MACOM misses forecasts, cites tougher cloud business

MACOM Technology Solutions reported preliminary non-GAAP revenue of approximately $121 million, compared to guidance of $134 million to $142 million. Non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be around 49%, which includes $8 million in inventory reserves primarily associated with data center materials, or roughly 600 basis point of gross margin impact. This compares to non-GAAP gross margin guidance of 55% to 57%, which did not reflect the inventory reserve. Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be a loss of ($0.18), compared to guidance for adjusted earnings per share of $0.04 to $0.12.

President and Chief Executive Officer, John Croteau commented, “We are clearly disappointed with our preliminary fiscal Q2 results. There were several contributing factors, the majority of which were rooted in the acute inventory correction that is currently underway among Cloud Data Center customers.

“Over the course of the quarter, demand across our Cloud Data Center businesses deteriorated beyond our original forecasts due to the rapid deceleration of this previously high-growth end market. The decline in new orders from Cloud Service Providers caused component inventory levels to grow more than we originally anticipated at many of our transceiver customers. This resulted in lower product revenue and was compounded by a corresponding impact across the supply chain as cloud customers delayed the ramp of new products and new transceiver suppliers.

“As a result, we did not recognize certain solutions revenue from a new customer in Q2, which we had originally anticipated in building our Q2 guidance. Moreover, the current demand environment drove cloud customers to deprioritize qualifying new suppliers during the quarter, creating added uncertainty in the timing of revenue from new players.

“Lastly, given light backlog and weak end market demand we recorded inventory reserves associated with certain Data Center products that we were ramping. The net result was a significantly larger decline in EPS and margin relative to the associated decrease in product revenue.”