Penguin Solutions (PENG) Earnings Transcript

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DATE

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, at 4:30 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer — Mark Adams
• Chief Financial Officer — Nate Olmstead

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RISKS

• The wind-down of the Penguin Edge business, combined with the planned absence of hyperscale hardware sales, is expected to create a 14 percentage point headwind to total company net sales growth in fiscal 2026.
• Non-GAAP gross margin guidance of 29.5%, plus or minus one percentage point, for fiscal 2026 reflects a forecasted decline from the prior year, driven by the exit of the higher-margin Penguin Edge business and growth in lower-margin sectors such as memory and AI hardware.
• Inventory levels and days of inventory both rose significantly, with inventory totaling $255 million and days of inventory reaching 51, up from $151 million and 36 days in the prior year, due to materials positioned for early Q1 fiscal 2026 shipments.
• Fourth quarter cash flows used by operating activities rose to $70 million, compared to $12 million in the prior year quarter, mainly due to investments in inventory ahead of Q1 fiscal 2026 shipments.

TAKEAWAYS

• Total Revenue-- $338 million for the fourth quarter, representing 9% year-over-year growth.
• Non-GAAP Gross Margin-- Non-GAAP gross margin was 30.9% for Q4 fiscal 2025, unchanged from the prior year but down 0.8 percentage points sequentially.
• Non-GAAP Operating Income-- Non-GAAP operating income reached $39 million in Q4 fiscal 2025, a 16% year-over-year increase, with a non-GAAP operating margin of 11.6%, up 0.8 percentage points.
• Non-GAAP Diluted EPS-- $0.43 for the fourth quarter, up 18% year over year; full-year non-GAAP EPS was $1.90, rising 53% from the prior year.
• Full-Year Revenue-- $1.37 billion in total company net sales for fiscal 2025 (ended Aug. 31, 2025), a 17% year-over-year increase and in line with April guidance.
• Advanced Computing Segment-- Q4 fiscal 2025 net sales of $138 million, representing 41% of total net sales and down 7% year over year; full-year fiscal 2025 advanced computing sales were $648 million, up 17%.
• HPC AI Non-Hyperscale Growth-- Within advanced computing, the non-hyperscale HPC AI business grew 75% year over year for fiscal 2025.
• Integrated Memory Segment-- Q4 fiscal 2025 net sales of $132 million, representing 39% of total net sales and up 38% year over year; full-year fiscal 2025 memory net sales totaled $464 million, up 30%.
• Optimized LED Segment-- Q4 net sales for optimized LED were $67 million, or 20% of total company net sales, up 2% year over year; for the full year, LED delivered $256 million of net sales, or 19% of total company net sales, down 1% versus the prior year.
• Services Revenue-- $63 million in Q4 fiscal 2025, up 5% year over year.
• Adjusted EBITDA-- Adjusted EBITDA was $43 million in Q4 fiscal 2025, up 11% year over year, and $187 million for fiscal 2025, up 28%.
• Cash, Cash Equivalents, and Short-term Investments-- $454 million at the end of Q4 fiscal 2025, down $282 million sequentially following term loan repayment.
• Net Debt-- $16 million net debt at fiscal 2025 year-end, after refinancing that reduced gross debt by $200 million.
• Stock Repurchase Authorization-- Increased by $75 million to a total remaining authorization of $112 million, as announced in Q4 fiscal 2025.
• Fiscal 2026 Net Sales Guidance-- Growth of 6%, plus or minus 10%, year over year for fiscal 2026 non-GAAP net sales, with notable impacts from Penguin Edge and hyperscale hardware declines.
• Advanced Computing Guidance Impact-- CFO Olmstead stated, "that 14 points all sits within advanced computing, which means it's about 28 to 30% advanced computing revenue from fiscal 2025."
• Integrated Memory Guidance-- Fiscal 2026 net sales are expected to grow 10% to 20% year over year.
• Optimized LED Guidance-- Fiscal 2026 net sales (non-GAAP) are expected to be between -5% and +5% year over year.
• Non-GAAP Gross Margin Guidance-- Full-year non-GAAP gross margin forecast for fiscal 2026 is 29.5%, plus or minus one percentage point, primarily lower due to shifts in business mix.
• Full-Year Non-GAAP Diluted EPS Guidance-- $2, plus or minus $0.25, non-GAAP, for fiscal 2026, with the diluted share count expected at approximately 55 million shares.
• Long-Term Non-GAAP Tax Rate-- Lowered to a 22% non-GAAP tax rate for fiscal 2026 and the long-term outlook, due to redomiciliation and changes in geographic earnings mix.
• Strategic Partnerships-- Management expanded partnerships with Nvidia, CDW, Insight Enterprises, and Dell Technologies to drive new growth avenues.
• Customer Diversification-- Management cited successful addition of several new enterprise, federal, and global customers, with early-stage AI deployments secured.
• International AI Project-- CEO Adams highlighted deployment and ongoing management of a large SK Telecom GPU-as-a-Service HPC system for South Korea's sovereign AI initiative.
• Full Exit from Penguin Edge-- Management committed to winding down the Penguin Edge business, with segment sales expected to "essentially cease at the end of this calendar year," according to management's outlook.
• No Hyperscale Hardware Guidance-- Management assumed "zero hardware sales in fiscal 2026 to hyperscale customers" in its net sales outlook.

SUMMARY

Penguin Solutions(NASDAQ:PENG) reported 17% full-year revenue growth, 190 basis points of non-GAAP operating margin expansion, and a 53% increase in non-GAAP diluted EPS for fiscal 2025 (ended Aug. 31, 2025). Management announced the planned exit from the Penguin Edge business and the absence of hyperscale hardware sales, creating a 14 percentage point headwind to projected net sales growth for fiscal 2026 and contributing to a lower non-GAAP gross margin outlook of 29.5%. CFO Olmstead emphasized that non-hyperscale HPC AI revenues rose 75% for fiscal 2025 and stated, "most of the guidance range mostly reflects opportunity in that HPC AI space for non hyperscale customers." CEO Adams underscored multiple new AI customer wins and the company's expanded enterprise pipeline, including an international AI deployment with SK Telecom and South Korea’s government. Management attributed sequential and year-over-year increases in inventories and negative cash flow from operations to positioning for shipments early in Q1 fiscal 2026, and highlighted lower leverage and an expanded stock repurchase program following recent refinancing actions.

• CEO Adams said, we are actively investing in forming strategic partnerships that we believe can expand our reach and open new long-term growth opportunities.
• CFO Olmstead confirmed full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance of "$2, plus or minus $0.25," for fiscal 2026 and a forecasted reduction in the non-GAAP tax rate to 22% for fiscal 2026.
• Management projects higher sales volumes in the second half of fiscal 2026, citing greater visibility into pipeline conversion for AI compute opportunities.
• The company is continuing to invest in next-generation memory products—including Compute ExpressLink (CXL) and optical memory appliance (OMA)—with the first OMA shipments targeted for late 2026 to early 2027.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Compute ExpressLink (CXL): An open industry standard for high-speed, low-latency CPU-to-device and CPU-to-memory interconnect, aimed at improving memory utilization and bandwidth in advanced computing applications.
• Optical Memory Appliance (OMA): A hardware platform leveraging optical technology to enable higher memory bandwidth and capacity, particularly in AI and high-performance computing (HPC) clusters.
• High-Performance Computing (HPC): The use of supercomputers and parallel processing techniques for solving complex computational problems, especially in scientific and engineering domains.
• Hyperscale Customer: A very large-scale company, typically a leading global cloud or internet service provider, that requires tremendous computing infrastructure to support rapidly scaling workloads.
• Non-Hyperscale: Refers to enterprise, government, or institutional customers not classified as the largest public cloud providers, representing a diversified client base for infrastructure solutions.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Mark Adams, Chief Executive Officer, and Nate Olmstead, Chief Financial Officer. You can find the accompanying slide presentation and press release for this call on the Investor Relations section of our website. We encourage you to go to the site throughout the quarter for the most current information on the company. I would also like to remind everyone to read the note on the use of forward-looking statements that is included in the press release and the earnings call presentation. Please note that during this conference call, the company will make projections and forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements about the company's growth trajectory and financial outlook, business plans and strategy, and existing and potential collaborations.

Forward-looking statements are based on current beliefs and assumptions and are not guarantees of future performance, and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, the risks and uncertainties reflected in the press release and the earnings call presentation filed today as well as in the company's most recent annual and quarterly report. The forward-looking statements are only as of the date they are made and except as required by applicable law, we assume no responsibility to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. We will also discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation from as a substitute for, superior to our GAAP results.

We encourage you to consider all measures when analyzing our performance. A reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's press release and accompanying slide presentation. And with that, let me turn the call over to Mark Adams, CEO. Mark?

Mark Adams: Thank you, Suzanne. Welcome to Penguin Solutions' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings call. Today, I'll walk through both our Q4 and full-year results, providing updates on each of our business segments and sharing how we are positioning the company for long-term growth. Fiscal 2025 was a transformational year for Penguin Solutions as we continue to evolve from a holding company structure into a leading provider of AI infrastructure solutions. In addition to delivering 17% top-line growth, a 190 basis points of non-GAAP operating margin expansion, and a 53% increase in non-GAAP diluted EPS, we made meaningful progress positioning the company for long-term success.

Key accomplishments included expanding our advanced computing pipeline and adding several new customers to the Penguin Solutions franchise. Supporting our ongoing customer diversification strategy, deploying our first international AI infrastructure implementation, developing and expanding key partnerships with NVIDIA, CDW, Insight, and Dell. Rebranding the company as Penguin Solutions. Moving our corporate domicile to the United States, closing a $200 million investment from SK Telecom, refinancing our debt to strengthen the balance sheet, and strengthening our leadership team with the appointments of Tony Fry, formerly of NetApp, as our SVP and Chief Revenue Officer, and Ted Gillick, formerly of Dell, as our SVP of Strategy and Corporate Development.

I'll now turn to our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year. We delivered solid fourth-quarter financial results. Revenue for Q4 was $338 million, an increase of 9% year over year. Non-GAAP gross margin was 30.9%. Non-GAAP operating income reached $39 million, a 16% increase year over year with non-GAAP operating margin at 11.6%, up 80 basis points. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.43, up 18% from the prior year. Our fourth quarter performance rounded out a strong fiscal year. For the full year, revenue grew 17% year over year. Non-GAAP gross margin remained steady at 31%, and non-GAAP operating margin improved by 190 basis points to 12.2%.

Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $1.90, an increase of 53% compared to fiscal 2024. We continue to see signs of broad AI adoption, particularly within verticals such as financial services, energy, federal, and education. As we've noted previously, our expectation has been that the AI pilot systems deployed across industries in 2023 and 2024 could lay the groundwork for broader production scale rollouts in the years ahead. We're now beginning to see indications of this transition, with early-stage corporate build-outs taking shape. Notably, Penguin Solutions was recently selected by a tier-one US financial institution to manage an AI infrastructure deployment. The institution's first on-premise GenAI data center implementation.

We believe this win reflects the growing confidence enterprises have in our ability to deliver scalable, high-performance infrastructure and we look forward to formalizing this engagement in due course. At Penguin Solutions, we support customers in navigating the complexity of AI adoption by combining deep technical expertise advanced cluster implementations with a comprehensive portfolio of hardware, software, and managed services. We collaborate with customers to design, deploy, and operate these environments with a focus on time to revenue performance, availability, and long-term reliability. Our solutions are primarily targeted at deployments serving Fortune 500 enterprises, educational institutions, government entities, and systems integrators, and neo cloud service providers.

While our go-to-market strategy has traditionally focused on direct customer relationships, we are actively investing in forming strategic partnerships that we believe can expand our reach and open new long-term growth opportunities. Our foundation is built on over twenty-five years of experience in large-scale deployments, beginning with our roots in high-performance computing, or HPC. We believe this expertise gives us an advantage in integrating complex AI building blocks such as power and cooling systems, compute, memory, storage, networking. This foundation enables us to deliver the kind of infrastructure that today's enterprise customers need to drive innovation scale efficiently, and stay ahead of the curve in enterprise AI. I'd like to provide additional detail on our business segments.

Advanced computing revenue for 2025 was $138 million, up 4% sequentially from Q3. For the full fiscal year, advanced computing revenue reached $148 million, reflecting 17% year-over-year growth. Within advanced computing, our HPC AI revenue from non-hyperscalers increased 75% year over year, highlighting progress on our customer diversification strategy. Since our last call, we completed the design, build, and deployment of HAN. One of South Korea's largest and most powerful GPU as a service systems, developed by SK Telecom for the Korea Ministry of Science and Technology as a key element in the country's sovereign AI initiative. We now manage the system on an ongoing basis.

We also launched several new AI projects, including with a Fortune Global 500 multinational consumer products company, a Fortune 100 federal systems integrator, and a Fortune 50 financial institution. This last project is in addition to the win from a different tier-one financial institution that I mentioned earlier. We're also pleased with the growth in our new customer opportunities. In fiscal 2025, pipeline, bookings, and revenue from new customers grew nicely, reflecting the ongoing demand for our expertise and solutions. As we've noted on prior calls, revenue in this segment can be lumpy, with large deployments in one period not necessarily recurring the next.

That said, we remain encouraged by the level of customer interest in our solutions, and the long-term growth potential of these relationships. Our core competency in successfully managing large-scale AI infrastructure build-outs helps customers accelerate their time to a live production environment. We believe our customers value our technology-agnostic approach which allows us to create a unique overall solution that meets their specific AI infrastructure needs. Beyond our hardware building blocks, we continue to invest in our Penguin Ice Clusterware software. A platform that helps customers manage infrastructure assets. Post-deployment, our Penguin solution services organization can provide ongoing operational support to sustain the high performance and high availability of their systems.

Our integrated memory segment which sells products under the Smart Modular brand, delivered $132 million in revenue for the fourth quarter $464 million in revenue for the full fiscal year. Representing a 30% increase compared to fiscal 2024. This growth was driven by strong demand from customers in computing, networking, and telecommunications. We are optimistic about our memory demand in the near term as large enterprises seek out higher performance and reliability memory solutions to support both traditional use cases and increasingly complex AI applications. In line with this demand, we are seeing promising early interest in our Compute ExpressLink or CXL family of products.

As customer qualification efforts continue to expand, we believe we are well-positioned for growth as adoption of CXL scales. In memory, our R&D investments are focused on next-generation technologies. One key area is memory pooling. Which has the potential to significantly expand bandwidth and improve memory capacities in GPU environments. We continue to invest in the design of smarts optical memory appliance or OMA With initial product shipments targeted for late calendar 2026, to early 2027. This new offering will be designed to enable memory scaling of the industry's fastest high bandwidth memory or HBM which is today a limiting factor in AI cluster performance and efficiency.

With a strong backlog, ongoing technology transitions such as DDR4 to DDR5, and a roadmap that includes innovations like CXL and OMA, we believe memory will be an important growth engine for Penguin Solutions. Optimized LED under the Cree LED brand. Cree's fourth quarter revenue came in at $67 million, an increase of 9% compared to the prior quarter. Full-year revenue was $256 million roughly flat year over year reflecting a combination of secular and macroeconomic headwinds. In the LED market. Despite these challenges, we achieved a 250 basis point improvement in non-GAAP operating margin in fiscal year 2025.

As we move into fiscal 2026, Pria is focused on capturing market share operating efficiently, protecting our intellectual property, and driving operating profit growth. Fiscal 2025 was a defining year for Penguin Solutions. We took meaningful steps to transform the company and sharpen our focus on becoming a leading provider of AI infrastructure solutions. We believe that these efforts have strengthened our foundation and positioned us well for long-term success. Looking ahead to fiscal 2026, we believe we can sustain our growth momentum with the following strategic priorities. Growing our enterprise customer base AI infrastructure deployments, driving innovation across our hardware software, and services portfolio, to create sustainable differentiation.

Expanding our strategic partnerships to enhance Penguin's go-to-market efforts, operating with discipline, efficiency to position the company for long-term success, and further strengthening our balance sheet to support investments in scale and new capabilities. In setting these priorities, our intention was to align with the long-term interest of our shareholders customers, employees. In closing, I want to thank our global team for their dedication, and performance in FY 2025. We delivered top-line growth improved profitability, strengthened our balance sheet, and expanded the Penguin Solutions customer base. We believe we are well-positioned for future success FY '26 and beyond. Let me stop and hand it over to Nate for a detailed review of 2025 financials. And their outlook for FY 2026.

Nate Olmstead: Thanks, Mark. I will focus my remarks on our non-GAAP results, which are reconciled to GAAP in our earnings release tables and in the investor materials available on our website. Now let me turn to our fourth quarter and full year results. The quarter, total Penguin Solutions net sales were $338 million, up 9% year over year. Non-GAAP gross margin came in at 30.9%, which was flat year over year. Non-GAAP operating margin was 11.6%, up 0.8 percentage points versus last year, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.43, up 18% from last year.

For the full fiscal year 2025, total company net sales were $1.37 billion, up 17% year over year and aligned with the outlook we initially provided in April and better than the outlook we provided at the start of the fiscal year. Full-year non-GAAP EPS was $1.90, up 53% versus the prior year and better than the increased outlook we provided last quarter. In the fourth quarter, our overall services net sales totaled $63 million, up 5% versus the prior year. Product net sales were $275 million in the quarter, up 9% versus the prior year. Net sales by business segment were as follows.

In advanced computing, Q4 net sales were $138 million which was 41% of our total net sales and down 7% year over year. For the full year, advanced computing delivered $648 million of net sales or 47% of total company net sales and up 17% year over year. Our strong full-year advanced computing growth was driven by our HPC and AI business, which grew 34%. Notably, within our HPC AI business, product and services sales to our non-hyperscale customers were up 75% for the full fiscal year. For integrated memory, in Q4, net sales were $132 million which was 39% of total company net sales and up 38% year over year.

For the full year, memory net sales totaled $464 million or 34% of total net sales and up 30% year over year. And in optimized LED, net sales were $67 million or 20% of total company net sales and up 2% year over year. For the full year, LED delivered $256 million of net sales or 19% of total company and down 1% versus the prior year. Non-GAAP gross margin for Penguin Solutions in the fourth quarter was 30.9% flat year over year with margin pressure from a higher mix of integrated memory net sales offset by improved margin rate across all three business segments.

Non-GAAP gross margin was down 0.8 percentage points sequentially, with lower margin rates in advanced computing partially offset by higher margin rates in both integrated memory and optimized LED. For the full fiscal year, gross margins were 31%, in line with our prior outlook and down 0.9 percentage points year over year due to growth in our memory and AI hardware businesses, which have lower than company average margins, but are addressing fast-growing market opportunities. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $65 million, up 5% year over year and up 1% sequentially.

Operating expenses as a percentage of net sales were down both year over year and quarter over quarter driven by higher net sales volumes and modest spending increases. For the full fiscal year, non-GAAP operating expenses were $257 million, up 1% year over year and down 2.9 percentage points as a percent of net sales due primarily to strong top-line growth and disciplined expense management. Q4 non-GAAP operating income was $39 million, up 16% year over year and up 2% versus last quarter. The combination of net sales growth and operating expense management translated into a 0.8 percentage point increase in operating margin versus Q4 last year.

This is our fifth consecutive quarter of non-GAAP operating margin expansion year over year. For the full fiscal year, non-GAAP operating income was $168 million, up 39% year over year and non-GAAP operating margin improved 1.9 percentage points to 12.2% of net sales. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter were $0.43, up 18% versus the prior year. For the full year, non-GAAP diluted EPS was $1.90, up 53% versus the prior year and 5¢ better than the high end of our outlook provided in July. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $43 million, up 11% year over year and for the full year was $187 million, up 28% versus the prior year.

Turning to balance sheet highlights. For working capital, our net accounts receivable totaled $308 million compared to $252 million a year ago, with the increase driven by higher sales volumes and variations in sales linearity across the quarters. Days sales outstanding came in at fifty-one days, up from forty-nine days in the prior year quarter. Inventory totaled $255 million at the end of the fourth quarter, up from $151 million at the end of last year due to higher sales volumes and order linearity. Days of inventory was fifty-one days, up from thirty-six days a year ago, primarily due to the positioning of inventory for shipment early in Q1 FY '26.

Accounts payable were $267 million at the end of the quarter, up from $182 million a year ago due primarily to higher sales volumes and the timing of purchases and payments. Days payable outstanding was fifty-four days compared to forty-three days last year due to the timing of purchases and payments. Our cash conversion cycle was forty-nine days, an increase of seven days compared to last year due to slower inventory turns resulting from materials positioned for shipment early next quarter. Consistent with past practice, days sales outstanding, days payables outstanding, and inventory days are calculated on a gross sales and gross cost of goods sold basis. Which were $550 million and $453 million respectively, in the fourth quarter.

As a reminder, the difference between gross and net sales is primarily related to our memory businesses logistics services, which are accounted for on an agent basis, meaning that we only recognize the net profit on logistics services as net sales. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaled $454 million at the end of the fourth quarter. Up $64 million from the prior year and down $282 million sequentially. The year-over-year fluctuation was due primarily to proceeds from the issuance of preferred shares cash generated by the business. The sequential decline was primarily driven by the repayment of our term loan. And the repayment of our term loan in Q4.

Fourth quarter cash flows used by operating activities from continuing operations totaled $70 million compared to $12 million used by operating activities from continuing operations in the prior year quarter. The increased use of cash in the quarter versus last year was due primarily to investments in inventory to support shipments at the start of Q1 FY 2026. For the full fiscal year 2025, operating cash flow from continuing operations was $113 million, an increase of 8% versus the prior fiscal year. We spent approximately $296,000 to repurchase 16,000 shares in the fourth quarter under our stock repurchase program.

Since our initial stock repurchase authorization in April 2022, we have used a total of $113 million to repurchase 6.6 million shares through 2025. Earlier today, we announced that our board has authorized a $75 million increase in our stock repurchase authorization bringing our total remaining authorization to $112 million. As mentioned in our Q3 earnings call, in Q4, we completed a refinancing of our existing credit facility. We paid off the $300 million remaining on our term loan using $200 million of cash from our balance sheet, $100 million of borrowings from a new revolving credit facility.

This refinancing transaction significantly reduced our leverage, extended our debt maturities, and is expected to lower our debt service costs as we reduce our total gross debt by $200 million. Our net debt at the end of the fiscal year was $16 million. For those of you tracking capital expenditures and depreciation, capital expenditures $3 million in the fourth quarter, and $9 million for the full year. Depreciation was $5 million for the quarter, and $21 million for the full year. And now turning to our outlook. Coming off a strong fiscal year 2025, we believe that our strategy and execution capabilities position us well for long-term profitable growth.

For fiscal 2026, we are initiating an outlook for net sales to grow 6% plus or minus 10% versus the prior year. There are a few important assumptions to keep in mind with regard to this outlook.

First, as previously disclosed in our annual and quarterly filings, we are in the process of winding down our Penguin Edge business, which is part of our advanced computing segment. We expect sales from these Penguin Edge products to essentially cease at the end of this calendar year and have included this assumption in our outlook. While this will result in the phase-out of some profitable business, Penguin Edge has become a smaller portion of our overall portfolio and in the long term, we do not expect a material impact on our growth trajectory. Second, we believe that we will continue to diversify our customer sales mix, and we have assumed zero hardware sales in FY '26 to hyperscale customers.

As we don't currently have line of sight to such business in this fiscal year. To be clear, and importantly, we do expect our hyperscale services business to continue in FY '26 and those sales are included in our outlook. The combined effect of these two assumptions in our FY '26 outlook is a 14 percentage point unfavorable year-over-year impact on our total company net sales growth. Last, you may notice that the net sales growth range in our outlook is wider than last year.

While we entered this year with a stronger pipeline of AI compute opportunities than last year, we expect our sales volumes to be higher in the second half of the year than in the first half. You'll recall that in FY '25, the opposite was true as we had a strong first half of hardware shipments to our large hyperscale customer. That shipment timing led to approximately 52% of our total company sales coming in the 2025. By comparison, for fiscal '26, the midpoint of our outlook assumes approximately 46% of our sales come in the 15 and plus 15% year over year. This outlook includes the Penguin Edge and Hyperscale hardware sales impact mentioned earlier.

For memory, we expect net sales to grow between 10-20% year over year. For LED, we expect net sales change between minus 5% and plus 5% year over year. Our non-GAAP gross margin outlook for the full year is 29.5%, plus or minus one percentage point. The decline in gross margin outlook versus FY '25 is primarily due to the wind-down of the high-margin Penguin Edge business as well as growth in lower-margin businesses such as memory and AI hardware. New AI customer wins typically begin with upfront hardware net sales at lower margin during the implementation phase, and we aim to follow those engagements with higher-margin recurring software and services sales.

As a result, we anticipate some near-term gross margin pressure as we engage in initial infrastructure deployments but we view these upfront investments as an important foundation for durable high-margin growth over time. For non-GAAP operating expenses, we expect a full-year total of $255 million plus or minus $10 million. For non-GAAP full-year diluted earnings per share, we expect $2 plus or minus $0.25. Our FY '26 non-GAAP diluted share count is expected to be approximately 55 million shares. Due primarily to changes in the geographic mix of our earnings and benefits from our recently completed US redomiciliation, we are lowering our FY '26 and long-term non-GAAP tax rate to 22%, which reflects currently available information.

We expect to use this normalized non-GAAP tax rate throughout, FY '26 and beyond, the long-term non-GAAP tax rate may be subject to changes for a variety of reasons, including the rapidly evolving global and US tax environment, significant changes in our geographic earnings mix, or changes to our strategy or business operations. Our outlook for fiscal year 2026 is based on the current environment, which contemplates, among other things, the global macroeconomic environment and ongoing supply chain constraints. Especially as they relate to our advanced computing and optimized LED businesses. This includes extended lead times for certain components that are incorporated into our overall solutions, impacting how quickly we can ramp existing and new customer projects.

Overall, we believe our focused execution disciplined expense management, and balance sheet strength provide a strong foundation for sustained profitable growth. We expect these qualities to support our continued progress as we pursue opportunities to enhance long-term shareholder value. Please refer to the non-GAAP financial information section and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures tables in our earnings release and the investor materials on our website for further details. With that, operator, we are ready for Q and A.

Operator: Great. Thank you so much. We will now begin the question and session. On your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to remove that As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before Alright. Our first question comes from the line of Kevin Cassidy. With Rosenblatt. Securities. Your line is now open.

Kevin Cassidy: Thank you. Thanks for letting me ask a question. And congratulations on the strong fiscal year 2025. Thank you for the information about your hyperscale customer. But can you say, is there a project over And would you say that, you know, going forward, we should just take them out of the forecast, or should you know, are you still active in potential more hardware deployments?

Mark Adams: Kevin, thanks for the question. We don't look at it like the project's over. We have ongoing services and with the customer. And still are in discussions for future development opportunities It's just that in our outlook for the year fiscal 2026, we don't anticipate any nonservice revenue or systems hardware revenue in the year. I'll let Nate comment.

Nate Olmstead: Yeah. That's right. I think, you know, last year, we entered the year with some visibility to some hardware shipments from the hyperscalers. And it just wasn't the case this year. So coming into this year, we thought it made sense to just make the assumption that we wouldn't have any hardware revenue from hyperscalers this year. But as Mark said, we're continue to have very good relationship with them and the services revenues continue.

Kevin Cassidy: Okay. Great. Thanks. And you know, ex also exciting news with the SK Telecom and landing one client with that. And there's there was a lot of news last week about SK Telecom even being awarded or some business with OpenAI in Berea. Is there any participation availability for Penguin in that relationship?

Mark Adams: That's something we can't address or talk to today, Kevin. What I would say is the referenced implementation in our prerecorded material was a great opportunity for the company. It's our first international deployment of significant scale. And we went from order to go live in just about two months. And it was a significant validation of our capabilities, our rapid deployment framework. And, you know, we really value the relationship with SK Telecom. But, we're not able to comment on any future opportunities at this time.

Nate Olmstead: Kevin, I'll just add to that. You know, last quarter, you saw in our filings when we when we initially booked the deal, it was for hardware. Since then, we've also added services as well. So it's it's great to see that. Part of that transaction and the relationship with SK. Being strong.

Mark Adams: Okay. And maybe just to add on to that a little bit. In the filing, I think it was $34.6 million. Is that will that be recognized over the next couple of quarters, or when does that get recognized? So we recognize that portion in Q4, but we'll have more in FY '26.

Kevin Cassidy: Okay. Great. I'll get back in the queue. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you for your questions. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Michael Ng: Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the question. I wanted to just ask about the Penguin Edge and combined impact with hardware and revenue for next year. I think you mentioned a 14 percentage point headwind to revenue growth to the total company growth company When I do the math, think that implies 28 percentage point impact to advanced computing Is that the right way to think about it? How would you think about advanced computing growth next year? Kind of ex these items and could you just remind us why it kind of strategically makes sense to exit the 10% of the segment, but we'd love to hear your general thoughts there. Thank you.

Mark Adams: Thanks for the question, Michael. I'm going to answer the last part of your question first and then hand it over to Nate. To talk about the financial impact in your question on impact of the other elements. It really wasn't a decision that we could stay or not stay. We had, from a we had two clients in our Penguin Edge business that made up a significant part of that business. And as we announced in our filings, we were going through some last time buys, and we're winding down the business. And over time, were just getting better visibility towards the end of our fiscal 2025 to what the impact would be in '26.

So it wasn't really a choice of should we stay in it strategically or not. It was too large customers that were winding down on a prior generation of a product and then they were not renewing.

Nate Olmstead: Yeah. Hey, Mike. And so I think on your math, you're roughly right. You know, advancing computing is about 47%. Or 50% of total company sales. So that 14 points all sits within advanced computing, which means it's about 28 to 30% advanced computing revenue from FY 2025.

Michael Ng: Great. Thank you. And if I could just follow up, please. So if the underlying you know, is growing closer to the 30 to 45, could you just maybe talk about the key areas of momentum for advanced computing that you're seeing for next year? Is it just you know, more of those customer wins that you talked about you know, converting into revenue and maybe just kind of expand a little bit more in terms of the wideness of the range. I know you had some comments earlier during the call. Thank you.

Mark Adams: Sure. Let me let me take a shot at that one. When you think about our model and we've talked about customer diversification for some time. We've done a pretty good job at the at the launching of going to market resources into a broader set of customers. And those target enterprise customers, plus, you know, federal opportunities and those in the education sector, When you combine that into a target set of customers for us, we engage with these customers. We bring them the value proposition we have. We try to identify funded projects that would allow us to utilize our capabilities in helping accelerate our customers AI implementation.

Once we get that opportunity to bid on a proposal, or a request for proposal, We deliver that, and that starts the beginning of a pipeline opportunity. And our pipeline is growing. Now pipeline is not a booking. As we all know, but the pipeline opportunities are growing as our just the number of customers that we're engaged with And so as you talk about the offset to some of these headwinds, we're continuing to add customers to the franchise and some really notable global brands. In their respective industries. And we're excited about the direction we're heading. We're looking to convert those pipeline opportunities into bookings and eventually revenue.

Nate Olmstead: I mean, I think just take building on what Mark said, I think, you know, it's part of our diversification of our customer base. Is what you're seeing reflected in the outlook. And as I mentioned in my prepared remarks too, 75% growth in the ... ahh ... AI business from non-hyperscalers. I think it's just a really positive data point for us from FY '25, and, you know, we think that we can continue to grow at a very fast clip those customers. In FY '26.

Michael Ng: Great. Thank You, Mark. Thank you, Nate.

Mark Adams: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you for your questions. Our next question comes from the line of Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Samik Chatterjee: Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple, and maybe I'll sort of give you both at the same time. You did mention better second half compared to the first half. And maybe just if you can dive into what's giving you that visibility with some your customers, and is it really more coming from advanced computing visibility, or is it more memory driven And then just specific to memory, when you are guiding to 10 to 20% growth, just, curious how much of that is maybe somewhat pricing driven given sort of what's happened with the underlying commodities here?

Or and what are the margin implications of what you're seeing on the commodity front if you didn't do your sort of overall systems on the memory side? Thank you.

Nate Olmstead: Sure. Let me take the memory one first. So, you're right. Obviously, prices are starting to increase, and that affects a portion of our portfolio. It's not all of it. Important to keep in mind that we generally operate in memory on a value add basis. Right? And so as memory prices increase, we can generally pass along those price increases, but we don't get additional margin from that. So you would see an increase in revenue but you would see a decrease in margin rate or really no increase in profit dollars. Because we operate on this value add basis.

I would say in terms of the outlook, listen, I think I put a little bit of price increase probably into the high end of the range for memory, but not a lot. We'll see how things play out there. I think currently, we feel good about the back that we've been able to build from memory going into Q1. And, you know, we have pretty good visibility, I'd say, into the first half on memory. Mentioned the second half being stronger than the first half. In our outlook, and mostly that reflects the AI business. You know, Mark mentioned about the strength of the pipeline. And, you know, we haven't converted those into bookings yet.

And so the outlook really reflects that, where we have a strong pipeline of some good opportunities. Some of which we expect to convert into bookings, but they will be booked later in the first half into the second half and expect revenue in the second half of the year.

Samik Chatterjee: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you for your questions. Our next question comes from the line of Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Ananda Baruah: Yes. Hey, thanks a lot. Yeah. Thanks, guys, for taking the question. I have a couple if I could. So just going back on the apples to apples, revenue growth, you know, sort of when you back out. Back out the meta hardware, and the Penguin solutions or the sorry. The edge business. Yep. So is that to say yeah. Thanks. So if it's a 14% impact, on year over year growth, is that to say that Apple's to add like, on a pro forma basis, you'd really be guiding 20% growth. Yeah. The way I think about an or am I totally off?

Nate Olmstead: Well, let me let me explain it to you this way and see if it makes sense. 14% of our revenue in FY 2025 came from the Penguin Edge business and the hardware from hyperscalers. Right? So having included that revenue in the FY 2026 outlook, So, yes, if you wanted to remove that from FY 2025, and have apples to apples with FY 2026, you would have a calculated growth rate around 20%.

Ananda Baruah: It would be. I got it. And that's helpful. That's helpful, Nate. Thanks. And then this Nate, the 75% growth from non hyperscale, eight p HPC AI. Can you give us a sense I mean, I guess, we guess you're giving us the bits we can back into that. I guess. Is right with the overall with the overall guide. Is that something we can back into? Or do we need you know, sort of more part You're talking about how much revenue that generates?

Nate Olmstead: I guess. Or what's the I think the comment was yeah, I think the comment was So the comment was if you look at it, it's confusing.

Mark Adams: Yep.

Nate Olmstead: If look at advanced computing or not, you know, there's the AI business, HPC AI business. There's Stratus, and there's Penguin Edge. Focusing on the HPC AI business, which is obviously our strategic focus. Within that, you have sort of hyperscale business and non hyperscale business. And the non hyperscale portion of that grew 75% in fiscal year 2025.

And I'm just trying to trying to zero in really on that on that strategic focus area for us.

Ananda Baruah: Totally. I guess what I'm what I'm wondering is, given the guidance frame which you've given us for the different businesses, for fiscal twenty six. Are we able to back into what's implied for that growth in fiscal '26? Or is that something that we need more information? To figure out?

Mark Adams: I think 2025. Yeah. I think we're we're basically discussing a trend that, happened in '25, and we're suggesting is that with that focus, we're trying to leverage that and build off that. To deliver on the plan for '26. I don't think there's an implied association with what happened in the report for the '25 outcome in the twenties in the '26 number.

Nate Olmstead: Yeah. And now that you can, I think I think you can kinda get to a range with data that we've given you, but the other thing I would just add to that is, you know, most of the guidance range mostly reflects opportunity in that HPC AI space for non hyperscale customers? So that's that's where we're seeing that pipeline build. Right? And so it's a wide range on a on advanced computing because of that. We have visibility to opportunities, but not visibility yet to the bookings. And so I left the range the range wider for advanced computing, than I did on LED or memory, which you see at tighter ranges on the revenue outlook.

Ananda Baruah: And Mark, actually, Nate and Mark, like, Nate to sort of to the to the variance that's left in the bookings that you that drove the describing the wider range. What would be, I guess, like, what aspect of HPC ad business I guess maybe what end markets or aspects you know, would be the biggest at parts of the market. That would sort of maybe drive some of the upside?

Mark Adams: Sure. Like, I guess, is it. Yeah. What I would say, let me just I'll try to answer that. The opportunities that we're seeing the most near-term customer engagements are in the financial sector, the federal sector, which includes both government and federal integrators, There are some education opportunities that are interesting, but also sovereign cloud opportunities. Those are the four that I think can drive us to a successful FY '26.

Ananda Baruah: That's super helpful. I got it.

Michael Ng: Now, by the way, this is to fully answer. In addition to that, those markets I think we mentioned in our script, we've had a new CRO star, Tony Fry, who came over from NetApp And Tony's already brought on team members to target health care and other verticals organizationally. To further enhance that. But in terms of '26 outlook, our pipeline reflects the sectors I talked about being, again, financial education federal integrators, and government direct. As well as Sovereign Cloud.

Ananda Baruah: Thanks, Mark. Thanks, guys.

Nate Olmstead: Thanks, Ananda.

Operator: Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from the line of Rustam Kanga with Citizens. Your line is now open.

Rustam Kanga: Hey, guys. Congrats on the strong close to the year and great to hear about Penguin's pivotal role in South Korean sovereign AI plans. I just had one follow-up Nate, it was great to hear you kinda call out that you were able to add the services revenue in such a short period of time after the initial hardware deal? And know, I think you guys have historically talked about hardware as a as a, you know, you lead with the hardware and then services follow on.

I'm just wondering is it too large of a leap to make to say that in this instance, you know, you were able to sort of accelerate the time to services from an initial hardware implementation, Is that something that you're seeing, or is that just a one off? Thanks.

Mark Adams: Well, I think, it's we gotta be careful to and be clear here. The overall solution and as it was common on in our in our recorded scripts, The overall solution contemplates hardware systems, software, and services. And the timing of when the revenue gets recognized is different. And so the more hardware-oriented deals we take revenue credit on, that's normally upfront in any deployment. The software and services bookings and revenue is typically ratified. So if we get a booking that doesn't mean that we get the revenue upfront, as you know. The revenue happens over the lifetime of a of an agreement.

And so in this case, like any case, once we once we install or deploy a system's into a data center environment for example, the hardware gets booked right away, relatively speaking. And we start the clock on software and services that are contracted to, and that happens over time. So this wasn't that different than other deployments. It's just that we got both agreements you know, within a certain time frame right after the other.

Nate Olmstead: I think also it's you know, listen. Each deal can be different than the than the than the next. But when we have a large hardware deployments, the value proposition for our services tends to be higher, and so we do tend to see good services attached to those large deployments. And that was the case with SK Telecom.

Rustam Kanga: Appreciate you walking through the nuances. That's great. Thanks.

Operator: Great. Thank you so much for your question. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Colicci with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Matt Colicci: Hey, guys. This is Matt Colicci over at Needham. Thanks for taking our questions. There's obviously no shortage of conversation around AI. And lately, we've heard quite a bit of discourse around how capex and revenue seem to be rotating between just a few companies. And then this week, we've had reports out about AMD getting involved and chip shipments with OpenAI, and another report today questioning the profitability of Oracle's GPU strategy. Just curious what your thoughts are on how build-outs are and will progress in this space, and what you're seeing in the broader market?

Mark Adams: Well, implied in our earlier comments, Matt, is that we still think we're in the relatively early innings of broad enterprise rollouts. If I if I separate your questions to AMD, OpenAI in that announcement. I think that just goes to show that capital dollars out building on future large language model training environments as well as inferencing implementations. Again, it's it's still on the front end or early end of the market opportunity there. Buoyed by enterprise adoption of AI. Which is different than the earlier stages that were primarily large hyperscalers making, significant investments in their training.

We're staying we're seeing we're starting to see big pickup in terms of enterprise engagements and the pipeline growing there. Now relative to your reference to the GPU gross margin announcement, What I guess I would say when you have a lot of people selling the same thing, it tends to get commoditized pretty quickly. And I'm not commenting on today's announcement only, but if you look at the gross margin of the hardware only companies, that are the large OEMs in the business, their gross margins have been significantly impacted over time. And so that model is not in my opinion, is not for everybody for sure.

I think it's a it's it will get commoditized if you're selling the same basic underlying, solution or chip in this case. So I think there are two different issues you raised. I definitely think the market is on the early stage of deployments, around the enterprise opportunity. And I think the announcement with AMD and OpenAI that was in the press this week Certainly, another, you know, good example of the CapEx spending. Today's announcement that you're referring to on the gross margin piece is something that we see when there's large hardware only type, environments and competitors. That makes sense. That makes sense. Very, very helpful there. Thank you.

Matt Colicci: And then as the memory market seems to be heating up here and good commentary from you guys there and guidance there. What how are you differentiating your offering there? Or a certain extent, is it just a matter of who has availability to ship the stuff?

Mark Adams: Well and, Matt, I know you're relatively new to our story from Needham, and thanks again for jumping on the call today. Our business is largely is differentiation because we buy our supply of memory silicon from the likes of SK Hymex and others. And we deliver a value add in terms of a or subsystem level solution, and we get margin above the industry gross margin for the commodity itself being the memory chip.

And so we differentiate ourselves both through design and firmware and software and performance reliability. And so those categories are elements of our differentiation allow us to charge more than the industry charges for the memory itself. And so it's it's largely a differentiation model we're not differentiation differentiating, on the design wins, we're not gonna get a lot of

Matt Colicci: Understood. Thanks so much.

Mark Adams: You got it.

Operator: Thank you for your questions, Matt. There are no additional questions waiting at this time. I would now like to pass the conference back to Mark Adams, CEO, for closing remarks.

Mark Adams: Thank you, operator. Our Q4 and full year results validate that we are on the right path. Helping our value customers solve the complexity of AI infrastructure. Thank you all for joining today's call.

Operator: That concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation, and enjoy the rest of your day.

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