Tower Semiconductor Ltd

NASDAQ:TSEM

Earnings Call Analysis

Company Stabilizes Amid Pullback, Plans Optimized Operations

The company reported $352 million in Q4 revenue, with fab utilizations ranging from 40%-75%. Despite industry pullback, they maintained good margins, credited to a 4% increase in average selling price from value-add products. They're optimizing operations, phasing out certain 6-inch products, and moving a high-value tech to their 8-inch operations. Their diverse product mix spans various markets, such as sensors, RF, and automotive, contributing differently to revenue. A rebound in RF mobile is driving high utilization for their RF SOI capacity, with additional capacity expected to come online through 2025. For Q1 2024, revenue is guided at $325 million, plus or minus 5%, with anticipation of sequential growth throughout the year.

Post-Earthquake Recovery and Facility Update

The company has overcome an earthquake near its Hokuriku facilities, ensuring employee safety and quickly restoring full operation levels. Despite tool damage and interrupted operations, the company's dedication has aligned production with the annual plan.

2023 Financial Performance in a Challenging Market

The industry faced a slowdown in 2023, resulting in $1.42 billion annual revenue for the company, compared to the previous year's $1.68 billion. Nevertheless, they increased their average selling price per layer by 4%. The company's fab utilization varied from 40% to 75% across different facilities, with an emphasis on maintaining value-add products.

Strategic Shifts and Product Optimization

Strategic moves include consolidating 6-inch operations into 8-inch facilities and phasing out lower-margin 6-inch products. This realignment focuses on higher-value technologies and efficient production, exemplified by the move to produce several hundred 200-mm wafers for an advanced CT machine within a 200-mm factory.

Rebound and Expansion in the RF Mobile Market

The company is experiencing a rebound in the mobile market, with high utilization and additional planned capacity for RF SOI. By collaborating with ST and leveraging their infrastructure, they're set to improve margins by 2025 and prototype new technologies that promise to drive handset refreshes and benefit from upcoming standards like 6G.

Strong Positioning in RF Infrastructure

The company holds a strong position in supplying AI infrastructure growth through strategic partnerships in silicon photonics. Their collaboration with industry leaders reaches beyond current production to new technologies, such as 1.6T systems, and expands applications to automotive and commercial LiDAR. Additionally, the company is well-positioned to benefit from the growing satellite broadband market through its products and newly announced partnership with Renesas.

Advancements in Power Performance and Sensor Technology

The company's technological solutions are gaining traction with Tier 1 companies and are running at high volume in its Japan facility. Significant progress in developing high-resolution imaging technologies and global shutter road maps for machine vision and medical imaging sectors mark Tower's ambition in advanced sensor technologies.

Guidance for 2024 Amidst Notable Growth Strategy

Tower suggests a Q1 2024 revenue guidance of $325 million, with expected quarter-over-quarter growth throughout the year. This confidence stems from a combination of financial strength, technical offerings, and strategic customer partnerships that position Tower for strategic value-add growth. The focus will be on market expansion, particularly in RF infrastructure with silicon photonics and a complete power offering that caters to robust growth opportunities.

Financial Highlights and Strategic Investments

Q4 2023 yielded a net profit of $54 million on revenues of $352 million. The full year exhibited substantial non-operational profit from the contract termination fee received from Intel, skewing year-over-year comparisons. The balance sheet remains strong, enabling substantial investments in strategic CapEx, such as expanding the Agrate facility and investing in Intel's New Mexico fab. The company targets a revenue of $2.66 billion at 85% utilization, which could result in a $500 million annual net profit.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tower Semiconductor Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded February 14, 2024. Joining us today are Mr. Russell Ellwanger, Tower's CEO; and Mr. Oren Shirazi, CFO. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Noit Levy, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Ms. Levy, please go ahead.

[Noit Levi-Karoubi, executive]

Thank you, and welcome to Tower Financial Results Conference Call for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some statements made during this call may be forward-looking and are subject to uncertainties and risk factors that could cause actual results to be different from those currently expected. These uncertainties and risk factors are fully disclosed in our Form 20-F and 6-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as filings with the Israeli Securities Authority. They are also available on our website. Tower assumes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements. Please note that the fourth quarter and full year of 2023 financial results has been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The financial tables and data in today's earnings release and in this earnings call also include certain adjusted financial information that may be considered non-GAAP financial measures under Regulation G and related reporting requirements as established with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial tables include a full explanation of these measures and the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the GAAP financial measures. Please note, we have a supporting slide deck that complements today's conference call. This presentation is accessible on our company's website and is also integrated into today's webcast for your convenience. Now I'd like to turn the call to our CEO, Mr. Russell Ellwanger. Russell, please go ahead.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

Thank you, Noit. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining our call today. During today's call, we will discuss our financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023 and share our strategic direction and expected growth outlook for 2024. To begin, as is known, on January 1 of this year, there was an earthquake in Japan in a surrounding area to our facilities at Hokuriku. We are grateful that no employee suffered any physical harm through this event. Due to state-of-the-art building practices, we did not suffer facility structural damage. We did suffer tools damage and scrap of some percentage of work in progress at both factories as well as succession of operations .Our dedicated and most capable employees have recovered both factories to full operation with start levels currently to the level set in the annual plan. 2023 was marked by an industry-wide slowdown, resulting in an annual revenue of $1.42 billion. As we transition into 2024, there are clear indicators of market recovery. We are realizing renewed demand across several of our key market segments. We will give more color on this as we continue the call. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $352 million. At this revenue level, fab utilizations were Fab 1 6-inch was about 60%. Fab 2, 8-inch was about 75%. Fab 3 remained at about 40%. Fab 5, 8 inch was about 40%, Fab 7, 12-inch was about 70%. Fab9, 8-inch, was also about 70%. As a validation of our value-add products and next-generation customer-aligned road maps, we not only maintained our blended average selling price per layer, but saw an increase of about 4% in 2023 over 2022. This was not due to price increases but rather due to value-add products resulting in a richer mix and is a reason for maintaining good margins in a period of industry pullback. Anticipating shifting market dynamics and customer demand, we are actively optimizing our operations through a consolidation of our 6-inch activities into our 8-inch operations in Migdal HaEmek Israel. As part of this optimization process, we will phase out certain lower-margin products in our 6-inch offerings, aligning to our long-term strategic goals and financial model, while supporting certain activities to the Fab 2 8 inch. For example, a high-value technology serving a next-generation advanced computer tomography, CT scan machine into our 200-millimeter factory, ensuring continuity and even greater efficiency for this technology, which will require several hundreds of 200-millimeter wafers for CT machine. A breakdown of our 2023 revenue per end market is as follows, shown in Slide 3 in the supporting slide deck. Sensors and displays represented 20%, RF mobile business, 22%; RF infrastructure business, 10%; Power IC business, 24%, discrete, 15% and mixed signal CMOS, 7%, and there's about 2% of miscellaneous for this period. Revenue breaked out by end market as follows: please reference Slide 4. Infrastructure revenue, which is predominantly RF optical with a certain amount of advanced discrete was 11%. Wireless was approximately 22%, automotive, 17%, which we serve with power ICs, with discrete, with imagers and with RF radar. Consumer in which we consider compute, power management for general accessories and home appliances and home use security cameras, was approximately 13%. And Industrial, about 7%, image sensors for high-end photography and medical applications, about 7%; aerospace and defense, about 4%, and there is about 2% of mixed-signal CMOS where we do not have exact end market knowledge. Additionally, about 14% of power device revenue for which we do not have granularity on the exact end market application, which serve multiple of the above-mentioned segments such as automotive, industrial, wireless and consumer. And lastly, an additional 3% divided among the end markets that we've spoken, but of which we cannot granulize. Specific on RF mobile, we are experiencing a rebound in the mobile market, running presently at high utilization for both 200-millimeter and 300-millimeter RF SOI capacity with additional capacity coming online throughout 2024 and 2025. Our capacity planning is and will continue to pay off. Having met our initial targets at the Agrate Italy facility, having qualified and shipped our first products with a planned ramp throughout this year, supported by an already executed double-digit number of production tape-outs to meet the increasing demand shown in our customers' forecast. Wisely, partnering with ST and hence, leveraging the ST build-out, we reduced the impact on margins of the new manufacturing activity. But as is in any new capacity ramp from scratch, there is an initial headwind on margins. This should be fully absorbed and become accretive margins within the first half of 2025, the planned completion of the present phase capacity ramp in the Agrate facility. Looking forward, we are prototyping new 200-millimeter and 300-millimeter technologies. Please see Slide 5, with best in industry efficiency as measured by our NCF and output power as measured by breakdown voltage, winning new customers and design slots whilst beginning conversations with customers about 60 requirements. Prior to the adoption of new wireless standards such as 6G, we see additional AI and mobile ARVR application, having the potential to drive a stronger handset refresh market over the next several years to further benefit our RF business. RF infrastructure, we are strongly positioned supplying AI infrastructure growth in part by our previously announced silicon photonics partnership with InnoLight, the global #1 optical module provider and Marvell, a Tier 1 optical connectivity provider as well as with a total of over 50 additional customers currently using our silicon photonics foundry platform. In addition to our current silicon photonics production supplying 400G and 800G, AI, data center and datacom infrastructure, we are investing with our lead customers and new technologies, enabling more efficient 1.6T systems through innovation in both material and architectures, including options for co-packaged optics. We continue to expand the silicon photonics application space by working with leaders in automotive and commercial LiDAR to enable silicon photonics-based future frequency modulated continuous wave that can create solid-state cost-effective LiDAR solutions with better resolution capability than possible with other technologies. Please see Slide 6. Leveraging our incumbent position, we continue to work with our previously announced silicon germanium customers, including MACOM, Broadcom and Semtech and many others to develop next-generation optical components for pluggable transceivers active cables and for LPOs, linear programmable optics to not only support faster data transmission rates for single wavelength, but also to reduce latency and power consumption for data centers supporting generative AI and machine learning applications. Finally, we just recently announced our partnership with Renesas, a global conglomerate and market leader in supporting the rapidly growing satellite broadband market. Today, our silicon germanium product can go into beamformer terrestrial and tenant terminals where each user terminal requires more than 250 silicon germanium transceivers. For reference, please see Slide 7 and 8. Longer term, the industry is exploring ways to incorporate satellite reception into handsets, which could create an even larger market opportunity, including a change of cadence, a next-generation mobile platform refresh adoption. With multiple fab qualifications for silicon germanium, we are well positioned to support the capacity needed for these expanding markets. Looking at our Power business, while 200-millimeter power is undergoing some level of inventory correction, driven in part by automotive, we continue to see very strong demand for our 300-millimeter power management BCD platform, where our advanced power performance and increased digital processing creates the ideal match for the smaller sizes needed for power, audio, battery management ICs with a broad feature catalog, pick and choose modular platform. Please see Slide 9. In addition, the advanced power performance makes it an excellent technology solution to deliver high power to computing processors and AI accelerators within data centers. This platform fits many power mixed-signal applications and is therefore being chosen by Tier 1 companies for a wide range of applications, which are now running at high volume in our Rose factory in Japan. We have recently delivered successful first silicon from our most advanced and feature-rich 65-nanometer BCD platform to a Tier 1 customer and are working together, bringing initial products to market on this most advanced platform. Regarding progress in Albuquerque, we have initial full flow material completed while making meaningful progress in qualifying the technology to enable further ramp of both existing customers as well as new high-volume power and mixed signal customers, and will begin customer prototyping in the second half of 2024 towards full qualification and production in 2025 and obviously beyond. Moving to sensors and displays. Our machine vision market is expected to get back to high demand levels in 2024. This rebound is mainly driven by the Chinese machine vision camera market, where our customers and their customers are gaining significant share in factory automation and embedded robotic camera systems. For this market, we are completing the development of a small pixel global shutter road map, scalable to various resolutions from mainstream of 5 megapixel to 12 megapixel sensors to very high-resolution sensors of up to 325 megapixel, enabled by our advanced proprietary stitching technology, printing sensors larger than the lithography frame size. Please see Slide 10. In the medical market, we have developed a new 12-inch 65-nanometer lead flow as a comparative answer to non-CMOS nonsilicon Ig, Indian gallium zinc oxide thin-film transistor technology. Please reference Slide 11. This enables customers to retain the high performance of CMOS imagers, namely low-dose x-ray sensitivity and high frame rate at cost levels now competitive to [indiscernible]. As mentioned, as a key technology being moved from 6-inch to 8-inch, we are producing new photon counting sensors for next-generation CT scanner, a new market for us with a silicon SAM of about $300 million. In this market, we partnered with an absolute leader to provide a unique technology, which allows scanning at lower doses with much higher resolution due to energy separation. In addition, we are expanding our high-end photography portfolio, capitalizing on our leadership position and learnings in the cinematography and broadcasting market, where in one instance, the end customer is an iconic industry leader. Revenue guidance for the first quarter of 2024 is $325 million, plus/minus 5%, in line with industry seasonality and in spite of the impact of the earthquake in Japan. Looking throughout 2024, we target notable quarter-over-quarter sequential growth. We left 2023 with multiple powerful doors having been opened, catalyzed through the unrealized merger deal. Tower is in the best position in its history, based upon financial strength, technical offerings, operational performance tied with growing operational capacity and backed by strategic customer partnerships, the strength of which cannot be overstated. We enter 2024 with strong focus on strategic value-add growth addressing both immediate and longer-term objectives. What is the strategic value-add growth based upon? Market expansion with growing capacity and innovation, both based upon strategic partnerships. For market expansion, we continue intensifying our efforts in several markets where we see substantial demand and opportunities. RF infrastructure with very strong focus on silicon photonics and a complete power offering are 2 areas poised for robust growth that we are well positioned to serve. Innovation in order to meet the evolving needs of customers and to outpace the competition, innovation remains at the core of our value proposition. In this call, we've discussed several areas of best in industry figures of merit. Strategic partnership. We believe in the supernal power of collaboration. We are expanding our partnerships with existing customers, leaders in their respective markets as well as new customers with ideas and excitement, pausing them to become leaders as well. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call to our CFO, Mr. Oren Shirazi. Oren, please?

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

Hello, everyone. We released today our quarterly and annual financial results. For Q4 '23, we reported revenues of $352 million, gross profit of $84 million and net profit of $54 million. For the full year, we reported revenues of $1.42 billion, gross profit of $354 million and net profit of $518 million, which included $290 million net profit impact of the merger contract termination fee received from Intel. I will start my review by analyzing the P&L highlights, followed by our balance sheet and CapEx plans. Revenue for Q4 was $352 million as compared to $358 million in the prior quarter, and gross profit for Q4 was $84 million as compared to $87 million in prior quarter. Operating profit for Q4 was $45 million, and net profit was $54 million or $0.49 basic and $0.48 diluted earnings per share. Operating and net profit for the third quarter included the net impact of merger contract termination fee we received from Intel in the amount of $314 million net of associated costs included in operating profit and an amount of $290 million net of tax included in net profit based on a 7.5% preferred income tax rate as applicable to us in Israel. Including the termination fees, operating profit for the third quarter were $362 million and net profit was $342 million or $3.10 basic and $3.07 diluted earnings per share. For the full year, revenue was $1.42 billion as compared to $168 billion in 2022, and gross profit was $354 million as compared to $466 million in '22. Operating profit for the full year was $547 million and included $314 million net from the Intel merger contract termination fee compared to operating profit of $312 million in '22. Net profit for the full year was $518 million or $4.70 basis and $4.66 diluted earnings per share and included $290 million net due to the payment printer of a merger contract termination fee compared to net profit of $265 million or $2.42 basic and $2.39 diluted earnings per share in 2022. Moving to the balance sheet and future CapEx and cash plans. Our balance sheet as of the end of December 2023 totaled $2 million -- $2.9 billion, primarily comprised of $1.2 billion of fixed assets, mostly machinery and equipment and $1.7 billion of current assets. Current assets ratio, reflecting the multipay by which current assets are larger than short-term liabilities is very strong by a multiple of 6.2x as compared to 3.9x as of the end of '22. Shareholders' equity increased by 29% as compared to its amount at the end of '22 and reached a total of $2.4 billion. Our strong financial position enables us to plan the following investments in strategic opportunities that are aligned to our vision. Approximately $500 million of total aggregate cash was allocated to make investments in equipment and other CapEx items required for the 12-inch factory in Agrate, Italy, following the previously announced ST Micron partnership agreement signed in 2021. We already invested $100 million in '22, an additional $200 million in '23 and the remaining $200 million will be paid during '24 and '25. In addition, as previously announced, we will invest up to $300 million to buy equipment and other CapEx items that we will own in Intel fab in New Mexico, enabling Tower to ramp up these Fed capacity and capabilities for our customers. In addition, we expect our maintenance CapEx baseline level to remain as previously announced, at about $200 million per annum. And lastly, we expect to invest additional cash to acquire more capability CapEx tools and other assets to expand our future technology offering, including increasing our 5G and SIFOR capacity and technological offering to enhance our flexibility to support our customers from our different sites and change our product mix to result in a richer mix from a margin perspective. All the above is aligned to our business strategy as well as our financial model, as presented by the company in our prior call in November, which financial model outlined our revenue target of $2.66 billion per annum that could be achieved by loading our existing factories at 85% utilization and that should result in $500 million annual net profit based on the specified assumptions that were outlined. Now I'd like to turn the call back to our CEO, Mr. Russell Ellwanger.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

Yes. Maybe we would open up to questions. And from there, we can go ahead and I'll give a closing.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Cody Acree of Benchmark.

[David Williams, analyst]

This is actually David Williams on for Cody this morning. Thanks for all the great color as usual. But what is it big in a bit on the impact on the revenue side? And maybe even on the margins from the transition or the shutting down of that 6-inch and and moving to 8-inch. It seems like there should be some nice margin tailwinds there, but also just kind of what that revenue impact could look like over the next couple of quarters as you put that over.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

Oren?

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

Yes. It will not impact the margins at all this Fab 1 because anyway, that's the oldest fab we had built 40 years ago in 1984. It was very nice, highly utilized. But in recent year or 2, it's about at a breakeven point. So it did not really contribute to the margin. So there will not be any deficiency to the margin. So it will be pretty much breakeven. The revenues we didn't disclose publicly, but it's immaterial really to the total amount, and it's already baked into our financial model that we presented in previous time.

[David Williams, analyst]

Okay. Great. It seems like that might have been margin dilutive and you might get a tailwind from that. And in addition to the economics of moving that some of that 6-inch to 8-inch. Is that fair to say?

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

It is. But over the next few quarters, it actually -- we've been well aligned with customers and getting prepared for this. And if anything, revenues will be higher through some pull-ins of end-of-life activities. So over the next 2, 3 quarters, if anything, it's going to be beneficial, not negative, but on a small level.

[David Williams, analyst]

Okay. All right. Great. And then maybe just on the rebound that you're talking about, what is maybe -- can you point to this giving you that confidence? Is it really the near-term order rates that are forecasting customers? Or are you getting better longer-term visibility of the customer demand?

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

That's a combination of both. I had stated that we're targeting notable quarter-over-quarter growth throughout the year. If we look at our forecasts on most all of the core businesses that we have, there's good, strong double-digit growth in the year, but really driven off of the second half, not very much off of the first half. With the exception right now, the RF SOI is very strong. And as well, we have certain mixed signal and power also going into mobile platforms that's very high at the moment. So that's 2 areas of really increase in forecast.I had mentioned that, I think fortuitous, but based upon good planning, when we started the activity in Italy, the Agrate facility, we had, by plan going to be shipping our first Qual wafers in the fourth quarter of 2023. And that is right now an area where we really do need capacity. And as the capacity is coming online quarter-over-quarter, it's fully spoken for throughout this year and by forecast for the 2025 as well when it hits the full capacity of this ramp phase in the second quarter of 2025. So in the area of the RFSOI and some other mobile applications, we have seen a very big pickup in orders. In the area of silicon germanium, which in silicon photonics, we see very strong forecasts for which we've not yet received the POs, but really in Q2, Q3, Q4. And that's very real. If I look at Sifor, year-over-year growth in silicon photonics by forecast is multiple hundreds of percent. And then our 300-millimeter power is also a very strong growth year-over-year as well as the 300-millimeter mixed signal, which is serving some of these mobile applications that I had said. And if I look again at our core CIS activities, I had mentioned the industrial sensors, and that's doubling from present run rate in Q3, Q4. Now I say, these are customer forecast or not yet POs, but our customers are pretty good about forecasting. And we are fairly good about what we put in the system. So across many of our segments, we see very strong growth coming in this year, but back in the second half. And that's what gets us very exciting is that either with new technologies that are now gaining new market shares for us and for our customers or a rebound in the market itself, both have the same accretive benefit on revenue and ultimately on margins. The one area that we do have weakness now, we don't see an increase coming quickly is that of our 200-millimeter power management, predominantly being done in our factory in [indiscernible] Japan. And I think anyone that looked at the TI release knows that there -- I think TI has a pretty good bellwether of across-the-board power management. That market is weak right now. And a big portion of what was being served in that market for us was automotive and particular battery management, and that has pulled back. So that's the one area that I don't see yet by customer forecast a rebound. But most everything else that we're doing, I think, looks very good, at least in the second half and some already having started in the first half. Hopefully, that answers your question. I tried to make it very complete.

[David Williams, analyst]

No, very, very great color. And then maybe just one last one for Oren. Just kind of given the trough that we're seeing in revenue next quarter, how should we think about the gross margin and just given the mix in that revenue base there and all the moving pieces. And I appreciate the help here.

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

I believe you should assume that the baseline of Q4 actual, which resulted in, I believe, 24% gross profit is the base line. And for Q1 and now since the revenue guidance is indicating about $25 million, $27 million lower revenue. So then you should apply the 50% incremental model, whether we go up or down.

[Operator]

The next question is from Richard Shannon of Craig-Hallum.

[Richard Shannon, analyst]

I'm actually going to follow up on the gross margin question. I appreciate the thoughts here Oren as to how to think about the first quarter here. But I think I heard from one of you two about some sort of impact here from the SC Micro Rate fab ramping up here. I wondered what that effect might be because it doesn't seem like you're necessarily seeing it here in the first quarter. How do we think about that? And then as the lower-margin products in Fab 1 roll off, does that give us any thought process for a higher ceiling of gross margins in your model? I think I heard you say no, Oren, but I just want to make sure.

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

Yes. I think my previous answer that to assume 50% incremental on the revenue increase or decrease is considering all that, meaning, let's say, currently the gross profit was whatever it was, $84 million. And if one assumes $25 million revenue reduction, so it should be attributed to 50% of that gross profit instead of $84 million, 50% of $24 million, so it's $72 million. Yes, what Russell mentioned is true about the fact that we will start since we start, like, as I said, from scratch, the gate factory, it will -- until it will reach the breakeven point, which Russell indicated in a year from now may influence us a little bit on the margins. We didn't specify the amount. It could be some lower margins, but it will be offset by other activities and rechurmix. So I think it's already in the numbers that is specified before.

[Richard Shannon, analyst]

Okay. Fair enough. Russell, kind of going on your press release and your comments here on the call about notable growth after this first quarter here, and you're clearance saying more in the second half here. You're trying to put numbers together and think about the total year, I think that's a fair question to ask here is do you think you're going to grow your total revenues in '24 to '23. It seems like you'd be right in that range. But I just want to get a sense of how do we interpret notable.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

I would expect that we grow our revenue, '24 over '23. Yes.

[Richard Shannon, analyst]

Okay. Excellent. That's great to hear. Let's see, maybe a couple of questions.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

I'll actually be very disappointed if we don't.

[Richard Shannon, analyst]

Okay. Excellent. That's great to hear. A quick question on the data center area here. It sounds like you're seeing some pickup here. But I want to get a sense of kind of exposure in some of the growth drivers here. You talked about higher end datacom and 800 gig. I'm wondering if you -- there's any way that you know where you can quantify how much of your business is 800 gig. And then you've talked about today and in the past about linear plug-able optic LTO. Is that -- you think that's going to be a sizable part of the market down the road?

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

What I think is necessarily that critical. Yes, I believe that there's major advantages in it that should be implemented. How big it will get, I don't know. I think it could, and it does have benefits that certainly would be beneficial for us in the offerings that we give. But I'm not a market analyst. I think that's really more of a question for you than me. But it's -- from the technical benefit, yes, I think that there's strong benefit there. As far as what you said about data center though, I did want to state what I have not yet seen other than in silicon photonics, we have not yet seen a big uptick in POs. We've seen an uptick in forecast. And there's sometimes a difference between the 2, but I'm confident in the forecast and that we'll be picking up in the second, third and fourth quarter as far as POs and ultimately shipments. For what we're doing in the -- with our customers and what's being done in the end customer, I was delightfully surprised in the executive meeting with a big integrator in the second half of '23 to hear how much of their present volume is going into 800G. And it was certainly much higher than the standard analyst reports for saying was 800G. So -- and that's, I think, very obviously driven by AI. So how much is now going into 800G, I would -- again, that's an overall market analyst statement not mine. But quite a bit of what we're shipping will be going into that. I believe most all of what we're doing in SIFOR is added at the 800G and obviously targeting to $1.6 million.

[Richard Shannon, analyst]

Okay. That's helpful. Two quick questions and I will jump on the line. You talked very positively about silicon photonics, and I think it's a very very small piece of your revenues within the company much less in data center. How should we think about this over the next couple few years? Big picture about how much of this becomes part of your data center business. I don't know if you want to give a percentage of that business and how fast that can grow? Or just any context of this area that you seem very excited about.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

Yes. So... I see by all of our own plans and by customer alignment that SIFOR will be a predominant portion of data center market and elsewhere as well, but data center definitely and realize that we have both passive and active cycle. The activity that we have going on, on integrated laser is pretty exceptional, and we are the only pure-play foundry that has that, and those are very, very high dollar, high-value systems as well as what we're doing now with SIFOR that, for example, we're shipping to Intelie. But I wouldn't say that it's an insignificant amount of our revenue presently. If I look at what we're having in our forecast for '24, the SIFOR revenue is not insignificant.

[Richard Shannon, analyst]

Okay. Russell, my last question, and I'll jump on the line here. Obviously, you have a very strong balance sheet here, and I think you're probably going to be free cash flow positive to some degree this year. How do we think about your plan for the cash here as it continues to grow?

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

So first, I don't forecast we will be positive free cash flow because -- and we did not -- and we were not also in Q4 -- in Q3 because of the big CapEx that we have for Agrate and also for Inter they are exceeding our cash operations.

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

Not for Intel for the Albuquerque capacity.

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

The [indiscernible] capacity, our tools, our equipment that will be in the Intel fare in [indiscernible]. So this $300 million and the Agrate remaining of $200 million plus the other CapEx that we have run rate of every year of $200 million. This exceeds the cash flow operation. So I don't think -- so it will not be positive. But still, it's good that we have the cash on the balance sheet, so we can fund it, all that. And like I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we still have to pay -- we didn't pay at anything to work the $300 million for 11 for Interferon for our tools there and we still have $200 million for Agrate and we have $200 million for maintenance. And in addition to that, like I mentioned, we are planning to invest to increase the capacity of fan 5.5G in our various sites. So we have flexibility.

[Operator]

The next question is from Lisa Thompson of Zacks Investment Research.

[Lisa Thompson, analyst]

And I just have a quick question a little bit about the finances. Oren, so given your plans for this year, what would be the CapEx expenditure by quarter? And then given that and your nice $1.2 billion in cash, what should we expect for interest income?

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

Okay. Interest income, you can see in the balance sheet, the cash amounts we have, you can assume that we -- and on the other hand, we have $200 million of loans. The loans are currently 2%. Our investments are currently -- I mean, we enjoyed this year also from rates of between 6% to 7% interest on deposits and yields on marketable securities. So we did really good. For -- currently, the interest rates are a little bit lower in the world. So instead of getting excellent 6.5% to 7% that we got last year, maybe you should assume 5% or 5.5%. And of course, not on the entire cash amount because some of that is for working capital required all the time. But for majority of our cash, we invested in deposits. And up to -- and about $150 million in marketable securities. So I would assume 5.5% of that. For CapEx. So I actually said in the beginning, we have a $200 million for maintenance CapEx, the sustainable level. So it's $50 million a quarter, right? On top of that, you should assume, I mean, I said $200 million remaining for Agrate, that's in the coming 1.5 years. So if you want, you can divide it by 6 to reach the quarterly CapEx for Agrate Fab. And for the February 11, it's the tools for that fab, I assume the $300 million will be paid in the coming 2, 2.5 years for everybody can make his assumptions. Overall, for sure, the CapEx should be more than $100 million per quarter between $100 million to $150 million.

[Lisa Thompson, analyst]

Okay. Great. And I'll just take that off the cash balance No, because you're going to generate a little bit in operating income, right?

[Oren Shirazi, executive]

Yes. But like I answered before to deliver the cash flow operations is typically lower than $100 million to $150 million a quarter, right?

[Lisa Thompson, analyst]

Right, right. So definitely negative cash flow, obviously.

[Operator]

This concludes the question-and-answer session. Mr. Ellwanger, would you like to make your concluding statement?

[Russell Ellwanger, executive]

Thank you. Thank you for joining the call. Really is a very exciting time for the company. As stated in the press release itself, it is probably the best position Tower has ever been in, in its history in all aspects in our financial strength in our technology offering and in our operational capability and that then all underpinned by the customer partnerships. It's an amazing place to be. We look forward to tracking our progress over the year and reporting on it. In the upcoming short period on February 29, Dr. Racanelli, our President, will host one-on-one meetings at the Susquehanna Technology Conference in New York. On March 19, we will be hosting an investor conference in Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at the TASE building itself. Overall, I appreciate your continued support and confidence. Our team is eager and ready to seize opportunities ahead and to drive value for our customers and stakeholders. Thank you, and look forward to follow-up conversational.

[Operator]

Thank you. This concludes Tower Semiconductor's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.