希捷科技 (STX) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Seagate Technology Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2022 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Also note, today's event is being recorded.

大家下午好，歡迎參加 Seagate Technology 第四季度和 2022 財年電話會議。 （操作員說明）另請注意，今天的活動正在錄製中。

And at this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Shanye Hudson, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Ma'am, please go ahead.

在這個時候，我想將電話會議轉交給投資者關係和財政部高級副總裁 Shanye Hudson。女士，請繼續。

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's call.

謝謝你。大家下午好，歡迎參加今天的電話會議。

Joining me are Dave Mosley, Seagate's Chief Executive Officer; and Gianluca Romano, our Chief Financial Officer. We've posted our earnings press release and detailed supplemental information for our June quarter and fiscal year 2022 results on the Investors section of our website.

希捷首席執行官戴夫·莫斯利 (Dave Mosley) 加入我的行列。和我們的首席財務官 Gianluca Romano。我們已經在我們網站的投資者部分發布了我們的收益新聞稿和 2022 年 6 月季度和 2022 財年業績的詳細補充信息。

During today's call, we will refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP figures are reconciled to GAAP figures in the earnings press release posted on our website and included on our Form 8-K that was filed with the SEC. We've not reconciled certain non-GAAP outlook measures because the material items that may impact these measures are out of our control and/or cannot be reasonably predicted. Therefore, a reconciliation to the corresponding GAAP measures is not available without unreasonable efforts.

在今天的電話會議中，我們將參考 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務指標。非 GAAP 數據與我們網站上發布的收益新聞稿中的 GAAP 數據一致，並包含在我們向 SEC 提交的 8-K 表格中。我們沒有對某些非公認會計原則的展望措施進行核對，因為可能影響這些措施的重大項目超出了我們的控制和/或無法合理預測。因此，如果沒有不合理的努力，就無法與相應的公認會計原則措施進行對賬。

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's call contains forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views and assumptions based on information available to us as of today, and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date.

在我們開始之前，我想提醒您，今天的電話會議包含前瞻性陳述，這些陳述反映了管理層當前的觀點和假設，基於我們截至今天可獲得的信息，不應依賴於任何後續日期。

Actual results may differ materially from those contained in our -- in or implied by these forward-looking statements as they're subject to risks and uncertainties associated with our business. To learn more about the risks, uncertainties and other factors that may affect our future business results please refer to the press release issued today and our SEC filings, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q as well as the supplemental information, all of which may be found on the Investors section of our website.

實際結果可能與我們在這些前瞻性陳述中包含或暗示的結果存在重大差異，因為它們受到與我們業務相關的風險和不確定性的影響。要了解有關可能影響我們未來業務結果的風險、不確定性和其他因素的更多信息，請參閱今天發布的新聞稿和我們提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件，包括我們最近的 10-K 表格年度報告和 10-Q 表格季度報告以及補充信息，所有這些都可以在我們網站的投資者部分找到。

As always, following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. Now I'll hand the call over to Dave for opening remarks.

與往常一樣，在我們準備好的評論之後，我們將打開提問電話。現在，我將把電話交給戴夫做開場白。

Thank you, Shanye, and welcome to those of you joining us on today's call.

謝謝你，山野，歡迎大家加入我們今天的電話會議。

Our June quarter financial results reflected near-record data center demand contrasted with impacts from a confluence of macro headwinds in other end markets, particularly in the consumer-facing legacy markets. We believe the secular data trends driving long-term demand growth for mass capacity storage and infrastructure remain intact, as I will discuss a bit later.

我們 6 月季度的財務業績反映了接近創紀錄的數據中心需求，與其他終端市場（尤其是面向消費者的傳統市場）的宏觀逆風匯合的影響形成鮮明對比。我們認為，推動大容量存儲和基礎設施長期需求增長的長期數據趨勢保持不變，稍後我將討論。

However, the impacts from COVID lockdowns in Asia, non-HDD component shortages and global inflationary pressures intensified late in the quarter. Our resulting June quarter revenue and non-GAAP EPS declined quarter-on-quarter to $2.63 billion and $1.59, respectively. While macro events are weighing on our near-term performance, Seagate's financial achievements for fiscal 2022 were noteworthy.

然而，亞洲 COVID 封鎖、非 HDD 組件短缺和全球通脹壓力的影響在本季度末有所加劇。我們由此產生的 6 月季度收入和非公認會計準則每股收益分別環比下降至 26.3 億美元和 1.59 美元。雖然宏觀事件正在影響我們的近期業績，但希捷在 2022 財年的財務成就值得注意。

We grew revenue by 9% year-over-year, fueled by 24% growth in our mass capacity products. We expanded profitability even faster than revenue, leading to fiscal year non-GAAP gross margin above 30% and non-GAAP operating margin above 18%, and we achieved record non-GAAP EPS of $8.18.

在我們的大容量產品增長 24% 的推動下，我們的收入同比增長了 9%。我們的盈利能力增長速度甚至超過了收入，導致本財年非公認會計原則毛利率超過 30%，非公認會計原則營業利潤率超過 18%，我們實現了創紀錄的非公認會計原則每股收益 8.18 美元。

In fiscal 2022, we generated $1.3 billion in free cash flow, our highest level in 4 years and maintained our commitment to returning cash to our shareholders, funding $610 million in dividends and repurchasing 9% of our shares outstanding.

在 2022 財年，我們產生了 13 億美元的自由現金流，這是我們 4 年來的最高水平，並保持了向股東返還現金的承諾，為 6.1 億美元的股息提供資金並回購了 9% 的流通股。

We are also demonstrating technology leadership and executing our product road map to support the growing demand for data. We attained our fastest ever ramp with the 20-plus terabyte nearline platform, handily beating the projections that we made at the start of the quarter. We are on track to achieve volume and revenue crossover with the 18-terabyte drives in the current quarter.

我們還展示了技術領先地位並執行我們的產品路線圖，以支持對數據不斷增長的需求。通過 20 多 TB 的近線平台，我們實現了有史以來最快的增長，輕鬆超過了我們在本季度開始時做出的預測。我們有望在本季度實現與 18 TB 驅動器的銷量和收入交叉。

The 20-plus terabyte product family is based on our highly successful common platform design, which has enabled us to scale and ramp to yield quickly as evidenced by the results I just shared. We have the flexibility to extend into the mid- to upper 20-terabyte capacity points with minimal changes to our design, which allows us to meet customers' timing, readiness and offers an attractive cost profile for both customers and for Seagate.

超過 20 TB 的產品系列基於我們非常成功的通用平台設計，這使我們能夠快速擴展並提高產量，正如我剛剛分享的結果所證明的那樣。我們可以靈活地擴展到中到 20 TB 的容量點，只需對我們的設計進行最小的更改，這使我們能夠滿足客戶的時間安排和準備情況，並為客戶和希捷提供具有吸引力的成本配置。

We have worked tirelessly over the last 3 to 4 years, improving the resilience of our supply chain, aligning our mass capacity product portfolio to our customers' needs and strengthening our financial foundation. Our operational execution, combined with structural changes that have taken place in the industry, namely the transition to mass capacity products and increased supply discipline, support our view that the company is fundamentally stronger today and better positioned for the future.

在過去的 3 到 4 年裡，我們孜孜不倦地工作，提高了我們供應鏈的彈性，使我們的大容量產品組合符合客戶的需求，並加強了我們的財務基礎。我們的運營執行，加上行業中發生的結構性變化，即向大容量產品的過渡和增加的供應紀律，支持我們的觀點，即公司今天從根本上變得更強大，為未來做好了更好的定位。

Let us now turn to the current market environment. Despite the ongoing impacts of COVID lockdowns and supply challenges, mass capacity revenue was flat quarter-over-quarter, due in part the strong cloud customer adoption of our 20-plus terabyte nearline drives. U.S. cloud data center demand remains strong. However, persistent non-HDD component shortages have led to inventory imbalances, precluding new data center build-outs from being completed.

現在讓我們轉向當前的市場環境。儘管 COVID 鎖定和供應挑戰的持續影響，大規模容量收入環比持平，部分原因是雲客戶對我們 20 多 TB 近線驅動器的強勁採用。美國雲數據中心需求依然強勁。然而，持續的非 HDD 組件短缺導致庫存失衡，阻礙了新的數據中心建設的完成。

These, along with other supply disruptions have led to a buildup in inventory levels across a broad spectrum of customers, a trend that continued through the end of the quarter. As macro uncertainties and inflationary pressures intensify, we expect customers will increasingly focus on reducing their inventory levels while maintaining the ability to address end market demand.

這些以及其他供應中斷導致廣泛客戶的庫存水平增加，這種趨勢一直持續到本季度末。隨著宏觀不確定性和通脹壓力的加劇，我們預計客戶將越來越關注降低庫存水平，同時保持滿足終端市場需求的能力。

At the same time, our Asia-based cloud customers are dealing with the impacts of COVID restrictive measures, which have had far-reaching effects across all of the end markets that we serve in the region. In the VIA markets, recall that many of the major projects driving demand are in the Asia region, particularly in China, where lockdowns are impacting our near-term revenue. While the situation remains fluid, we are confident that mass capacity demand growth will resume once lockdowns ease and inventory levels normalize.

與此同時，我們位於亞洲的雲客戶正在應對 COVID 限制措施的影響，這些措施對我們在該地區服務的所有終端市場產生了深遠的影響。在威盛市場，請回想一下，推動需求的許多主要項目都在亞洲地區，特別是在中國，那裡的封鎖正在影響我們的近期收入。儘管情況仍然不穩定，但我們相信，一旦解除封鎖和庫存水平正常化，大規模產能需求增長將恢復。

Within the legacy markets, demand rapidly deteriorated at the end of the quarter as lockdowns and surging inflation severely impacted consumer spending for PCs and external drives. Exiting the June quarter, the legacy business represented only 20% of our HDD revenue, which is a historic low.

在傳統市場中，由於封鎖和通脹飆升嚴重影響了個人電腦和外部驅動器的消費者支出，需求在本季度末迅速惡化。退出 6 月季度後，傳統業務僅占我們 HDD 收入的 20%，創歷史新低。

In response to the current business conditions, Seagate is taking actions to maintain strong supply discipline and a favorable pricing environment. We are reducing our manufacturing production plans while continuing to focus on driving efficiencies in the factory and across supply chains.

為應對當前的業務狀況，希捷正在採取措施維持嚴格的供應紀律和有利的定價環境。我們正在減少我們的製造生產計劃，同時繼續專注於提高工廠和整個供應鏈的效率。

We are maintaining prudent cost controls across the business and executing our product road map, which also helps to support our customers' TCO objectives. While the current environment is challenging, the multiple secular drivers fueling long-term demand for mass capacity storage have not changed, and in fact, continue to expand.

我們在整個業務範圍內保持審慎的成本控制並執行我們的產品路線圖，這也有助於支持我們客戶的 TCO 目標。儘管當前環境充滿挑戰，但推動大容量存儲長期需求的多種長期驅動因素並未改變，事實上還在繼續擴大。

Digital transformation is still in the early innings according to leading cloud service providers who have estimated that only 10% of corporate IT has moved to the cloud. New AI applications continue to emerge with the AI engines requiring a massive amount of new data for training, data that must be captured, analyzed, stored and moved across a more distributed multi-cloud network. And as the digital and physical worlds begin to converge, enterprises are employing data-intensive digital twins to enhance decision-making and overall business efficiencies.

據領先的雲服務提供商稱，數字化轉型仍處於早期階段，他們估計只有 10% 的企業 IT 已遷移到雲中。隨著人工智能引擎的出現，新的人工智能應用程序不斷湧現，需要大量新數據進行訓練，這些數據必須在更分佈式的多云網絡中捕獲、分析、存儲和移動。隨著數字世界和物理世界開始融合，企業正在使用數據密集型數字孿生來提高決策制定和整體業務效率。

These trends dovetailed into a view that businesses will need technology investment strategies to remain competitive in a data-driven world, which includes the need for mass capacity storage and infrastructure. Seagate is poised to benefit with a broad product portfolio of cloud and edge infrastructure solutions from mass capacity HDDs to enterprise systems to our live cloud and mobile service offerings.

這些趨勢與這樣一種觀點相吻合，即企業需要技術投資策略才能在數據驅動的世界中保持競爭力，其中包括對大容量存儲和基礎設施的需求。希捷準備受益於廣泛的雲和邊緣基礎設施解決方案產品組合，從大容量 HDD 到企業系統，再到我們的實時雲和移動服務產品。

We are executing our development plans for the 30 terabyte plus product family based on our innovative HAMR technology, which enables capacity points of 30, 40, 50 terabytes and beyond to support future data demand growth.

我們正在執行基於我們創新的 HAMR 技術的 30 TB 以上產品系列的開發計劃，該技術支持 30、40、50 TB 及更高的容量點，以支持未來的數據需求增長。

Seagate's innovation extends beyond our HDD technology leadership. We're garnering recognition for our systems portfolio, capturing the coveted Product of the Year Award for hardware infrastructure at this year's NAB show for our CORVAULT storage system. CORVAULT has also gained customer attention with its unique autonomous drive regeneration technology, which combines our device and systems expertise to enable self-healing capabilities.

希捷的創新超越了我們在 HDD 技術上的領先地位。我們的系統產品組合獲得了認可，在今年的 NAB 展上，我們的 CORVAULT 存儲系統獲得了令人垂涎的硬件基礎設施年度產品獎。 CORVAULT 還憑藉其獨特的自動駕駛再生技術贏得了客戶的關注，該技術結合了我們的設備和系統專業知識以實現自我修復功能。

These systems provide enterprise CIOs with peace of mind that their data will be protected while offering a strong TCO value proposition. Additionally, technologies such as self-healing distributed data protection, and secure erase play a critical role in reducing the environmental impact of our products.

這些系統讓企業 CIO 高枕無憂，他們的數據將受到保護，同時提供強大的 TCO 價值主張。此外，自我修復分佈式數據保護和安全擦除等技術在減少我們產品對環境的影響方面發揮著關鍵作用。

Drives with these technologies can be repaired, reused or recycled rather than just discarded thus helping to preserve the Earth's precious resources. These efforts are critically important to Seagate and a key pillar of our product circularity strategy. We are also receiving very positive feedback from customers on a global basis for our work in this area.

採用這些技術的驅動器可以被修復、重複使用或回收，而不僅僅是丟棄，從而有助於保護地球的寶貴資源。這些努力對希捷至關重要，也是我們產品循環戰略的關鍵支柱。對於我們在這一領域的工作，我們還在全球範圍內收到了來自客戶的非常積極的反饋。

In closing, Seagate has broad exposure to the strong secular tailwinds driving demand for mass capacity storage. These trends remain intact, which lends confidence that growth will resume the supply constraints and COVID lockdown impacts ease. Seagate is fundamentally a stronger company today and is exceptionally well positioned to endure the current market environment.

最後，希捷廣泛接觸推動大容量存儲需求的強勁長期順風。這些趨勢保持不變，這使人們相信增長將恢復供應限制，並且 COVID 鎖定影響會緩解。從根本上說，希捷如今已是一家更強大的公司，並且在應對當前市場環境方面處於非常有利的地位。

We have the right product portfolio, deep customer relationships and operational agility to optimize profits and fuel growth.

我們擁有合適的產品組合、深厚的客戶關係和運營敏捷性，可以優化利潤並推動增長。

I'll now hand the call over to Gianluca to discuss the financial results.

我現在將電話轉給 Gianluca 討論財務結果。

Thank you, Dave. While demand for our mass capacity products remained very healthy in the June quarter, the intensifying economic pressures, buildup of inventory at our customers and COVID restrictive measures that Dave discussed earlier and a more significant impact on our results than we were anticipating, particularly in the legacy business.

謝謝你，戴夫。儘管在 6 月季度對我們的大容量產品的需求仍然非常健康，但日益加劇的經濟壓力、我們客戶的庫存增加以及 Dave 之前討論的 COVID 限制措施以及對我們業績的影響比我們預期的要大，尤其是在遺留業務。

Despite lower-than-anticipated revenue levels, and extraordinary cost pressures. Our non-GAAP gross margin expanded slightly to 29.3% in the June quarter, with HDD gross margin remaining comfortably inside our target range of 30% to 33%.

儘管收入水平低於預期，而且成本壓力很大。我們的非 GAAP 毛利率在 6 月季度略微擴大至 29.3%，而 HDD 毛利率保持在我們 30% 至 33% 的目標範圍內。

Our results are due in part to steady demand for our mass capacity products and a mix shift toward higher capacity drives. In the June quarter, total hard disk drive capacity shipments increased slightly to 155 exabytes, of which the mass capacity market made up 90% of the total with shipments of 129 exabytes, up 4% sequentially and 12% year-over-year.

我們的結果部分歸因於對我們的大容量產品的穩定需求以及向更高容量驅動器的混合轉變。在 6 月季度，硬盤驅動器總容量出貨量小幅增長至 155 EB，其中大容量市場佔總量的 90%，出貨量為 129 EB，環比增長 4%，同比增長 12%。

Our nearline product contributed 119 exabyte, up 1% sequentially and 17% year-on-year, bolstered by strong U.S. cloud customer demand for our 20-plus terabyte product family. With a richer mix of high capacity nearline drives supporting record total HDD capacity per drive of 7.8 terabyte compared with 5.4 terabytes just 1 year ago.

我們的近線產品貢獻了 119 EB，環比增長 1%，同比增長 17%，這得益於美國雲客戶對我們 20 多 TB 產品系列的強勁需求。憑藉更豐富的高容量近線驅動器組合，每個驅動器的 HDD 總容量達到創紀錄的 7.8 TB，而 1 年前僅為 5.4 TB。

On a revenue basis, mask capacity represented 80% of total HDD revenue at $1.9 billion in the June quarter, flat compared to the prior quarter and slightly higher than the prior year period. Strong U.S. cloud demand, combined with a sequential improvement in the VIA market, albeit of very weak March levels, offset lower-than-expected sales into the Asia cloud market, which have also been affected by COVID lockdowns.

在收入基礎上，掩模產能佔 HDD 總收入的 80%，6 月季度為 19 億美元，與上一季度持平，略高於去年同期。美國強勁的雲需求，加上威盛市場的連續改善，儘管 3 月份的水平非常疲軟，抵消了亞洲雲市場低於預期的銷售額，亞洲雲市場也受到 COVID 封鎖的影響。

While we believe the end market demand disruptions are temporary, we are mindful of prevailing macro uncertainties which influenced how quickly the VIA and other mass capacity markets will return to strong annual growth. Within the legacy market, revenue was $489 million, down 24% sequentially and 43% year-over-year. The decline was most pronounced in the client PC end market, which now represents a mid-single-digit percentage of our overall revenue.

雖然我們認為終端市場需求中斷是暫時的，但我們注意到普遍存在的宏觀不確定性影響威盛和其他大容量市場將多快恢復強勁的年度增長。在傳統市場中，收入為 4.89 億美元，環比下降 24%，同比下降 43%。這種下降在客戶端 PC 終端市場最為明顯，現在占我們總收入的中個位數百分比。

Consumer demand also deteriorated more than anticipated, reflecting the sharp rise in inflation impacting consumer discretionary spending. Finally, revenue for our non-HDD business was $218 million, down about 8% sequentially and 21% year-over-year.

消費者需求的惡化程度也超出預期，反映出通脹的急劇上升影響了消費者的可自由支配支出。最後，我們的非 HDD 業務收入為 2.18 億美元，環比下降約 8%，同比下降 21%。

We saw a sharp uptick in our system business as we were able to mitigate some of the component shortages we have been experiencing, which enable us to begin shipping some of the record order backlog. However, component availability remains a challenge and impacted the SSD business during the quarter, leaving us unable to fulfill all the customer demand. We continue to work with our suppliers to support customer demand as constrained is.

我們看到我們的系統業務急劇上升，因為我們能夠緩解我們一直在經歷的一些組件短缺，這使我們能夠開始運送一些創紀錄的訂單積壓。然而，組件可用性仍然是一個挑戰，並在本季度影響了 SSD 業務，使我們無法滿足所有客戶需求。我們將繼續與我們的供應商合作，以支持有限的客戶需求。

Moving to our operational performance. Non-GAAP gross profit in the June quarter was $771 million, corresponding to non-GAAP gross margin of 29.3%, up 10 basis points quarter-over-quarter. As noted earlier, the increased mix of mass capacity products and transition to higher capacity drives more than offset lower business volumes and higher component costs.

轉向我們的運營績效。 6 月當季非美國通用會計準則毛利潤為 7.71 億美元，對應非美國通用會計準則毛利率為 29.3%，環比增長 10 個基點。如前所述，大容量產品組合的增加和向更高容量的過渡，足以抵消較低的業務量和較高的組件成本。

Non-GAAP operating expenses were $349 million, slightly up quarter-over-quarter and in line with our expectations as business travel and sales and marketing activity resumed. Our resulting non-GAAP operating income was $422 million or 16.1% of revenue. We will continue to focus on managing costs and balancing supply with demand to position the company to expand operating margin back into the target range of 18% to 22% when top line growth resumes, which we believe could begin later in the fiscal year.

非美國通用會計準則運營費用為 3.49 億美元，環比略有增長，符合我們的預期，因為商務旅行以及銷售和營銷活動恢復。我們由此產生的非公認會計原則營業收入為 4.22 億美元，佔收入的 16.1%。我們將繼續專注於管理成本和平衡供需，以使公司在收入增長恢復時將營業利潤率擴大至 18% 至 22% 的目標範圍，我們認為這可能會在本財年晚些時候開始。

Based on diluted share count of approximately 217 million shares, non-GAAP EPS for the June quarter was $1.59.

基於約 2.17 億股的稀釋後股票數量，6 月季度的非公認會計原則每股收益為 1.59 美元。

Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow. Inventory increased to approximately $1.57 billion as we ended the quarter with higher finished good consistent with the rapidly changing business environment.

轉到資產負債表和現金流。庫存增加至約 15.7 億美元，因為我們在本季度末完成了與快速變化的商業環境相一致的更高的成品。

We continue to maintain a higher level of physical components and use ocean trade to reduce logistic costs and support future product demand. Based on our current outlook, we expect inventory to decline slightly as we move through the calendar year. Capital expenditures were $72 million for the quarter and totaled $381 million for the fiscal year or just over 3% of fiscal year revenue, reflecting our focus on aligning supply and demand. Given the current business environment, we will continue to carefully manage our investment and supply.

我們繼續保持更高水平的物理組件，並利用海運貿易來降低物流成本並支持未來的產品需求。根據我們目前的展望，我們預計隨著日曆年的推進，庫存將略有下降。本季度資本支出為 7200 萬美元，本財年總計 3.81 億美元，略高於財年收入的 3%，反映了我們對調整供需的關注。鑑於目前的商業環境，我們將繼續謹慎管理我們的投資和供應。

Free cash flow generation was $108 million in the June quarter, down from $363 million sequentially due to a combination of factors, including higher inventory levels, the timing of certain and linearity that was heavily weighted to the back end of the quarter. This impact should normalize in subsequent quarters.

6 月季度的自由現金流產生為 1.08 億美元，低於上一季度的 3.63 億美元，原因包括庫存水平較高、確定的時間安排以及在本季度末佔很大比重的線性度。這種影響在隨後的幾個季度應該會正常化。

Overall, we are pleased with our free cash flow for fiscal 2022, which increased 13% year-over-year to approximately $1.3 billion. We currently expect continued growth in our annual free cash flow generation in fiscal 2023, depending on the pace of economic recovery.

總體而言，我們對 2022 財年的自由現金流感到滿意，同比增長 13% 至約 13 億美元。我們目前預計 2023 財年我們的年度自由現金流量將繼續增長，具體取決於經濟復甦的步伐。

Consistent with our commitment to returning cash to shareholders we used $152 million for the quarterly dividend and $486 million to repurchase 6 million ordinary shares, exiting the quarter with 210 million shares outstanding.

根據我們向股東返還現金的承諾，我們使用了 1.52 億美元的季度股息和 4.86 億美元回購了 600 萬股普通股，本季度以 2.1 億股流通股結束。

And approximately, $2.4 billion remaining in our authorization. Over the past 2 years, we have reported more than 20% of Seagate share outstanding at an average price of approximately $71 per share. We ended the fiscal year with cash and cash equivalents of $650 million, and total liquidity was approximately $2.4 billion, including our revolving credit facility.

我們的授權中還剩下大約 24 億美元。在過去 2 年中，我們報告了超過 20% 的希捷流通股，平均價格約為每股 71 美元。我們在本財年結束時的現金和現金等價物為 6.5 億美元，總流動性約為 24 億美元，包括我們的循環信貸額度。

Total debt balance at the end of the quarter was relatively flat with the prior period at $5.6 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.5 billion for fiscal '22 resulting in total debt to leverage ratio of 2.2x. As we enter fiscal 2023, we expect macro uncertainties and non-HDD component shortages to continue pressuring our end market over the near term.

本季度末的總債務餘額與上一季度相對持平，為 56 億美元。 22 財年調整後的 EBITDA 為 25 億美元，導致總債務與槓桿比率為 2.2 倍。隨著我們進入 2023 財年，我們預計宏觀不確定性和非 HDD 組件短缺將在短期內繼續給我們的終端市場帶來壓力。

Drawing on our decades of experience in managing the company through dynamic industry environment, we are taking action to carefully manage our cash and safeguard profitability, including managing our supply to restore healthy customer inventory levels.

利用我們在動態行業環境中管理公司的數十年經驗，我們正在採取行動謹慎管理我們的現金並保障盈利能力，包括管理我們的供應以恢復健康的客戶庫存水平。

With that in mind, our outlook for the September quarter is as follows: we expect revenue to be in the range of $2.5 billion, plus or minus $150 million. At the midpoint of our revenue guidance, non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be slightly above 15%, and we expect non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $1.40 plus or minus $0.20.

考慮到這一點，我們對 9 月季度的展望如下：我們預計收入將在 25 億美元左右，上下浮動 1.5 億美元。在我們收入指導的中點，非公認會計準則營業利潤率預計將略高於 15%，我們預計非公認會計準則每股收益將在 1.40 美元上下 0.20 美元的範圍內。

I will now turn the call back to Dave for final comments.

我現在將電話轉回戴夫以徵求最終意見。

Thanks, Gianluca. Last quarter, I expressed confidence in the long-term growth trajectory of our business, and that view holds firm today. The multiple secular trends fueling demand for mass capacity HDD storage also catalyze growth for our system solutions and Lyve services business and Seagate is well positioned to benefit.

謝謝，吉安盧卡。上個季度，我對我們業務的長期增長軌跡表達了信心，這種觀點在今天依然堅定。多種長期趨勢推動了對大容量 HDD 存儲的需求，也促進了我們的系統解決方案和 Lyve 服務業務的增長，而希捷完全可以從中受益。

Our products are funded on our drive innovation, and we continue to execute our strong HDD product road maps. We are shipping the 20-plus terabyte family of nearline drives and high volume and we are well down the development path towards launching our 30-plus terabyte family of drives based on HAMR technology.

我們的產品資金來自我們的驅動創新，我們將繼續執行我們強大的 HDD 產品路線圖。我們正在交付 20 多 TB 的近線驅動器系列和大容量產品，並且我們正朝著推出基於 HAMR 技術的 30 多 TB 驅動器系列的發展方向邁進。

We expect to begin customer shipments of these HAMR-based products by this time next year. Seagate will navigate through the near-term market dynamics by focusing on what we do best, namely run efficient and predictable operations, partner closely with our customers, put in place prudent spending controls and align supply with demand.

我們預計將在明年這個時候開始向客戶發貨這些基於 HAMR 的產品。希捷將專注於我們最擅長的領域，即運行高效且可預測的運營、與客戶密切合作、實施審慎的支出控制以及使供應與需求保持一致，從而駕馭近期市場動態。

We believe that these actions position us to quickly return to our long-term financial model once these macro pressures abate delivering 3% to 6% revenue growth and operating margins of 18% to 22% of revenue, all the while maintaining our commitment of returning capital to shareholders. While the dynamic market environment is disrupting typical demand patterns, the underlying demand for data remains strong, which supports flat or even slightly higher revenue in fiscal 2023 and depending on the timing and pace of the economic recovery.

我們相信，一旦這些宏觀壓力減弱，實現 3% 至 6% 的收入增長和 18% 至 22% 的營業利潤率，這些行動將使我們能夠迅速恢復我們的長期財務模式，同時保持我們回歸的承諾資本給股東。儘管動態的市場環境正在擾亂典型的需求模式，但對數據的潛在需求仍然強勁，這支持 2023 財年的收入持平甚至略高，具體取決於經濟復甦的時機和速度。

I'd like to conclude by expressing gratitude to our employees for their incredible efforts through the fiscal year. I'd also like to thank our suppliers, customers and partners for their contributions to our results and our shareholders for their ongoing support.

最後，我想對我們的員工在本財年做出的令人難以置信的努力表示感謝。我還要感謝我們的供應商、客戶和合作夥伴對我們業績的貢獻以及我們的股東的持續支持。

Gianluca and I will now take your questions.

Gianluca 和我現在將回答您的問題。

(Operator Instructions) Our first question today comes from Aaron Rakers from Wells Fargo.

（操作員說明）我們今天的第一個問題來自富國銀行的 Aaron Rakers。

Yes. I guess I want to go down the path on the nearline business. As you look back over this past quarter, relative to the 119 exabytes that you shipped, I guess the first part of the question is, did that play out largely as you expected? Did you see demand slow down at all through the course of the quarter.

是的。我想我想走近線業務的道路。當您回顧過去的這個季度時，相對於您交付的 119 EB，我想問題的第一部分是，這在很大程度上符合您的預期嗎？您是否看到整個季度的需求都在放緩。

Any kind of changes relative to your initial expectations coming into the June quarter? And how are you currently kind of thinking about the demand profile of that end market considering your comments on inventory as you kind of look at your current quarter guidance.

與您進入 6 月季度的最初預期相比，有什麼變化嗎？在您查看當前季度指導時，考慮到您對庫存的評論，您目前如何考慮該終端市場的需求狀況。

Thanks for the question, Aaron. If I look at where we were 2 quarters ago, predictability of the cloud, 20-terabyte transition, those kind of tactics that you referred to. I think it's been fairly predictable through the end of last quarter.

謝謝你的問題，亞倫。如果我看看我們 2 個季度前的情況，雲的可預測性，20 TB 的轉換，你提到的那些策略。我認為到上個季度末這是可以預見的。

We do see, in particular, in China and some of CSPs, some inventory overages. So what we're doing to try to compensate for that, is to not make sure we don't pack into it, not building too many 16s and 18s, if you will, and heading up the transitions to the 20s there. So it's more of a looking forward where I see issues. It's not really with U.S. CSPs.

我們確實看到，特別是在中國和一些 CSP，一些庫存過剩。所以我們正在做的嘗試彌補這一點，就是不要確保我們不會打包進去，如果你願意的話，不要建造太多的 16 和 18，然後將過渡到 20 年代。因此，在我看到問題的地方，它更像是一種期待。這與美國的 CSP 無關。

I mean everyone is having the same supply chain issues out in the world, but some people are navigating it differently. And I think there's a good market demand out for mass capacity and especially in the cloud businesses. I do think there are some temporary issues that people are getting through given their supply chain points or COVID lockdowns or things like that.

我的意思是，世界上每個人都面臨著同樣的供應鏈問題，但有些人的處理方式不同。而且我認為市場對海量容量有很好的需求，尤其是在雲業務中。我確實認為，鑑於他們的供應鏈點或 COVID 鎖定或類似的事情，人們正在經歷一些暫時的問題。

Yes. And any thoughts on how we think about the end demand? I know in the past, we've talked about kind of a longer-term growth rate in that nearline market being kind of in that 30%-plus range.

是的。關於我們如何看待最終需求的任何想法？我知道過去，我們曾討論過近線市場的長期增長率在 30% 以上的範圍內。

Do you think that to kind of get back to that flat to slight revenue growth into -- for fiscal '23 that that's how we should kind of think about the demand profile into the back half of the fiscal year. Is that kind of how you're thinking about it?

您是否認為，對於 23 財年，我們應該如何考慮到本財年後半段的需求狀況，才能恢復到平穩的收入增長。你是這樣想的嗎？

Yes. So we're going to pause a little bit because make sure the inventory flows through here in the front half of the year, but we'll eventually get back on that. And we do have products coming higher capacity points, which actually helps drive the extra demand as well as those customers wake up, maybe they were stuck on 16 before and now they're going to be a 20 or 20 plus, right? So that will help the exabyte demand as well.

是的。所以我們要暫停一下，因為要確保庫存在今年上半年流過這裡，但我們最終會回到這一點。而且我們確實有更高容量點的產品，這實際上有助於推動額外需求以及那些客戶醒來，也許他們之前被困在 16 歲，現在他們將成為 20 歲或 20 歲以上，對嗎？因此，這也將有助於艾字節的需求。

Ultimately, we're going to be driving out of the back of this fiscal year, like we said, 30 terabytes. So we should get back to some healthy exabyte growth. But I think what we're seeing right now is very tactical.

最終，就像我們說的那樣，我們將在本財政年度結束後推出 30 TB。所以我們應該回到一些健康的艾字節增長。但我認為我們現在看到的是非常戰術性的。

Our next question comes from Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America.

我們的下一個問題來自美國銀行的Wamsi Mohan。

Dave, you mentioned a return to growth later in the fiscal year. I was hoping you might give us some color around how you're thinking about the trajectory of recovery, both in mass capacity, are you assuming that you basically have a 2-quarter sort of slowdown here as inventory gets worked down and the demand headwinds abate.

戴夫，你提到了本財年晚些時候恢復增長。我希望你能給我們一些關於你如何看待復甦軌蹟的顏色，無論是在大規模產能方面，你是否假設隨著庫存下降和需求逆風，這里基本上有兩個季度的放緩減弱。

And is gross margin going to be following a similar trajectory. So are we sort of at the bottom of gross margins? Or should we expect gross margins to contract further from here?

毛利率是否會遵循類似的軌跡。那麼我們是否處於毛利率的底部？還是我們應該期望毛利率從這裡進一步收縮？

Thanks, Wamsi. I'll let Gianluca answer the gross margin point. From a demand perspective, the legacy was hit pretty hard as we talked about in the prepared remarks.

謝謝，萬西。我會讓 Gianluca 回答毛利率問題。從需求的角度來看，正如我們在準備好的評論中談到的那樣，遺產受到了相當大的打擊。

And that's there are a lot of the legacy products that are -- the inventory is too high now on things like PCs. It's so de minimis as a part of our portfolio now that we're probably not going to pack anything into it, but some of the legacy products will suffer this quarter and then they'll come back a little bit on the stuff that's more salient for us now because 80% is mass capacity.

這就是很多遺留產品——現在個人電腦等產品的庫存太高了。作為我們產品組合的一部分，它是如此微不足道，以至於我們可能不會在其中打包任何東西，但一些遺留產品將在本季度受到影響，然後它們會在更突出的東西上回歸一點現在對我們來說，因為 80% 是質量容量。

There still are some things like the VIA market that are not going through their normal seasonality gyrations, they're actually more impacted just because of COVID lockdowns and so on. But we do think that after we get through that period, whether that starts at the end of Q1 or Q2, we don't know right now, but we think that there's a lot of pent-up demand that's coming.

仍然有一些東西，比如威盛市場，沒有經歷正常的季節性波動，實際上只是因為 COVID 封鎖等等，它們受到的影響更大。但我們確實認為，在我們度過那個時期之後，無論是從第一季度末還是第二季度末開始，我們現在還不知道，但我們認為會有很多被壓抑的需求即將到來。

And so that's one of the reasons what we're doing is we're changing over from some of the more -- the older products that might be going into life to some of our newer products like the 20-plus terabyte some of the mid-cap nearline products are just making sure that the inventory that we do have is more current and when those customers are ready for the strong polls again, then we have the best stuff out in front of them.

所以這就是我們正在做的原因之一是我們正在從一些更老的產品轉變為我們的一些新產品，比如 20 多 TB 的一些中期產品。 -cap 近線產品只是確保我們擁有的庫存是最新的，當這些客戶再次準備好接受強大的民意調查時，我們就會有最好的東西擺在他們面前。

Gianluca, do you want to talk about gross margins?

Gianluca，你想談談毛利率嗎？

Yes, clearly, we are positive on our expectation for the business to recover soon and to improve sequentially. I think the seasonality will be different than what we have seen in the last year, for example.

是的，很明顯，我們對業務將很快恢復並逐步改善的預期持積極態度。例如，我認為季節性將與我們去年看到的不同。

I would say mass capacity is actually strong already. Now we have done 5 consecutive quarters of record or near record revenue and volume and gross margin. Actually the trend in gross margin is a bit different depending from which segment you are looking at.

我想說的是，大規模的容量實際上已經很強大了。現在我們已經連續 5 個季度實現了創紀錄或接近創紀錄的收入、銷量和毛利率。實際上，毛利率的趨勢與您所關注的細分市場略有不同。

The legacy part and the non-HDD part have seen some decline in gross margin in the last 4 quarters. The mass capacity part has been very strong. So at the total level, we don't see a lot of change because the increase in mix to the mass capacity basically is offsetting the decline for the legacy and the non-hard disk. But in future, with a continued improvement in mainly in mass capacity and the mix continues to go into the 80% plus of the total [RPF] being more capacity. That should bring an improvement in gross margin, too.

過去 4 個季度，傳統部分和非 HDD 部分的毛利率有所下降。質量能力部分已經很強大了。所以在總體層面上，我們沒有看到太大的變化，因為大容量混合的增加基本上抵消了傳統和非硬盤的下降。但在未來，隨著主要在質量容量方面的持續改善，混合繼續進入總容量的 80% 以上 [RPF] 是更多容量。這也應該會帶來毛利率的改善。

Our next question comes from Krish Sankar from Cowen and Company.

我們的下一個問題來自 Cowen and Company 的 Krish Sankar。

The first 1 is for Dave. You mentioned the U.S. CSPs are pretty strong. How do you think about their demand into the calendar second half of this year? Or do you think that's the next shoe to drop?

第一個是給戴夫的。您提到美國的 CSP 非常強大。您如何看待他們對今年下半年的需求？或者你認為那是下一隻要掉的鞋？

And then a quick question for Gianluca. You said you have like $2.4 billion remaining in the buyback or your cash levels have come down. So how do you think about the sustainability of the buyback over the next few quarters?

然後是 Gianluca 的一個簡短問題。你說你有大約 24 億美元的回購，或者你的現金水平已經下降。那麼您如何看待未來幾個季度回購的可持續性？

Thanks, Krish. Yes, I don't think there's another shoe to drop to be very clear. I think depending on which customer, there may be very specific challenges that they have in their data center build-outs.

謝謝，克里什。是的，我不認為還有另一隻鞋可以放下來很清楚。我認為根據客戶的不同，他們在數據中心擴建中可能會遇到非常具體的挑戰。

But in general, there -- the cloud storage demand growth continues and their CapEx investments to continue. And so I think in some places, it's becoming very predictable with them. And so that's why -- one of the reasons why we've kind of establish the businesses we have as we pivot our mass capacity.

但總的來說，雲存儲需求繼續增長，他們的資本支出投資繼續。所以我認為在某些地方，它們變得非常可預測。這就是為什麼 - 我們在調整我們的大規模產能時已經建立了我們所擁有的業務的原因之一。

It's interesting right now I think most of the capacity transitions that we're talking about with 20 terabytes and beyond, are the people we still have yet to transition are the people who are in the markets that are actually most impacted by some of the COVID shutdowns and things like that. So that's the way I think about it, if that helps.

現在有趣的是，我認為我們談論的大多數容量轉換為 20 TB 及以上，我們尚未轉換的人是市場上實際上受某些 COVID 影響最大的人停工之類的事情。所以我就是這麼想的，如果有幫助的話。

And then Gianluca can answer the question.

然後 Gianluca 可以回答這個問題。

Yes. We are very committed to our shareholder return program. And so to both the dividend and the share buyback. As you said, we still have $2.4 billion of -- as amount authorized for our share buyback.

是的。我們非常致力於我們的股東回報計劃。股息和股票回購也是如此。正如你所說，我們仍有 24 億美元——作為我們股票回購的授權金額。

Our free cash flow in fiscal Q4 was lower than what we were expecting now for the reason that I explained in the remarks. Of course, we expect free cash flow to improve -- strongly improve in the next few quarters, and that will help us to continue our shareholder return and also increase our cash balance.

由於我在評論中解釋的原因，我們在第四財季的自由現金流低於我們現在的預期。當然，我們預計自由現金流會改善——在接下來的幾個季度裡會大幅改善，這將有助於我們繼續為股東回報並增加我們的現金餘額。

Our next question comes from Timothy Arcuri from UBS.

我們的下一個問題來自瑞銀的 Timothy Arcuri。

This is Jason on for Tim from UBS. Just a couple of questions. So my first 1 is, as you noted, there has been a lot of concerns around meeting consumer demand. I know consumer legacy market it's still a much smaller portion of your business than your VIA line market, but how can we think about the trajectory of your legacy businesses in terms of exabytes shipment for the second half of this calendar year?

這是來自瑞銀的傑森為蒂姆。只是幾個問題。因此，正如您所指出的，我的第一個問題是，人們對滿足消費者需求存在很多擔憂。我知道消費者遺留市場與威盛產品線市場相比，它在您的業務中所佔的比例仍然小得多，但我們如何看待您的遺留業務在本日曆年下半年的 EB 出貨量方面的軌跡？

Also, could you provide the same color on the VIA market in terms of exabyte shipment as well? And I have a follow-up.

另外，您能否在 VIA 市場上提供相同顏色的艾字節出貨量？我有一個後續行動。

Thanks, Jason. So on the legacy demand, the consumer facing. So for example, the USB drives and the like, it's been a strong market through the COVID work-from-home period. Right now, the consumers in the world have decided that they're spending money on other things.

謝謝，傑森。所以關於遺留需求，面向消費者。例如，USB 驅動器等，在 COVID 在家工作期間一直是一個強勁的市場。現在，世界上的消費者已經決定把錢花在其他事情上。

I think everyone knows this around. You can see these consumer spending patterns in many, many different markets, and we're not immune to any of that. I think that's some of the stuff that we have to make sure we pull back and position the right inventory. Those markets, in particular, are not going away, they may be slowly going down, but -- they're not like the PC or Notebook markets, which are effectively already gone. So we wouldn't have to debit those markets anymore because they're effectively gone.

我想每個人都知道這一點。您可以在許多不同的市場中看到這些消費者支出模式，我們也不能倖免於這些。我認為這是我們必須確保撤回並定位正確庫存的一些東西。特別是那些市場並沒有消失，它們可能會慢慢下降，但是——它們不像個人電腦或筆記本電腦市場，它們實際上已經消失了。因此，我們不必再從這些市場中扣除，因為它們實際上已經消失了。

Mission-critical has been a little bit choppy through the COVID period. It is slowly declining as well, but it has a long tail. So that's another place where there's probably a little bit too much inventory. So when we lump it together in those legacy markets, they will have longer tails that we're talking about now because the ones that we're going to go to 0 is effectively already gone there.

在 COVID 時期，關鍵任務一直有點不穩定。它也在緩慢下降，但它有一條長長的尾巴。所以這是另一個庫存可能有點過多的地方。因此，當我們將它們放在那些傳統市場中時，它們將有我們現在正在談論的更長的尾巴，因為我們要達到 0 的那些實際上已經消失了。

The exabytes were fairly low in the June quarter. We expect September as Dave was saying, not to be a strong quarter for legacy. Now usually, it is the quarter where you see some improvement from seasonality. We don't see this happening this year. December is a quarter where you will see some improvement. And then the second part of the fiscal year should continue to trend fairly well.

6 月季度的艾字節數相當低。正如戴夫所說，我們預計 9 月不會是遺產的強勁季度。現在通常，這是您看到季節性有所改善的季度。我們認為今年不會發生這種情況。十二月是一個你會看到一些改善的季度。然後本財年的第二部分應該會繼續保持良好的趨勢。

Got it. And my second question is on the part of road map. Your main competitor shared some color on their 20 and 22 terabyte product plans, where they're expecting the 20 P cross over by the end of this year. I was wondering if you could share any color or time lines on your product plans for 20 and 22 drives?

知道了。我的第二個問題是關於路線圖的。您的主要競爭對手在他們的 20 和 22 TB 產品計劃中分享了一些顏色，他們預計到今年年底將實現 20 P 交叉。我想知道您是否可以在 20 和 22 驅動器的產品計劃中分享任何顏色或時間線？

Yes. We said in the prepared remarks that our 20 would cross over relative to our 18, if you will, this quarter. So the quarter we're in right now. So we're ramping the 20 very hard. We met the fastest growth target that we'd ever had before. We said that a couple of quarters ago, and we've actually met that very happy with the 20-plus terabyte family.

是的。我們在準備好的評論中說，如果你願意的話，本季度我們的 20 將相對於我們的 18 交叉。所以我們現在所處的季度。所以我們正在非常努力地增加 20 個。我們實現了前所未有的最快增長目標。我們在幾個季度前就說過，我們實際上已經對 20 多 TB 的家庭感到非常滿意。

There's a lot of variance of this family. There are variants that continue to be CMR. There's variants that are SMR. Those drives are out there in the world, various places. As a matter of fact, I think I said last quarter that most of 20s are actually being used and above 20 because of some of these variants. So we're fairly happy with how all that's latching out in the world. It's already at high volume.

這個家庭的變化很大。有一些變體仍然是 CMR。有 SMR 的變體。這些驅動器在世界各地，不同的地方。事實上，我想我在上個季度說過，由於其中一些變體，實際上大多數 20 都在使用，並且超過 20。因此，我們對世界上所有這些都如何鎖定感到相當滿意。它已經在高容量。

And with small changes, we can continue that a little bit to the conventional platform. We don't need any major technology transitions. With a bigger change to the heads and media and the recording channel and so on by the end of the year, we'll take that platform to 30 terabytes. So we're very confident in our product portfolio.

通過小的改動，我們可以在傳統平台上繼續一點點。我們不需要任何重大的技術轉型。到今年年底，隨著磁頭和媒體以及錄製頻道等方面的更大變化，我們將把這個平台提升到 30 TB。所以我們對我們的產品組合非常有信心。

We don't really talk about all the details of 20, 22, 23, whatever people are using things out because I don't think that setting the right narrative. It's more just we want to make sure that we have flexibility with our platform that we're on today and then launching the 30 terabyte platform in the future with all the technology that comes in there, we're confident in, and we're driving it as hard as we can.

我們並沒有真正談論 20、22、23 的所有細節，無論人們在使用什麼東西，因為我認為這沒有設定正確的敘述。更重要的是，我們希望確保我們今天使用的平台具有靈活性，然後在未來推出 30 TB 平台，其中包含我們有信心的所有技術，並且我們正在盡可能努力地駕駛它。

Our next question comes from Patrick Ho from Stifel.

我們的下一個問題來自 Stifel 的 Patrick Ho。

Maybe, Dave, first off, on the big picture basis, you talked about introducing HAMR technology at 30 terabytes next year. Given the common platform that you have, that you mentioned about 20 terabytes to the mid-20s and the upper 20s, how do you correlate the demand trends from your customers in supplying these very attractive cost-efficient drives that you just talked about along versus, say, the 30-terabyte HAMR drives which I assume are going to be a little more costly in its initial ramp.

也許，戴夫，首先，在大局的基礎上，您談到了明年以 30 TB 的速度引入 HAMR 技術。鑑於您所擁有的通用平台，您提到大約 20 TB 到 20 年代中期和 20 年代上層，您如何將客戶的需求趨勢與提供您剛才談到的這些極具吸引力的成本效益驅動器的需求趨勢聯繫起來？比方說，我認為 30 TB 的 HAMR 驅動器在初始階段的成本會更高一些。

Yes. Thanks for the question, Patrick. So it is a question of what can you make in high volume, where do we get our scrap and yields? And since there are so many heads and disks in there, our component readiness for the ramp is critical in our margins.

是的。謝謝你的問題，帕特里克。所以問題是你能大批量生產什麼，我們從哪裡得到我們的廢料和產量？而且由於那裡有很多磁頭和磁盤，因此我們為斜坡準備的組件對我們的利潤至關重要。

And then going to the 30 terabyte, there are cost adders. There's a number of different technology transitions, not just to the writer the HAMR, if you will. The media has to change. The reader has to change. All the platform things the electronics serve mechanics, everything that gets you to 30 terabytes has to change.

然後到 30 TB，還有成本加法器。如果你願意的話，有許多不同的技術轉換，不僅僅是對 HAMR 的作者。媒體必須改變。讀者必須改變。電子設備服務於機械的所有平台事物，所有使您達到 30 TB 的事物都必須改變。

So we're very confident in that. But how fast do we make that turn that's a good question. A lot of it is our ability to go work the yields and scrap and cost to the point where we need to be.

所以我們對此非常有信心。但是，我們能以多快的速度轉彎，這是一個很好的問題。其中很大一部分是我們將產量、廢料和成本工作到我們需要的程度的能力。

I think from a customer perspective, that's a fairly big jump from 1 to the other and the TCO benefits when you think about building a data center and running it for 5 to 7 years, you're willing to entertain the discussion and then the more positive feedback you see on those initial drives, the more you'll be able to drive it hard.

我認為從客戶的角度來看，這是一個相當大的飛躍，當您考慮構建一個數據中心並將其運行 5 到 7 年時，TCO 會受益，您願意接受討論，然後更多您在這些初始驅動器上看到的積極反饋，您將能夠越努力地驅動它。

We've had customers that have been working with us on these technologies for a number of years now. And I think when we launched the product, I think they'll be very open to those discussions because they see tremendous benefit as well. So I think -- but balancing all these things is exactly the point of what we have to do in our operations, and that's what we're focused on.

多年來，我們的客戶一直在與我們合作開發這些技術。而且我認為當我們推出該產品時，我認為他們會對這些討論非常開放，因為他們也看到了巨大的好處。所以我認為 - 但平衡所有這些事情正是我們在運營中必須做的重點，這也是我們關注的重點。

Great. That's helpful. And just as my follow-up question for Gianluca. In terms of the cost pressures from COVID, elevated component costs, logistics costs, how much of an impact was it this past quarter? And how do you see, I guess, those additional basis points pressure on a going-forward basis?

偉大的。這很有幫助。就像我對 Gianluca 的後續問題一樣。就 COVID 帶來的成本壓力、組件成本上升、物流成本而言，上一季度的影響有多大？我猜你如何看待這些額外的基點壓力？

Yes. In the June quarter, we had a lot of cost pressures, not only from COVID, but also for inflation, some of our component costs have increased. As you have seen, we were able to keep the gross margin stable, as slightly up quarter-over-quarter despite a lower revenue.

是的。在 6 月季度，我們面臨著很大的成本壓力，不僅來自 COVID，還來自通貨膨脹，我們的一些組件成本增加了。如您所見，儘管收入較低，但我們能夠保持毛利率穩定，環比略有上升。

So we are -- now we are taking our measure to offset the majority of those cost increase. Mix is also, of course, very important to us. I would say for the future, the part that is coming from inflation is probably not going to abate very quickly. So we probably expect the same impact for the next couple of quarters.

所以我們 - 現在我們正在採取措施來抵消大部分成本增加。當然，混合對我們也很重要。我想說的是，未來來自通脹的部分可能不會很快減弱。因此，我們可能預計接下來的幾個季度也會產生同樣的影響。

On the COVID side, on the logistics side, we have seen a little bit of improvement in the June quarter compared to the prior quarter. But no, I think I said in the past that the COVID cost was about 200 basis points of our gross margin for June was probably around 150. But this is not, of course, including all the extra costs coming from inflation.

在 COVID 方面，在物流方面，我們看到 6 月季度與上一季度相比有所改善。但是不，我想我過去說過，COVID 成本約為 200 個基點，我們 6 月份的毛利率可能約為 150 個。但這當然不包括通貨膨脹帶來的所有額外成本。

Our next question comes from Toshiya Hari from Goldman Sachs.

我們的下一個問題來自高盛的 Toshiya Hari。

Dave, you talked about cutting production. I was hoping you could expand on this, I guess, specifically in terms of utilization rates, where do you expect to be over the coming quarters relative to the past couple of quarters?

戴夫，你談到了削減產量。我希望您可以對此進行擴展，我想，特別是在利用率方面，您預計未來幾個季度相對於過去幾個季度的情況如何？

And I guess given the production cuts and given how you're vertically integrated, I guess I'm a little positively surprised by how well gross margins are hanging in. I guess, what are some of the offsets that you're incorporating in your September quarter guidance?

而且我想考慮到減產和垂直整合的方式，我想我對毛利率的表現感到有點驚訝。我想，你在你的九月季度指導？

Yes. Thanks for the question. I think I'll ask Gianluca to break down some of the F Q1 bridge, if you will, on gross margins.

是的。謝謝你的問題。如果你願意的話，我想我會要求 Gianluca 在毛利率上打破一些 F Q1 橋樑。

But let me give you a little perspective. Where we see too much inventory in the chain is in some of the markets that we were planning on building towards, and we don't want to do that. If I've learned 1 lesson in my life, it's -- when you see too much inventory, don't pack into it.

但是，讓我給你一點看法。我們在鏈中看到過多庫存的地方是我們計劃建立的一些市場，我們不想這樣做。如果我在我的生活中學到了 1 課，那就是——當你看到太多庫存時，不要打包進去。

It's exacerbated a little bit by the linearity of the last quarter was poor, and therefore, almost by definition, you go to the next quarter, and it's linearity is poor again. And especially in these times, when you get out to the back of the quarter, you don't have opportunity to cross ship because freight logistics lanes are choked. And that drives costs.

上個季度的線性度很差，這稍微加劇了這種情況，因此，幾乎按照定義，你進入下一個季度，它的線性度又很差。尤其是在這些時候，當您離開本季度後部時，您沒有機會跨船，因為貨運物流通道被阻塞。這推動了成本。

We're trying to put on a little bit more inventory so that we can use ocean freight, it becomes very problematic. And so that's one of the reasons why we're intentionally not packing into it. Relative to the build plan, so yes, by slowing things down on some lines that does have some financial impact, what we're really doing is pivoting over since the lead times, wafer lead times are quite long, product lead times are quite long for, say, 20 terabytes pivoting more towards 20 terabytes and beyond or pivoting more towards the new mid-cap nearline drive, we can do it.

我們正試圖增加一點庫存，以便我們可以使用海運，這變得非常有問題。這就是我們故意不打包的原因之一。相對於構建計劃，所以是的，通過在某些確實會產生財務影響的生產線上放慢速度，我們真正要做的是從交貨時間開始轉向，晶圓交貨時間很長，產品交貨時間很長比如說，20 TB 向 20 TB 甚至更高或更多轉向新的中型近線驅動器，我們可以做到。

It just doesn't happen very quickly. And so the factories are still relatively full, if that helps exactly your question. You don't see as much absorption hit net-net, even though you're taking down the old products as pushing out the new, but there's an intention around not pushing too much into the chains, not having to price that stuff to move eventually into customers that really don't need the product right now.

它只是不會很快發生。所以工廠仍然比較滿，如果這對你的問題有幫助的話。即使您將舊產品推向市場，您也不會看到對網絡的吸收那麼多最終進入現在真正不需要該產品的客戶。

Now I would say this is where inflation is playing a role for everyone because you have the CFOs of those companies saying a slow down a little bit, and we have to be able to help our customers do that. Gianluca, do you want to...

現在我想說這就是通貨膨脹對每個人都起作用的地方，因為這些公司的首席財務官說要放慢一點，我們必須能夠幫助我們的客戶做到這一點。吉安盧卡，你想...

Yes, we will have some costs coming from the underutilization but we also have an increase in the volume from our 20 terabytes sequentially, and that is positive for the gross margin. I also have to say the pricing environment, especially in the mass part is still very favorable. So we don't see -- despite the decline in revenue, we don't see a major impact to our gross margin and profitability in general.

是的，我們將因未充分利用而產生一些成本，但我們的數量也從 20 TB 連續增加，這對毛利率是有利的。我也不得不說定價環境，尤其是大眾部分還是很優惠的。所以我們看不到——儘管收入下降，但我們總體上看不到對我們的毛利率和盈利能力產生重大影響。

Great. As a quick follow-up, I guess, to your last statement, Gianluca, just on the overall pricing environment. Generally speaking, when demand softens and you've got excess inventory in the system, there's typically downward pressure on pricing.

偉大的。我想，作為對 Gianluca 的最後一次聲明的快速跟進，就整體定價環境而言。一般來說，當需求疲軟並且系統中有多餘的庫存時，定價通常會面臨下行壓力。

But at the same time, the industry overall has been very disciplined in the past, I guess, several quarters, if not a couple of years, you've got inflationary pressures as well. So I guess you've got an incentive to potentially pass through some of those inflationary pressures. So net-net, how should we think about pricing across the legacy markets and mass capacity over the next couple of quarters? Is there a possibility for you guys to raise pricing? Or is that difficult just given the demand backdrop.

但與此同時，整個行業在過去一直非常自律，我想，幾個季度，如果不是幾年，你也有通脹壓力。所以我猜你有可能通過其中一些通脹壓力的動機。那麼，net-net，我們應該如何考慮未來幾個季度傳統市場的定價和大規模產能？你們有可能提高價格嗎？或者僅僅考慮到需求背景，這很難嗎？

Well, first of all, we need to align supply and demand. This is not what Dave was saying before, when there is extra inventory in the business. We need to reduce our supply so that demand and supply were aligned. When we have that alignment, of course, the pricing environment gets better.

嗯，首先，我們需要調整供需。這不是戴夫之前所說的，當時企業中有額外的庫存。我們需要減少供應，以使需求和供應保持一致。當然，當我們達成一致時，定價環境會變得更好。

And so right now, we are in the situation of transition from, let's say, in a high inventory to a more healthy business situation. And then, of course, during the rest of the year when demand comes stronger and well aligned to our supply, we will take any possible action on pricing, but we will look at that later during the year.

所以現在，我們正處於從高庫存過渡到更健康的業務狀況的情況下。然後，當然，在今年剩下的時間裡，當需求變得更強勁並且與我們的供應保持一致時，我們將採取任何可能的定價行動，但我們將在今年晚些時候進行研究。

I think this is where the LTAs have served us pretty well over time to understand the -- all of the macroeconomic inputs and like I always say that some of the procurement people that are sitting on the other side of the table from us they understand what's going on in commodity pricing and freight just as well as we do.

我認為，隨著時間的推移，LTA 為我們提供了很好的幫助，以了解所有宏觀經濟投入，就像我經常說的那樣，一些坐在桌子另一邊的採購人員，他們了解什麼是在商品定價和運費方面和我們一樣。

So we work together to come up with a predictable outcome. We believe in the mass capacity markets at least that there's going to be a strong rebound coming. And everyone factoring all these things in, I think it serves us well to know exactly what we're building, what we've qualified, and what will apply. And so that's what we're trying to do right now is to change -- to pivot the operations towards that future supply.

因此，我們共同努力，得出一個可預測的結果。我們相信，至少在大容量市場中，將會出現強勁的反彈。每個人都將所有這些因素考慮在內，我認為準確地了解我們正在構建的內容、我們的資格以及適用的內容對我們很有幫助。所以這就是我們現在要做的就是改變——將運營轉向未來的供應。

Our next question comes from Steven Fox from Fox Advisors.

我們的下一個問題來自 Fox Advisors 的 Steven Fox。

Two questions, please. First of all, Gianluca, any help on what you're thinking for CapEx spending this fiscal year?

請教兩個問題。首先，Gianluca，您對本財年資本支出支出的看法有什麼幫助嗎？

And then secondly, Dave, given that you basically were surprised negatively just a few weeks ago, I'm just trying to understand the biggest factors that make you come out and say that you should start to see a recovery in a couple of quarters.

其次，戴夫，鑑於幾週前你基本上對負面感到驚訝，我只是想了解讓你站出來說你應該在幾個季度內開始看到復甦的最大因素。

You've touched on a few things, but just maybe give us a sense from -- about where that confidence is going at when demand holds up on the data center side, and two, that you're not overbuilding into like what could be even a worse macro.

你已經談到了一些事情，但也許可以讓我們了解——當數據中心方面的需求保持不變時，這種信心會去哪裡，第二，你不會像可能的那樣過度建設甚至更糟糕的宏。

On the CapEx side, as you have seen, we have already reduced our spending in fiscal Q4, probably for fiscal year '23, I don't want to change the range. I think 4% to 6% of the revenue is a good range, but for sure, will be in the lower part of the range and similar to what we have done in fiscal '22.

如您所見，在資本支出方面，我們已經減少了第四季度的支出，可能是 23 財年，我不想改變範圍。我認為 4% 到 6% 的收入是一個不錯的範圍，但可以肯定的是，它將處於該範圍的較低部分，與我們在 22 財年所做的類似。

Yes. And I think longer term, discussions with our customers, the bigger the customer there are, the more they're convicted they are on their ultimate need to add capacity because they're the ones that manage cloud storage.

是的。而且我認為從長遠來看，與我們的客戶討論，客戶越大，他們就越確信他們最終需要增加容量，因為他們是管理雲存儲的人。

Some of the customers that are having -- I mentioned a few people that are smaller CSPs that are having some of the inventory issues, we are working closely with them to make sure that we transition to the right product set. So we don't build the wrong thing into it. And that's a very tactical thing. That's why we have conviction that this thing is going to be over pretty soon. We're all cognizant of all the macro trends and watching them every day.

一些客戶——我提到了一些存在一些庫存問題的小型 CSP，我們正在與他們密切合作，以確保我們過渡到正確的產品集。所以我們不會在其中構建錯誤的東西。這是一個非常戰術性的事情。這就是為什麼我們堅信這件事很快就會結束。我們都了解所有宏觀趨勢並每天觀察它們。

So I don't want to gloss over that. But I think as far as demand for data products, I do think that there's, there will be a rebound coming when all these issues abate.

所以我不想掩蓋這一點。但我認為就數據產品的需求而言，我確實認為，當所有這些問題消退時，將會出現反彈。

Our next question comes from Erik Woodring from Morgan Stanley.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根士丹利的 Erik Woodring。

Maybe Gianluca, any comments you can just share on cash flow thoughts as you move into this next fiscal year after a strong 2022. Should we expect growth maybe similar to your comments on revenue? Or just maybe help us parse out how to think about that. And then I have a quick follow-up.

也許是 Gianluca，當您在 2022 年強勁之後進入下一個財年時，您可以就現金流的想法分享任何評論。我們是否應該預期增長可能類似於您對收入的評論？或者也許只是幫助我們解析出如何思考這個問題。然後我有一個快速跟進。

Well, free cash flow, as you said, was good in fiscal '22. We increased about $400 million over fiscal '21. We gave an indication of what we expect for the revenue in fiscal '23. And now if that comes through free cash flow will continue to increase. It would be the same level of this improvement in fiscal '22, maybe even it's a bit higher.

好吧，正如你所說，自由現金流在 22 財年很好。我們在 21 財年增加了約 4 億美元。我們給出了我們對 23 財年收入的預期。現在，如果這是通過自由現金流實現的，它將繼續增加。這將與 22 財年的這種改進水平相同，甚至可能更高一些。

Yes. We're especially at these times, we'll manage cash very carefully, but we also see if the mass capacity rebound is what we're projecting that we should be able to continue to grow cash flow.

是的。我們尤其是在這些時候，我們會非常謹慎地管理現金，但我們也會看到大規模產能反彈是否是我們預測的，我們應該能夠繼續增加現金流。

Okay. Super. And then maybe along those same lines, Gianluca, just obviously, a more challenging macro environment, but any comments you can help us better understand kind of how you're thinking about OpEx is the quarterly run rate is still kind of $350 million or any puts and takes that you can help share there would be great.

好的。極好的。然後也許沿著同樣的思路，Gianluca，很明顯，一個更具挑戰性的宏觀環境，但是你可以幫助我們更好地理解你如何看待 OpEx 的任何評論是季度運行率仍然是 3.5 億美元或任何放置和使用您可以幫助分享的內容會很棒。

Yes. I think between $350 million and $360 million will be the range through the fiscal year. We have done a strong control of the OpEx in the last 2 or 3 years already. So we think we start from a good point.

是的。我認為整個財政年度的範圍將在 3.5 億美元到 3.6 億美元之間。在過去的 2 或 3 年裡，我們已經對 OpEx 進行了強有力的控制。所以我們認為我們從一個好的點開始。

September is a month where we have our annual salary increase. So we expect a little bit of increase starting basically the December quarter, but still in that range, $350 million to $360 million should be the right range for us.

九月是我們年薪增加的月份。因此，我們預計基本上從 12 月季度開始會有一點增長，但仍然在這個範圍內，3.5 億美元到 3.6 億美元對我們來說應該是合適的範圍。

And our next question comes from Sidney Ho from Deutsche Bank.

我們的下一個問題來自德意志銀行的 Sidney Ho。

I have a quick clarification. I think Gianluca talked about expecting revenue growth could resume later in the fiscal year, but you're not necessarily meaning the December quarter, which means I guess is that right.

我有一個快速澄清。我認為 Gianluca 談到預計收入增長可能會在本財年晚些時候恢復，但你不一定指 12 月季度，這意味著我猜是對的。

But my question is, when I look at the inventory adjustments and your customers, whether in the PC or elsewhere, what is your thinking about when they will get to the equilibrium point that your customers stop draining inventory? And what gives you that kind of confidence?

但我的問題是，當我查看庫存調整和您的客戶時，無論是在 PC 還是其他地方，您的想法是什麼時候他們會達到您的客戶停止消耗庫存的平衡點？是什麼讓你有這種信心？

I would say, in general, no, we are trying to use this quarter to realign inventory. Of course, as you said, it's not -- it doesn't depend on in from us, but we are reducing our production. And now we are taking a fairly low revenue in the quarter in order to do this realignment.

我想說，一般來說，不，我們正試圖利用這個季度來重新調整庫存。當然，正如你所說，它不是——它不依賴於我們的投入，但我們正在減少我們的產量。現在，為了進行這種調整，我們本季度的收入相當低。

So I'll say after that, we actually expect to increase revenue sequentially. So December should be better than September quarter and not to achieve the revenue that Dave indicated in his prepared remarks, we need to have a fairly good level of revenue in all the 3 quarters after September.

所以我會在那之後說，我們實際上希望按順序增加收入。所以 12 月應該比 9 月的季度要好，而且要達到 Dave 在他準備好的評論中指出的收入，我們需要在 9 月之後的所有 3 個季度中都有一個相當不錯的收入水平。

Okay. Great. Maybe I'll just jump into my second question. There's a lot of questions on cloud already. But I'm curious on the enterprise OEM side of the new line business -- last quarter, you mentioned you were limited by non-HDD supply shortages.

好的。偉大的。也許我會直接進入我的第二個問題。關於雲的問題已經很多了。但我對新線業務的企業 OEM 方面感到好奇——上個季度，您提到您受到非 HDD 供應短缺的限制。

I'm just curious -- are you seeing any changes in demand on that side of the business? And does that business also as covered as by the LTA as your cloud customers?

我只是好奇——您是否看到業務方面的需求發生任何變化？該業務是否也像您的雲客戶一樣被 LTA 覆蓋？

It's -- yes is the answer to your question, to your last question, it's a little bit more complicated than some of the cloud customers. But what I would say, for example, in our prepared remarks on the systems business, we talked about how we saw a flood of the components that we needed to go chase after revenue and we did that.

是的，是對您的問題的回答，對於您的最後一個問題，它比一些雲客戶要復雜一些。但是我要說的是，例如，在我們準備好的關於系統業務的評論中，我們談到了我們如何看到我們需要追逐收入的大量組件，我們做到了。

That's because I think some of the supply-demand picture is changing very rapidly. The things that we're constrained components 6 months ago may not be constrained anymore because of a lot of macro issues. It's not completely all clear yet. There are still component shortages that are affecting the enterprise. I think also the spending reductions by -- again, I always say nervous CFOs, which are talking to the CIOs of the world that's, I think, impacting us a little bit right now as well.

那是因為我認為一些供需情況正在迅速變化。由於很多宏觀問題，我們在 6 個月前受到約束的組件可能不再受到約束。這還不完全清楚。仍然存在影響企業的組件短缺。我還認為削減開支——我總是說緊張的首席財務官，他們正在與世界各地的首席信息官交談，我認為這對我們現在也有一點影響。

Look, long term, I believe that on-prem enterprise is going to be healthy because there's going to be hybrid clouds, not just, not just in the public cloud, but also in the private cloud as well. And so I think those will be strong businesses. They still -- there are various challenges there, supply-related still, and I think some of that will start to break free over the next 6 months.

看，從長遠來看，我相信本地企業將是健康的，因為將有混合雲，不僅在公共雲中，而且在私有云中也是如此。所以我認為這些將是強大的業務。他們仍然 - 那裡存在各種挑戰，仍然與供應相關，我認為其中一些將在未來 6 個月內開始擺脫困境。

Our next question comes from C.J. Muse from Evercore ISI.

我們的下一個問題來自 Evercore ISI 的 C.J. Muse。

I guess two questions. First, you talked on the call about excess inventory in the channel for your various end markets. I was curious if you could rank order perhaps worse to best by end markets so we get a flavor of where things need to correct.

我猜有兩個問題。首先，您在電話會議上談到了各個終端市場渠道中的過剩庫存。我很好奇您是否可以按終端市場對訂單進行排序，可能從最差到最好，這樣我們就可以了解需要糾正的地方。

And then, I guess, specifically for U.S. data centers, you talked in your prepared remarks around a correction there. It sounds like it's a handful of players. Could you provide perhaps more color on what you're seeing there and when you think that will start to recover for you.

然後，我想，特別是對於美國數據中心，你在準備好的評論中談到了那裡的更正。這聽起來像是少數玩家。您能否提供更多關於您在那裡看到的內容以及您認為何時會開始為您恢復的顏色。

Yes, C.J. let me just make sure I got all this right. So the first 1 was rank order. I think China generally is the biggest impact. There's impact in distribution channels worldwide, consumer and disty. So Europe, Americas, they're both down significantly year-over-year, and that's part of the macro malaise that we've been talking about.

是的，C.J. 讓我確保我做對了。所以第一個是排名順序。我認為中國總體上是最大的影響。全球分銷渠道、消費者和分銷渠道都受到影響。因此，歐洲、美洲的同比均大幅下降，這就是我們一直在談論的宏觀萎靡不振的一部分。

But China itself has not only that, but also the VIA markets and some of the cloud service providers. There's inventory challenges each place, I think, that we're staring at. working through it with those customers. Some of that is macro, some of it is COVID lockdown. There's kind of just trepidation in the market because some of the lockdowns happen and then they go for reopening, they pull inventory in and then they can't reopen.

但中國自己不僅有，還有威盛市場和一些雲服務商。我認為，我們正在關注每個地方的庫存挑戰。與這些客戶一起工作。其中一些是宏觀的，其中一些是 COVID 鎖定。市場有些不安，因為一些封鎖發生了，然後他們又去重新開放，他們拉入庫存，然後就無法重新開放。

I think the world is going to get through these things. but we just have to kind of wait it out.

我認為世界將會經歷這些事情。但我們只需要等待它。

Can you answer this or ask the second part of your question again?

你能回答這個問題還是再問你問題的第二部分？

Yes, sure. In your prepared remarks, you spoke to what I thought I heard was inventory collection at select hyperscale plans. And so I guess, did I hear that correctly? And then if you could provide more color on your expectations for that to be cleared out.

是的，當然。在您準備好的評論中，您談到了我認為我聽到的是精選超大規模計劃中的庫存收集。所以我猜，我沒聽錯嗎？然後，如果你能提供更多關於你期望被清除的顏色。

I don't think there's too much inventory problems at U.S. hyperscalers. I think everyone's having supply challenges, not necessarily hard drives or whatever.

我認為美國的超大規模企業沒有太多的庫存問題。我認為每個人都面臨供應挑戰，不一定是硬盤驅動器或其他什麼。

There's -- maybe the way I would characterize it is to say that there is pent-up demand for data storage in a lot of markets. And once the world gets through all of these supply challenges, whether they're power supplies or chassis or compute or memory or whatever it is for each 1 individual, I think we'll be in a better place.

有 - 也許我會描述它的方式是說許多市場對數據存儲的需求被壓抑。一旦世界克服了所有這些供應挑戰，無論是電源、機箱、計算或內存，還是每個人的任何問題，我認為我們都會處於一個更好的位置。

People are working this very hard, and everyone's got their own challenges. But I think we're -- that's the thing that the world is just not firing on all cylinders like it was maybe 3 or 4 years ago, and I think we will be able to get back to reach some kind of equilibrium over time.

人們正在非常努力地工作，每個人都有自己的挑戰。但我認為我們 - 這就是世界並沒有像 3 或 4 年前那樣全力以赴，我認為隨著時間的推移，我們將能夠恢復到某種平衡。

Our next question comes from Thomas O'Malley from Barclays.

我們的下一個問題來自巴克萊的 Thomas O'Malley。

My question was just on the long-term agreements that you guys talked about on the call here. When Micron took down numbers, they were asked specifically about whether those long-term agreements were take or pay.

我的問題只是關於你們在電話會議上談到的長期協議。當美光記下數字時，他們被特別詢問這些長期協議是接受還是付費。

And they kind of talked about the fact that they can't really force customers to take their product. What gives you guys the confidence that when you're looking at the back half of this year, your customers aren't going to walk away from those long-term agreements if the market looks a little bit worse than it does today.

他們談到了這樣一個事實，即他們不能真正強迫客戶接受他們的產品。是什麼讓你們有信心，當您回顧今年下半年時，如果市場看起來比現在更糟一點，您的客戶不會放棄這些長期協議。

Yes. Thanks, Tom. I kind of agree with what you said. We have to work with our customers on these things. I said -- I think last quarter, I talked about co-planning more. It's just how many units do you need, what kind of products need to be qualified and it has to go out further because as we're making 20-plus terabyte products, or even starting 30-plus terabyte products, we need to know exactly how many of the customers are willing to take and how much to use our factory, use inside of our factories.

是的。謝謝，湯姆。我有點同意你說的。我們必須在這些事情上與我們的客戶合作。我說 - 我想上個季度，我更多地談到了共同計劃。只是你需要多少個單元，需要什麼樣的產品才能合格，它必須走得更遠，因為我們正在製造20+ TB的產品，甚至開始30+ TB的產品，我們需要確切地知道有多少客戶願意拿，有多少使用我們的工廠，在我們的工廠內部使用。

If something else happened, then I think we'd have to work it through with the customers at the time. So it's not really take-or-pay. And from my perspective, the customers have been great working through that, just trying to give us the right visibility, and we hold each other accountable on both sides of the table there, it's working pretty well.

如果發生其他事情，那麼我認為我們當時必須與客戶一起解決。所以這不是真正的接受或支付。從我的角度來看，客戶在這方面做得很好，只是試圖給我們正確的知名度，我們在桌子的兩邊都互相負責，它運作得很好。

Great. And then just my follow-up is, even if you do assume some accelerated growth in the back half. Obviously, the inventory is working down, so that helps a bit. Free cash flow does become a bit challenged. If you were to look at an environment in which free cash flow from a quarterly perspective goes negative, could you just talk about your rank order of capital returns, do you think that you would buy back less stock first? Or do you think that you would rationalize the dividend?

偉大的。然後我的後續行動是，即使你確實假設後半部分會加速增長。顯然，庫存正在下降，所以這有點幫助。自由現金流確實變得有點挑戰。如果你看一個季度自由現金流為負的環境，你能不能談談你的資本回報率排序，你認為你會先回購更少的股票嗎？或者你認為你會合理化股息？

Can you just talk about priorities there in terms of where you'd be cutting first if the environment kind of persists like it is?

如果環境像現在這樣持續存在，你能談談你首先要削減的優先事項嗎？

So I don't see that coming through. I don't see any quarter where our free cash flow will go negative. So -- and we have a capital allocation strategy. As I said before, we want to stay focused on shareholder return. I think our free cash flow will be strong in fiscal year '23, I don't see now the situation you are showing here.

所以我認為這不會發生。我看不到任何一個季度我們的自由現金流會變成負數。所以 - 我們有一個資本配置策略。正如我之前所說，我們希望繼續關注股東回報。我認為我們的自由現金流在 23 財年會很強勁，我現在看不到你在這裡展示的情況。

Yes. The way I'd say it, Tom, is that we're going to go work the cash flow. We had some period very specific things that Gianluca talked about in Q4. I think we can go recover some of those things over time. And some of it's too much inventory, like I said, before making sure we're building the right things.

是的。湯姆，我想說的是，我們將著手處理現金流。我們有一些 Gianluca 在第四季度談到的非常具體的事情。我認為隨著時間的推移我們可以恢復其中的一些東西。就像我說的那樣，在確保我們正在構建正確的東西之前，其中一些庫存過多。

I think once we get through that period, I think we're going to be just fine from a cash flow perspective and even have the opportunity to grow it year-over-year. We have a lot of levers that we can still continue to control.

我認為一旦我們度過了那個時期，我認為從現金流的角度來看我們會很好，甚至有機會逐年增長。我們有很多槓桿，我們仍然可以繼續控制。

And our next question comes from K. Cassidy from Rosenblatt Securities.

我們的下一個問題來自 Rosenblatt Securities 的 K. Cassidy。

Yes, just two quick questions. With all the long-term agreements you have in place, what are the lead times? Or what is the visibility that you're getting from your customers?

是的，只有兩個簡單的問題。有了所有的長期協議，交貨時間是多少？或者您從客戶那裡獲得的知名度是多少？

And second is, are you seeing any change in the trends of lockdowns in China?

其次，您是否看到中國的封鎖趨勢有任何變化？

Yes. Thanks, Kevin. There's different kinds of LTAs depending on the market, depending on which specific customer and their appetite, typically 6 months to a year, the visibility that we're working together. So -- and it's over the last few years, it's gotten longer. So that's good.

是的。謝謝，凱文。有不同類型的長期協議，具體取決於市場，具體取決於具體客戶和他們的胃口，通常為 6 個月到一年，以及我們合作的知名度。所以——在過去的幾年裡，它變得更長了。所以這很好。

Just making sure we have the right product stage for what they're going to need at that point in time with predictable economics for them and so on. And as relative to China, I think I made a comment earlier, even our own factories have been impacted recently.

只要確保我們有合適的產品階段來滿足他們當時的需求，並為他們提供可預測的經濟性等等。至於中國，我想我之前發表過評論，甚至我們自己的工廠最近也受到了影響。

So making sure that we're doing the right things for the employees not working them in places where we don't need the materials and things like that is a challenge. I personally think that things are already getting better. But I also think part of the problem is that the -- we've said that 3 or 4, 5x and people have pulled inventory against a reopening, if you will.

因此，確保我們為不在我們不需要材料之類的地方工作的員工做正確的事情是一個挑戰。我個人認為情況已經在好轉。但我也認為問題的一部分是——我們已經說過 3 或 4、5 倍，人們已經拉動庫存反對重新開放，如果你願意的話。

It's not even so many matter of what you're capable of in your factory. It's also what your customers are ready for and whether you can get to -- just like in the front end of code, whether you can get people in to build the data centers and all these other things that are going on.

您在工廠中的能力甚至都不是那麼重要。這也是您的客戶準備好做的事情以及您是否可以做到——就像代碼的前端一樣，您是否可以讓人們參與構建數據中心以及所有其他正在發生的事情。

The thing I'm focused on the most is the small business aspect of talking to some of our customers about people who have to actually go in and do the builds in the smart city builds, the smart buildings, hospitals, things like that. That's where any kind of lockdown just really throws that for a loop.

我最關注的事情是與我們的一些客戶談論必須實際進入並在智能城市建設、智能建築、醫院等方面進行建設的人的小企業方面。這就是任何類型的鎖定都會真正引發循環的地方。

And I do think that we're going to continue to see some of it, it will be a little bit. And then we're all looking for improvements in Q2, and it's going to have to break free at some point.

而且我確實認為我們將繼續看到其中的一些，這將是一點點。然後我們都在尋找第二季度的改進，它必須在某個時候擺脫困境。

And our final question today comes from Vijay Rakesh from Mizuho.

我們今天的最後一個問題來自瑞穗的 Vijay Rakesh。

Dave and Gianluca, I know you guys mentioned slightly higher inventory levels. Just wondering if you could help us level set what the inventory levels were, let's say, in China versus or in Asia versus the U.S.?

Dave 和 Gianluca，我知道你們提到的庫存水平略高。只是想知道您是否可以幫助我們確定庫存水平是多少，比方說，在中國與亞洲或亞洲與美國？

And is your expectation that the inventory normalizes within the quarter here? Because I think you've talked about maybe December quarter revenues start to improve.

您是否期望庫存在本季度內正常化？因為我認為您已經談到 12 月季度的收入可能會開始改善。

Right. We're taking action to make sure it improves this quarter. Gianluca made the point earlier that I don't think it will improve all the way, but we'll get the lion's share of what we need to get done this quarter.

正確的。我們正在採取行動確保本季度有所改善。 Gianluca 早些時候指出，我認為它不會一路改善，但我們將獲得本季度需要完成的大部分工作。

And again, depending on the pace of some of these recoveries like COVID and some of the other pressures that people are feeling, it will happen faster. And the important thing for us is that we make sure that we pivot the customer qualifications and our product towards the stuff that's more modern, that's higher margins for us that we can make with -- that we can make that people actually want to buy that we don't have to go disrupt the market anymore.

再說一次，取決於其中一些復甦的速度，比如 COVID 和人們感受到的其他一些壓力，它會發生得更快。對我們來說重要的是，我們確保我們將客戶資格和我們的產品轉向更現代的東西，這對我們來說可以獲得更高的利潤——我們可以讓人們真正想要購買我們不必再去擾亂市場了。

Got it. And I think you mentioned utilization levels. I mean, I believe you indicated when the gross margins should be flat sequentially. Is that right, given that utilization still stay high with the 20-terabyte ramping, I guess, right? Even as your thoughts on the supply back. Is that the way to look at it?

知道了。我認為您提到了利用率水平。我的意思是，我相信您指出了毛利率何時應該按順序持平。對嗎，我猜，考慮到 20 TB 的增長，利用率仍然很高，對吧？就像你對供應的想法一樣。是這樣看待它的嗎？

Well, we did not guide [directly] in gross margin, but I was answering to a question, I said, well, there is a negative impact in the September quarter because of some underutilization cost, but is also a positive impact coming from higher 20 terabytes. And I also said the pricing environment is also still favorable. So overall, we don't see major changes to our profitability.

好吧，我們沒有[直接]指導毛利率，但我在回答一個問題，我說，嗯，由於一些未充分利用的成本，九月季度有負面影響，但也是來自更高的積極影響20 TB。而且我還說定價環境也還是有利的。所以總的來說，我們沒有看到我們的盈利能力發生重大變化。

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

女士們，先生們，此時，我想將發言權交回管理層，以聽取任何結束語。

Thanks, Jamie. I'd like to take the opportunity to once again thank our employees for their incredible efforts and recognize our suppliers and customers for their ongoing support this quarter.

謝謝，傑米。我想藉此機會再次感謝我們的員工所做的令人難以置信的努力，並感謝我們的供應商和客戶在本季度的持續支持。

It's a challenging environment across the ecosystem, and we appreciate all of your partnerships. Likewise, I appreciate our shareholder community for your ongoing trust in Seagate.

在整個生態系統中，這是一個充滿挑戰的環境，我們感謝您的所有合作夥伴關係。同樣，我感謝我們的股東社區對希捷的持續信任。

Seagate will continue to take actions to manage through the current macro dynamics. However, long term, I'm confident that the secular demand for mass capacity storage and infrastructure remains high and remain excited by Seagate's opportunities to deliver value for all the stakeholders. So thanks for joining us, everyone.

希捷將繼續採取行動來管理當前的宏觀動態。然而，從長遠來看，我相信對大容量存儲和基礎設施的長期需求仍然很高，並且仍然對希捷為所有利益相關者創造價值的機會感到興奮。所以感謝大家加入我們。

And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

女士們，先生們，至此，我們將結束今天的電話會議。我們非常感謝您的加入。您現在可以斷開線路。