Semtech Corporation
Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 18 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Greetings. And welcome to Semtech Corporation’s Q4 Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now pleasure to introduce your host Sandy Harrison, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, Sandy. You may begin.

[Sandy Harrison:]

Thank you, Paul. And welcome to Semtech’s conference call to discuss our financial results for our fourth quarter and fiscal year ‘21. Speakers for today’s call will be Mohan Maheswaran, Semtech’s President and Chief Executive Officer; and Emeka Chukwu, our Chief Financial Officer. A press release announcing our unaudited results was issued after the market close today and is available on our website at semtech.com.

[Emeka Chukwu:]

Thank you, Sandy, and good afternoon, everyone. For Q4 fiscal ‘21, net sales was $164.7 million, which came in above the upper end of our guidance. This represented a 7% sequential increase and 19% growth over the same period a year ago. Despite the challenges presented earlier in the year by the pandemic, fiscal year ‘21 net sales increased 9% to $595.1 million, driven by the strength of the underlying secular themes driving our growth engines. In Q4, shipments into Asia represented 79% of net sales, North America represented 12% and Europe represented 9%. Total direct sales represented approximately 13% and sales to distribution represented approximately 87%. Our distribution business remains balanced with 33% of the total POS coming from the high end consumer end markets, 37% coming from the infrastructure end market and 30% from the industrial end market. Q4 bookings increased significantly both on a sequential and year-over-year basis, and was a new quarterly, as well as annual record for fiscal year ‘21 and resulted in a book-to-bill significantly above 1. POS bookings accounted for approximately 24% of shipments during the quarter. The bookings threat has continued into Q1. Q4 GAAP operating expense increased 12% sequentially due to the impact of 14-week quarter, impact of the weaker U.S. dollar, higher new product expenses as stock-based compensation expense associated with an increase in our stock price.

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Thank you, Emeka. Good afternoon, everyone. I will discuss our Q4 fiscal year ‘21 performance by end market and by product group and discuss our fiscal year ‘21 performance and then provide our outlook for Q1 of fiscal year ‘22. In Q4 fiscal year ‘21, net revenues increased 7% sequentially to $164.7 million. High demand across all three of our end markets drove better than seasonal Q4 results. We posted non-GAAP gross margin of 61.5% and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $0.51. In Q4 fiscal year 2021, net revenues from the high end consumer market increased 10% sequentially and 32% over the prior year and represented 30% of total revenues. Approximately, 19% of high end consumer net revenues was attributable to mobile devices and approximately 11% was attributable to other consumer systems.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Thank you. Our first question comes from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

[Tore Svanberg:]

Yes. Thank you and congratulations on the record results. Mohan, you talked about targeting 20 service agreements by the end of fiscal ‘22 for LoRa. Could you elaborate a little bit more on the size of those, I mean, are these kind of like million dollars agreements? Just trying to understand how quickly the services revenue can ramp, but I know eventually obviously your target is about 100 million, but just wanted to understand for fiscal ‘22 how much is ramping?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yeah. The thinking Tore is that the agreements will really be focused on connecting devices and so obviously if there is a very high volume of devices and usage of those devices accessing the cloud services then the revenues will go up. So it depends on use case, it depends on number of devices, so each one is kind of individual on its own. But that’s the way the thinking is. So the revenues will be generated by number of times the algorithms are accessed and the number of devices etc, things like that. So, obviously, FY ‘22 for us this is almost a trial year to see, make sure we fine-tune the system, I mentioned the three areas we are starting off with device provisioning, which is about connectivity to the network and the cloud, device management, which is about monitoring the device itself, making sure the battery, telling you what the level of the battery is and things like that, and then geolocation, which is about locating the device and tracing it and things like that. So we have to demonstrate the value, but as we demonstrate the value, I think, as customers recognize the value of each of those aspects of the service then they will be quite happy to pay for it and that’s the thinking and we will see how it plays out.

[Tore Svanberg:]

Yeah. Thank you for that. And as my follow-up, you sound pretty confident that gross margin could expand this year obviously driven by mix. Does that mean that your visibility in your infrastructure markets including 5G and datacenter is pretty decent right now, because I know those markets have been a bit softer as of late? But it sounds like you have pretty good visibility out there though?

[Emeka Chukwu:]

Yeah. Tore, this is Emeka. So, yeah, I think, we feel very good about what is happening in the optical infrastructure space. We have continued to see a whole lot of design wins with some of our newer product platforms. And so the expectation on our side is that, we have a lot of good things going on the gross margin side, a lot of new products driving the topline revenue. But speaking on the gross margin, the one thing that is still out there that we are trying to really assess is what is the impact of our cost increases within the supply chain. Although, our feeling is that any negative impact would get from there should be mitigated by not giving us much pricing reductions or actually in some cases going back and asking for higher prices from our customers. So to your point, it definitely, like I said before, I think, it was last quarter, I am still anticipating same gross margin expansion anywhere from 50 basis points to 100 basis points and we are still pretty good about that based on the visibility that we have at this time.

[Tore Svanberg:]

Very good. Congrats again.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tristan Gerra with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

[Tristan Gerra:]

Hi. Good afternoon. Just following up on the same topic, any concerns about the availability of any component or in terms of wafers for this year? And also have you implemented any type of non-cancellable order policies with your customers?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

So, Tristan, I think, on the first part of the question, we have -- you can see probably since the second half of last year, we have been building more internal inventory and one of the reasons for that is the increasing lead times and supply chain. So we don’t anticipate any major issues and at least in the first half of the year. We think we are going to be good for most of the year, obviously, it’s a daily -- we are looking at it daily and it depends on demand. We have a couple of constraints around the business in terms of supply, but fairly small modest in nature, I would say, less than a few million dollars. So I think here and there and then we will just wait and see what the upside -- where the upside is. And as I said, we think we have it covered with our demand management and inventory management and the way we are managing the business. So I think we are okay. And then, as Emeka pointed out, we obviously, we see we have some supply constraints and in those cases we are going out and looking at whether we can when we get increases in the supply side on the cost side we are going out and deliberately looking specifically at where we can also offset that with raising prices. In some cases, I think, it’s also being more disciplined about how we work with our partners. In general, at the moment, we don’t have to do anything. I think first half is going to be fine. I think it’s really going to be a question of how the second half plays out and if the demand continues to be extremely strong and improves and the markets continue to improve then we may have to do some of those things. But I think at this point we are okay.

[Tristan Gerra:]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

[Harsh Kumar:]

Yeah. Hey, guys. First of all congratulations on some very good numbers and some very good guidance despite all the challenges in the market, so we do appreciate that as investors. I wanted to ask you, Mohan, if all the things that you see positive that are going on with the company, what are some of the things that you are the most excited about or you feel that will grow the fastest for you and then I have a follow-up?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Well, this year, I think is going to be the year where LoRa is really moves into the mainstream. I have said that before there will be catalysts and I think we are starting to see that, obviously, the Amazon Sidewalk announcement was exciting. The Amazon AWS IoT Core announcement was exciting and the cloud services. The first time we have really gone out there with cloud services as a capability and we are going to test them and check that out and see. But we are very excited about that, obviously, we will see how the results play out over the next few years, but that’s obviously exciting. All of our businesses in the infrastructure side on the Signal Integrity Product side are doing extremely well. Obviously, it’s largely to do with the world moving to more higher bandwidth across different segments of the market. But because we play in all areas, datacenter, base stations and on the access side with PON, we can see that there is demand in all areas and one feeds the other. If you have core bandwidth increase you need base station bandwidth increase. If you have base station bandwidth increase you need access bandwidth increase and so we are seeing that definitely become playing out. And I think the other thing that’s exciting about that is, that it’s becoming more global for a large part of our last five years, if you look at it, I mean, a lot of the growth has come from China and what we are seeing now is a lot more growth in other regions. Very excited by Tri-Edge, got great momentum with that and so we will see how that plays out, but we are very excited by the work that’s going on with customers and on the feedback and we started to get very good orders in that area. So that’s very exciting. And then, I think, the Protection business is, we made the decision to diversify a few years ago. That’s starting to play out nicely for us and I think that could be extremely positive for us as well. So lots of areas, Harsh, it’s tough for me to pick out one. But I think if you have to -- if we have to pick out one it would still be LoRa.

[Harsh Kumar:]

Awesome. Thank you, Mohan. And then thanks for mentioning Tri-Edge I was going to ask about that. So I will ask you now about what kind of interests are you seeing regarding your cloud services from customers as you talk to the folks out there that are going to buy these services. Are they excited or is it just more of a push or show me the concept kind of thing at this point?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

It’s a little bit of both. I think the initial show me, but once they see what we have, I think there’s a lot of excitement. I think it’s very unique platform, right? I mean, we are the only real guy out that provides -- providing device to cloud services that offer this type of capability. We can offer very good security in terms of device provisioning, joining network, obviously because we are in both the end devices and in the gateways and obviously have worked with the cloud guys. So, on the device management side, that’s also a very unique capability of being able to update the device itself over the year in software. And then geolocation, the unique -- obviously another unique capability for us with what we have with WiFi sniffing and GPS sniffing essentially being able to allow the device to be tracked indoors and outdoors, is a very nice feature as well. So lots of my things we have to -- it’s embryonic, I mean, it’s very new. But the opportunity is clearly there, the market is huge, and now, I think, if we execute, we should do very well.

[Harsh Kumar:]

Thank you, Mohan

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Gary Mobley with Wells Fargo Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Gary Mobley:]

Hey, guys. Let me extend my congratulations on a strong finish to the year. We have seen and heard out there in the marketplace of manufacturing constraints for automobiles, is there’s a shortage as automotive semiconductors. We heard just yesterday Samsung talking about smartphone supply chain constraints. And so my question to you is to what extent have you factored into your guidance any supply chain constraints unrelated to your specific products?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Unrelated to our specific products is tricky, because we don’t really know until we hear about it right, Gary. But I would say, you can tell from our turns number required, we are -- obviously we are guiding to a number we feel comfortable with based on how much turns we need. The question really is whether our customers change their demand outlook and then reduce the need for the devices. I doubt that’s going to happen. If anything, I think it will go the other way, which is as lead times continue to extend out they will want more material and need more material if they are going to continue to be successful. And so I don’t think it changes much from our perspective, obviously, there could be a surprise if some customers come back and cancel phones and things like that. But the likelihood is, it’s just a temporary blip and the next quarter will probably be the stronger if they choose to grow their businesses, right?

[Gary Mobley:]

Okay. Appreciate that, Mohan. So a follow-up I had a couple quick housekeeping questions. Could you share with us perhaps how much the extra week in the quarter impacted the sales and as well could you give us an update on where your distribution, sorry, your distributor inventory stand in turns of days or weeks?

[Emeka Chukwu:]

So, Gary, with regard to the impact of the 14-week on sales, it’s really kind of hard for us to estimate that. So I think what most people have basically done is just look at it on a linear basis, right? And in terms of distribution we then announce the days publicly. But I can tell you that we are very pleased with where the distribution inventory is and is probably a little bit on the lower side, if I were to add some color to that.

[Gary Mobley:]

All right. Thanks, Emeka. Thanks everybody.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Quinn Bolton with Needham. Please proceed with your question.

[Quinn Bolton:]

Hey guys. I will offer my congratulations as well and I apologize that my call dropped during the Q&A. So I apologize if somebody else asked the question. But Mohan, you talked about a strong outlook for the LoRa business in fiscal ‘22, really starting to hit the mainstream and a 40% longer term five-year CAGR. I am wondering if there is any reason to think that the growth in fiscal ‘22 for LoRa would be wildly off that 40% year-on-year rates implied by the longer term CAGR you are looking at?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Nothing I can think of Quinn other than macro events. I mean this last year pandemic something like that occurring is just a little bit are off right now on what type of things are going on. But the pipeline is good, the activity is good, number of new big initiatives like the Amazon initiatives, I mentioned, we have got more in the pipeline on those that will be announced soon. I think cloud services, as I mentioned. We just got great momentum and one of the things about LoRa and IoT and specifically the LPWAN market, it’s a market that has been created. And a lot of the use cases are around climate pollution -- climate initiatives, pollution initiatives, green initiatives, energy savings initiatives and then there is just great momentum. So my own sense is that, if anything, the momentum will be better. But at this point in time we just -- we are just monitoring it case-by-case. We look at all the use cases. We look at all the proof of concepts that are in place and how we can move those to revenue. But yeah, I think, there’s a lot of initiatives, obviously the Amazon Sidewalk initiative as an example of that, it’s -- once it starts to really get out there and I think it’s more the second half of this fiscal year. But as it starts to ramp, I mean that could really ramp very, very nicely, very quickly or it may not, right? So we will have to wait and see. But we are confident about it.

[Quinn Bolton:]

And just a quick clarification Mohan on the Amazon Sidewalk, when you are talking about that second half of ‘21 ramp, is that more on the gateways or is that on the end-node side?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Well, at once the -- what we know, and obviously, I can’t say -- talk about it too -- in too much detail, but we do know is that work is going on in both ends of devices and gateways. But from a use case standpoint, you really kind of need the gateways out there first and then that will drive more end-nodes and more sensors. And once the gateways are in place, of course, you can then add infinite amount of sensors. And so, I think, once they are in place and you have an installed base of gateways out there, I think the next five years to 10 years will be very interesting to see how many sensors are actually connected.

[Quinn Bolton:]

Great. The second question I have is just on the Protection business I think you said that I will look for growth in fiscal ‘22 was 10% or better. I might have missed it, but did you give an outlook for Signal Integrity, it sounds like base station on data center are all going to be pretty good growth years. So just wondering if you had a -- it’s kind of a fiscal year ‘22 target for the Signal Integrity business?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

We -- I expect it to have another record year Quinn and grow double digits again. So very strong, all areas of the business, I expect datacenter, base station and PON will do very well. And then as I mentioned, the PAM4 side of the Tri-Edge is doing very well. So I expect that to grow very nicely in FY ‘22. And then some of the segments that has struggled in FY ‘21, particularly video, broadcast, the Pro AV stuff really struggled in FY ‘21 through COVID. I think some of that’s going to come back quite nicely in FY ‘22. We will see, it may be second half loaded. Again, as live events come back on and as more people start to get out there to sports, bars and things like that. I do expect a ramp-up of Pro AV as well.

[Quinn Bolton:]

I will be rooting for the video broadcast business then. Thanks, Mohan.

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Karl Ackerman with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

[Karl Ackerman:]

Yeah. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Appreciate you let me ask the question. Two if I may. First, some 5G networking supply chain players have noted a pause in China infrastructure projects until tenders are granted. Given your unique position within the supply chain, I guess, what level of activity are you seeing in China infrastructure spending today and I guess also in the context of 10-gig PON order rates for the April quarter?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

We see strength in both areas 10-gig PON and 5G base stations. As you know, PON is sometimes lumpy in one quarter here, sometimes you wait. But in general, everything’s up into the right and that’s not a surprise, infrastructure across the globe is increasing, 5G base stations are increasing, 4G also is increasing. PON is doing nicely, and as I mentioned, 10-gig PON specifically because of the bandwidth expansion needs is increasing quite nicely. The other thing is it’s not just China and I think that’s an important takeaway is that we are starting to see a lot more activity in both 5G and PON in North America and Europe and other regions of the world. So, which is also quite good, very positive. And remember both 5G and PON we have more content than we have with 4G. So with 5G, obviously, we have now CDRs, as well as PMD function. Also with 5G there’s typically more front haul modules and so -- and then you have expansion in the geographical side. And then on the PON side, not only do we have 2.5-gig and 10-gig PON. But in 10-gig PON we also have OLT side, so ONU and OLT side, so kind of the CPE and central office side, if you like and that’s also giving us more content. So both these segments of the market we are doing extremely well. I would say that both markets are also doing quite well though.

[Karl Ackerman:]

Got it. I appreciate that Mohan. For my follow-up, you spoke about how Protection business can grow double digits this year. How does automotive play into that outlook and how should we think about the incremental revenues here and I guess the margin profile for those as you look to expand into this area? Thank you.

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

So Protection is doing very well in automotive. It does take longer though. This is all fairly new design wins in automotive and those take some time. So that they kind of have more of an industrial growth rate I think, but yeah, I do expect to do well. And anything in any protection that goes into automotive or into IoT or into communications infrastructure or into broader industrial will be at either our corporate average or much higher actually. So in general, it’s the consumer protection business, that’s the lower margin for us. And so I think as Emeka pointed out, we get the right mix in both our different businesses, but across the company that should be accretive to gross margins. Operator?

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Rick Schafer with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

[Andy Hummel:]

Hi. This is Andy Hummel on for Rick. Thanks for taking my question. The first one, just on with LoRa and some of the Amazon wins that you announced, but more specifically on the AWS IoT side, but can you just talk a little bit more about the opportunity with that platform? What are some of the factors that Amazon has that helps you accelerate LoRa adoption and then more broadly, if you can just remind us what your revenue opportunity is with the Amazon partnership?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yeah. So, AWS IoT Core is really an important initiative. It’s taken several years I think to come up with and develop and create, but essentially it creates a plug and play experience for enterprise solution providers that enable them essentially to connect their IoT sensors directly to the Amazon Cloud. And why that’s important is essentially as a time to market thing and also a competence thing. Because AWS already has software developed for applications, has different unique kind of vertical application software that it can be applied to different segments. And so not only the connectivity enablement which is easier and faster, but then also the ability to provide a kind of end-to-end solution quicker is also important. So I would say that’s the key thing. And so for enterprise, it’s really an enterprise play different than Sidewalk which is more of a kind of a smart home consumer play. That gateway connectivity directly to the cloud is really significant for large enterprises and so we do expect that to be part of our $100 million in five years with Amazon as tied to Sidewalk and some of it is tied to AWS IoT Core. But I think that’s kind of the goal.

[Andy Hummel:]

Okay. Great. Thanks. And then the follow-up, just on depending upon market, do you have a sense for where customers are at in the upgrade cycle like of is there a way to clarify I guess like what percentage of customers that might end up upgrading at some point have already upgraded the 10-gig?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Well, about 50% of our revenues that are coming in quarterly now are for 10-gig. So that’s a very rapid increase. I wouldn’t have expected that. And we knew 10-gig was going to ramp up. But that tells me that the market is moving to higher bandwidth PON quite quickly and we are expecting that to continue to grow that way. So, yeah, it’s moving fast. I mean if you think about a 10-gig is a natural hand-off for 5G. It’s also a natural connectivity point for HDTV, things like that. So it’s really a nice kind of data point, 10-gig typically is really as a good hand-off point for high speed data and so I think 10-gig PON has an option to do very well. And we look at it, if you have got a greenfield site certainly in China, but I think it’s also a place to other regions of the world, where you don’t have optical cable, but you are going to lay out optical cable, you would go with the higher bandwidth optical connectivity, right? So that’s why we will go with 10-gig PON or above even, we have customers who are looking at higher bandwidths as well, so which again will help Semtech.

[Andy Hummel:]

That’s great. Thanks. Appreciate it. Congrats on the quarter.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Craig Ellis:]

Yeah. Thanks for taking the question and congratulations on the results. Mohan I wanted to start with LoRa, but before I ask the question, thanks for keeping the dashboard fresh and the metrics relevant to the things that are evolving in the business. The question on LoRa though is, if we look back a year ago, I think, it was a priority to really increase the next design win and engagement activity in U.S. and Europe, and the team clearly did that and did that well. As you look ahead to 2022, are there any areas of geographic emphasis as you look at pursuing some metrics that you talked about in this year’s LoRa dashboard?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

I think we still have to execute on that, Craig. I would say, it’s huge now and so a lot of the opportunities are outside China. I don’t think that we necessarily are changing our strategy in China. Our momentum in China is still very good. It’s more a question of, let’s make sure we have momentum in other regions of the world and clearly North America now with Amazon and some of the things that are going on in the enterprise space in North America is extremely good and in Europe as well. So I think it’s more of the same. We just want to keep doing that, executing on that. And now, as I mentioned, really LoRa is quite well adopted around the world globally. I mean, it’s really acknowledged as a great technology for LPWAN. So I think our focus now is on executing on the proof-of-concepts and making sure this end-to-end solutions there is enough sensors, there’s enough gateways, there’s high quality software out there, there’s cloud connectivity, those type of things. And really focusing now on the use cases, make sure that the customers themselves who are implementing those use cases are not having any challenges with the use of LoRa from an end-to-end solution standpoint and therein lies the opportunity with LoRa Cloud I think and with some of the things we are doing with Amazon on the AWS IoT Core, for example.

[Craig Ellis:]

Got it. And then the follow up, Emeka, is for you. In your prepared remarks you mentioned rising input costs and the potential to make some pricing moves. And so I just want to dig into a little bit further on what was possible. For example, I would expect in some parts of the business it is not possible to raise prices due to your relationship with existing Tier 1 customers. But in other parts of the business it may be more feasible. So can you just provide some further color on what the company might be able to do and when in fact the company might be able to make some moves if it chose to act in that direction? Thank you.

[Emeka Chukwu:]

Thanks, Craig. I think, we already seen -- like Mohan did mention, we already seen some expenses where we are getting indications of price increases from the supply chain and we are assessing that. It’s not really -- it is pretty much going to be across the Board where we continue to look at where, which product lines, which areas are we seeing the impact of this increases and then I will have to figure out whether the strategies are going to be, as you are coming through every year, you plan for a certain amount of ASP reductions. May be the answer is going to be okay. We are not going to give those planned ASP reductions and in some cases, if the increase is on the supply chain is pretty significant then we will have to expect that our customers to help us share some of those bargains. But it is very -- I am not sure that I can comment now and tell you exactly where we are seeing things, but our office varies that, we should be able to find opportunities to offset the impact of cost increases that we get.

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

One thing to remember, Craig, as I mentioned earlier is that, we have done a really fantastic job in my view of building more inventory in anticipation of some of these issues. And so I think at least for the first half, I think where we feel pretty good about where we are from a supply standpoint. The question really is in the second half if demand increases and we need to go to our suppliers and get more material than it’s going to come at a higher price, right? And for those we may have to go to our customers and request higher pricing.

[Craig Ellis:]

Well, certainly, you wouldn’t be the first doing so there, so guys thanks very much and good luck.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Rolland with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

[Chris Rolland:]

Hey guys. This one will be for Mohan. So I recently ordered a Helium hotspot. So I am back ordered on that. But if you look at the token value market cap implied by the network we are in the hundreds of millions now, which would imply this would be a real thing. So I was wondering Mohan, if you could talk about this. Do you think this could be a real thing? Is this something that maybe you thought Comcast was going to be. Can you talk about kind of where we are now and if this how you are viewing this whole network?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yeah. That’s a really interesting question, Chris. I would say that was our vision and dream with Comcast and for whatever reason they decided not to go down and continue to execute on that. They are still involved. But not with the ambition that we thought they initially had. We do think that that’s the same kind of concept which is Amazon Sidewalk is -- has and others that are in the pipeline. And Helium’s approach is very interesting and very unique and very creative, which obviously fits well with LoRa and all of the things that are going on. So, yeah, I think it could work to some extent with some of these networking approaches. It’s a beauty of LoRa, which is very flexible where you could have very low cost, very secure networks that connect together and it just changes the world of networking to some extent and I think that’s the ambition, right? So take it away from the big guys and give it to the small guys and see what happens. And so, we will see, it’s early and I think with Helium obviously being a start-up. They have to execute. But we see this in several countries in the world going on. It’s not just in the U.S. And as I say, I think, definitely the momentum is there. We will see how it plays out. The use cases of the key in my view as more and more use cases become available and make the network itself very valuable, then I think it could work for sure.

[Chris Rolland:]

Understood. My final question is around China both on the handset side and the optical side. I think you said, China handset was good, do you have any viewpoint on China inventories and how much you were helped by inventories that may have been built as Huawei has been struggling here, the other guys have been said to have been building inventory? And then secondly on the 5G infra side, I think, you mentioned, some optical strength, is that where it came from, is it China Optical on 5G?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Well, I think, though on the first the 5G strength today is mostly China, but I think we are starting to see new opportunities now emerge from other regions of the world, which is as I said they are a very encouraging. So and it’s not -- it’s well understood I think around the world that some of the North America -- American and European companies Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson Cisco are all engaged and in trying to build 5G systems and equipment and so we see definitely a good momentum there more globally. And then on the smartphone question, on the mobile question, for sure China has ramped up and specifically non-Huawei smartphone manufacturers have ramped-up their demand and are looking to get more material. We are seeing that strength. I would say, it’s also North America and the strength is there. Korea has been slightly not so strong. I do think that that might come back in Q1 and beyond. But certainly for Q4 China was strong and probably will be for the first half of this year. I don’t know how much of that is in the supply chain driven. I don’t think it is, I think we started to see that well in advance. I think it’s more in anticipation of maybe winning some of Huawei’s business. But at the end of the day we look at across all of our customers and are looking at carefully at how much what is demand and what’s being consumed and how much material is out there in the channel and paying out a lot of attention to that.

[Chris Rolland:]

Thanks guys.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Cody Acree with Loop Capital. Please proceed with your question.

[Cody Acree:]

Yeah. Thank you guys for take my questions. If we can go back to maybe towards the beginning and just try to get a better sense of the velocity of your bookings level as we push here through the first part of the year, just on a linearity basis? And then what is that, is there a correlation between that bookings uptick and the expansion or the expanded lead times?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yeah. I would say that the demand came first. Cody, I mean, we definitely start to see bookings, very strong bookings in October, November, December, I mean, very, very strong Chinese New Year, softened a little bit, but then bookings have been very strong since then. Lead times have been gradually increasing, supply lead times of gradually increasing, so customers obviously want to give you more visibility as they get concerned about supply constraints. But I think it’s a healthy position for someone like us. We have built inventory. We have enough material to support customers. It’s just a question now of making sure that the materials we ship out are being consumed effectively. And I think that’s what, as I said, we are keeping a close eye on. But that’s kind of how the way we think about it.

[Cody Acree:]

Mohan, I guess, given your position, how much visibility do you have, do you still -- do you feel comfortable with having on the possibility of double ordering or just, just inventory restocking efforts. We all know how this ends but what the visibility do you have? And then maybe why the 16% turns guidance visibility is so high? Why not a higher guidance if you are that much booked for the quarter?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Well, we -- so we do have very good visibility actually and that’s the good thing, and as I said, that’s not a surprise. The turns number and the reason for the low percentage turns is mostly because of that consumption question, as I answered is that. While customers are asking for more, we want to be cautious about making sure that there is no excess channel inventory and so we pay a lot of attention to that. As Emeka said, it’s kind of the low end, I would like to keep it there. And so we are making sure that whatever we ship out is being consumed effectively and it’s not double ordered and things like that. So we are taking specific steps on that front and that’s the way -- that’s the reason why our turns numbers is what it is.

[Cody Acree:]

Great. Thank you, guys.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

[Tore Svanberg:]

Yes. Thank you. I just had a few follow-up housekeeping ones. Mohan, you talked about the LoRa pipeline being $700 million. I believe in the past you have talked about the funnel and leads to the funnel. So is that $700 million now basically just adding those two up?

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yes. Opportunities and leads, Tore. I would say this last year in FY ‘21 normally a lot of the leads come from shows, conferences, events and things like that. And of course, we went in Q1 into a period where nothing was happening. So I think that’s going to change this next fiscal year when things start to get back to normal in terms of some conferences being open, shows starting to open up a little bit and people traveling a little bit more. We will start to see those leads expand. But, yeah, but to answer your question, it’s a combination of both opportunities that are in the pipeline that are running proof-of-concepts and leads.

[Tore Svanberg:]

Got it. Got it. And then I just had a question on so of the math of the number of the gateways and the end-nodes versus your revenue. So I think end-nodes grew about 30%, gateways I think doubled year-over-year, your revenues grew 20%. So how should I just think about the math there, and of course, I am not looking at perfect tides here but...

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yeah. So the way to…

[Tore Svanberg:]

…I mean…

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Yeah. The way to think about it, Tore, remember gateways is installation is a question of a network, right? So they are creating the networks first according to gateways, whether that’s a private network or a public network. The end-nodes are tied to actual sensors being connected to those gateways. Now remember the end-nodes, the timing of an end-node when we ship a device out, the device typically will go to a distributor. The distributor will then ship it to a customer. The customer will then put that for example that device. We just tell a radio component they will put it into a system, build the whole sensor node and then it gets connected to the gateway. So there are -- there is a different timing components here. But the reason why I shared these metrics, obviously the gateways are important, because it tells you about the capacity that’s out there to support LoRa. So with the current capacity of 1.3 million gateways that can support about 5 billion sensors there. So there is no -- there’s plenty of availability of networks to support centers. And then the cumulative end-nodes is important, because it tells you exactly how many nodes are now connected to the gateways. In terms of our revenue, it’s when we ship devices to our customers, right?

[Tore Svanberg:]

Right. Now that’s very helpful. Thank you so much.

[Operator:]

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mohan for any closing comments.

[Mohan Maheswaran:]

Okay. In closing, we were pleased with our strong Q4 and fiscal year ‘21 results. Despite the impacts of the pandemic, our multi-sourcing initiatives, our investments in IT operations and sales infrastructure limited the impact of COVID on our business operations. We also benefited from the strengthening of several secular themes driving our key growth engines, targeted at the data center, Internet of Things and mobile device segments. We remain committed to considering the impact of environmental, social and governance factors in our decision making processes. Given our diverse product offering, balanced end market approach and strong customer relationships, we expect to see growth and a strong financial performance in fiscal year ‘22. With that, we appreciate your continued support of Semtech and look forward to updating you all next quarter. Thank you.

[Operator:]

This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful evening.