Texas Instruments Incorporated (TXN) Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

Texas Instruments, Inc. (TXN 0.84%)
Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call
April 24, 2018, 4:30 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Texas Instruments Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the floor over to Dave Pahl, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Good afternoon and thank you for joining our 1Q18 earnings conference call. Rafael Lizardi, TI's Chief Financial Officer, is with me today. For any of you who missed the release, you can find it on our website at ti.com/ir. This call is being broadcast live over the web and can be accessed through our website. A replay will be available through the web. This call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause TI's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the "Notice regarding forward-looking statements" contained in the earnings release published today as well as TI's most recent SEC filings for a more complete description.

I'll start with a quick summary of our financial results. Revenue for the first quarter increased 11% from a year ago, as demand for our products remained strong in the industrial and automotive markets. In our core businesses, analog revenue grew 14% and Embedded processing revenue grew 15% compared with the same quarter a year ago. Operating margin increased in both businesses. Earnings per share were $1.35, including 14 cents in tax-related benefits not in our original guidance, primarily due to the recent tax reform law.

With that backdrop, I'll now provide details on our performance, which we believe continues to be representative of the ongoing strength of our business model. In the first quarter, our cash flow from operations was $1.1 billion. We believe that free cash flow growth, especially on a per-share basis, is most important to maximizing shareholder value in the long term. Free cash flow for the trailing twelve-month period was $4.9 billion, up 17% from a year ago. Free cash flow margin for the same period was 32.1% of revenue, up from 30.7% a year ago. We continue to benefit from the quality of our product portfolio that is long-lived and diverse, and the efficiency of our manufacturing strategy, the latter of which includes our growing 300mm analog output.

We believe that free cash flow will be valued only if it is productively invested in the business or returned to owners. For the trailing twelve-month period, we returned $5.1 billion of cash to owners through a combination of dividends and stock repurchases. I'll now provide some details by segment. From a year-ago quarter, analog revenue grew 14% due to power and signal chain. High volume was about even. Embedded processing revenue increased by 15% from a year-ago quarter due to growth in both processors and connected microcontrollers. In our Other segment, revenue declined 13% from a year ago primarily due to custom ASIC.

Now I'll provide some insight into this quarter's revenue performance by end market versus a year ago. Industrial demand remained strong with broad-based growth. Automotive demand remained strong, with all sectors contributing to growth. Personal electronics grew, with increases across several sectors and customers. Communications equipment declined but was about even compared with the fourth quarter. Lastly, enterprise systems grew.

As we get more insight into and guidelines on the tax reform law, we have updated our tax estimates. First, we now expect a 16% ongoing annual operating tax rate starting in 2019, down from our prior expectation of 18%. Second, for 2018, investors should now assume a 20% annual operating tax rate, down from our prior expectation of 23%.

The 2018 rate is higher than the 2019 rate due to a transitional non-cash expense in 2018. As a reminder, our operating tax rate does not include any discrete tax items. To get you to an effective tax rate by quarter for the balance of the year, we continue to expect the benefit from stock-based compensation to be $10 million in the second and third quarters, and $5 million in the fourth quarter. Therefore, the effective tax rate will be about 20% in each of the remaining quarters of 2018. You will find this information summarized on our IR website under "Financial Summary Data" as we have done in the past.

Lastly, in the first quarter of 2018, we had about $140 million of tax benefits that were not in our original guidance. These include $50 million due to stock-based compensation, $50 million due to updated estimates related to the tax reform law, and $40 million primarily due to the previously described decrease in the tax rate for 2018.

In summary, we continue to focus our strategy on the industrial and automotive markets, where we have been allocating our capital and driving initiatives to strengthen our position. This is based on a belief that industrial and automotive will be the fastest growing semiconductor markets. They have increasing semiconductor content. These markets also provide diversity and longevity. All of which translate to a high terminal value of our portfolio. Rafael will now review profitability, capital management and our outlook.

Rafael Lizardi -- Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Dave, and good afternoon everyone. Gross profit in the quarter was $2.45 billion, or 64.6% of revenue. From a year ago, gross profit increased due to higher revenue and lower manufacturing costs. Gross profit margin increased 160 basis points. Operating expenses in the quarter were $818 million, a 1% increase from a year ago and about as expected. R&D grew 4% and SG&A was about even. On a trailing twelve-month basis, operating expenses were 20.9% of revenue, within our range of expectations. Over the last twelve months, we have invested $1.52 billion in R&D. We are pleased with our disciplined process of allocating capital to R&D that allows us to continue to grow our top line and gain market share.

Acquisition charges, a non-cash expense, were $80 million. Acquisition charges will be about $80 million per quarter through the third quarter of 2019, then decline to about $50 million per quarter for two remaining years. Operating profit was $1.55 billion, or 40.9% of revenue. Operating profit was up 24% from the year-ago quarter. Operating margin for analog was 45.4%, up from 41.4% a year ago, and for embedded processing was 35.4%, up from 29.9% a year ago. Our focused investments on the best sustainable growth opportunities with differentiated positions enable both businesses to continue to contribute nicely to free cash flow growth. Net income in the first quarter was $1.37 billion, or $1.35 per share.

Let me now comment on our capital management results, starting with our cash generation. Cash flow from operations was $1.11 billion in the quarter. Capital expenditures were $189 million in the quarter. Free cash flow was $4.92 billion on a trailing twelve-month basis, up 17% from a year ago. In the first quarter, we paid $611 million in dividends and repurchased $873 million of our stock for a total return of $1.48 billion in the first quarter. We have returned $5.1 billion to owners in the past 12 months, consistent with our strategy to return to owners all of our free cash flow. Over the same period, our dividends represented 45% of free cash flow, underscoring their sustainability. Our balance sheet remains strong with $4.1 billion of cash and short-term investments at the end of the first quarter. Total debt is $4.1 billion with a weighted average coupon rate of 2.05%. Inventory days were 136, up 4 days from a year ago and within our expected range.

Turning to our outlook for the second quarter, we expect TI revenue in the range of $3.78 billion to $4.10 billion, and earnings per share to be in the range of $1.19 to $1.39, which includes an estimated $10 million discrete tax benefit. In closing, I'll note that the strength of our business model was demonstrated throughout our financial performance over the last few years, from top-line growth and margin expansion to free cash flow generation. We continued to invest in our competitive advantages, which are manufacturing and technology, portfolio breadth, market reach, and diverse and long-lived products.

We will continue to strengthen these advantages through disciplined capital allocation and by focusing on the best products, analog and embedded processing, and the best markets, industrial and automotive, which I believe will enable us to continue to improve and deliver free cash flow per share growth for a long time to come.

With that, let me turn it back to Dave.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Thanks, Rafael. Operator, you can now open the lines up for questions. In order to provide as many of you as possible an opportunity to ask your questions, please limit yourself to a single question. After our response, we will provide you an opportunity for an additional follow-up.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing *1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press *1 to ask a question. We'll go first to Vivek Arya with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Vivek Arya -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Managing Director

Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the strong results and consistent execution. For my first question, since you guys have such a wide perspective on the global economy, I was wondering if you could give us a sense on what you are seeing versus, for example, what you might have thought at the start of the year? Are you noticing any areas of slowdown, or pause, or anything? Because your Q1 results are very strong, Q2 is above expectations -- perhaps, sequentially, it's not what it has been in the past -- so just, broadly, what you're seeing in the economy versus what you thought three months ago?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Okay, I'll start with that and then, Dave, if you want to chime in on that... but I'll tell you, from a global standpoint, what we're seeing is that the macroeconomy continues to be constructive although on certain things have been introduced, clearly, in the geopolitical area with everything going on that we've read in the news, it's too soon to bet what that impact is going to be on the macro level.

From what's important from a year-ago basis, we continue to see strength in industrial/automotive, as Dave highlighted during his prepared remarks. Personal economics grew across several sectors, in world communications equipment decline -- it was about even sequentially. Dave?

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, and I think that Vivek, when you look at the quarter with the revenue increasing 11%, the demand continuing to remain strong in both industrial and automotive, and I just described that demand is continuing to be a very broad-base. And I think that that speaks to one of our competitive advantages, which is diversity and longevity in products. So, we're certainly benefiting from that today. D

Vivek Arya -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Managing Director

Yes, thanks, Rafael and Dave. On CapEx, it's up 42% on a trailing 12-month basis, running ahead of revenue growth so it's closer to 5% or 6% of sales versus the full percent target. I'm curious, why is CapEx growing so much faster than your only 50% utilized in your 300-millimeter factor? Should we look at growing CapEx as a sign of confidence in demand or at what point should we be worried that you're going to build too much inventory?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I'll give you a few things on that. First -- maybe most importantly -- let's step back and think about what is the purpose of CapEx? We talked about this during our capital management strategy a couple of months ago and CapEx, our objective there, is to support technology development and revenue growth. We want to extend our low-cost manufacturing advantage, specific to 300-millimeter, we're the only analog company with its own 300-millimeter factory. And what that does, at the end of the day, is allow us to maximize long-term free cash flow per share growth. So, that's what the ultimate objective is.

The CapEx percent of revenue, that's just a general guide that we give. And, on that, our sense is that, that 4%, that could vary depending on what's going on in the marketplace. A period of very strong demand, when we're expanding capacity, that could run up and, right now, on a trending 12-month basis, it's 4.9% but, of course, the reason it would run up is that we see opportunities to continue expanding our technology development and our local manufacturing advantage so that, ultimately, we drive long-term growth of free cash flow per share.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you, Vivek, and we can go to the next caller, please.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research.

Stacy Rasgon -- Bernstein Research -- Managing Director and Senior Analyst

Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. First, I wanted to ask about OpEx. In Q1, it grew but probably a little less than would ordinarily be typical sequentially. Were there any specific drivers to that -- maybe pushout of spend maybe into Q2? And, I guess, along those lines, Q2 OpEx would usually be up a little bit. Any change that we should expect from what would be typical there?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

On OpEx, on first quarter, we came in about as expected and we continue to be pleased with how we're allocating capital to OpEx, in general, specifically, to R&D as it continues to drive growth and the topline and we continue to gain market share. On the subsequent quarter, as you know, we gave a range of revenue and EPS. We don't get in between the lines. If there was something unusual going on, we would point that out -- we're not pointing it out because there's nothing unusual going on in between those lines.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

You have a follow-on, Stacy?

Stacy Rasgon -- Bernstein Research -- Managing Director and Senior Analyst

I do, thank you. I wanted to ask about the [inaudible] grew year-over-year. I was a little surprised, just given what we've heard from other players in that space right now. Could you give us a little more color? I think you said, in certain segments, could you give us a little bit more color about what's actually going on under the covers in personal electronics and, I guess, whether or not you see the current trends extending that into next quarter given what's going on in the supply chain?

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

 Well, yeah, let me talk about this quarter that we're reporting -- we'll wait for second quarter results to go through the details there. We described it as that we saw growth across several sectors and several customers so, that, we're trying to point out there that it's not just handsets that are growing -- there are other things that are growing inside of that. And I would describe the growth as somewhere in the mid-to-single digits so good growth, especially for a sector like personal electronics.

Long-term for us, we think that we'll see auto and industrial drive our business -- that's where we've been allocating increasingly our capital to and that's just the belief that those will be the two areas that will drive growth, not just for us but certainly in our industry overall. Okay, thank you very much, Stacy. We'll go the next caller, please.

Operator

Our next question will come from Toshiya Hari with Goldman Sachs.

Toshiya Hari -- Goldman Sachs -- Managing Director

Great. Thank you so much for taking the question. On inventory, Dave, I think Q1 inventory grew about 4% sequentially. I think days inventory grew a little bit as well. Can you describe how you guys see internal inventory today? And, if you can comment on the channel -- what you guys see in the channel -- that would be helpful as well.

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Okay. I'll talk about our internal inventory and then Dave will talk about channel inventory. But, on inventory, let me step back again and refer you to our long-term objectives that we talked about at the capital management call. What do we want inventory for? The objective of inventory is to maintain high levels of customer service, minimize obsolescence, improve our manufacturing asset solidation and we also see value in controlling that inventory -- having more of it in our own product distribution centers, more in consignment, more in low-volume buffers. I talked about this at the capital management call as well as 90 days ago when we closed the last quarter and this topic came up. So, we're very pleased with our inventory. And then, from a days' basis, it was 136 days from a year-ago. That's up four days -- sequentially, it's up two days -- and is well within our 115 to 145 inventory days range.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, and Toshiya, from a channels standpoint, inventory's remained at about four weeks. And, just as a reminder for those that aren't familiar, as Rafael pointed out, we believe that there is value in owning and controlling our own inventory and that shows up in the consignment program. So, about 65% of our distribution revenue is shipped through a consignment program so that four weeks really represents maybe one-half to one-third of what many of our peers will run in a channel so we feel that that's a good level -- that combined with the inventory positions that we have on our books. Do you have a follow-on, Toshiya?

Toshiya Hari -- Goldman Sachs -- Managing Director

I do, thank you. So, on communications equipment, specifically, I think three months ago you guys talked about the business being a little bit choppy. And, I guess, today you told us that revenues were down year-over-year and flattish sequentially. At what point would you expect this business to revert back to growth? Is it in the second half of '18 given lower comps or do we need to wait longer for this business to start growing again? Thank you.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, so I won't try to predict what the back half of the growth for comms equipment will look like. As you mentioned and you've been following the industry long enough, you know that sector is just choppy the way that operators place orders and the OEMs have to build inventories to respond to that. That doesn't make it a bad business -- it is just the nature of it and there will be more communications equipment shipped in the coming year. So, we've got a great position today in 4G products, we'll have a great position in 5G products and we don't spend, really, any time trying to figure out when that mix will begin to shift -- we'll just enjoy the demand as it comes in. Alright, we'll go to the next caller, please.

Operator

Our next question will come from Joe Moore with Morgan Stanley.

Joseph Moore -- Morgan Stanley -- Semiconductor Industry Analyst

Great. Thank you. I wondered if you could just talk about what you're seeing -- you mentioned channel inventory -- if you could speak to your customers' inventory a little bit? And, I guess, we've seen shortages of things outside your space like passives and embedded memory and things like that -- is that causing any change to your customers' inventory behavior in your business, either because they have inventory waiting for those things that are in shortage, or they're holding more of a buffer, or is it sort of business as usual?

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, Joe, I would say that we've got no indications of inventories growing or double-orders for that matter which history suggests, also -- and I'd very quickly point out -- that you never seen that ahead of time. Right? So, with that said, I think it's always important to qualify what we can see. So, we've got good visibility into distribution inventories that I talked about earlier -- a good portion of that remains on consignment so we'll actually hold that inventory on our books. Our visibility into customer inventories varies. Really, it depends on whether we've got consignment or not so, with consignment OEMs, we're carrying that inventory on our books and we're not seeing anything that I would describe as unusual signals, things like expedites, and things like that that would suggest that there'd be some other broader issue.

Now, our visibility into inventory beyond our customers' manufacturing operations, of course, is very low. So, our lead times remain stable. Of course, we always have hotspots and we work aggressively with customers to close and other metrics like cancellations, reschedules -- those also remain at very low levels. So, those are the things that we can see and we can measure. For a long time, we would just try to keep doing what we've been doing, which is with our manufacturing and our internal inventory strategies, we just stay focused on keeping those lead times stable and, more importantly, delivery metrics very high because that's ultimately what gives customers confidence they can get support from us when they need it. Do you have a follow-on, Joe?

Joseph Moore -- Morgan Stanley -- Semiconductor Industry Analyst

That makes sense. No, that's all I had. Thank you very much.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you. We'll go to the next caller, please.

Operator

Our next question will come from Chris Danely with Citigroup.

Chris Danely -- Citigroup, Inc. -- Semiconductor Analyst

Hey, thanks, guys. First question is just a quick one: so, sequentially, revenue increased but gross margins were down a bit. Can you comment on why that happened?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, when you look at gross margin follow-through -- which is what's embedded in your question there -- in any one sequential transition, particularly when revenue is about flat, is up 1%, it's difficult to do that analysis and have anything meaningful come out of that. You probably want to look at it on a year-on-year basis and, on that basis, our gross profit margin increased 160 basis points -- the follow-through was about 78% -- and that's along the lines what we have guided all of you before that, on a long-term basis, the follow-through that you should expect from our revenue gross should be between 70% to 75%.

Chris Danely -- Citigroup, Inc. -- Semiconductor Analyst

Great. For my follow-up, we know that, well, the tax rate continues to go down. Can you just talk about your plans for this extra cash? Is it possible -- I know you usually raise the dividend sometime around August or September -- is it possible or feasible you could raise the dividend twice this year? Why not crank up the buyback a little bit more? I think you took your share count down by just a couple million -- comment on that?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so let me step back and talk about tax return and how we think about that and then how we think about dividends and repurchases. From a tax return standpoint, our objective's to return all free cash flow to the owners of the company and we have been doing that for a number of years. In fact, on a trailing 12-month basis, we generated $4.9 billion of free cash flow and we've returned $5.1 billion of free cash flow so we're doing that. Now, obviously, we're doing that in two ways: dividends or repurchases. From a dividends standpoint, we want to provide sustainable and growing dividends. As the end of last year, we have been growing that dividends 24% on a compounded basis for the previous five years and the last year also on a trailing 12-month basis -- that 45% of free cash flow -- so that underscores its sustainability.

On the repurchases, we just got done repurchase in $873 million of our own stock and our objective there is the accretive capture of the future free cash flow for the long-term owners of the company. So, we just retell all our assumptions to extrapolate what we estimate what we think our free cash flow growth is going to be and then, based on that, we come up with different scenarios and valuation and, as long as the market price is below those scenarios, we buy back the stock and that's what you've seen us do for a number of years now and we will continue doing it.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Okay. Thank you, Chris, and we'll go to the next caller, please.

Operator

Our next question will come from Blayne Curtis with Barclays.

Blayne Curtis -- Barclays -- Semiconductor Analyst

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question. Actually, maybe I could just follow up on the last question on gross margins. I know you guided specifically into June, but just a similar question on sequential growth into June. What's the right way to think about gross margins? Is there any headwind to think about mix-wise or such as to why gross margin would be up?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I'll just tell you, except for on any given point whenever I give a specific projection that we give a revenue range and an EPS range, but the bigger picture on that is that, A.), we continue to drive revenue growth and that's the biggest contributor to free cash flow growth. And then, in addition to that, we continue increasing our loadings on 300-millimeter, which has a 40% cost advantage as one of our competitive advantages. We're the only analog company with its own 300-millimeter factory so, every time we build an incremental way on 300-millimeter, we have better follow-through on that, we have better free cash flow per share growth so we will continue to do that for the foreseeable future, even beyond the current capacity of those factories.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Do you have a follow-up, Blayne?

Blayne Curtis -- Barclays -- Semiconductor Analyst

Thanks. And, just in the March quarter, you saw a good strength in embedded -- in particular, processors. Just wondering if you could just speak about that strength in terms of that market or particular products or such? That would be helpful.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, if you look at embedded, overall, and processors, specifically, they have a very high exposure to industrial and automotive so that growth is really coming from very diverse places. Connected biker controllers also grew very nicely as well and, again, that includes our connectivity products there and they are doing quite well. And we're encouraged because that growth is coming from diverse places which I think gives us confidence in the long-term ability of that portion of our business to continue to grow.

Okay, thank you, Blayne. We'll go to the next caller, please.

Operator

Our next question will come from Ambrish Srivastava from Bank of Montreal.

Ambrish Srivastava-- Bank of Montreal -- Analyst

Hi, thank you very much. Dave, Rafael, I apologize if I missed it, what were the orders for the quarter?

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, our orders for the quarter were up about 11% year-on-year and that put our book-to-bill about 1.03. And, whenever I give a book-to-bill, I always try to remind everyone that we've got about 60% of our revenues that go on consignment so we don't carry a backlog -- when we get orders running up to the quarter, they happen when the revenue happens so always be cautious on both of those numbers.

Do you have a follow-on Ambrish?

Amber Sharifestava -- Bank of Montreal -- Analyst

Yes, I did, and thanks for the color. Geo-wise, was there any geos that stood out as stronger/weaker as you went through the quarter? Thank you.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, so from a geo standpoint, we had revenue up in three of the four regions and, from a year ago, Asia was up followed by the U.S. and Europe. Japan was down and a couple of comments. So, first, I'll make the comment that that is measured by where we ship the products, not where consumed, so usually our regional shipments don't often reflect the broader macro in a particular region. And the second thing that I'll add is that, from a Japan standpoint, we are seeing that companies in Japan are building products in other regions of the world so, as products get designed in Japan, they actually may be produced in other regions and so I wouldn't look too much on that as well.

Okay, thank you, Ambrish, and we'll go to the next caller, please.

Operator

We'll take a question from Chris Caso with Raymond James.

Chris Caso -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Yes, thanks, guys, good afternoon. Just a question on what you saw as perhaps better and worst in the quarter and it looks like the revenues came in a little better than you expected. Can you talk about what was the driver of that?

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, Chris, so revenues came in within our expectations for the quarter. Certainly, they're in the upper half of our expectation and I would just say that, of course, that was driven by industrial and automotive. And I'd just say that strength we saw very, very broadly so there wasn't one specific thing that we point to. And I think, again, that highlights one of those competitive advantages of diversity in long-lived positions that we can see that strength and it comes through and shows up even on the topline.

Do you have a follow-up?

Chris Caso -- Raymond James -- Analyst

I do, thank you. And, I guess that we've been in a situation where business conditions have been stable, if not pretty good, for a while and I know you guys have been doing this for a while and, whenever things are good in semis, we wonder how long it's going to last. Can you talk about, perhaps, for what we're seeing now, what, perhaps, is different than what we've seen in past cycles? Are there things that TI is doing differently? Are there things within the industry that are different as compared to last cycle such that things would be more stable now?

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

What I'm going to point out for this question is that we are now a much larger company in terms of industrial/automotive -- the percentage of our revenue was, at the end of last year, 64%. If you go back a few years ago, that number was sub-40% and that provides inherent stability to our revenue because that revenue comes from many, many customers, many, many sectors within industrial and many in equipment.

Now, that doesn't mean that we would be immune from a correction -- I think a correction would, short-term or medium-term, would affect all the sectors -- but the important part is that longer-term, this is the place where we want to be because this is, in both of those end markets, automotive and industrial, that's where the content is growing. So, even if there's -- or when there's a correction -- and we go through that, the endpoint down the road 10, 15, 20 years from now is still the same, which is more and more content in those end markets.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you, Chris, and we've got time for one more caller. Operator?

Operator

We'll take our next question from Rahmit Shaw with Nomura Internet.

Rahmit Shaw -- Nomura Internet -- Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question. Hey, guys. So, just following up on the last question, Rafeal, if I look at the five and 10-year averages for revenue growth, Q1 has been down low to mid-single digits, Q2 and Q3 have been up high singles and then Q4's been down the most. Given your enhanced exposure to industrial and automotive, do you still think those averages are good guideposts for us as we forecast your business, or do you think it's different now?

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, Rahmit, I'll take a shot at that. I think that, when we look at seasonality, I would remind you that we still have a very nice calculator business that has a strong seasonal pattern with the back-to-school so that, along with the balance of the semiconductor business, in the past, has been stronger in the second and third quarters. So, yeah, for seasonality, in general, that makes second and third quarters stronger than the first and fourth quarters. If you look at those sequential changes, you'll see that you can take an average of them but, out of the last five or ten years, there's a very, very wide range of numbers that are in there. So, when we look at it, we just talk about seasonality in those two quarters.

Do you have a follow-on?

Rahmit Shaw -- Nomura Internet -- Analyst

Yeah, thanks for that. Just on R&D, the last several years in Q1, R&D has gone up by about $20 to $25 million. In this Q1, R&D was down $1 million. I know that, in 2016, R&D grew faster than revenues and then it grew about in line with revenues in 2017. Just given what we've seen so far in year-to-date, is it reasonable to assume that we might seen more R&D leveraged this year versus the last couple years? a

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

We're pleased that we're allocating capital to R&D, even SG&A, and CapEx and, ultimately, to drive topline growth and market share. We do that based on long-term expectations, on growth, particularly industrial/automotive as I talked about earlier, even how well our portfolio matches those markets so we'll continue to do that. And, if we have opportunities to increase R&D because we have even better opportunities, we'll do that. If not, we'll keep it about where it is but we don't have any set percent increase or number to give you.

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you, Rahmit, and with that, we'll wrap up the call. Thank you all for joining us. A replay of this call's available on our website. Good evening.

Operator

That concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Duration: 38 minutes

Call participants:

Dave Pahl -- Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Rafael Lizardi -- Chief Financial Officer

Vivek Arya -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Managing Director

Stacy Rasgon -- Bernstein Research -- Managing Director and Senior Analyst

Toshiya Hari -- Goldman Sachs -- Managing Director

Joseph Moore -- Morgan Stanley -- Semiconductor Industry Analyst

Chris Danely -- Citigroup -- Semiconductor Analyst

Blayne Curtis -- Barclays -- Semiconductor Analyst

Ambrish Srivastava -- Bank of Montreal -- Analyst

Chris Caso -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Rahmit Shaw -- Nomura Internet -- Analyst

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