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Coherent (COHR 1.38%)
Q1 2024 Earnings Call
Nov 07, 2023, 8:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Coherent Corp. FY '24 first quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
After the speakers' presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] Please be advised, today's conference is being recorded. I would like to hand the call over to your speaker today, Paul Silverstein. Please go ahead.
Paul Silverstein -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. Today on the call, we have chair and CEO, Dr. Chuck Mattera; and a number of executives who Chuck will introduce in a moment.
Yesterday, after the market closed, Coherent issued a news release and posted a shareholder letter, along with an updated investor presentation in the investor relations section of our website. Both of these documents were furnished on a Form 8-K. This morning, we filed our 10-Q. Today's conference call will be available for webcast replay in the investor relations section of our website.
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Before I turn the call over to Chuck for his opening remarks, please note that following our September overview webinar on our communications market, we plan on hosting our second market overview webinar focused on our industrial market to be held on December 14th. I want to call everyone's attention to our shareholder letter, which contains our traditional financial statements that were previously set forth in our earnings press release, along with detailed information around our operating performance, key trends, and outlook. We plan to devote the bulk of this morning's call to answering questions from analysts in the investment community. I also want to remind everyone on this call, we will refer to forward-Looking statements, including all statements the company will make about its future performance and market outlook, and actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in the first quarter 2024 shareholder letter and in our SEC reports. Coherent assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the respective dates. Also, during this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the shareholder letter.
With respect to the historical non-GAAP financial measures, we will limit our discussion to those that are reconciled in the shareholder letter. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Coherent's chair and CEO, Dr. Chuck Mattera. Chuck, please go ahead.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Paul. Leadership development is among the most important jobs of the CEO. Given how extensive our disclosures are in the shareholder letter, I have the following senior leaders with me on the call today. They are interim chief financial officer, Rich Martucci; chief strategy officer and president of the materials segment, Dr.
Giovanni Barbarossa; EVP of lasers, Dr. Chris Dorman, who came to us through the Coherent acquisition; Sohail Khan, EVP of our wide-bandgap technologies silicon carbide business; our chief commercial officer, Magnus Bengtsson, who leads our global sales and service org and who also came to us through the Coherent acquisition; chief marketing officer, Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi; and the EVP of our telecommunications business, Dr. Beck Mason, a recent market hire and one of the industry's top leaders who chose to come to Coherent as a place to grow.
They will participate in the Q&A fireside today to provide investors a rich source of information about the depth and breadth of our markets, technologies, operations, and overall business, and especially our leadership talent. And I'm sure you'll enjoy interacting with them today. In the first quarter, the Coherent team did a good job executing in the midst of a challenging macroeconomic environment. We posted revenue of 1.053 billion, which was slightly above the midpoint of our guidance, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.16, which was above the midpoint of our guidance.
Operating cash flow was 199 million, which marked sequential and year-over-year improvement. We invested 62 million in capital equipment, and we retired $19 million of debt. Macroeconomic headwinds and uncertainty continue to affect many of our end markets and will continue to constrain our near-term growth and visibility. Our first quarter results, however, demonstrate the success of our diversification strategy.
While some of our markets remain challenged, our silicon carbide business in which we recently announced $1 billion of investments by Mitsubishi Electric and Denso, enjoyed another quarter of strong demand. We also enjoyed a second straight quarter of extremely strong demand for our AI-related datacom transceivers and components. Both of these are indicative of the breadth and differentiation we offer the market leaders who are disrupting the status quo and underpinning the irreversible market megatrends that we enable. In addition to continuing to invest in our core assets, we are taking substantive actions to ensure that we improve our operating performance, especially to drive recovery in our margin structure, including through global integration and transformation, and the realization of our synergy plan from the Coherent acquisition, as well as our previously announced restructuring activities.
Turning now to our guidance for the second quarter of fiscal '24, revenue of approximately 1.05 billion to 1.175 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of approximately $0.14 to $0.32. Our guidance for fiscal year '24 is revenue of approximately 4.5 billion to 4.7 billion, which is unchanged from our previous guidance. And non-GAAP earnings per share of approximately $1 to $1.50, which is also unchanged from our previous guidance. And while our annual guidance remains unchanged, this simply reflects the confidence we have in that guidance.
And we continue to believe that we still have very real opportunities to exceed those results by several hundred million dollars as we discussed last quarter. We will not hesitate to increase our outlook as we gain improved visibility regarding our ability to capitalize on these opportunities within fiscal year '24. Now, before I -- before we turn to your questions, I would like to say how appreciative and proud I am of our employees whose tireless dedication for setting the stage for now, next, and beyond. Coherent is well positioned with differentiated technology, exceptional talent, and high-quality efficient manufacturing platforms capable of delivering products to the market that are growing at high single digits to double digits.
And I believe that we are better positioned than others to take full advantage of our existing market positions and to grow deeper into these markets because of our growing scale and customer intimacy and trust. We are a trusted and value partner with the industry leaders. And that trust and intimacy creates stability in our core business and that also creates a flywheel effect of growth opportunities that many other companies simply don't have. We have tremendous upside and platform cost optimization from the ongoing integration, special restructuring, and transformation projects over the next few years.
And we have a track record to prove our likelihood of success. We have a good plan and a roadmap to take advantage of all of these assets and the opportunity the markets are offering today and to take advantage of the recovery and the anticipated growth in our markets. We have a team of world-class technologists, industry pioneers, and executives with a demonstrated capability for identifying and capitalizing on market megatrends. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Paul.
Paul?
Paul Silverstein -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Chuck. We will now open the call to analyst questions. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and feel free to get back into the queue and, if time permits, we'll circle back around to you. This call is scheduled for a full hour.
As we have almost 20 analysts that cover the company, we ask that each of you limit yourself to that one question and follow-up. Please direct your questions to Chuck who will decide who's best to respond. Kevin, please go ahead.
Questions & Answers:
Operator
[Operator instructions] The first question comes from Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Hey, good morning, Samik.
Operator
If your phone line is muted, could you please unmute the line?
Samik Chatterjee -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst
Hi. Can you hear me now, Chuck? Yes, I can hear you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Samik.
Samik Chatterjee -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst
Yeah. Great. Good morning, Chuck. Thank you for the comments.
And if I can just start, I mean, last quarter, you did talk about, and you referenced this in the shareholder letter as well, the capacity increase or the capacity ramp that you're planning and the incremental orders that you can get from the customers if your capacity ramp goes full plan or exceeds your current base is. If you can share your thoughts around the ability to sort of exceed that capacity ramp, what are you seeing as bottlenecks and the ability to go to customers and get incremental orders for the AI -- from the AI use cases and the ability to run pseudos in relation to sort of executing on that capacity ramp. And I have a follow-up after that. Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK. Thank you, Samik. Samik, I'm going to ask Giovanni to take that because he's got a view all the way from the laser through the transceiver. Giovanni?
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
So, Samik, thanks for the question. So, I would say, generally speaking, we're doing better than our expectations, but it's very much a moving target in terms of the opportunity here, in the sense that the target's getting higher and higher, as particular as we said in the shareholders' letter, as the engagement with new significant AI players are increasing, particularly those players that we have not been historically strong at. So, we think that the overall opportunity is getting larger. And our ability to meet this larger and larger opportunity obviously gets more complex, more challenging.
But I think we have all hands on deck, and the entire team is focused on several of the needs to ramp, which are not only related to the supply chain. Because as new products -- and this, as you know, is 800G is a very much new product. There were all these MPI-related challenges to bring up to speed, you know, the manufacturing lines, the test equipment, the cost supply chain, as we said, but most important, to make sure that we deliver high-quality products to our customers at the volumes that are placing us to ramp to.
Samik Chatterjee -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst
Thank you. And so, for my follow up, if I can just ask about the long-term guidance that you gave in the shareholder letter, about 40% gross margin and 20% operating margin that you're looking at, can you share some thoughts about sort of how you're thinking about getting -- making progress to that in relation to cost versus what you need in terms of top-line recovery to get to those margin levels? Any thoughts around how much of that we get from cost sales that you're outlining versus any level of volume recovery that you need? Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK. Thank you, Samik. Rich?
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Thank you. We will benefit from our ongoing class reductions, which include our restructuring and synergy plans, higher volume as noted in our guidance, better mix of product on higher-margin products, and long-term continued -- to leverage our NPI, as well as vertical integration where we can drive margin improvement.
Samik Chatterjee -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst
OK, thank you. Thanks for taking the call.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Samik.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Next question comes from Ruben Roy with Stifel. Your line is open.
Ruben Roy -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst
Yes, thank you for letting me ask some questions. I wanted to follow up on Samik's question, Chuck, and talk about just sort of the AI transceiver, NPI launches, the delta between sort of your full your guidance and, you know, sort of what you're holding back. Love to hear some details outside of the supply constraints. Sounds like there's some qualification milestones needed.
Is that product-specific, customer-specific? If you could give us some details on, you know, how you expect those qualifications to ramp near term and, you know, what's left to be done before you actually start kind of seeing some revenues.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Thank you, Ruben. Giovanni?
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
Thanks for the question. I mean, as we said earlier, new products generally require an incubation period in the manufacturing line to reach the quality, the yields, the performance that we promised. So, those are generally true for any product. This 800G is significantly more challenging than any other product we had before in the same type of market.
So, I think the complexity comes from the fact that while we are ramping for the orders that we already have, we are also engaging, as I said, new players in a meaningful way to further extend our opportunity in the near future. And therefore, eventually, as Chuck mentioned in his remarks, we see an upside for the overall market that we can address. So, it's a combination of serving needs that we have short term versus the needs to continue to increase the pipeline, you know, the funnel of new opportunities for 800G with additional customers beyond those that we're already engaged with.
Ruben Roy -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst
Thanks, Giovanni, for the detail. For my follow-up, on telecom, data points remain pretty negative, and nice to hear you guys talk about bottom here coming out of September quarter. Can you give us some details on what you're thinking in terms of -- it sounds like inventory's driving some of your view for the rest of the year, you know, starting in the December quarter? If you can give us any detail on kind of how you're thinking about that business, whether it's market share or kind of what's driving your view on a recovery, you know, starting here near term, however gradual that might be.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Beck?
Beck Mason -- Executive Vice President, Telecommunications Business
Yeah, sure. I think in the telecom softness, you know, it's a combination of end market softness and inventory digestion at our customers. We've been staying very, very close customer base on this. And we see progress, you know, modestly coming through FY '24 and the rest of the quarters on their inventory digestion.
And then we see gradual improvement in the end market demand really progressing through into FY '25.
Ruben Roy -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst
OK. Thank you.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Next question comes from Meta Marshall, Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Meta Marshall -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. Maybe just on growth margins, you know, was the weakness kind of versus expectations on a mix of categories? Or just, you know, are there any higher costs that are needing to be paid to kind of clear some of the 800-gig transceiver bottlenecks to be mindful of? And then, maybe, just as the second question, just any more clarity on how you guys are thinking about debt repayment in fiscal '24. Thanks.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK. Maybe Rich?
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Yep. So, you know, the margin of weakness is a result of separate factors. One was the lower volume that we incurred in the quarter. Unfavorable mix are the main key drivers.
However, as well, we did experience prior period underutilization that hit the P&L as well. For debt reduction, right now, we're anticipating $200 million of paydown for the year.
Meta Marshall -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Great, thank you.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold of Raymond James. Your line is open.
Simon Leopold -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Great, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to get a bit of a clarification type question here in that unlike last quarter's shareholder letter -- and by the way, we like the way you're doing this, it's helpful. This one did not mention explicitly several hundred million of AI-related datacom sales in the Outlook. And I'm just wondering how you'd like us that exclusion versus the prior quarter's letter.
And then, I've got a quick follow-up.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
All right. Simon, thanks for your question. I'd like to get us back to basics. We have the guidance.
The guidance is the guidance. I made some additional comments this morning to give a sense that we are still aiming to do more, but I don't want to get us into a mode where we're going to have guidance and then guidance on top of the guidance. So, we just want to get us back to the basics. That's what we're doing.
And as I indicated today, we might have some upside to it that we can achieve. For sure, we have upside as an opportunity. OK?
Simon Leopold -- Raymond James -- Analyst
That's very helpful. Thank you. And then, in terms of this AI pipeline of business, I'm just wondering if you could help us bracket how much of this is hyperscale exposure and how much of it is nonhyperscale? And what I'm getting at, just trying to understand a little bit about the customer mix and concentration of the pipeline. Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sanjai will take that, Simon. I can tell you, it grows every day. Sanjai?
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Yeah, thanks, Chuck. So, last, last quarter, Simon, we did -- 50% of our business came from hyperscalers. And this is both direct, as well as indirect sales in hyperscalers. Does that help?
Simon Leopold -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Thank you. Yup, it does. I guess I'm wondering about the pipeline is more so than the most recent quarter.
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
So our pipeline is still pretty strong. We expect to -- in fiscal '25, for example, we believe that 80% of our datacom transceiver revenues will be from hyperscalers. A lot of it, majority of it -- vast majority of it driven by AI/ML.
Simon Leopold -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Thank you very much. Appreciate that.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks. Simon, thank you for your feedback, too, on the letter. Thanks, Simon.
Operator
One moment for our next question. My next question comes from Jed Dorsheimer with William Blair. Your line is open.
Jed Dorsheimer -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst
Hi. Thanks for taking my question here, guys. I guess, first question, just want to shift from -- you know, most of the others around the 800G. And just on some of your comments around the consolidation, in compound semis, you mentioned that, one, if you could give a little bit more color on -- maybe metric that.
And then, two, on the new product introduction, you talked about reducing or improving cycle times. Could you talk about where they're at now and where you hope to get those two? Thanks.
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
OK. This is Giovanni here, so thanks for the question. So, when we acquired Finisar, you know, we acquired a number of wafer fabs, which, at that time, were pretty much fully utilized. And as we were able to transfer products and, you know, manufacturing lines between sites and so forth, we were able to identify ultimately what the best footprint for the compound semiconductor manufacturing for the company was going to be.
And so, that's what we are basically doing now because we couldn't do it that fast. So, now, what we've been doing, we are -- we have announced several shutdowns of smaller fabs, and we intend to move and integrate those manufacturing lines into our largest fab, which is in Sherman, Texas. So, there was a footprint. We still have some some other fabs in between Europe and North America that will still stick with the stand-alone because the cost of moving those bottom lines will be too high and also will require a lot of, you know, quarterly qualifications.
We cannot -- we don't see it an advantage in moving those product lines. But at least for the gallium arsenide -- particularly, the gallium arsenide, VCSEL-based type of powders, and some of the indium phosphide-based products, we ultimately decided that Sherman, Texas would be our center of excellence, our consolidated power.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I'll take the second part, Jed. Thanks for your question. With regard to NPI cycle times, I would say one thing I think you know that we're built for speed. We -- this place is organized for a great sense of urgency about everything we do.
One of the benefits we have with our global footprint is we can do things 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That's not so easy for everybody else to say. I would tell you that I can give you a baseline generically because we have so many platforms and so many products in the company. But I will point out that using AI in this last year, our teams have demonstrated a factor-of-two reduction in the cycle time for launching new products from our fiber laser business.
And that is going to be a contagious example that goes around the company. I think that AI is going to be a great driver, but it's not the only thing that we need to do. And so, a factor of two everywhere is a starting point for the mindset of the management team. OK?
Jed Dorsheimer -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst
Got it, thank you. Just as a follow-up. On the silicon carbide business, we are seeing greater restrictions on raw materials from China. And I'm just wondering, you know, graphite is an important component to both the furnaces, as well as the input material.
Could you just update on supply chain exposure, if any, in terms of how you see specific to graphite? Thanks.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Jed. Hey, Sohail, are you out there?
Sohail Khan -- Executive Vice President, Wide-Bandgap Technologies
Yes, yes. Jed, thanks for your question. First answer is no, we don't have the exposure. We have multi-sourced for both base material and the other components.
And we have put in place long term agreements and none of our graphite suppliers have the basics coming from China.
Jed Dorsheimer -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst
That's helpful. Thank you, Sohail.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Jed.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.
Richard Shannon -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst
Great. Thanks, guys, for taking my questions. And I'll also echo my happiness with the shareholder letter. Keep it up, please.
I want to follow up on the topic of telecom. I guess one of the questions I had looking at some reports here in earnings season so far, including last night, we were seeing some inventory burn still taking place at the equipment level here. Wondering why you're seeing some start of a pickup here. And to the degree to which you can describe it, how much of this recovery is coming from transceiver-type products like that you point out in the shareholder letter versus things like WSSs and ROADMs?
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
So, thanks for the question. So, right now, I think what we're seeing is a little bit more strength on the WSS and the modem side, amplifier and that portion of the business. And it's really as our customers are burning down inventory right now and we're starting to see different product lines there have a small pickup this quarter, and we think that's going to continue into double digits for the second half of FY '24. Our transceiver-based products, we see a lot of design and activity happening right now.
There's a lot of RFQs and RFPs, especially for new technology products like our 100-gig Coherent ZR. And there's an increase in RFP activity around 800 gig, which is coming next year. And so, we think that's very positive for that segment, but we think that's going to be more delayed toward the latter half of FY '24 and early FY '25 from a ramp perspective. Does that help provide a little more color?
Richard Shannon -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst
Yes, it does. Thanks for that. My follow-on question will be in the display market. I think you talked about service utilizations that have increased here sequentially, I think even a nice 20% number, if I remember correctly, but still below your year ago levels here.
I wonder if you have any visibility into those utilizations continuing to improve and, perhaps, even get back to a year-ago levels? And then, does this imply or just give you better visibility on further capex orders within the display unit?
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Richard. Thank you very much. Chris Dorman?
Chris Dorman -- Executive Vice President, Lasers
Yeah, in display, the utilization of the other tools drives the service revenue. And it's worth remembering that there are two factors in terms of the utilization. It's the number of phone screens that are produced, but there's aa multiplying factor in terms of the percentage of phones which are using OLED screens. And that has led to an uptick in the service revenue, the utilization of the excimer lasers.
And that will continue through the year.
Richard Shannon -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst
OK, perfect. Thank you.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Sidney Ho with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Sidney Ho -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Great, thank you. Good morning. I want to switch gears over to the industrials market. You seem quite confident that the business will improve in the second half of fiscal '24.
Can you talk about which subsegments do you think will lead to recovery between semi cap display, precision manufacturing, and aerospace? Particularly interested in your comments in precision in the factory. You are seeing second consecutive order of growth and some customers are requesting shipments on short notice. But that's quite different than what we're hearing from other broad-based semiconductor companies.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK. Sidney, good morning, this is Chuck. Sidney, we may have two or three people that have an angle on this, but we'll start with Sanjai.
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Yeah, thanks, Chuck. So, in terms of -- our industrial market group is broken up into verticals. So, we have our precision manufacturing vertical, our semi cap vertical, our display vertical, and aerospace and defense. We are really excited about semi cap.
That market for us has been growing very steadily quarter over quarter, year over year. So, there is -- we continue to see a lot of demand, both from existing customers and new customers, and an envelope of applications seemed to continue to improve. On precision manufacturing, in particular, that is a market that is a lot more sensitive to macro. However, we do have certain areas of very strong growth such as electric vehicles.
So, our stock market is growing at a 15% CAGR. The medical device market is turning around. That's growing also fairly well. So, we've got some really big bright spots within precision manufacturing.
And I think Chris covered the display question earlier.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Do you want to add anything to that, Chris?
Chris Dorman -- Executive Vice President, Lasers
Yeah, I would say that semiconductor capital equipment inspection is also showing growth. It remains strong. Our customers continue to pull, and there's strong backlog there.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Great. OK, Sidney. Yeah.
Sidney Ho -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
OK, great. That's helpful. My follow-up question, I just want to follow up on the silicon carbide. You call it the near-term demand for silicon carbide business remains pretty robust, but recent data points from the industry seems to be more mixed in the past few weeks with demand for EVs may be slowing down a little bit.
Can you give us a sense what you are seeing in terms of demand? Is that you are doing better than others because you're gaining share? And also, interested to see how the pricing side of things are. Are you seeing more competition in terms of prices? Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Sidney. All right, Sohail.
Sohail Khan -- Executive Vice President, Wide-Bandgap Technologies
OK, Sidney, we have to look at the market not by one-quarter basis because this is a market which is on a growth trajectory. And it is going to continue to grow at close to 30% compounded growth rate over the next five to 10 years. So, one announcement of one vendor pushing in and out does not define the market. Overall, market sense is there, and the market adoption is there.
And, yes, when you have the growth and many players are coming in, there will be price pressure. It is normal, natural in any growth market. But we see a strong growth and a very good traction with very large customers with a long-term agreements in place.
Sidney Ho -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
OK, thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Sidney.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Blake Friedman -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Hi, this is Blake Friedman on for Vivek. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to go back to your AI opportunity. I know one of your competitors recently made an acquisition to enter the data transceiver space.
First, was hoping you can provide any clarity on the margin generator from higher speed AI-related transceiver products and if you think this growing competition also creates any pricing risk in the market?
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
Thanks for the question. First of all, the -- clearly, this validates the investment thesis we had for the acquisition of Finisar years ago. So, we had that vision, which is now, you can see, was a pretty, pretty good one. And then, it reinforces, right, the -- it's an endorsement.
This reinforces the strength of the market that we are witnesses today and the upside potential that we all see. I think the -- generally speaking, from vertical integration, scale, and technology differentiation, we are still the market leader. And that explain why we see the funnel, the pipeline for new engagement around 800G increasing daily in the sense that we believe that we are -- we are an opportunity that maybe we have not considered in the recent past to penetrate hyperscalers where we have been historically not as strong as we would like to be. And so, generally speaking, the competitiveness of the landscape is there.
I think we welcome competition, and I think we are very well positioned with the three attributes which I mentioned to compete and continue to grow and take advantage of the -- again, as I said, the strategy which we we deployed years ago when we identified AI on demand as being a key driver for the growth of our business.
Blake Friedman -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Got it. And then, just as a follow-up on the silicon carbide side, I know there's certainly a supply demand imbalance in the market. Just trying to get your thoughts around kind of there's more device vendors in the market who are kind of bringing the kind of materials production in-house, how we should think about the growth opportunities for Coherent, and I guess your thoughts on the relative growth in the materials market versus the device market longer term?
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
OK, thanks for your question. So, we see our demand on both ends that even you said, there are lots of suppliers in the device side. People are still looking for a good MOSFET, a MOSFET which will be rugged, MOSFET which will have high reliability, and MOSFET which can address the future needs which are getting more and more integration and the amount of current and power you can handle. So, we see a very strong demand on the device side from our customer engagements.
And then, on the material side, we see a very strong demand for 200 millimeter. And in 200 millimeter, there are very few limited choices. And as you know, we were the first one to introduce the 200 product to the marketplace. So, I feel pretty good about it.
Yes, there is competition, but competition reaffirms that there is a strong demand for it.
Blake Friedman -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Great. Thank you.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna. Your line is open.
Chris Rolland -- Susquehanna International Group -- Analyst
Hey, guys, congrats on the results and guidance, and thanks for the question. I guess my question is around backlog. So, that's now increased two quarters in a row. Is this a sign you guys think of the bottom? Does this mean we can grow revenue each quarter as we move through next year? Or are there some decent timing and fulfillment issues here in this backlog that would disturb that kind of linear pattern?
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, thanks a lot, Chris. Good morning, Chris. I'm going to ask Magnus just to make a general comment about the the overall pulse from the marketplace as he sees it from the point of view of the demand, and we'll see if there's a follow-up.
Magnus Bengtsson -- Chief Commercial Officer
Good morning, Chris. Appreciate the question. So, let me just talk a little bit about the customer engagement. Perhaps, I would say that customer engagement is really robust.
And we see orders continuing to grow across the end market. Customers today -- there's certainly the inventory digestion issues we mentioned with some of our end markets, but customers are really focused on innovation. And so, the design win funnel, the outlook that we have looks very robust across most of our markets. So, we would expect that trend to continue.
Chris Rolland -- Susquehanna International Group -- Analyst
Great, thank you. Perhaps, as a follow-up to someone else's question, did you guys get to take a look at the Cloud Light deal, or did you guys get to look at the Intel FIFO sale to Jabil? And were any of these deals interesting or, perhaps, in your opinion threatening in any way either? Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, Chris. Giovanni, do you want to take that?
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. No, we're not engaged. You know we don't need pretty much a contract manufacturer to be added to our, you know, existing manufacturing lines.
So, we believe that -- as I said earlier, we welcome the competition, we think it is -- you know, the combination will definitely be a stronger competitor. so we endorse that. But as I said earlier, it's also an endorsement to our strategy, which we deployed years ago to be in this market at this time, the leader with the larger scale and the largest, broadest portfolio of differentiated components and subassemblies for -- to serve this market.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Giovanni.
Chris Rolland -- Susquehanna International Group -- Analyst
Thanks, Giovanni.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Chris. Thank you, Chris.
Operator
One moment for our next question comes from Tom O'Malley with Barclays. Your line is open.
Tom O'Malley -- Barclays -- Analyst
Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question. I just had one on the segments. So, in your $4.6 billion guide for the year, could you give us a little more color on what you expect a comm business to do? And then, more specifically, within the comm business, what you're expecting the telecom business to do and what the datacom business will do. I asked because there's obviously some big movements inside of the telecom and data companies.
And I'm just trying to get a little better feel for what you guys expect the growth would be --
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, Tom, good morning. We're not going to give business unit guidance. And I think Rich can just make a general overall comment. I think at the midpoint, we're up 11% in the second half compared to the first half.
There's some puts and takes across the segments. You want to say anything else, Rich, about it?
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
No, That's great.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK. You know, if you have any specific question about the telecom market, that can take it. But we're not -- he's not going to give you a guidance in the second half of the year.
Tom O'Malley -- Barclays -- Analyst
Sure, I guess just the trend looks as though the high-speed datacom business looks as though it's the big driver of growth. Could you talk about historically you guys have said that within your own business, the transceiver business is below corporate gross margins? In these new products, particularly in 800G, are you seeing accretive gross margins with those new higher speed products, or are those still below corporate gross margins? Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, this is a good question. Well, Rich will take it. But I would say, at the launch point, with all the things that we have going on, what -- where we're at today, we're driving to improve, is just a general comment for the company. We have lots of flywheels turning inside the company all the way from the front-end fabs, where we're still adding capacity to be able to keep pace.
Not with FY '24 demand, although that's a challenge because it keeps going up, but especially because we believe FY '25 is going to be that much more exciting. Rich, make a general comment about the margins, if you would.
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Sure. So, on the margins, the average is about where we are at as a company. But we fully expect, as we move through the learning curve, that the margins will increase going forward.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Mark Miller with The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.
Mark Miller -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst
Thank you for the question. Just wanted to pursue more --
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
How are you, Mark? Good morning.
Mark Miller -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst
I'm doing fine. Good morning. Just wanted to pursue a little more. From your guidance, it looks like you're projecting improvements in margins going forward.
You listed several things in your letter to shareholders. Is that being driven by higher revenues? I guess I have a similar concern about transceivers in terms of the -- they being accretive to overall margins, especially when you're seeing strong growth there. I'm just wondering what's driving the expectations for higher margins. Is it just higher sales or mix?
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
I'll take that. This is Rich. Thank you. So, as I mentioned before, you know, our ongoing cost reductions, you know, including our synergy and restructuring plans and higher volume as noted in our guidance, better mix of product on higher-margin products as we move forward throughout '24, and our our long term continued leverage of our NPI.
You know, anything that we can also get from our vertical integration, we're driving margin improvement. We'll be implementing that as well.
Mark Miller -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst
Last question is the data centers, a couple of firms like Cigna and Western Digital are finally saying they're seeing light at the end of the tunnel which -- with their data center customers. I'm just wondering what you're seeing in terms of data center business.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sanjai, do you want to --
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Yeah, sure, sure. So, within our datacom business, there are two drivers. The biggest one today is AI, which is growing at a 47% CAGR. Our traditional non-AI business, if you will, is growing at a slower clip.
But together, it's still -- the market is still continuing to grow at a 20% CAGR long term. So, we are pretty excited about that market.
Mark Miller -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst
Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Mark.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital. Your line is open.
Ananda Baruah -- Loop Capital Markets -- Analyst
Yeah, good morning, guys. Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. Really appreciate it. Chuck, I guess just sticking on transceivers and the higher speeds, do you have any sense if you're positioned -- I guess, how you're positioned from a share perspective going forward? Would you expect to -- I guess, any view on expectations to maintain share going forward, gain share going forward? You know, any context there would be helpful, and I have a quick follow-up.
Thanks.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I believe that we're in a great position. I believe that if you look even beyond 800G, given the portfolio that we have of products coming through the funnel, that we're going to be able to continue to not only maintain that position, but we're counting on growing it.
Ananda Baruah -- Loop Capital Markets -- Analyst
And are you guys seeing -- just given all the activity in AI, are you seeing any greater urgency from your engagements around 1.60? You know, you've been -- you've given a lot of great context actually this calendar year with regard to sort of timelines, industry, 1.60 adoption. You made reference, I think, in the slide deck today the 3.2T any greater urgency there given what's going on in AI? And any context around your kind of market positioning with regard to that? And that's it for me. Thanks.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK. Thanks, Ananda. Sanjai?
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ananda, for the question. So, one thing is very clear. With AI, we need to go higher and higher speeds and we need -- and it needs to happen, you know, earlier.
We are making great progress toward our 1.60. We believe that we'll be one of the first ones out there. And in terms of timing, we are looking at -- we think the market will be trying to inflect in 1.60 around fiscal '25. And I just want to say, we've got all the key-enabling blocks, especially the DFB Mach-Zehnder laser, which is a 200G laser that we demonstrated at ECOC.
So, we're making good progress there. Hopefully, that helps.
Ananda Baruah -- Loop Capital Markets -- Analyst
That's great. Appreciate it, guys. Yeah, no, that's super helpful. Appreciate it.
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Ananda. Thank you.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Dave Kang with B. Riley. Your line is open.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Dave.
Dave Kang -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst
Good morning. Yes, good morning. Thank you. Just regarding your datacom, I was wondering if you can provide by what the mix was between 100 gig, 400 gig, 800 gig?
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Please, Sanjai.
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
So, the high speed which we define as 200G and above was 70% of the revenues last quarter.
Dave Kang -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst
So, I assume the remaining 30% is 100 gig and below. How should we think about -- I mean, first of all, are they growing, and what do you think their runway is? And how should we think about, you know, pending decay eventually?
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Yeah, I mean, the slower speeds are typically today non-AI related, so they're not growing as fast as 800G and even some parts of 400G. But long term, we still believe those speeds are still going to continue to grow, especially the AI kind of moves toward the edge of the networks.
Dave Kang -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst
Got it. And my follow-up is regarding your capex, how should we think about capex for this fiscal year? And then, fiscal '25 after, you get that $1 billion investment from two Japanese companies. You know, how will that drop off in '25 after silicon carbide investments?
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Okay, two great questions, Dave. Rich, will you take those?
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. So, as of right now, we're still holding to the full year guidance that we previously gave of 350 million to 400 million for FY '24. On the silicon carbide for FY '25, obviously, the investment will offset, or what we thought we were going to invest, into '25.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Dave, when we close, we will run through in that next quarter revisions to our guidance. And in the reporting quarter after the close, we'll update and give a strong sense for what we see both for '24 and give at least a glimpse of '25. OK?
Dave Kang -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst
Got it. Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Thank you, Dave.
Paul Silverstein -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Kevin, can we go on to the next speaker?
Operator
Our next question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Tim.
Operator
Tim, your line is on mute.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Tim.
Tim Savageaux -- Northland Capital Markets -- Analyst
Sorry about that. Good morning. A couple of math questions here, I think with some significant implications maybe. First one is on results and guide telecom versus datacom.
And I think the anecdotal commentary is about inventory digestion on the cloud side. But if you look at how that's proceeding, it seems like most of the weakness sequentially was in telecom, going from, you know, 40% to 29% on a declining number. So, we talk in order book versus revenues, and we're talking about those comments. Am I looking at that right? As you look at the guide, is most of that sequential growth, about $75 million? Is that in comms, and is that, you know, some AI starting to shift or telecom bouncing back? Or how will we characterize that? And I have a follow-up.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, well I think there's really two questions. Beck will take the one that's market related and Rich will take the finance.
Beck Mason -- Executive Vice President, Telecommunications Business
Sure, I mean on the telecom side, we see that growing, you know, modestly this quarter, and then we see double-digit growth recovery in the second half of this fiscal year for our telecom revenues, right? And I comment on the ratio that was relative to the revenue last quarter.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Exactly. OK. Tim, would you repeat the second part of your question for Rich?
Tim Savageaux -- Northland Capital Markets -- Analyst
Let me go on to the third part. And, of course, there's a rich history of multi-part questions here with numbers of this call, but -- and that is the overall question I'm saying -- I'm going to ask is what is the absolute size of your AI backlog? But I'm going to try and get there in a couple of parts, which is you talked about an order increase last quarter that was entirely networking-driven, 30%. That seems like it's $300 million. There's some commentary here in the call about, despite orders coming down, the AI backlog going up 200%.
So, I'm going to give you a chance here just to give us a number for what you got in backlog that you would consider AI, whether that's all 800 gig or not.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I don't think we can give you that. What I can tell you is it's a substantial and meaningfully material one-off. But I'm not going to give you the number.
Tim Savageaux -- Northland Capital Markets -- Analyst
OK, thanks.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, thank you, Tim.
Operator
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham and Company. Your line is open.
Jim Ricchiuti -- Needham and Company -- Analyst
Hi, thanks. Good morning. So, you seem to be suggesting some recovery in the second-half on both the OLED side and the WFE side of the business. The OLED side, I think we understand what's happening with service utilization going up.
What's your line of sight in terms of deployment of new excimer laser tools in the second half of fiscal '24, as well as your line of sight on the WFE improvement in the second half?
Chris Dorman -- Executive Vice President, Lasers
Yeah, as you mentioned, service utilization, uptick in the Excimer business for display in the near term. In the long term, the principal movements in the display market will be around the adoption of OLED technology in laptops, in tablets, in IT panels. And we are engaging with customers on Gen 8 investments. The timing of those Gen 8 investments should be clear early calendar year '25 and we'll be well positioned to work with our customers on the expansion of OLED capacity for tablets and for laptops, which would be incremental to our current business.
We've developed solid state technology in line with the challenges of maintaining a sensible cost level for those larger OLED panels. And in the long term, we see migration with TVs into the micro LED markets, which we're investing heavily in developing new tools for. Jim, did you have a second that you want to --
Jim Ricchiuti -- Needham and Company -- Analyst
Yeah, the other question was just -- and maybe I'll just group this into one last question on the balance of that laser and industrial business, it sounds like you're feeling relatively positive about the WFE portion of the business. Back-end semi, is that going to continue to be relatively weak? And are you assuming looking at precision manufacturing beyond the current quarter that the recovery there is still fairly uncertain? Is that a good way to characterize the outlook for this part of the business?
Chris Dorman -- Executive Vice President, Lasers
Yes, front-end semi remains strong. The reasons for that are that, you know, the customer relationship in the front end semi market is a long-term roadmap. We engage -- we partner with our customers in terms of developing that long-term roadmap. We develop lasers specifically for our partners in that area.
And it's more than a sale. The relationship lasts for 20-years in terms of one particular laser technology. The service component of the semi cap business is very significant. And so, we go on this long-term journey which gives us more certainty in the service business of the emergence of the semi cap inspection market.
So, we get a great deal of visibility through our customers on that. In terms of back end, it is softer. The recovery is taking longer, potentially the end of the fiscal year to see any change there. And in precision manufacturing, PMI, as Magnus mentioned before, the recovery is around the end of the year.
But all of that, the precision manufacturing, the back-end semi is offset by the strength in display and the strength in semiconductor [Inaudible] equipment wafer inspection.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Chris.
Jim Ricchiuti -- Needham and Company -- Analyst
Thank you.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, Jim, thanks for your question.
Jim Ricchiuti -- Needham and Company -- Analyst
Thank you. Yup.
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
OK, thanks.
Operator
And I'm not showing any further requests at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to our host for any closing remarks.
Paul Silverstein -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Kevin, thank you. And I want to thank all the analysts on the call for your thoughtful questions. As always, if we could be of any help throughout the quarter, please feel free to reach out. And I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning.
Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. [Operator signoff]
Duration: 0 minutes
Call participants:
Paul Silverstein -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Chuck Mattera -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Samik Chatterjee -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst
Giovanni Barbarossa -- Chief Strategy Officer and President, Materials Segment
Rich Martucci -- Interim Chief Financial Officer
Ruben Roy -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst
Beck Mason -- Executive Vice President, Telecommunications Business
Meta Marshall -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Simon Leopold -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Sanjai Parthasarathi -- Chief Marketing Officer
Jed Dorsheimer -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst
Sohail Khan -- Executive Vice President, Wide-Bandgap Technologies
Richard Shannon -- Craig-Hallum Capital Group -- Analyst
Chris Dorman -- Executive Vice President, Lasers
Sidney Ho -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Blake Friedman -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Chris Rolland -- Susquehanna International Group -- Analyst
Magnus Bengtsson -- Chief Commercial Officer
Tom O'Malley -- Barclays -- Analyst
Mark Miller -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst
Ananda Baruah -- Loop Capital Markets -- Analyst
Dave Kang -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst
Tim Savageaux -- Northland Capital Markets -- Analyst
Jim Ricchiuti -- Needham and Company -- Analyst
