Year-to-date, we have made $107 million in total debt payments, including $33.4 million in Q3.

  • As a result, our non-GAAP debt leverage ratio, as defined in the credit agreement, is now below 1.5.

  • To put this in perspective, we have improved our leverage ratio from 3.5 a year ago.

  • Additionally, the Q3 discretionary debt payment allowed us to reduce the interest rate by another 25 basis points, for a total reduction of 300 basis points in 2019.

  • Let me now review our outlook for the fourth quarter.

  • Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019 is expected to be between $97 million and $103 million.

  • Gross margin is expected to be 59.5% plus or minus 1% on a non-GAAP basis.

  • Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter are expected to be between $35.5 million and $36.5 million on a non-GAAP basis.

  • As we look forward, our priorities and focus are unchanged.

  • We remain committed to expanding our profitability, increasing our cash flow generation and delevering our balance sheet to build additional value for Lattice and our shareholders.

  • Operator, we can now open the call for questions.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) We have a question from Tristan Gerra from Baird.

  • Tristan Gerra - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • Given your increasing exposure in data center and also ongoing changes in mix, how should we look at typical seasonality going forward by quarter and including for Q1 in terms of sequential changes in revenue?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • Thanks, Tristan.

  • In general, our business, over the last year in particular, you've seen a shift in the makeup of our revenue towards higher percentage of comms and compute and industrial and automotive versus, for instance, consumer segment, and so our revenue shifted to those segments.

  • And I would say that's made our business a little bit less susceptible to seasonality.

  • There is still some seasonality in our business with respect to specifically consumer, right?

  • Normally, we would expect, for instance, consumer to be down from, say, Q4 to Q1, but it's really consumer that's the only segment that exhibits significant seasonality now.

  • Tristan Gerra - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay, great.

  • And then as a follow-up, your direct sales increased nicely sequentially.

  • Was there a particular end market that was the driver for that increase?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Tristan, could you repeat the which sales were you asking about?

  • Could you repeat that?

  • Tristan Gerra - MD and Senior Research Analyst

  • Yes.

  • So the non-distribution revenue, the direct sales which increased sequentially.

  • Was there a particular catalyst for that increase sequentially?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • No.

  • That can vary from quarter-to-quarter distribution versus direct, so I don't think there is any particular catalyst for that.

  • But we view that as within the normal sort of variance that we can see from quarter-to-quarter.

  • Operator

  • Your next question comes from the line of Matt Ramsay from Cowen.

  • Matthew D. Ramsay - MD & Senior Technology Analyst

  • Jim, I wanted to ask a question, and you've called it out in your script about some of the AI applications, facial recognition and a whole bunch of others that you listed that some of your low-power FPGAs are enabling.

  • And I wondered if you might expand upon that a little bit.

  • What are the customers that are driving that.

  • How, I guess, deep are their engagements?

  • And might they continue to expand on your new-generation FPGA platform as you guys roll it out?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes, thanks for the question, Matt.

  • So first of all, a lot of that's related to our sensAI software stack.

  • So our sensAI software stack is a software stack that we introduced first about a year ago.

  • We made refinements over the course of this year, introducing new versions that have improved the performance and features and capability.

  • And what that software stack really allows our customers to do is to make it very easy to use our FPGA products in AI applications, particularly at the Edge of the network, and in particular for inference processing at the Edge where you want to make basic decision-making in Edge computing applications.

  • And we've seen really good adoption of that and quite a bit of customer traction and interest, and it's across a number of different segments.

  • We've certainly seen consumer-related applications for that, whether it's facial detection or key phrase recognition.

  • We can also analyze an audio or video signal and pick out different patterns in the audio or video.

  • So not just consumer applications, but also we've seen applications in the industrial segment for -- as well.

  • For instance, analyzing production lines as -- in manufacturing line and detecting manufacturing excursions, for instance, and things like that.

  • So we're quite pleased with the progress that we're making with sensAI and AI in general.

  • And yes, it's been broad-based across a number of different applications.

  • Matthew D. Ramsay - MD & Senior Technology Analyst

  • Got it.

  • As my follow-up, Sherri, the whole team laid out some pretty ambitious gross margin target at the Analyst Day 6-odd months ago, and it looks like you're coming in even better than those expectations.

  • And you mentioned in the script that you had a number of different levers to continue working on margins as you go forward.

  • Maybe you might expand on those and sort of remind us of what your long-term ambitions are on the gross margin line.

  • Sherri R. Luther - CFO & Corporate VP

  • Yes.

  • Sure, Matt.

  • Yes.

  • So as we outlined at our Investor Day, we talked about some of the levers of gross margin expansion related to pricing optimization and product cost reductions.

  • And so the improvement that we have seen to date, Q3 over Q3, the 240 basis points, you can see is really delivering on those levers that we mentioned at our Analyst Day.

  • And the long-term target that we laid out at our Analyst Day of over 62% in years -- by years 3 and 4 out there is really looking at those levers including mix.

  • And so the way we laid it out there in terms of the pricing optimization, we said roughly a 500 basis point increase from 2018 to get to our target model gross margin, and we laid that out in terms of the -- about 200 basis points improvement in pricing optimization, another 200 in product cost reductions, and then another 100 in mix.

  • And so that's kind of the way to think about the progress that we're making moving forward with the 240 basis improvement that we've achieved so far, and really the levers that we're looking at continuing to pull on to achieve our target model.

  • Operator

  • Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Rolland from Susquehanna.

  • Christopher Adam Jackson Rolland - Senior Analyst

  • Maybe you guys could talk about your outlook for next quarter by end market, how you see those trending.

  • And then I know it's early, but some people have given thoughts on Q1 expectations versus typical seasonality just given the difficult macro out there.

  • I wonder if you guys had any thoughts there as well.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes, thanks, Chris.

  • So first, on the Q4 guidance if you take a look at the midpoint of our guidance, from a year-over-year perspective, it's up.

  • From a sequential perspective, it's down sequentially.

  • If I speak about kind of what are the key drivers that we see sequentially, a couple of things driving the expectation for a sequential decline.

  • One would be we're expecting our IP revenue to decline sequentially.

  • We had a little bit higher-than-normal IP revenue in Q3, and we expect in Q4 for IP revenue to decline back to what is kind of considered by us to be the normal run rate.

  • So that's maybe a $1 million to $2 million sequential decline.

  • And then the other factor I would say is in the industrial automotive segment, towards the end of Q3, we did see a little softening in demand at the end of Q3 related to macroeconomic conditions and continued conservatism around trade negotiations and the dynamic nature of trade negotiations.

  • And we're expecting some of that softness to continue into Q4.

  • So those are kind of the main factors for the sequential movement from Q3 to Q4.

  • And then probably early -- too early for us to give any thoughts on Q1 in specific.

  • But I will say if we go back to our Investor Day in May, where we see over the long-term growth coming from for the company is in those 2 main sectors of ours: First of all, in comms and compute; and then secondly, in industrial and automotive.

  • We really see those 2 sectors as the long-term growth drivers for the company.

  • Christopher Adam Jackson Rolland - Senior Analyst

  • Great.

  • Well, I guess great gross margin guidance, particularly given that IP decline sequentially there as well.

  • As a second question, maybe you can just talk about FD-SOI.

  • How do you see this affecting top line?

  • Is it a revenue accelerator for you guys?

  • And is it really about taking share here?

  • Are these new kind of greenfield opportunities that FPGAs haven't been able to address before?

  • How are you thinking about the FD-SOI opportunity?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes, thanks.

  • So first, the FD-SOI is the technology that our new FPGA platform is based on, right?

  • So that platform, it's not just about FD-SOI, it's about a new architecture that we're bringing to market with new features, new capabilities, and then that's built on top of the FD-SOI semiconductor technology.

  • And what FD-SOI brings is, at a transistor level, a much more power-efficient transistor level.

  • And so for instance, roughly 50% lower power than, for instance, regular bulk CMOS technology.

  • And on top of that then, we add our own low-power architecture and other features and capabilities.

  • So we're really excited about that next-generation platform.

  • As I mentioned in prepared remarks, we were actually executing a bit ahead of schedule.

  • If you remember back in May of -- at our Investor Day, we talked about first samples for this platform being in the first half of 2020.

  • We're now expecting to provide first samples to our customers before the end of the year.

  • I'm quite pleased with the engineering team's execution on this, and we're excited to get this in the hands of customers.

  • We're also expecting to have a special launch event in December to rollout the new product, and so we'll talk more about it at that time.

  • But in terms of the business impact or revenue impact from that product, we would expect that to begin to generate revenue for us in probably the second half of next year.

  • That would be a typical time period from the samples to the very first initial levels of revenue.

  • And so that's when we would expect to see the business benefit.

  • And then, of course, in the follow-on years, we expect it to be a bigger revenue benefit.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Richard Shannon from Craig-Hallum.

  • Richard Cutts Shannon - Senior Research Analyst

  • Apologize, I got on a little bit late, so I may have missed some of the prepared remarks.

  • But let me ask you a question on the comms segment.

  • It looks like it was up a few percentage points.

  • I think you made some comments about 5G benefiting.

  • Maybe if you could kind of replay those comments and maybe unpack whether the comms business would have been up sequentially without 5G.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • Thanks, Richard.

  • So in comms and compute, we saw good sequential growth, and also in that segment, very, very good year-over-year growth.

  • I think around 27% year-over-year growth in that segment.

  • But in terms of sequential growth, we saw growth in both the compute and communications parts of that segment.

  • A couple of the growth drivers are 5G.

  • You mentioned that.

  • So we saw sequential growth from Q2 to Q3 in 5G, but we also saw nice growth in our server revenue from Q2 to Q3 as we continue to benefit from our higher attach rate and the higher ASPs that we have in the current server platform generation versus the prior generation.

  • So yes, the segment has been a good growth vector for us over the last couple of years and certainly in the most recent quarter.

  • Richard Cutts Shannon - Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay.

  • And maybe I'll follow-up on the -- just looking at the comms part of that segment.

  • Again, this is -- is the business outside of 5G, is that growing?

  • Obviously, we have some trade tensions with a very large OEM out there sanctioned by the U.S. government.

  • Maybe if you can kind of help us understand the dynamics in the third quarter and whether you have any worries about that going forward.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • From a sequential standpoint, Q2 to Q3, I think it was relatively stable across those 2 quarters.

  • And look, moving forward, the main driver for that segment will certainly be 5G wireless infrastructure deployments over the coming years.

  • I mean, 2019 is really just the beginning of the 5G wireless infrastructure build-out.

  • It's really only happened in a couple of countries, a couple of geographies.

  • Moving into next year and the following years, we'll start to see greater build-outs in North America, and eventually in Europe, too.

  • And so we think that the 5G wireless infrastructure and our very healthy position in that will be a nice, long-term growth vector for us.

  • Richard Cutts Shannon - Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay, great.

  • My last question.

  • I'll jump out of line.

  • Specifically in the automotive space here, we're seeing some difficult numbers coming out of the -- some of the major automakers worldwide, particularly in Europe.

  • And I know, historically, Lattice has had a pretty good exposure in Europe.

  • Maybe if you could help us understand the degree to which you've seen an impact from units perspective and maybe offsetting -- as how much you've been gaining share to offset that.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • In the industrial automotive segment, automotive is still a relatively small part of our revenue in that segment.

  • And certainly, we are -- we have a number of different customers there, and so we're subject to any macroeconomic slowdown that affects automotive.

  • But we do believe automotive electronics is a good long-term growth engine for us.

  • We're seeing a very healthy design win funnel in automotive electronics.

  • Obviously, there's increasing electronics and automotives moving forward.

  • And we're seeing, as I said, very healthy design win funnel with customers.

  • And so we think this will be a nice growth propellant for us for a number of years to come.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Charlie Anderson from Dougherty.

  • Charles Lowell Anderson - VP and Senior Research Analyst

  • Yes.

  • I'll start with kind of a two-parter on margins.

  • I wonder as FD-SOI starts to layer in back half of next year, as you mentioned, what is the impact on gross margins, if you could speak to that.

  • And then also on the OpEx side, we sort of flattened out here a little bit.

  • I think SG&A on an absolute dollar standpoint sort of flattened out.

  • I know you guys want to get to 15% at some point.

  • So is that more of a revenue growth that gets you there?

  • Or is there still some opportunities to trim on the SG&A side?

  • And then I've got a follow-up.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Thanks, Charlie.

  • So on the FD-SOI or next-gen FPGA platform, we are planning that program or that set of products that will be based off of that platform to be a margin benefit to us.

  • We're trying to build into that the design of those products and the marketing and the positioning of those products, a margin tailwind for us as those products ramp.

  • I would say in the second half of next year, we expect to see some initial revenue.

  • But I think the actual impact to our margin would be pretty muted in the first year, just because the level of revenue would be pretty small in the first year.

  • But moving toward the outer years as that program -- or as that generation of products contributes a higher amount of revenue, it would have more of an impact, positive impact to our margin.

  • And then on the second question on the OpEx, on SG&A, yes, in terms of absolute dollars, it was roughly flat Q2 to Q3.

  • But we are not done in SG&A yet.

  • We still are looking at areas to continue to try to drive SG&A to that 15% target.

  • And that is still -- we still expect that to be a combination of absolute dollar declines as well as just better scale as revenue ramps as well.

  • So I would say we're still looking at additional absolute dollar declines in the SG&A bucket.

  • Charles Lowell Anderson - VP and Senior Research Analyst

  • Great.

  • And then there was some commentary in the script about the -- and I think there was a press release, too, in the quarter about the NIST standard and security as a source of content gain for you.

  • So I wonder if you can just speak to the ramifications of that standard and some of the content opportunities that are out there, end markets that want to adopt this security.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • Thanks, Charlie.

  • Yes, that's under MachXO3D product.

  • And that one, we launched in Q2.

  • And what that is -- that product is an FPGA that we've added specific security technology to, and it allows that product to provide platform root of trust, and essentially allows that product to ensure that the hardware or firmware in a system has not been tampered with, whether it's tampered with in production or in transit, or when it's been deployed.

  • And so we're really excited about that product.

  • We've seen very good traction with, for instance, server OEMs for our next-generation server platforms.

  • The reason that, that particular standard is important than this standard is that's basically a good stamp of approval that this meets the right security requirements.

  • And so it's an important -- it's an important stamp for our customers to know that we meet those security requirements.

  • And again, we're very pleased with the customer progress.

  • And beyond the server customers, we see this product as potentially applicable in a number of different markets to basically provide security in all sorts of endpoint devices, whether those would be client computing platforms or other endpoint devices in the network.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of David Duley from Steelhead.

  • David Duley - Managing Principal

  • I was wondering, it seems like your new product introductions have been accelerated versus previous conference calls and your Analyst Day.

  • I'm just wondering with the acceleration of new products, does that mean that you'll achieve higher levels of -- will hit your accelerated levels of revenue growth sooner than you had before?

  • And could you just remind us what the long-term revenue growth goal is?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • Let me start with the last part of your question, Dave, and that's at our Analyst Day in May of earlier this year.

  • What we provided is that over this year and next year, our revenue growth would be expected to be kind of in the mid-single digits in terms of year-over-year percentage.

  • And then in 3- to 4-year time frame, we would accelerate revenue growth into the low-double digits is what we expected.

  • And yes, certainly, to the extent that we can accelerate the product road map or get things to market quicker, in the hands of our customers quicker, that certainly helps solidify our long-term growth objectives.

  • And I would say -- you asked a little bit about the products and why they were accelerated.

  • If you recall, at the end of last year, and we talked about this previously, we did a pretty extensive portfolio optimization where we looked at every single product and project that the R&D team is working on, and really justified each project according to its ROI and strategic value.

  • And we pruned out a lot of projects that we believe were low-ROI or just didn't have the right value for the company.

  • What we did then is we took the resources that we saved out of pruning out some of those projects, and we doubled down on the high-ROI projects and really focused the R&D team on driving the high-ROI programs to market quicker, to increase the cadence of our road map and to increase the time to market.

  • And so a couple of the programs that I mentioned that had some schedule acceleration, I really view that as a direct result of that portfolio optimization and R&D focusing that we did last year.

  • And so our CrossLinkPlus product, which launched in Q3, that sampled a little earlier to customers than expected.

  • We're actually expecting to generate initial revenue from that product this quarter.

  • And then I mentioned our next-generation FPGA platform as well.

  • Originally, we thought samples early next year; now, samples before the end of the year.

  • So yes, I'm pleased with the progress on the product road map, and the R&D team has done a good job to execute to the schedules and actually pull in a bit.

  • David Duley - Managing Principal

  • Okay.

  • Next question is as far as your server business goes in the -- with the cloud computing guys, you've talked about increasing content there with the next-generation platforms that are being rolled out.

  • Could you just help us understand where are we on the next generation of server platforms being rolled out by the big customers, whoever they might be -- the Intels of the world, I guess.

  • And what we should expect going forward from this segment with that progression of the customers adopting the new platform

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Sure.

  • In the current generation that's really ramping today, sometimes it's called by its code name, the [pearly] generation.

  • And that current generation that started ramping last year has been ramping this year.

  • One of the reasons I would -- that's a big growth opportunity for us or has been a good growth performer for us is that versus the prior generation of servers, we increased both our attach rate and our ASPs.

  • Our attach rate roughly tripled from prior generation to this generation, and our ASP went up as well.

  • And so that helped drive a significant amount of growth for us.

  • That's, for instance, part of the reason that our comms and compute sector this quarter in Q3 was up 27% year-over-year.

  • Now if we look forward to the future generations of server which aren't -- haven't started ramping yet, what we're focused on there is, of course, maintaining our high attach rate, but also continuing to bring more value to the customers and higher ASP along with that value as well.

  • So we're trying to bring more content, more value to the server customers.

  • And then that MachXO3 product that I mentioned earlier is part of that.

  • That product brings new security functionality.

  • We're working with the server customers to get that designed in the future server generations to again bring more value and continue to drive growth in that segment over the long period.

  • David Duley - Managing Principal

  • Just as a follow-on about what you just talked about.

  • Did your server unit volumes grow this quarter?

  • Or was it more of an ASP increase?

  • And then just as a final clarification, could you just talk about any revenue into China?

  • And are you recognizing revenue that you sell to Huawei?

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • Yes.

  • So on the first unit ASP and the sequential increase from Q2 to Q3, it was a combination of both and -- both unit and ASP relative to certainly the prior generation.

  • And then in terms of China or Huawei revenue specifically, so we are shipping to Huawei.

  • We are shipping only those products that we deemed compliant with export restrictions.

  • And so near the end of Q2 of this year, we did a very extensive legal analysis of which products are compliant with export restrictions using both internal counsel as well as leveraging multiple external legal firms as well.

  • So we did very extensive analysis, and we're shipping those products that we deem compliant at this point.

  • Operator

  • There are no further questions at this time.

  • I would like to turn the call back to Lattice CEO, Mr. Jim Anderson, for closing comments.

  • James Robert Anderson - President, CEO & Director

  • All right.

  • Thank you, operator, and thanks, everybody, for joining us on our call today.

  • So in summary, we achieved a new 10-year high in our non-GAAP operating profit as a percentage of revenue.

  • On the product side, our solid execution has enabled us to launch and sample CrossLinkPlus ahead of plan and to pool in sampling of our next-generation FPGA platform, which is based on FD-SOI technology.

  • And overall, we remain focused on executing to our business strategy and our product road map.

  • We appreciate your support and look forward to updating you on our progress moving forward.

  • Operator, that concludes today's call.

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call.

  • Thank you for participating.

  • You may now disconnect.