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DATE

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

  • Chief Executive Officer — Timothy Breen
  • Chief Financial Officer — Sam Franklin
  • Head of Investor Relations — Eric Chow

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TAKEAWAYS

  • Total Revenue -- $1.634 billion, down 11% sequentially and up 3.1% year over year.
  • Gross Margin -- 29%, above guidance high end and up 510 basis points year over year, representing the largest margin expansion in over three years.
  • Operating Margin -- 16.6%, above guidance range and up 320 basis points from the prior year period.
  • Net Income -- $227 million, up approximately $38 million from the prior year period.
  • Diluted EPS -- $0.40, at the high end of the guidance range on approximately 561 million shares.
  • Cash Flow from Operations -- $542 million.
  • Adjusted Free Cash Flow -- $233 million, with a margin of approximately 14%, driven by favorable working capital movements expected to reverse in the next quarter.
  • Technology Services Revenue -- 13% of total revenue, above the high end of expectations, boosted by mask, reticle, and IP/software growth following the MIPS acquisition.
  • Manufacturing Services Revenue -- 87% of total revenue, reflecting adjusted reporting categories to better capture the evolving business mix.
  • Automotive Revenue -- 23% of total revenue, decreased 11% sequentially but increased 24% year over year; low double-digit percentage growth expected for the full year.
  • Communications Infrastructure and Data Center Revenue -- 14% of total revenue, increased 2% sequentially and 32% year over year, with fiscal 2026 growth now expected in the high 30% range versus the prior 30% forecast (period ending Mar. 31, 2026).
  • Smart Mobile Devices Revenue -- 34% of total revenue, declined 15% sequentially and 5% year over year; full-year revenue expected to decline in the high single-digit percentage, outperforming forecasted overall smartphone unit declines.
  • Home and Industrial IoT Revenue -- 16% of total, decreased 16% sequentially and 22% year over year, with the decline attributed to shipment timing and expected to reverse in the next quarter.
  • Wafers Shipped -- 579 thousand 300-millimeter equivalent wafers, down 6% sequentially and up 7% year over year.
  • Share Repurchases -- $400 million completed of the authorized $500 million, with $100 million remaining under the current plan.
  • End Market Mix Shift -- Two-thirds of total revenue originated from all end markets and technology services outside of smart mobile devices, a company record.
  • Design Wins -- 50% year-over-year increase in design wins, signifying continued customer engagement across all four major end markets.
  • Silicon Photonics -- GF remains on track to double silicon photonics revenue in 2026 versus 2025, aiming for a greater than $1 billion annual run rate by the end of 2028.
  • MIPS Acquisition and Synopsys ARC Pending Acquisition -- Technology services mix is expected to rise toward the high end of the 10%-12% range for 2026 as integration continues.
  • CapEx -- $309 million net of government grants, approximately 19% of revenue; full-year CapEx anticipated in the 15%-20% range, with upcoming investments tied to customer prepayments and government incentives.
  • Q2 2026 Guidance -- Revenue expected at $1.76 billion (±$25 million), gross margin guided to 28.5% (±100 basis points), operating expenses ex-SBC at $225 million (±$10 million), and diluted EPS forecast at $0.43 (±$0.05).

SUMMARY

GlobalFoundries (GFS +3.00%) reported rising year-over-year revenue and substantial gross margin expansion, largely attributable to shifting business mix and continued execution within high-growth technology sectors. First quarter performance reflected a notable strategic shift, with non-smart mobile device markets and technology services now making up two-thirds of total revenue. Management confirmed a 50% rise in design wins, increased customer prepayments for capacity expansion, and stronger growth expectations in communications infrastructure and automotive, as well as confidence in durable, high-margin revenue streams resulting from strategic acquisitions and expanded government and customer partnerships.

  • Franklin stated, "about 1 point of that came through cost synergies that we've been driving from our acquisition of Advanced Micro Foundry in Singapore."
  • Breen emphasized, "capacity at our Vermont fab oversubscribed through well into 2027," supporting margin expansion and long-term revenue visibility in silicon germanium for AI data center networking.
  • GF executed tape-outs for co-packaged optical solutions compliant with the new OCI standard, directly aligning with accelerated adoption curves in advanced networking.
  • Strategic partnerships included a "multibillion-dollar" expansion with Renesas and early tape-outs for Apple at the Malta, NY fab, illustrating GF's differentiated U.S. onshoring proposition and integration with customer R&D cycles.
  • Pricing power is expected to rise in the back half of 2026: Breen stated, "consistent with even many of our customers, we will implement price adjustments on that part of the portfolio. You can imagine those kicking in towards the back end of 2026 and."
  • Margin trajectory faces incremental cost headwinds from supply chain securing actions related to "key gas and cans like helium, hydrogen, sulfur," with Franklin quantifying impact at "about a 0.5 point of margin impact for each quarter."
  • Repurchase activity showed balance sheet flexibility, with $400 million repurchased, $100 million authorized outstanding, and a cash position of $3.8 billion supporting future initiatives.
  • Management noted working capital movement benefited adjusted free cash flow in Q1, but this tailwind is expected to reverse in Q2.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

  • SiGe: Silicon Germanium, a compound semiconductor enabling high-speed, low-loss signal amplification, crucial for optical data transmission in AI data centers.
  • FDX: Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FD-SOI) process technology, offering enhanced performance and lower power consumption for advanced chips, especially in automotive and connected devices.
  • CPO: Co-Packaged Optics, an advanced integration technology combining optical and electronic components for higher bandwidth and lower power interconnects, particularly in data centers.
  • OCI MSA: Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement, an industry standard for co-packaged optical networking in data centers.
  • Pluggable Optical Transceivers: Modular optical components that can be swapped in networking hardware to enable flexible, high-speed data connections.
  • MIPS: Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages, a RISC processor IP portfolio recently acquired by GlobalFoundries.
  • Synopsys ARC: A family of configurable processor IP, pending acquisition by GlobalFoundries to support IP and custom silicon growth.
  • MRAM: Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory, a non-volatile memory type offering fast access times and endurance, significant in automotive microcontrollers.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Eric Chow: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to GlobalFoundries' First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. On the call with me today are Tim Breen, CEO; and Sam Franklin, CFO. A short while ago, we released GF's first quarter 2026 financial results which are available on our website at investors.gf.com, along with today's accompanying slide presentation. This call is being recorded, and a replay will be made available on our Investor Relations web page. During this call, we will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. The most directly comparable IFRS measures and reconciliations for non-IFRS measures are made available in today's press release and accompanying slides. Please note that these financial results are unaudited and subject to change.

Certain statements on today's call may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Such statements can be identified by the terms such as believe, expect, intend, anticipate and may or by the use of the future dense. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today.

For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today as well as risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings, including in sections under the caption Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 20-F and in any current reports on Form 6-K furnished with the SEC. In terms of upcoming events, we look forward to hosting our Investor Day this Thursday, May 7, with live public webcast beginning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. During the event, our leadership team will provide updates on GF's strategy, growth initiatives and long-term outlook, followed by a Q&A session.

We will also be participating in fireside chats at the JPMorgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in Boston on May 19 and the TD Cowen Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in New York City on May 27. We will begin today's call with Tim providing a summary update on the business environment, technologies and end markets. Followed by Sam, who will provide details on our first quarter results and second quarter guidance. We will then open the call for questions with Tim and Sam. We request that you please limit your question to one with one follow-up. I'll now turn the call over to Tim.

Timothy Breen: Thank you, Eric, and welcome, everyone, to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. GF delivered a strong first quarter with all of our non-IFRS profitability metrics at or above the high end of their respective guidance ranges. This was the result of excellent execution by the team with a focus on delivering for our customers. These results demonstrate a strong step forward in our multiyear journey to enhance the quality of our revenue composition, improve our structural cost position and achieve efficient scale across our world-class fabs. We have made meaningful traction in secular growth end markets, where our differentiated technology drives share growth and [indiscernible] value creation. The first quarter continued to demonstrate proof points of this transformation.

We delivered strong double-digit percentage growth in both automotive and comms infrastructure and data center. I'm proud of our team's accomplishments this quarter. We continue to execute to our proven 3-pillar strategy: to innovate and deliver a unique technology road map; to deepen our engagement throughout our customers' design cycles and to scale our diverse and fungible global footprint. Let me now update you on our progress on each. First, our unique and innovative technology road map. There is no better proof of our technology innovation that with our industry leadership in optical networking, which includes both our silicon sonics and silicon germanium capabilities.

With the advent of optical for scale across scale out and scale up networks, the market is moving to adopt our solutions for pluggable, near and co-packaged optics. With process technology leadership, in-house design, assembly, test and packaging ecosystems, all supported with high-volume manufacturing in our advanced 300-millimeter fab footprint, including here in the U.S., we believe no other company has our suite photonics offerings at scale. Beyond silicon photonics, we also believe we have robust growth and opportunity within our silicon germanium solutions in the AI data center. SiGe by CMOS, or just SiGe, is another great example of GF's preparation and foresight meeting a strong positive inflection point in the market.

Our SiGe technology is a critical enabler for data center networks where [indiscernible] amplifiers, TIAs and drivers using GF's solutions support the conversion between high-speed electrical and optical signals. GF SiGe has industry-leading FT and S-MAX performance. This means faster, cleaner signal amplification, more headroom and lower data loss across the system. TIAs and drivers are required on virtually every data center connection, and industry forecasts are anticipating significant unit growth in the coming years. Correspondingly, we are seeing very strong customer demand for our SiGe solutions with capacity at our Vermont fab oversubscribed through well into 2027. As these city offerings are meaningfully margin accretive to our overall business, we are expanding SiGe capacity to meet accelerating customer demand.

We expect GF SiGe opportunity to be a substantial driver of high-quality long-term revenue growth that complements [indiscernible] to form a comprehensive optical networking portfolio. Another notable proof point of GF leadership was announced at the Optical Fiber Communications conference, OFC, in March. At OFC, [indiscernible] members of the Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement, or OCI MSA, including AMD, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, established the CPO industry standard for scale-up networks that perfectly aligns with the capabilities GF has spent years developing. This was no accident. Thanks to our proven development and leadership in Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, or DWDM, GFNR partners provided industry proof points, laying confidence to the OCI founders to define this high standard.

As a result, just a month after the OCI standard was announced, year-to-date, GF announced its complete optical module solution for NPO and CPO, known as scale or silicon photonics co-packaged advanced light engine. This is not just the industry's first OCI MSA capable platform, the technical specs exceed the MSA requirements, supporting our customers' road maps for multiple generations. For example, scale fiber coupling is natively broadband, which enables it to excel at minimizing insertion loss, a key differentiator for CPO. Our years of development, including partnering with our customers to design scale from the ground up, feedback so far has been excellent.

In the first quarter, we saw new tape-outs in Multi New York for a pair of CPO design wins that support the new optical compute interconnect OCI standard for scaled networks. We are excited to share more details on scale and other developments at our Investor Day on May 7. also, at OFC in March, GF made several announcements in conjunction with partners that showcased our robust silicon photonics offerings. Notable highlights included the following: Senco and GF demonstrated a wafer-level detachable fiber interface solution for CPO, a critical breakthrough that enables [indiscernible] connectivity to be attached and detached through the entire [indiscernible] development process for precise and repeatable testing.

Together with Corning and EXFO, GF showcased a complete ecosystem of CPO technology, which combined attachable fiber connectivity and automated die-level testing with high-volume silicon photonics manufacturing. Finally, we announced a strategic partnership with Siltech to mass produce 200 gig per lane receiver photonic ICs for pluggable optical transceivers using our process technology. All of these recent developments represent a growing body of proof points for the value our innovative technology road map provides. Let me now discuss our second key strategic pillar and provide an update on our customer partnerships and commercial engagements. Thanks to our robust product portfolio and deep partnerships with customers, we continue to accelerate our design win momentum.

In the first quarter, we saw a 50% increase in design wins compared to the same period a year ago, with excellent representation across all 4 major end markets. Not only does this build on the record design win year in 2025, it is another leading indicator of our tape-out for revenue momentum in the years to come. Notable commercial engagements in the quarter included the following highlights. GF and Renesas announced a multibillion-dollar strategic partnership that expands [indiscernible] to GF technologies, including FDX, BCD and feature is CMOS with integrated nonvolatile memory. These platforms will support SoCs, power devices and MCUs for applications such as data center power, advanced driver assistance systems and secure industrial IoT connectivity.

Tape-outs under the broadened collaboration are already underway, and we believe this partnership will contribute meaningfully to continued outperformance and ramp of our data center business over time. In automotive, we are particularly encouraged by the strong customer momentum around our new Auto Grade 1 embedded MRAM capability on FDX. This technology offers industry-leading 100 megahertz class access times for code execution directly from MRAM, combined with ultra-low power operation and proven insurance and reliability up to 150 degrees C. Our lead customers have taped-out with this feature. And as highlighted in our recent announcement, we are seeing growing engagement and traction with Tier 1, such as Bosch, as this technology moves towards production.

This underscores the differentiated value of our SDX platform as automotive customers transition to a next generation of software-defined real-time systems. In our smart mobile devices end market, we continue to secure additional design wins in the quarter that expand our reach into new applications and emerging form factors that benefit from the features we offer such as low power, rate of reliability and superior RF performance. For example, in the first quarter, we secured 2 new design wins on our SDX platform for micro LED back planes used in smart glasses, a fast-growing market is starting to gain adoption.

In the realm of robotics and typical AI, in March, GF announced a partnership with Inova Semiconductors to deliver our robotics control reference platform that combines MIPS open risk 5 compute and mixed-signal technologies with Inova's high-speed communication links. This physical AI reference platform will simplify robot design, reduce bond costs and accelerate time to market, enabling next-gen humanoid and advanced robotics. Finally, for optical networking reported within our comms infrastructure and data center end market, we have substantial forward momentum in both customer wins and pipeline.

In the first quarter, we executed additional tape-outs for silicon photonics that reinforce our confidence that we are on track to roughly double our silicon photonics revenue in '26 and to achieve greater than $1 billion silicon photonics revenue run rate exiting 2028. GF is now designed in at 3 of the top 4 pluggable optical transceiver companies. Customers continue to provide excellent feedback on our suite of pluggable offerings that enable 1.60 solutions as well as a road map to 3.2T and beyond. With our proven record of high body manufacturing at scale, we believe we can sustain a strong growth trajectory in this area for years to come.

Now let me address our third strategic pillar, the value and importance of GF's unique diversified manufacturing footprint. Recent world events have only reinforced the reality that faces business and government leaders around the globe. Concentrated supply chains are now subject to previously unimagined risks. The [indiscernible] lies in diversification flexibility and security. All 3 areas that GF is uniquely positioned to provide our customers. In a fragmented geopolitical environment, our 3 continent manufacturing footprint across the U.S., Germany and Singapore is a tremendously valuable asset for our customers.

In particular, we have invested for years to cross-qualify fungible capacity across our fab network, meaning a customer who only design with GF once and gain the flexibility to manufacture out of 3 continents. Our one-of-a-kind footprint provides supply chain resilience, closer proximity to end demand and greater nimbleness to shift supply quickly as market demand changes. For many of our customers, geographic flexibility is no longer a nice to have, it is a requirement. As a result, we continue to see a meaningful increase in customer engagements and design win activity specifically linked to onshoring.

For example, last month, Apple announced a joint collaboration with [indiscernible] Logic and GF to bring new process technologies to our Multi New York fab. This marks the first U.S. availability of the silicon platform that supports clinical functions in upcoming Apple devices, including next-generation components used in face ID systems. GF is proud to be a founding partner in Apple's American manufacturing program. We see this as another step in a growing partnership and just one notable example of our onshoring value proposition. We are not just partnering with customers to onshore semiconductor supply. We are also working closely with the governments of the U.S., Germany and Singapore.

In the U.S. in particular, support frameworks such as chips grants and investment tax credits are an important element to our long-term strategic road map, and we continue to deepen our partnership with the U.S. government both for capacity growth as well as innovation and technology onshoring. In summary, I'm deeply proud of our team's execution in this quarter, which advanced GF across all 3 strategic pillars. With our deep and differentiated technology portfolio, we are reaping the benefits of years of innovation. With our customer-first approach and design enablement capabilities, we remain the partner of choice. With our unique and diversified scaled manufacturing footprint, we are empowering the global onshoring megatrend.

All of these place GF at the heart of the industry transformations to come. I'll now pass the call over to Sam for a deeper dive on first quarter 2026 financials.

Sam Franklin: Thank you, Tim. For the remainder of the call, including guidance other than revenue cash flow and net interest income, I will reference non-IFRS metrics. GF delivered strong results in the first quarter, with revenue in the high end of the guidance range and gross margin and operating margin well above the high end of the ranges. In particular, our gross margin achieved the first quarter record and grew over 500 basis points year-over-year, representing the biggest expansion in 3 years. This is testament to our team's execution and relentless focus on the structural levers driving GF sustained improvement in profitability, and we believe we're only in the early stages of this margin expansion opportunity.

Before I go deeper into the financials, I'd like to take a moment to update you on some terminology changes to our revenue categorization. The acquisition of MIPS, closed in August 2025, as well as the announced acquisition of the Synopsys ARC, our key business, which we expect to close towards the end of the first half of 2026, are both helping to transform GF into a holistic technology solutions provider. As a result, we believe that non-wafer revenue no longer captures the broader reach of our customer offerings, which we expect to include an increasing proportion of revenue from IP, licensing and software over time.

Similarly, wafer revenue is evolving to capture our expanding manufacturing capabilities in custom silicon and advanced packaging, which we look forward to covering in more detail at our Investor Day on May 7. As a result, revenue previously referred to as wafer revenue will now be categorized as revenue from manufacturing services, and non-wafer revenue will now be categorized as revenue from technology services. We believe these categories better reflect the depth and breadth of our business model today and going forward. Now on to the results. We delivered first quarter revenue of $1.634 billion, down 11% sequentially and up 3.1% year-over-year.

We shipped approximately 579 300-millimeter equivalent wafers in the quarter, down 6% sequentially and up 7% from the prior year period. Revenue from manufacturing services accounted for approximately 87% of total revenue. Revenue from Technology Services, which includes revenue from IP, licensing, software, reticles, nonrecurring engineering, expedite fees and other items, accounted for approximately 13% of total revenue for the first quarter. Revenue upside in the quarter for Technology Services was driven by increased mask and reticles as we ramp customer tape-outs as well as consistent momentum from within IP licensing and software as we integrate the acquisition of MIPS.

As the momentum and engagements with customers grow, we expect MIPS to contribute a greater proportion of our technology services revenue going forward at an accretive gross margin to our corporate objectives. All of these factors considered, we expect revenue from Technology Services to comprise a greater proportion of our total 2026 revenue, closer to the high end of our original 10% to 12% range. Our early traction here adds to our belief that the Technology Services portion of our business will be an important long-term driver of durable, high-quality, high-margin growth. Let me now provide an update on our revenue and outlook by end markets.

Communications infrastructure and data center represented approximately 14% of first quarter total revenue and increased 2% sequentially and 32% year-over-year. This marked the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit percentage year-over-year growth for communications infrastructure and data center. Within this end market, silicon photonics drove robust growth in the first quarter and remains on track to roughly double in 2026 compared to 2025. In line with our expectations, we saw a healthy revenue contribution from Advanced Micro Foundry, which GF acquired in November of last year. The integration is progressing well as we expand our photonics capabilities at the Jeff Science Park.

Combining GF's significant scale in Singapore with AMF's complementary customer base and pluggable photonics solutions for scale across networks has expanded our customer momentum in this rapidly growing market. This acquisition is already gross margin accretive to GF, and we expect to realize even greater growth and profitability tailwinds in the coming years. For these reasons, we now expect to achieve high 30s percent year-over-year revenue growth in our communications infrastructure and data center end market in 2026, up from our expectations a quarter ago of approximately 30% year-over-year growth. Automotive represented approximately 23% of first quarter total revenue. Automotive revenue decreased 11% sequentially off a strong fourth quarter and increased 24% year-over-year.

In addition to our strong customer share in automotive microcontrollers, we are in the early stage of revenue ramps as a result of our accumulated design wins in smart sensors and networking as well as vehicle infrastructure. We are continuing to diversify our offerings to the automotive end market by ramping newly secured sockets in applications such as camera, ethernet, radar and power. It is our differentiated technology and disciplined execution that we believe is enabling GF to capture the growing automotive semiconductor content opportunity and outperform peers in this end market. As a result, we expect Automotive revenue to deliver low double-digit growth in 2026. Its sixth consecutive year of double-digit percentage growth.

Smart mobile devices represented approximately 34% of first quarter total revenue and declined 15% sequentially and 5% from the prior year period. Current industry forecasts for overall smartphone units in 2026 indicate a low double-digit percentage year-over-year decline. With approximately 2/3 of our revenue in this end market driven by premium handsets, we expect to see a more contained impact from memory pricing dynamics compared to the broader industry. As such, we expect revenue from smart mobile devices in 2026 to slightly outperform the overall smartphone market, with an expected decline in the high single-digits percentage.

Beyond the near-term dynamics, we expect smart mobile devices to gradually benefit from the growth of new AI-powered form factors, such as smart glasses, hearables and wearables where we have nascent growing traction and design wins with our customers. Finally, home and industrial IoT represented approximately 16% of first quarter total revenue and decreased 16% sequentially and 22% year-over-year. The decline in revenue from this end market in the first quarter was principally driven by the timing of certain customer shipments, a temporary impact, which we expect to reverse in the second quarter.

Importantly, we continue to expect 2026 to be a growth year for IoT, driven by the normalization of core industrial customer inventory as well as the production ramp of new applications in the second half of 2026, which we believe should contribute to a healthy growth of mid-single-digit percentage year-over-year. Beyond 2026, we expect this end market to be one of the primary beneficiaries of the burgeoning physical AI revolution and serviceable addressable market expansion, where our technology platforms and solutions are well suited to enable devices to sense, think, act and communicate. In summary, we believe GF's strong secular growth drivers, including meaningful upside from our recent acquisitions will help offset smart mobile devices in 2026.

As continued growth across the other end markets we serve, expand as a percentage of revenue. These strategic actions are also intended to accelerate our targeted mix shift towards margin accretive high-value growth markets and applications. We believe the result over time will be a more durable, more resilient, more profitable business. In the first quarter, we delivered gross profit of $474 million, which translates into approximately 29% gross margin, above the high end of the guidance range and up 510 basis points year-over-year. First quarter saw the largest year-over-year expansion of gross margin in over 3 years. R&D for the quarter was $114 million, and SG&A was $89 million.

Total operating expenses of $203 million, were up 4% quarter-over-quarter and represented approximately 12% of total revenue. We delivered operating profit of $271 million for the quarter and an operating margin of 16.6%, above the high end of our guided range and up 320 basis points from the prior year period. First quarter net interest income, net of other expenses, was $5 million, and we incurred tax expense of $49 million in the quarter. We delivered first quarter net income of approximately $227 million, an increase of approximately $38 million from the prior year period.

Diluted earnings of $0.40 per share was at the high end of the guidance range based on a free diluted share count of approximately 561 million shares. Let me now provide some key cash flow and balance sheet metrics. Cash flow from operations for the first quarter was $542 million. First quarter CapEx net of proceeds from government grants was $309 million, or roughly 19% of revenue. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was $233 million, which represented an adjusted free cash flow margin of approximately 14% in the quarter. This outcome was principally driven by favorable working capital movements in the first quarter, which we expect to reverse in the second quarter.

At the end of the first quarter, our combined total of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, stood at approximately $3.8 billion. Our total debt was $1.1 billion, and we also have a $1 billion revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn. In the first quarter of 2026, we repurchased $400 million of shares of the $500 million share repurchase authorization approved by our Board of Directors, approximately $100 million remains, and we remain flexible with the deployment of the remaining authorized amount. Capital allocation, planning and decisions remain tightly linked to visibility, returns and balance sheet resilience. As we move through 2026, our focus remains consistent, disciplined capacity investments structurally improving margins and cash generation aligned with returns.

We will continue to drive momentum in areas that we can control and deliberate in how we allocate capital. Next, let me provide you with our outlook for the second quarter of 2026. We expect total GF revenue to be $1.76 billion, plus or minus $25 million. We expect gross margin to be approximately 28.5%, plus or minus 100 basis points, which at the midpoint reflects over 300 basis points of year-over-year gross margin expansion. Excluding share-based compensation, we expect total operating expenses to be $225 million, plus or minus $10 million.

We are ramping R&D programs in the second half of 2026 to strengthen our technology differentiation and accelerate our road map in secular growth areas, such as custom silicon, silicon photonics and advanced packaging. Taking into account these investments into R&D and the expected close of the Synopsys ARC IP business acquisition towards the end of the first half of 2026, we expect to maintain a similar quarterly operating expense run rate in the second half of 2026, as indicated in our second quarter guidance. We expect operating margin to be in the range of 15.7%, plus or minus 180 basis points.

At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect share-based compensation to be approximately $71 million, of which roughly $19 million is related to cost of goods sold. We expect net interest and other for the quarter to be between negative $6 million and $2 million and income tax expense to be between $28 million and $48 million. Based on the tax environments across the jurisdictions we operate in, we continue to expect an effective tax rate in the high teens percentage range for the full year of 2026. Based on a fully diluted share count of approximately 555 million shares, we expect diluted earnings per share for the first quarter to be $0.43, plus or minus $0.05.

Given the timing of tool delivery windows in order to meet forecast customer demand in critical growth corridors as well as the timing of government grants, we expect net CapEx to increase in the second quarter. For the full year 2026, we continue to expect non-IFRS net CapEx to be in the range of 15% to 20% of revenue. Our CapEx strategy continues to align the sizing and timing of our investments with customer demand while scaling our footprint efficiently. Over the last few years, we have seen notable increases in customer demand for incremental capacity in high-growth technology corridors such as silicon photonics, FDX and high-performance SiGe.

In order to unlock sustainable accretive revenue growth, we are expanding capacity in these areas to support the strong demand signals from our customers. Critically, these targeted CapEx investments are supported by robust partnerships with both customers and governments. As a result, we expect that the next wave of capacity investments will be accompanied by customer prepayments in addition to meaningful government grant and tax incentive frameworks in all of the geographies we serve. Even with greater investment in enabling capacity in these key growth technology corridors, we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow margin of approximately 10% for the full year 2026 with a skew towards the second half.

In summary, I'm grateful for our team's excellent execution this quarter and the strong progress we are making towards our long-term strategic objectives, which are reflected in our financial performance. We believe GF is at a definitive inflection point where years of preparation have positioned us well to capitalize on the secular megatrends defining our industry, and we very much look forward to sharing more details with you all at our Investor Day on May 7. With that, let's open the call to Q&A. Operator?

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Harlan Sur from JPMorgan.

Harlan Sur: Congrats on the solid quarterly execution. Industry demand trends, even over the past 90 days, have accelerated, especially in areas like AI and data center where cloud and hyperscale spending continues strong. In non-AI segments, we're seeing this broad cyclical recovery profile. And then on the supply side, advanced all manufacturers are actually cutting their specialty mature capacity. And your competitors in specialty and differentiated are signaling wafer pricing increases starting in the second half of this year. I know the team had previously talked about a stable pricing environment this year.

But just given the tight supply outlook, continued focus on supply chain resiliency, as you guys had outlined, how should we think about your pricing profile as you move to the second half and for the full year? .

Timothy Breen: Yes. Thank you for the question, Harlan. I think the way you can think about it is differently for different parts of the portfolio. Obviously, there's a part of our portfolio that prices on a very long-term basis. That's been stable for several years now and continues to be stable going forward. There is a component, a smaller component of the portfolio, the prices over a more short-term dynamic. And exactly, as you said, both the supply and demand dynamics there are more favorable from a pricing perspective. And consistent with peers, consistent with even many of our customers, we will implement price adjustments on that part of the portfolio.

You can imagine those kicking in towards the back end of 2026 and obviously flowing into 2027. I'll also add that for part of our portfolio where we are, capacity constrained, where demand is stronger, we're also having conversations with customers, not just about pricing but also about advanced payments to secure capacity as we accelerate our CapEx investments in those tight corridors such as FDX, silicon photonics, high-performance silicon germanium. Those customer discussions are very constructive.

Harlan Sur: Appreciate that. And gross margins came in 200 basis points better than guidance. MIPS was such a factor, right, your higher gross margin segments like CID, auto, technology services did better on a sequential basis. And for the last question, on industry supply tightness, it looks like the team potentially also benefited from sustained or increasing utilization. But maybe you could just help us understand puts and takes around gross margins Q1, during Q2? And then given the better demand mix, pricing outlook, how should we think about gross margin trajectory as you move through the second half of the year? Could we see the team, as we end the year, closer to the 33%, 35% range?

Sam Franklin: Harlan, it's Sam here. I'll provide you a little bit of color there. Obviously, we're very encouraged by where we're seeing the structural improvements within our gross margin profile, and this has been a trend which has been continuing for last couple of quarters now. Obviously, if you look at things from a year-over-year basis, roughly 3% of revenue growth but 510 basis points of gross margin. And so this is something we've been positioning for several years. These types of structural levers don't happen overnight, and they really focus across several areas in the business, namely productivity cost continuing, as Tim said, to optimize our footprint from a technology point of view. And mix obviously really matters as well.

If I touch specifically on the first quarter and bridge you a little bit from last year. The single biggest driver there was mix and mix falls into 2 categories. It's the mix as it relates to our manufacturing services, and it's the mix as it relates to our technology services. And you called it out in part of your question, which is the relative strength of the growth that we've seen within those rich mix environments from, say, for example, a communications infrastructure and data center point of view, which generally falls through at a very high margin relative to our corporate objectives. And the same is true for the likes of automotive.

So that's a contribution from manufacturing services, high rich mix has been important. And I'd say as well, from a revenue from technology services perspective, that's continued to trend actually in the first quarter, above the high end of the range, that we indicated. We expect it to be at around 12%. We ended up coming in at 13% of revenue. And part of that is related to the increased contribution we're seeing from the likes of mix and our capabilities in that arena. But I'd say that was factored into our guidance. We did see some stronger mask and [indiscernible] related revenue within technology services in the first quarter as well.

And particularly in the aerospace and defense sector as well, and that falls through at a relatively attractive margin as well. So we're quite encouraged from that perspective. I'd say the other dynamic outside of mix is really from a cost perspective. And the teams have been focusing maniacally on driving cost and productivity improvements. actually, as it relates to the 200 basis points that you referenced in the quarter, about 1 point of that came through cost synergies that we've been driving from our acquisition of Advanced Micro Foundry in Singapore. So that came in certainly more favorable from the perspective of where we were at about 90 days ago.

So you take that combination of richer mix, technology services, favorability from the acquisition when we made [indiscernible], that kind of bridges you to that 200 basis points of outperformance we had relative to the midpoint of our guidance. I think if I fast forward a little bit to take you into where we're looking at the guidance from the second quarter perspective and how we think about things for the remainder of the year, look, I'd like to focus a little bit on the year-over-year story here because I think it really matters in terms of that structural evolution that we're seeing. At the midpoint of our guidance range, that implies about 330 basis points of year-over-year margin growth.

But if you take the revenue we delivered in the second quarter of last year, $1.688 billion, we delivered gross profit of about $425 million in the second quarter of last year. And then you compare that through to midpoint of our revenue guide for the second quarter at $1.76 billion and you take that 28.5% midpoint of the range, that implies about $500 million of gross profit delta, which actually corresponds almost fully to the revenue delta. So what you're seeing is a very meaningful pull-through from that increase in revenue relative to the year-over-year margin story there as well.

Now just on a couple of the -- if you like, the pace as it relates to second quarter and how we're thinking about some of the rest of the year. Look, it would be remiss of us not to be thinking around how the conflict in the Middle East impact supply chain and how we proactively drive our supply chain planning decisions around that. And we've taken some very proactive steps in the first quarter to make sure that we're shoring up our supplies of key gas and cans like helium, hydrogen, sulfur. So making sure we have that supply chain security is key.

Obviously, that comes with some incremental costs that we forecasted at the beginning of the year prior to this conflict. So expectation is that, that probably has about a 0.5 point of margin impact for each quarter as we go through the rest of 2026. But all said and done, we're quite pleased with the continued year-over-year margin trajectory that we're seeing.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya from Bank of America.

Vivek Arya: For the first one, I'm curious, how are you benchmarking your growth in comms infrastructure and data center? Because when I look at a lot of your analog peers or some of the optical customers or AI in general, they're all growing anywhere between 50% to 100%. So high 30% growth is impressive, but how do you know whether you are gaining or losing share relative to the growth rate? Like, are those growth rates representative of what the industry is growing? Or am I comparing Apples store in this year? .

Timothy Breen: Yes. Thanks for the question, Vivek. I'd say the following. Remember, our CID market considered 3 kind of big drivers. Silicon photonics, we've talked about already approximately doubling year-on-year. We think that is definitely growing in line with the industry. Trends and the rollouts, and we even see further acceleration to follow as we launch new products like Gale that we announced earlier this week. Our high-performance silicon germanium equally exhibiting very, very strong year-on-year growth [indiscernible] networking we're seeing a very good story. Also in the CID mix, and that continues to grow very sort of solidly as we see rollout of more [indiscernible] capacity and the scale of terminals.

So we look at it on a kind of end market, submarket basis. And in those cases, we don't see share loss. In fact, we see a share gain in many of those cases.

Sam Franklin: Do you have a follow-up, Vivek?.

Vivek Arya: Yes. Second question is kind of another follow-up on pricing and revenue per wafer. So when the year started, what did you assume for the pricing environment? And what is it now? And then I know I'm focusing on just one metric, but revenue per wafer that continues to decline. And I imagine that's probably because of mix or other factors. But I would just appreciate your perspective on how are you thinking about industry pricing now versus before? And is your revenue per wafer, what does it -- what should it indicate to us because it has continued to decline.

Sam Franklin: Sure, Vivek, I'll take that. And obviously, Tim gave a little bit of color as part of the last question in terms of how we see the broader pricing environment, particularly in the context of some of those supply/demand constraints that we've seen. Look, I'd say one important point to remember around how we think about pricing is that within wafer pricing, we also have what used to be the underutilization payments that flowed through associated with some of those long-term agreements. That is largely in the rearview mirror. And in fact, we were still getting some of those in the first quarter of 2025.

And so when you think about it from a year-over-year comparison basis, there is a little bit of fallout from that ASP perspective. The important point, and you touched on mix, which is the right way to think about it, but the way we think about pricing is really the contribution from a margin perspective. And at the start of the year, we viewed the broader pricing environment is certainly more constructive than it was in 2025.

And actually, as we've gone through first quarter, particularly where we see space constraints on some of our core technology corridors, we remain [indiscernible] view that it is not only constructive in some of those, but favorable tailwinds in some of those technology corridors. So from a year-over-year comparison basis and going forward, I would say that the key focus is really around the margin structure that we're seeing pull through rather than just the stand-alone pricing. I hope that helps.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of C.J. Muse from Cantor Fitzgerald.

Christopher Muse: I guess first question was to focus on technology services. Obviously, you're rebranding changes in mix. Would love to hear how we should think about the growth trajectory here beyond calendar '26. Is there a framework that we should be thinking about, particularly as Synopsys ARC closes at the end of Q in the first half of 2026 and your expectations around MIPS and other contributors?

Timothy Breen: Yes. Thank you, C.J. Maybe I'll start with just kind of winding back on why we've made this [indiscernible] change, and it really reflects the evolution of our strategy. So we renamed wafer revenue to manufacturing services, and that's because more and more of our end products we delivered in different form factors. And if you take our announcement earlier this week on the optical engine, that's much more than wafer. That's an integrated module. And we'll see more and more of that across our portfolio. So it felt more appropriate to describe that as manufacturing services. In the technology services bucket, which you asked about, that's also growing.

What that used to represent is really just a complement to the wafer revenue, the mass, the reticles, the NRE that went along with it. But with some of the acquisitions we've made, we increasingly see areas like IP, software in some of that customization and value-add services that really enable us to work more deeply with our customers. I'll let Sam talk about how that range will trend over time. Obviously, we see increased growth based on the acquisitions that we've made.

Sam Franklin: Sure. Thanks, Tim. And C.J., we're definitely going to dive more into this as part of the day when we get together on Thursday. So I won't review too much. But to Tim's point, putting all of that together in terms of the composition of revenue from technology services, you'll recall that we used to guide that to the neighborhood of sort of 8% to 10%, we were typically around that 10% midpoint. And as we've seen this evolution and the increase in complementary services within our technology service, our expectation is that our trends will go to the high end of the 10% to 12% range that we indicated at the start of this year.

And obviously, we're in the early innings of integrating MIPS, and we haven't yet reach close on the Synopsys ARC IP business. But again, as we ramp those over time and as we create more offerings for our customers, in the IP, the software, the custom silicon solutions, we'd expect that to drive incremental growth over time.

Christopher Muse: Very helpful. And I guess as a follow-up, I wanted to focus on silicon photonics. You announced a new platform. You gave a pretty robust outlook exiting calendar, expected, I think revenues to double to $400 million here in calendar '26. Would love to get a sense of how you see kind of the product mix evolving over time. My sense is the lion's share of the revenues today are pluggables, but we'd love to get an understanding of how you see that pattern of changing as we go into '27 and '28.

Timothy Breen: Yes. Thank you, C.J. No. I mean I think the broader picture is you're seeing extremely strong adoption of optical across the industry. We hear stats like by 2030, 70% of networking ports in the data center will be optical, and that reflects the complexity of compute and the sheer amount of data that AI workloads require. So I think the optical momentum is clearly building. I think there will continue to be a good discussion about the form factors. Pluggables are in high demand today, growing fast and also evolving with new features and new data rates with 1.6T going into the market today and 3.2 and others on the road map, including for us.

I think the evolution to near and co-packaged optics is still very much, if anything, accelerating, and we've heard at OFC this year, many companies come out with their plans, and also this adoption of industry standards indicates ways that the industry can coalesce around a number of kind of more typical approaches to make those products consistent and accelerate the adoption. We've always been of a view that sort of co-package [indiscernible] story. I think that remains the case. What we have said is that we are already seeing tape-outs of products that are intended for co-package and near package optic use, and that's already happening today. So I think that confidence level on that rollout is definitely increasing.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Krish Sankar from TD Cowen.

Sreekrishnan Sankarnarayanan: Congrats on the strong results. Tim, just to stay on the topic of silicon photonics, is there a way you can compare and contrast your scale optical solution with TSMC scoop or [indiscernible] semis offerings? Any color on the nanometer nodes of the logic or optical photonics advanced packaging, et cetera, it would be helpful.

Timothy Breen: Thanks for the question, Krish. And we're going to go into a lot more detail on this week on Thursday at our Investor Day. I think it merits not just a longer discussion, but also some slides to make it a bit more visual as well. I mean we've been working on co-packaged optics for more than 10 years.

And a lot of what we announced this week is based on technologies that we've developed at the wafer level, but also around advanced packaging, things like hybrid bonding, TSVs, also some of the announcements we made about the ability to have fiber attached that is able to deliver low insertion loss light into the chip, while still maintaining maintainability of those devices so you can service them. All of these are some of the innovations we've worked on, and you'll find a lot of them written about in that OCI MSA. So we think we have an industry-leading solution. It benchmarks very well to competition. But more broadly, this is a fast-growing market and destined to be very large.

And so of course, there will be multiple solutions in the market. I think we're very confident in our ability to be amongst those leaders for the foreseeable future.

Sreekrishnan Sankarnarayanan: Very helpful, Tim. And then just a quick follow-up. Maybe you'll talk about this more on Thursday as well. On the MIPS IP strategy, how to think about it, given the risk [indiscernible] processor IP, custom silicon software angles. And I remember in the past, you mentioned that MIPS's technology service revenue could be a $100 million plus business this year. Is that still the [indiscernible] to think about? .

Timothy Breen: Yes. So look, we've mentioned this before a little bit, but just to comment on it. We're seeing very, very good customer feedback to MIPS and even more positive feedback when we announced Synopsys ARC transaction, which, as Sam mentioned, is set to close within the first half. I think the reason is that customers love the idea of a company with GF scale, with GF, kind of, reliability through the cycle, providing that IP. And I think with the increased adoption of risk 5, especially in those real-world workloads, right, think automotive, think AI at the edge, think about things like radar that require different kind of process technologies. There's a real market need for risk file.

I think what also customers are appreciating is the ability for us to engage earlier in that design cycle. And so we can talk about their optimization of their products. We can give them software tools to simulate those early on well before we're talking about manufacturing decisions. But obviously, it's also enabling us to have a deeper conversation and increase our chances of being that partner of choice when we get to the manufacturing. So that's highly synergetic, and it's changing the nature of the conversations with customers.

And I think the last piece that's worth calling out is having internally these capabilities also gives us a chance to, if you like, taste our own cooking, and push our process technologies further, not just today but also a longer-term road map because we're able to -- with short learning loops, basically push the limits of what we can do in our process technologies for those key applications. So I'm very, very bullish, not just about the financial trajectory of these acquisitions but also on the strategic back. I'll let Sam comment about where we are for the year.

Sam Franklin: Sure. Thanks, Tim. And Krish, to the second part of your question in terms of how we think about the revenue contribution from MIPS in 2026, but we provided some guidance actually at the start of this year and also at the end of last year when we did our Physical AI webinar, that we expected about $50 million to $100 million revenue contribution associated with MIPS in 2026. That range still holds. But what I would say is that we feel like the momentum with customers, as Tim said, is progressing very well. The bookings are progressing very well. We're sort of trending towards above the midpoint of that range that we indicated at the start of this year.

And obviously, that's before we factor in the timing of the close associated with the Synopsys ARC IP business. That will come later, and we'll probably be able to give a bit more color on the contribution from that perspective when we get to our next earnings call.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Bryson from Wedbush Securities.

Matthew Bryson: For the comms and data center side of things, you've highlighted solid opportunities in silicon photonic, but can you talk a bit more specifically around whether there were any specific factors that drove the upside versus your prior guide?

Timothy Breen: Yes. Thanks, Matt. Look, I think it's incremental across the board. We're seeing, for sure, the [indiscernible] optical networking picking up. I think there's a lot of momentum behind that adoption. As we mentioned earlier, pulling through to pluggable optical transceivers. If I could show you an X-ray of pluggable optical transceiver, you'd find in it. High-performance silicon tonics, you'd also find some of that high-performance SiGe content that we talked about. So those 2, I think, are the contributors to the increased confidence in the revenue trajectory within that end market. The other parts remain solid and growing well like SATCOM, but I think the optical piece is the one that we'd call out.

Matthew Bryson: Awesome. And just a follow-up on that. Higher growth in the segment, I mean, it seems to be favorable for margins, but beyond the higher costs you've outlined tied to the geopolitical events, are there any potential offsets we should maybe think about, like additional CapEx to support the quarters that are tight, or is the shift to mix largely just an unmitigated positive for gross margins?

Sam Franklin: Yes. Look, I'd probably break that down, Matt, into sort of the near-term horizon and longer term, and we'll obviously get to some of the longer term when we get together on Thursday. But the expectation from a CapEx point of view at the beginning of this year was that we'd be in the ZIP code of 15% to 20% net CapEx to revenue. That already contemplated some of the increasing demand that we've been seeing come through on the likes of high performant SiGe, photonis, FDX. And so we'd already sized our overall CapEx envelope at the start of this year to really factor some of that in.

Now I would say one other point, which I mentioned earlier from a margin point of view, we have seen strong cost synergies come through with the acquisition and continued integration of AMS, that is proving to be a good business, not just accretive from a margin point of view, but growing our offering to customers within the photonics space. And so you're right to call out some of that cost headwind, but we've generally felt that we can see some offsets from that associated with the mix dynamics. And look, our target for the full year is still to exit 2026 at or above a 30% gross margin.

Matthew Bryson: Congrats on the strong results.

Timothy Breen: Thank you, Matt. Give me a second. I'll can add on the CapEx side. I think as you're seeing, our principles of where we think our CapEx are very much linked to where we see strong conviction in customer demand in those corridors that are oversubscribed today. But you should think about that CapEx, the ROI is very strong because we're adding tools to existing footprints and able to bring capacity on very quickly. And by the way, we do that in sites where we have in place strong government support frameworks and especially for these technologies, there's a lot of government support to build out capacity in the U.S. and around the world.

And so even though that CapEx comes through at a significantly lower kind of net fall through once you consider those government partnerships as well.

Operator: And our final question for today comes from the line of Ross Seymore from Deutsche Bank.

Ross Seymore: One near-term one then one longer term. On the near-term side of things, you guys were helpful for the full year on the revenues by segment. And I think you mentioned that the home IoT is likely to rebound in the second quarter. Any other kind of even directional guidance for the subsegments between the manufacturing and the technology services by end market for 2Q?

Sam Franklin: Yes. Look, I'd probably, Ross, draw your attention to start with in terms of how we're seeing this evolution from revenue composition and a diversification point of view because that kind of becomes a little bit of the layup as to how we see the opportunities, not just in the second quarter, but as we go through the year, from an end market point of view. And look, it's an important point to note that in the first quarter, the contribution of revenue from all of the end markets and technology services outside of smart mobile devices that came in at the highest level that we've had as a company, roughly 2/3 of our total revenue.

So that gradual mix shift just from a technology point of view, but from an end market point of view has been several years in the making, and we're really seeing that come through in the first quarter, and our expectation is that continues through the rest of this year. So as it relates to the specific quarter-on-quarter dynamics, I'd say that we do continue to expect good year-over-year momentum as it relates to comms infra data center, automotive. As I said, IoT should reverse some of those dynamics we saw in Q1.

And then the general offset that, which we touched on in the prepared remarks in the Q&A is really around smart mobile devices, where -- from 90 days ago, we're seeing more kind of high single-digit decline year-over-year. But putting it all together, we think that those declines are offset by the momentum we're seeing in the other end markets.

Ross Seymore: Perfect. And I guess my one longer-term question is a perfect segue from what you just said on smart mobile devices. I realize what that end market is doing, and it's nice to see you guys outperforming it relatively speaking. How do you see the performance of GlobalFoundries in that business relative to the market over time? Can you increase that delta so you outperformed by more? Or is it just is what it is, and that might be a kind of year-over-year headwind more structurally going forward as an overall segment?

Timothy Breen: Yes. And Ross, we'll share significantly more on that this firstly because obviously, the objective is that is to go a bit further out in time. I think you're seeing some tailwinds when it comes to content growth within the handset. You're also seeing new form factors that bring content. Let me give an example, like smart glasses. I'm a personal strong believer that, that form factor we'll see the light of day and will grow and will become a common place. And that requires new technologies, things like back lane for display micro LEDs things that we've been working on with partners for some time. So I think there are some tailwinds.

We'll say more about the overall end market on Thursday. But I think it's too early to count out that category as a drive for the future.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Eric Chow for any further remarks.

Eric Chow: Great. Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks, everyone, for joining today. We're very excited to see you at our Investor Day on May 7. We will also be at JPMorgan Conference on May 19 and the Cowen conference on May 27. Thanks, everyone, for joining. I appreciate your interest in the company.

Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.