Wolfspeed (NYSE:WOLF) released fourth-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Wednesday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Access the full call at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/154849101
Summary
Wolfspeed reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $150 million, aligning with the midpoint of guidance. The company experienced a 6% sequential growth in device revenue, driven by AI data center strength.
The company is progressing its strategic initiatives, including the launch of a dedicated Data Center Solutions team and the appointment of industry veterans to accelerate growth in AI and data center applications.
Wolfspeed expanded its product portfolio with Gen 5 MOSFET technology and 10 kV MOSFET commercial readiness, aiming to improve system efficiency in various applications, including automotive and AI data centers.
Operational highlights include a significant increase in AI-generated revenue, a new partnership with Toyota for EV onboard charging, and a memorandum with GE Aerospace for 10 kV SiC MOSFETs.
The company ended the quarter with $1.1 billion in cash and short-term investments, focusing on reducing debt and cost of capital. Non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to range between $62 million and $66 million in Q1 fiscal 2027.
Management emphasized their commitment to operational excellence and financial discipline, aiming to achieve profitable growth and enhance shareholder value.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
2026 earnings call. On the call today from the Wolfspeed team is Chief Executive Officer Robert Furle, Chief Financial Officer Gregor Van Eesom and Dan Whalen, Vice President, Investor Relations. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. I will now hand the conference over to Dan Whalen. Dan, please go ahead.
Dan Whalen, Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Wolfspeed's fourth quarter fiscal 2026 conference call. We encourage you to reference the slides that were published on our IR website today. Please note that we will be presenting non-GAAP financial results during today's call, which we believe provide useful information to our investors. Non-GAAP results are not in accordance with GAAP and may not be comparable to non-GAAP information provided by other companies.
Non-GAAP information should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is in our press release and posted in the Investor Relations section of our website along with the historical summary of our other key metrics. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements about our business outlook, and we may make other forward-looking statements during the call.
Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. Our press release today and the SEC filings noted in the release mention important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. With that, I will turn the call over to Robert.
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. This quarter marks another step in building momentum since we substantially refreshed our leadership team and capital structure. The fourth quarter revenue result of $150 million represents another quarter of delivering results at the midpoint of the guidance range and further demonstrates we are delivering on our commitments. Reflecting on this past fiscal year, we have proactively taken aggressive actions, including recapitalizing the company to strengthen the balance sheet and bolstering our leadership team and our sales organization with seasoned industry veterans.
We've also adjusted our go-to-market sales strategy and positioned the company to refocus on our technology leadership and a customer-centric approach. But we have accomplished a lot as we continue to deliver on our commitments. We remain early in our transformation, and as each month and quarter passes we continue to gain further confidence in our path to profitability as we execute our strategic priorities and navigate broader industry dynamics.
As I said on my very first earnings call leading the Wolfspeed team, we have enormous potential underpinned by strong foundation elements. Since then, we've been proactive, building upon these strengths while attracting and incorporating industry veterans with extensive customer relationships to leverage, optimize and capitalize on our physical, operational and intellectual assets. Most recently, as announced late July, Andy Matthes was appointed to our Board of Directors.
As the former CEO of Coherent and Diebold Nixdorf, with more than 40 years of leadership in semiconductor and advanced technology industries, he brings a strong record of strategic leadership, operational excellence and industry relationships to further bolster and accelerate our path to profitability. Also in early June, we announced the launch of a dedicated Data Center Solutions team to capitalize on the further growth in our fastest growing end market.
To lead this effort, we appointed two industry veterans in the San Francisco Bay Area, the epicenter of tech innovation, with extensive experience in high-voltage power architecture for AI and data center applications. Our investment and focus in AI data center applications is gaining momentum, reflected in both revenue growth and expanding customer traction. In fiscal 2026, revenue in this business more than doubled versus fiscal 2025, including increasing approximately 20% from the fiscal third quarter to the fourth quarter.
We continue to see encouraging progress as new design wins ramp at leading power supply companies including Lite-On, Magmeet and others to support multiple hyperscaler customers. These wins span both established and emerging HVDC AI architectures. Transition to 800-volt architectures is increasing silicon carbide content across the data center power ecosystem. As these next-generation power architectures become a critical enabler of AI infrastructure, hyperscaler customers are placing greater emphasis on system efficiency, quality and supply assurance.
Beyond AC-DC power supplies, we are seeing opportunities emerge across battery backup units, supercapacitors, e-fuses and high-voltage DC-to-DC conversion. We're also pursuing opportunities on the secondary side of high-voltage DC-to-DC conversion systems, which could further expand our addressable market over time. While the market remains in its early stages, we believe our technology leadership and available manufacturing capacity position us well to participate in this long-term growth opportunity.
With industry-leading SiC technology and differentiated, vertically integrated 200-millimeter manufacturing capability, we are well positioned to support this transition as AI data center adoption continues to scale. These are all clear examples demonstrating the team is executing and delivering on the key strategic priorities we committed to. I will also comment on a few updates regarding our commitments to technology leadership, another key strategic priority.
This past June we announced two significant achievements at PCIM, a leading power technology conference in Europe: Gen 5 MOSFET technology and 10 kV MOSFET commercial readiness. At PCIM, we announced our 5th generation silicon carbide MOSFET technology, marking another significant milestone in our innovation roadmap. Gen 5 MOSFETs deliver the best specific on-state resistance in the industry while maintaining the excellent switching behavior introduced in our Gen 4 MOSFETs.
This combination represents a substantial performance leap in efficiency over competitive solutions, giving our customers the option to maintain efficiency and reduce the overall size of their systems, or maintain system size and achieve greater power density. Gen 5 enables more compact traction inverters, extended EV driving range, right-sized battery systems and improved EV charging infrastructure, directly addressing the cost and efficiency pressures faced by automotive OEMs.
Beyond automotive, Gen 5 also addresses several industrial power supply applications demanding leading-edge performance, including AI data center power supplies, solid-state transformers and renewable energy conversion. Importantly, Gen 5 was developed and is running in our highly automated 200-millimeter facility in Mohawk Valley in upstate New York. This provides our automotive and industrial customers with a rapid, low-risk path from design into volume production.
While we are diversifying our revenue and customer base beyond our historical core concentration as discussed above, we are also continuing to develop and improve our automotive customer relationships. To this point, our previously announced partnership with Toyota for onboard charging systems reflects the continued importance of silicon carbide in next-generation EV platforms. More recently, we were awarded first-time business from a European Tier 1 supplier supporting the onboard charger of a large German OEM.
To touch on the aerospace and defense market briefly, our 10 kV silicon carbide MOSFET was acknowledged at PCIM as a top innovation at the conference. We also recently announced a memorandum of understanding with GE Aerospace to accelerate the adoption of high-voltage silicon carbide across the industrial, aerospace and defense market. This technical partnership includes the supply of the industry's first commercially available 10 kV SiC MOSFETs from Wolfspeed and will ensure co-development of standard high-voltage power module formats.
This domestic partnership strengthens our supply chain resilience and aligns with U.S. government priorities around critical technologies for AI, energy, defense and national security. Now, materials business continues to serve a broad range of power and RF-based customers, including our 150-millimeter LTA customers. We are also working closely with them on their 200-millimeter transition by providing state-of-the-art samples and technical support.
Our increased focus, customer-centric approach and operational discipline continue to be the backbone of these relationships. Regarding our 300-millimeter substrates, we continue to explore new opportunities and make steady progress. Since our last update, we began shipping the first engineering samples to multiple customers for their internal evaluation. We continue to view this as a longer-term growth opportunity. Prior to turning it over to Gregor, I will close by saying thank you to the entire Wolfspeed team for their continued commitment, execution and drive.
Our strategic alignment is significantly improved with new leadership, a new sales strategy and a stronger capital structure, better positioning us to capitalize on long-term industry trends. This will continue to strengthen our earnings potential, and we believe will ultimately deliver significant value creation for shareholders.
Gregor Van Eesom, Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. In addition to the key strategic priorities reviewed by Robert, we have also made great strides with our operational excellence initiatives, which will continue to increase our earnings potential and differentiate us in the marketplace as partner of choice. I will turn to our fourth quarter results. We generated $150 million in total revenue for the quarter, in line with the midpoint of our guidance.
Materials revenue was approximately $43 million. Our device revenue was approximately $106 million, which represents 6% sequential growth, as the quarter benefited from strength in AI data centers, which increased approximately 20% from Q3 to Q4 and more than doubled from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2026, which helped to compensate for the softer results in automotive. Our adjusted non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was minus 19.9%, reflecting a 70 basis point sequential improvement.
This was driven primarily by product mix, including higher AI sales in Power and higher RF sales in Materials. Underutilization continues to be the primary driver of our gross margin profile, and improving factory utilization remains one of the most important levers to drive margin expansion. As I mentioned during the third quarter earnings call, we continue to focus on producing the same revenue with less capacity consumed. These continued efforts position us to keep expanding our earnings potential per dollar of invested capital, even if it makes the reported underutilization appear larger.
Non-GAAP operating expenses totaled $62 million in the quarter versus $61 million in the prior quarter, largely due to continued investment in R&D and marketing-related expenses. Adjusted non-GAAP EBITDA for the quarter was negative $62 million, comparable to the prior quarter. Gross capital expenditures were only $5 million in the fourth quarter versus $38 million in the prior quarter. Changes in working capital contributed approximately $23 million to cash for Q4, driven primarily by continued reduction of inventory levels.
Now turning to cash flow, which remains one of our top priorities. Operating cash flow for Q4 was negative $54 million and included a $41 million benefit from further reduction of inventory levels in the quarter. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.1 billion in cash and short-term investments, allowing us to pursue our strategic priorities with confidence. We continue to pursue aggressive efforts to reduce our debt and cost of capital. During the fourth quarter, our capital structure further improved as holders of $46 million of our 2L convertible notes exercised a voluntary conversion of their debt to equity.
This debt principal decrease resulted in approximately $1 million of annual interest expense savings. Net debt was approximately $600 million at the end of the quarter. Turning to our business outlook, we continue to see growth in our device business and are targeting revenue between $140 million and $160 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027. We are expecting non-GAAP gross margin to remain negative as we are entering the new year. We are now expanding our guidance to include non-GAAP operating expenses, and we expect them to be in the range of $62 million to $66 million in the fiscal first quarter of 2027.
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Gregor. Before we open the call up for questions, I will reiterate we are laser focused on continuing to deliver on our key strategic initiatives, including technology leadership, diversifying our revenue and customer base, operational excellence and financial discipline. Cumulatively, this will cement our path to profitable growth, stronger earnings power and greater value creation for our shareholders. With that, operator, we are now ready to take questions.
OPERATOR
We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press Star 1. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna.
Christopher, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Christopher Rolland, Analyst at Susquehanna
Hi, and thanks for the question. I guess my first is just going to be a pretty simple near-term question. You know, when it comes to automotive and industrial, your primary customers, what are you seeing? What does the outlook look like both for materials and devices? And are you confident that June is the bottom for this business?
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
Thanks for the question. It's Robert here. So pretty much what we see is that our diversification efforts in terms of broader customer structure globally are really starting to pay off, right? And then of course we cannot influence the demand of our end customers. But what we can clearly see is that pretty much both in the AI space and also in the auto space, we see now really good traction. And again, we also announced here one additional design win with a German car OEM for onboard charging, and we see really a broad engagement across the globe.
How the overall demand will develop across these end verticals is hard to predict, quite frankly speaking here, as also some of our customers are going through product mix changes, especially on the auto side here. So I think that's something which is rather hard to predict.
Christopher Rolland, Analyst at Susquehanna
Thank you, Robert. Maybe as a follow up, there's a ton of interest in AI. You've talked about AI revenue. I don't know if you have any projections perhaps for next year and where you might be, but if you could talk about the progression of products that you will be releasing to market and/or have design wins for. Obviously you had the announcement with Lite-On. I believe that's for PSU for a sidecar. I don't know if there's any timing around that, but SST is beyond that.
Perhaps even with your 10 kilovolt solutions. Maybe if you could talk about the progression and new product opportunities and what that timeline might look like.
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
Absolutely. Great question. So we doubled our revenue from FY25 to 26. That just shows you kind of the momentum this market segment has gained. And quite frankly speaking, this was not on anybody's radar screen a couple of years ago. In terms of the product portfolio, here we are quite frankly looking into, again like you said, on the PSU side, discrete devices. Here we are engaged and we named two of these companies, Magmeet and Lite-On, in our press release also here.
But of course we are engaged across the whole ecosystem on the power supply side, and then working with the major solid-state transformer companies on the higher-voltage devices, which are primarily 2.3 and 3.3 kilovolt modules. And here it's around how do we get the end customers, which are the hyperscalers, comfortable pretty much with the reliability aspect and also making sure that they are comfortable pretty much deploying these SSTs. So we're really engaged from 750-volt devices, 1200-volt devices, 2.3-kilovolt devices, 3.3-kilovolt devices.
Then again, the higher the voltage comes, the more differentiated the product portfolio is. And we have the product and we have this in our 200-millimeter Mohawk Valley fab. So where we're getting a lot of requests from these customers is, okay, we're going to go deploy this now. Are you ready to ramp? And the good news is with us having completed the 6- to 8-inch transition, I think this is a huge, huge asset for us as a company, right? And as you know, we're vertically integrated.
It means we’ve got the substrates, we’ve got the product, and again we all can serve them out of the Mohawk Valley fab.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Bachelter with TD Cowan. Joshua, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Joshua Bachelter, Analyst at TD Cowan
Hey guys, thank you for taking my question. Maybe following up on Chris's last one. So I think you called out, you know, great to see the data center business doubling, but it still remains modest. I guess any timeline you’re able to offer us on when you would expect data center revenue to become more meaningful and, I guess, how much of that is tied specifically to the 800-volt architecture versus broader compute and AI deployments? Thank you.
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, so again, there are a couple of factors driving the demand. One is of course the 800-volt deployment. That's a big milestone here, which is going to happen. And here we're working on various qualifications across the whole ecosystem. But then also the whole deployment of solid-state transformers, right. I mean this is where, you know, I talked about this. 2.3 kV, 3.3 kV devices are really important and us being able to deliver these devices from our Mohawk Valley factory is putting us in a really good situation to take advantage of that demand.
Joshua Bachelter, Analyst at TD Cowan
Got it, thank you. And then for my follow up, any help you can give us on the gross margin trajectory either near term or longer term? Like, I guess for the medium term, you know, what level of Mohawk Valley utilization or revenue is needed for gross margins to flip positive?
Gregor Van Eesom, Chief Financial Officer
Thank you. Yeah, and thanks for the question. I think indeed gross margin neutrality is the next big milestone for us to drive towards. That is particularly driven by volume growth. As you know, we have a high fixed-cost nature in our business. Revenue expansion is the best way to improve our margins. Inherent profitability of the products is quite okay, I would say. So it's really about asset utilization. It greatly depends on the exact mix you have between devices and material, but also within material on the end market.
So we're pretty happy to see that some of the industrial markets have got a lot of traction, including the data center side. But in a ballpark, we would say an $800 million annual run rate is probably the ballpark where a break-even gross margin point lies right now. But again, that could be plus or minus several million depending on the mix.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Jed Dorsheimer with William Blair. Jed, your line is now…
Jed Dorsheimer, Analyst at William Blair
Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. So my first is, could you just take a minute and maybe come back and talk about what you could do in terms of cash management and specifically around the L1, and what that would save in terms of interest? I believe that is callable at this point in time. What would that save you on annual interest and what would that do to your cash burn? And then I have a follow up.
Gregor Van Eesom, Chief Financial Officer
Ajit, thanks for the question. Obviously the first lien debt is the highest-prior debt to refinance. Right now it's around 16% interest. Depending on the means of refinancing, you can calculate on the $630 million of outstanding debt how much saving that would be. But again, it depends on what type of refinancing or repayment that would be. But it would be a meaningful contribution to the cash flow in this particular quarter. Overall, we have spent $32 million in cash out of the total $54 million in operating cash flow.
So you can see it's a meaningful amount. Obviously that's not all coming from the L1, but a significant portion of that.
Jed Dorsheimer, Analyst at William Blair
Got it. And then just as my follow up question, retiring the L1 would also unencumber the ability to break the business in two between materials and power. Is that still the case? I believe the covenants previously maintained that Apollo would have to sign off on that. But I'm assuming if the L1 was taken care of, that would unlock that covenant. Not that you're planning on doing that. I'm just wanting to make sure that I had that correct.
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
I would say I don't go into that. We have absolutely no interest to break it in two. So whether that's allowed or not is quite irrelevant from our perspective. We believe that having a vertically integrated business drives really a performance differentiator when it comes to our device performance. I think when you look at the Gen 5 product performance that we have released at PCIM, you have seen a leap in performance that others have not been able to achieve with the technology in play.
And we are convinced that this is to a certain extent contributed by the fact that we are vertically integrated. So whether that may or may not be true, I don't think really is relevant for us at all.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Cardozo, JP Morgan. Joseph, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Joseph Cardozo, Analyst at JP Morgan
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the time. This is a colleague on for Joe Cardoso. Just had a broad question here related to materials revenue. It was $43 million this quarter. While you support 150 millimeter LTA customers through their 200 millimeter transition, how do we think about materials revenue from here? And when does 200 begin contributing more meaningfully to the overall number?
Robert Furle, Chief Executive Officer
So we're working with all the major customers on qualifying the 8-inch, or 200-millimeter, materials as we speak. And some of them are digesting inventory levels. And I think we're exactly in this transition from 6 to 8 inch. Some LTAs are running out. Some LTAs on 150 are still continuing. And this is something I would say here which will continue for this year, as we're seeing this transition year to happen. But as we see, of course, overall demand for silicon carbide—and if you look in all the market studies, silicon carbide market is growing—this means also our customers on the material side will transition to 8 inch eventually.
And then we clearly are in a very good position with leading-edge quality and leading-edge technology on 8 inch to take full advantage of that.
Joseph Cardozo, Analyst at JP Morgan
Thank you.
OPERATOR
We have reached the end of the Q&A session. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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