"Tower Semiconductor" Q2 2026 Earnings Call - Silicon Photonics Surge and Japan Expansion Fuel Record Margins and $3.6B 2028 Target

Conference Operator: Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tower Semiconductor second quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 11 on your telephone keypad. You will hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Noit Levi. Please go ahead.

Noit Levi, Investor Relations, Tower Semiconductor: Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to Tower Semiconductor second quarter of 2026 financial results conference call. With us today are Mr. Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note that certain statements made during today’s call may be forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks are detailed in our SEC filings, Form 20-F and 6-K, as well as filings with the Israel Securities Authority, all available on our website. Tower assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Our second quarter 2026 results are prepared in accordance with US GAAP. Some data presented may include non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC Regulation G. Reconciliation to GAAP figures and full explanations are provided in today’s press release and financial tables.

For your reference, a supporting slide deck is available on our website and integrated into this webcast. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Russell Ellwanger. Russell?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. I’m truly excited to share with you the status, progress, and future outlook potentials for Tower. The second quarter was quite significant, setting substantial company records across all key metrics. These results continue to validate the growing value of our technology portfolio and the powerful operating leverage embedded in our business model. Our revenue is on a fervent growth trajectory with an accelerated flow-through into earnings. Second quarter revenue was $460 million, with a particularly positive profitability, 30% gross margin, 20% operating margin, and 20% net margin, all being company records excluding non-recurring accounting items, and representing respectively 58%, 55%, and 55% quarter-over-quarter contribution from the increased revenue.

These results stand as the first step of continual margin expansion we expect over the next years, driven by market-leading customer partnerships, which dictate a very rich product mix backed by strong operational execution. Looking ahead, we guide the third quarter of 2026 mid-range revenue to be $520 million, representing an annualized revenue run rate of above $2 billion. We began the year stating that Tower will have a very strong second half as the previously announced capacity investments become qualified and converted into shipments. Beginning the second half of 2026 with a $2 billion run rate turns the page into multiple new exciting chapters for the company. The strength of our customer demand, our growing partnerships, our proven execution capabilities, and the strategic investments that we have and still continue to announce provide a powerful catalyst to accelerate our short, mid, and long-term growth.

Due to direct and growing customer demand, representing the scale of the market opportunity, and more importantly, our ability to capture it, we have updated our 2028 model to be $3.6 billion in revenues, $1.63 billion in gross profit, or 45% gross profit margin, and $1.2 billion in net profit, or 33% net profit margin. Please see slides four and five. Very important, the profitability gains we delivered in the second quarter are not a one-time achievement, but rather just an initial step towards profitability expansion and cash generation as represented in our updated 2028 model. Equally important, as can be seen in slides four and five, this growth is accompanied by even greater efficiency. Today, we operate at about a 10 percentage point difference between gross margin and operating margin, a highly efficient structure for a company investing strongly in future growth.

As revenue expands, we drive greater efficiency with operating expenses as a percentage of revenue lowering to approximately 7%, 30% lower than current levels. This improvement is not the result of limiting investment in R&D. To the exact opposite. The model includes an increase of R&D investment by over 40% against present levels. Rather, this improvement reflects the enhanced efficiency achieved through our support functions as we grow scale. Speed and execution are one of the primary differentiators for high-tech success. We must continue to invest in R&D. As well, there must be a focus to streamline context, all of the SG&A functions. We are doing this, and likely with numbers that rival or exceed the otherwise best in the industry.

Efficiency, driving the speed of execution, of course, yields strong margins, but more importantly, it enables sustained business success through the speed of execution. Three weeks ago, we announced a dual-track 300-millimeter capacity strategic expansion in Japan for our silicon photonics, silicon germanium, and advanced optical packaging capabilities, having gained the support of the government of Japan through the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, METI. By combining Tower’s specialized technology leadership and our best of the best worldwide workforce into Japan’s unparalleled manufacturing expertise and quality output, its world-class research institutions, and deeply committed workforce, we are building a strategic platform that will drive innovation, economic growth, and semiconductor leadership for decades to come. Track one of this dual track adds significant new 300-millimeter silicon photonics capacity with full production readiness expected during the fourth quarter of 2027.

It consists of repurposing the Arai facility, formerly Fab 6, for 300-millimeter silicon photonics capacity and advanced packaging capabilities, as well, maximizing Tower Semiconductor’s Fab 7 300-millimeter output in Uozu. This track one is the driver for updating the 2028 business model. Track two will commence in parallel with the first track and consists of constructing an additional 300-millimeter manufacturing facility adjacent to Fab 7. This facility is expected to provide a 4x increase in our Japanese 300-millimeter manufacturing output, focusing on silicon photonics, silicon germanium, and related advanced optical packaging, positioning Tower Semiconductor to continue to support our accelerating customer demand for emerging AI and data center applications, driving next-generation optical connectivity requirements, and is planned to provide a seamless path for Tower Semiconductor and our customers for continued growth post-2028. Moving to our businesses, please refer to Slide 6 as reference for Q2 revenue breakdown.

Our RF infrastructure revenues for the second quarter represented 49% of corporate revenue, with approximately 43% of quarter-over-quarter growth and over 140% year-over-year growth. Silicon photonics revenue itself increased by over 60% quarter-over-quarter and over 270% year-over-year, hitting a Q2 annualized run rate of over $680 million, targeting a $1 billion run rate in Q4 2026 as the previously announced capacity expansion continues to be qualified. The full ramp of wafer starts in these investments is anticipated to occur within the fourth quarter of 2026, creating a wafer start capacity over three times higher than the second quarter silicon photonics revenue shipments, with full financial effect anticipated to be in the second quarter of 2027.

After kicking off the year with several breakthrough technology milestones, the second quarter was about further propelling Tower Semiconductor’s leadership position in silicon photonics as an added foundation to the next phase of growth. We focus on expanding capacity, advancing our technology capabilities, and deepening our engagements with strategic customers aligned to their long-term roadmaps. The data center industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation as AI performance is no longer defined solely by compute. It is increasingly determined by how efficiently data moves between processors. High bandwidth, low latency, energy-efficient optical connects have become a critical enabler of AI infrastructure. While geographically distributed deployment has become equally important to hyperscalers and the communities. These trends align directly with Tower Semiconductor’s core strengths. As AI clusters scale from thousands to hundreds of thousands of XPUs, electrical interconnects are rapidly approaching their practical limits.

Silicon photonics has emerged as the leading platform for 800G at 1.6T pluggable optical interconnects, which have, for the most part, already replaced copper for scale-out connections outside the rack. The next frontier is enabling optical interconnects for scale up, either within a single rack or across multiple racks. Once again, silicon photonics with Tower Semiconductor is well positioned to lead this transition with several Near-Packaged Optics, NPO, deployments planned over the next year and many more in design. NPO delivers much greater bandwidth density at reduced energy per bit compared to pluggable optics, and yet it leverages the same established ecosystem as pluggables, overcoming the reservations from hyperscalers and data center operators about reliability, serviceability, or multi-source flexibility. We announced customer contracts representing approximately $1.3 billion of silicon photonics revenue for 2027, with even higher growth for 2028.

With what we’ve stated about track 1 investment, substantial additional 300 millimeter capacity will be added throughout 2027. This added 300 millimeter capacity is already requested by and committed to several lead customers, reflecting their confidence in Tower’s ability not only to scale manufacturing capacity rapidly, but to continue to execute on highly differentiated technology roadmaps required for future networking architectures. To support the long-term growing demand, we announced a track 2, a most significant expansion of our manufacturing footprint in Japan, which is expected to more than quadruple its 300 millimeter capacity, positioning Tower well to support not only today’s workhorse pluggable optics and our rapidly growing Near-Packaged Optics, but also the additional future market for co-package optics. Capacity alone, however, is not enough. Our future growth will also be driven by the next generation of enabling technologies that are already moving through development pipeline.

Over the next one to two years, we expect several of these technologies to transition into high volume manufacturing, including and especially heterogeneous integration of III-V materials on silicon photonics for integrated lasers, advanced modulators, and optical signal processing. In support of this roadmap, we enter into a multi-year epitaxial wafer supply agreement with IQE, securing a strategic supply of III-V epitaxial material, while continuing to internalize key manufacturing steps that enhance both performance and supply chain control. Our long-standing collaboration with Marvell reached an important milestone as the number of SiPho-based coherent optical modules crossed over into multi-million. This achievement demonstrates Tower’s ability to manufacture some of the industry’s most complex silicon photonics ICs at high volume production scale.

Looking ahead, coherent photonics is expected to play an increasingly important role in scale across AI architectures, where multiple data center campuses operate as a single AI factory while distributing power, cooling, and infrastructure requirements across geographically diverse locations. Our silicon germanium business continues to benefit from growing demand for low latency, low power, efficient analog drivers, and transimpedance amplifiers across traditional pluggables, as well as linear pluggable optics and linear receive optics architectures. Our 100G per lane and 200G per lane products are in high volume production across all three 200 millimeter fabs as we advance towards Near-Packaged Optics as well as 400G per lane solutions requiring tighter electrical IC, photonics IC integration, and co-design. We’re also seeing strong customer pull for our next generation 300 millimeter silicon germanium platforms. Our RF mobile revenue represented 12% of our second quarter corporate revenues.

As we discussed last quarter, our RF SOI business is undergoing a strategic transition from 200 millimeter to 300 millimeter manufacturing, enabling higher performance, greater integration, and stronger value for our customers. In addition, we are consolidating 300 millimeter RF SOI manufacturing to Fab 7, freeing up Fab 10, freeing up Fab 7 capacity for a rapidly growing SiPho and silicon germanium business. These factors resulted in a 14% decrease in our 300 millimeter year-over-year RF SOI revenues. Looking forward, we have realized very strong design win momentum for our 300 millimeter platform, particularly for premium smartphones. A roadmap replete with best-in-industry figures of merit has gained market excitement and engagement, driving an expected 3x RF SOI increase in 300 millimeter wafer starts by mid-2027 against the Q2 2026 shipments.

Power management revenue for the second quarter represented 14% of corporate revenues, with year-over-year revenue growth and strong demand for both our 200 millimeter and 300 millimeter BCD offerings. Our technology focus on power delivery for high performance computing gives us a leadership position in low gate charge and low RDSON LDMOS devices. Our latest generation power technology enables our customers to develop high frequency, high efficiency DC-to-DC converters for a variety of growth segments. During this quarter, we experienced increased demand from existing customers and also saw very strong new customer acquisitions across our power portfolio. This momentum is primarily driven by growth sectors where power density and thermal efficiency are mission critical. Through close collaboration with our lead customers, we continue to advance our next generation power management roadmap. Sensor display for the second quarter represented 12% of our corporate revenue.

In our image sensor business, year-over-year revenue is predominantly flat. However, we’re seeing a sharp surge in demand, particularly in the machine vision market for high-end, high-resolution sensors used in semiconductor inspection, driven by the accelerated build-out of DDR and HBM memory assembly lines, and as well in the automotive industry, especially for EV battery inspection. This strong demand is expected to continue to grow over the next two years. We are well-positioned to support it with a range of products our lead customers have developed on our state-of-the-art global shutter 300 millimeter platform. Looking at utilizations. During a period of high capacity ramp, Fab 2, Fab 3 and Fab 9, 200 millimeter fabs operate at utilization rates between 80% and 85%. Fab 5 in Japan was at 75% utilization. Fab 7 continues to be fully utilized, well above our 85% utilization model.

I’d like to turn the call to our CFO, Mr. Oren Shirazi. Please, Oren. Thank you.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Thank you. Hello, everyone. Earlier today, we released our financial results for the second quarter of 2026. I will now review the highlights of these results, as well as the balance sheet, CapEx investments, and our updated business models. First, looking into the P&L. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $460 million, a record in the company’s history, representing 11% quarter-over-quarter growth, compared to $414 million in the first quarter of 2026, and 24% year-over-year growth, compared to $372 million in the second quarter of 2025. Gross profit for the second quarter of 2026 was a record, $138 million, reflecting a 30% gross margin and an increase of 72% compared to $80 million in the second quarter of 2025. Operating profit for the second quarter of 2026 was $90 million, 2.26 times the operating profit in the second quarter of 2025.

Net profit for the second quarter of 2026 was $91 million, reflecting a 20% net margin, and an increase of 95%, or $44 million, compared to net profit of $47 million in the second quarter of 2025. Earnings per share for the second quarter of 2026 were $0.80 per share basic, and $0.79 diluted, almost double the $0.49 basic and $0.41 diluted in the second quarter of 2025. Moving to our balance sheet. As we previously announced, we received $290 million in prepayments from SiPho customers in the first quarter of 2026, mostly towards 2027 capacity reservations. These customer prepayments are included in the balance sheet as of the end of June 2026 as liabilities under short- and long-term customer advances, and are included in the cash flow report for Q1 2026 and for H1 2026 as cash from operating activities.

Our balance sheet continues to be strong, evidenced by the following indicators and financial ratios. As of the end of June 2026, our assets totaled $3.8 billion, primarily comprised of $1.6 billion in net fixed assets, predominantly fab machinery, and $2 billion of current assets. Our current ratio remains very strong at about 4.9x, while shareholders’ equity reached a record of $3.1 billion at the end of June 2026. Hedging. I would like now to describe our currency hedging activities. Regarding the Japanese yen, since the majority of TPSCo’s revenue is denominated in yen, and the vast majority of TPSCo’s costs are also in yen, we have a natural hedge over most of our Japanese business and operations. To mitigate part of the remaining yen exposure, we execute zero-cost cylinder transactions to hedge currency fluctuations.

While the yen exchange rate against the US dollar may fluctuate, there is limited impact on our margin. Regarding the Israeli shekel. While we have no revenue in this currency, a portion of our cost in Israel is denominated in shekel, so we also hedge a large portion of that currency risk by entering into zero-cost cylinder transactions to mitigate this exposure. While the shekel exchange rate against the US dollar may fluctuate, the impact on our margin is limited, as seen over the past few quarters, during which the shekel appreciated strongly against the US dollar. Moving to our CapEx investment plan.

As previously announced, in order to support the increasing SiPho and SiGe demand, we are executing a $920 million investment plan to extend capacity and capability of SiGe and SiPho equipment across our 8-inch fabs in Israel, Newport Beach, and Texas, as well as our 12-inch Uozu fab in Japan. This investment is on track in terms of purchase orders issued, technology and process qualification, equipment arrivals, and ramp plans. Approximately 50% of this $920 million CapEx investment has been paid to date through the second quarter of 2026 and is included in our cash flow for investing activities for the reporting period, while the remaining 50% is expected to be paid during H2 2026 and full year 2027. Business model.

As recently announced and presented earlier today by Russell, the company updated its business model, which now includes the planned investment in the Arai facilities, formerly Fab 6, to repurpose it for 12-inch SiPho wafer manufacturing, thereby maximizing the company’s 12-inch wafer output in Japan, supported by METI, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The updated model is based on forward-looking operational business and financial assumptions, including the assumption that all fabs will operate at 85% utilization post the full installation and qualification of the $920 million in SiPho and SiPho CapEx investments. We continue to execute to ramp up SiPho and SiGe capacity and capability in our fabs 2, 3, 5, and 7, and post the planned repurposing of the Arai facilities and qualification of the new equipment tools to be installed there.

Another assumption is the assumption regarding forward-looking wafer selling prices for existing and future products and flow. Forward-looking assumptions regarding cost and completion dates for the successful qualification of tools to be installed, process technologies to be qualified, and customer products to be qualified and ordered from the company. Under the updated model, we target $3.6 billion in annual revenue, which is $760 million higher than the February model target, reflecting 27% revenue increase. $1.63 billion annual gross profit, resulting in a 45% gross margin as compared to 39% in the prior model. This annual gross profit is $510 million higher than the prior February 2026 model, representing 67% incremental gross profit derived from the incremental $760 million revenue, reflecting our enhanced product mix. $1.38 billion of annual operating profit, resulting in a 38% operating margin as compared to 32% in the prior model.

This annual operating profit is $480 million higher than the prior February 2026 model, representing 63% incremental operating profit derived from the incremental $760 million revenue, again reflecting our enhanced product mix. Lastly, $1.2 billion in annual net profit, resulting in a 33% net margin as compared to 26% in the prior model, and as compared to 20% in the second quarter of 2026. This annual net profit is $450 million higher than the prior February 2026 model, representing 59% incremental net profit derived from the incremental $760 million of additional revenue, reflecting our enhanced product mix. That concludes my prepared remarks. Now I’d like to turn the call back to the operator so we can take your questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you so much. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we’re going to take our first question. It’s from the line of Cody Acree from Benchmark StoneX. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Hi, Cody.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Thanks for taking my questions. Hey, guys. Congrats on another great quarter and just great execution. Congrats, everybody. Just a point of clarification. A couple quick questions. Did you update the SiPho bookings number for 2027, the $1.3 billion? Did you give a new version of that?

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: No, I did not. I stated in the script that the Q4 start rate, which would be fully realized in Q2 2027 revenue, was three times higher than the Q2 shipment.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: This can be 680 times three. This is capacity. While the $1.3 billion is on customer committed prepayment, on customer committed contracts.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Although the.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Okay.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Yeah. As stated additionally, the capacity growth is spoken for. Is it all booked? No, but it’s spoken for. I think.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Is it fair to say it. Sorry.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Go ahead.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Excuse me.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: I was just going to state that I think there was no update given on the contracts and the bookings, but there was an update given pretty much on what is started or will be started for shipments.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Okay. Excellent. Thank you for that. Just with that level of visibility you’ve been able to put up some record sequential and annual growth rates, both on a % and on a dollar basis. It’s been pretty impressive. With this level of visibility, can you maybe just handicap the likelihood of being able to sustain this kind of growth rate or even accelerate from here?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Well, we gave the 2028 financial model and stated that it is our expectation to reach those numbers at a minimum by run rate, nominally in the full year, in 2028. I think you could estimate what the growth rate is off of a $3.6 billion 2028 revenue level.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Lastly, Russell, maybe if you can just help me to get a scale on the Japanese projects, the track 1 and track 2. I’m just trying to understand the wafer volumes or the revenue support that ultimately will be available out of Japan. Not so much track 1, I think that’s clear in your fiscal 2028 model, that that is assuming full utilization of that track 1 build-out. Is that the right way to think about it?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: At 85% utilization, correct.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: How do we think about the scale of track 2?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: We stated that the track 2 would quadruple the 300 millimeter capacity, and that it’s predominantly for SiPho and SiGe. We didn’t give specific numbers. Part of the reason for not giving numbers is that we’re in final negotiations, strong negotiations, not on the pricing part of it, just on the timing part to complete the facility and complete the facilitization of the facility, and then the negotiations with the suppliers on the equipment itself. Budgets, everything’s approved, everything is there. We’re focused on covering everything with internal cash creation, so it sits nicely in our hands. We’re not looking at anything being gated or leveraged by a fundraising event or anything of the sort. There’s no dilution within the plans. We don’t yet at this point have the final schedule of tool installations and tool qualifications.

Our target is that everything is installed and functioning by Q4 2028, as stated in the script, that it then provides a seamless growth trajectory into 2029, having reached the full potential of the track one development in 2028. Our target would be to have that grow from there. The exact numbers of how much we would get from that we haven’t said. It’s not necessarily our desire to give quarterly updates and financial models.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Sure.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: You could expect that within the first quarters as we get into 2027, that we’ll update a long-term financial model, depending upon how it actually turns out on the final build-out of the factory and the amount of tools that we can fit into the built-out factory. Some of that, even some of the building plan is not yet finalized.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Okay, excellent. Thank you for that detail. Just to be clear, that the 4X quadrupling of the capacity of track two, that is just the Uozu facility, or is that quadrupling accounting Fab 6?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: We’re including Fab 6 in that 4X number. Whatever we would be doing incrementally in Fab 6, which predominantly we’ll be using as an epicenter and also for some specialty packaging tools. Yes, the Fab 6 incremental that you see in track one is included into the 4X.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: All right. That’s very helpful. Thank you, guys.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Now we’re going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Mehdi Hassani from SIG. Your line is open. Please ask the question.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Yes. Thanks for taking my question. I do have a couple. Russell, I just want to better understand the evolving end market demand. As we look into next year and NPO becomes material, does that give you ability to increase your content per given transceiver?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: To the extent I understand your question, I would say no. It basically would be We would be selling an NPO in those cases rather than selling a plugable, and in many instances, most likely be selling both. The content itself, no, at least to the extent that I understand your question.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Sure. I’m trying to better understand if there is synergy here, especially I’m under assumption that at some point, the pick itself will require a stacking of SiGe and SiPho, and that’s where the question is originating from. If we have more of a heterogeneous structure, a pick-based structure, I imagine that would be more positive for you, and I just want to see if I’m in the right frame of mind.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: I think you’re in the correct frame of mind, I think the answer is yes. I believe that focus is more not on NPO, but on next generation. Where we talked about the advanced packaging, a good amount of the advanced packaging that we’re putting in place is die-to-wafer and wafer-to-wafer bonding.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Okay. Thank you. I imagine that will also require you to increase SiGe capacity, and that’s already embedded in the phase 1 of the capacity expansion, right?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: To some extent. It’s mainly embedded into the phase 2.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Okay. No, just real quick.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Phase 1 is focused very strong. I’m sorry. Phase 1 is focused very strong directly on SiPho expansion, where we, as stated, all of that growth that we’re doing in phase 1 is already spoken for.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Okay, great. Then, second question regarding your manufacturing footprint. Given your emphasis in Japan and how you have this phase 1 and phase 2, should I assume that majority of your U.S.-based customers would be supported through facilities in Japan, or U.S. would present another area where you eventually have to increase capacity?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: We have, we continue to increase capacity in both Newport Beach and in San Antonio, we’re still planning to increase further capacity in both sites. One of the reasons for having chosen Japan is its geopolitical neutrality. There’s no issues for somebody to be supplied out of Japan. It’s a very good place to grow. There’s multiple reasons to want to have chosen Japan. We have truly a remarkable workforce there. Most of the R&D that we have in Japan was a derivative of Panasonic hires back when Panasonic was the crème de la crème, a top three Japanese company, and hiring their choice of people, predominantly from Tokyo University. We still have an extremely capable core workforce as far as R&D. Additionally, anybody in the world that’s ever been around Japanese manufacturing, the quality of it is just outstanding.

It’s part of a Japanese mentality. Ancillary here, but we lived in Japan for a number of years when our youngest daughter was going through kindergarten, and it’s a very interesting thing. Already at three and a half, four years of age, when a kindergarten student goes to school, part of their uniform is a plastic container with a washcloth in it called an oshibori, and the school day starts by taking out that washcloth and wiping down their desk, and the school day ends by taking out that washcloth and wiping down their desk. The honoring of the workplace is a very big thing in Japan. That culture, when you start at three and a half, four years of age, learning to honor the workplace, that stays with you forever.

I did a film once, so it’s kind of funny, just about the procedure of returning your tray and dishes after lunch. The activities in Japan, it’s more or less of an assembly line. There’s absolutely no degradation of a quality mentality lunch, first when they’re in the regular factory. When it deals with very high quality manufacturing, I think Japan is really the best of the best. Those are multiple reasons for going there. It was the taxonomy that we have of workforce is fantastic. Quality culture in Japan is fantastic. Education in Japan is amazingly good, and it’s geopolitically neutral.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Got it. Thanks for all the detail. Just very quick follow-up. When should RF mobile revenue stabilize? Your preparing month suggests that you’re continuing to consolidate move manufacturing to 300 millimeter. Would those changes in your manufacturing footprint stabilizing to the second half or is this something that is going to carry on into 2027?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: I wouldn’t use the term stabilize. Stabilize would mean going into an area where you’re not having incremental growth. I believe I had stated that from the tape-outs activity, the design activity that we’ve already won, that we would see Q2, Q3 of next year having the largest 300 millimeter manufacturing that we’ve ever done for RF SOI. I wouldn’t say stabilizing. It’s just getting to a point of continued growth, then additional plans, how do we grow it beyond that. Yeah, I would think that for the Fab 10 factory where we’re manufacturing, it will be very full come second, third quarter of next year.

Mehdi Hassani, Analyst, SIG: Got it. Thank you.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: You’re very welcome. Good question.

Conference Operator: Thank you so much. Now we’re going to take our next question. The question comes line of Richard Shannon from Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Hey, Richard.

Richard Shannon, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC: Great. Russell, hi. How are you?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Good, thank you.

Richard Shannon, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC: Excellent. I’d like to congratulations on wonderful results. Keep up the good work here. My first question is going to be a follow-on from a couple of Cody’s questions here trying to think about the ultimate silicon photonics in SiGe 300 millimeter capacity after you finish track 2, you used the statements of or 4x increase in capacity, I think at least 4x capacity. It seems like we need to understand and characterize how much of the capacity to that point is 200 versus 300. I was wondering if you could answer that quantitatively or at least qualitatively to help us think about that more specifically.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: I honestly not sure I understand the question. Could you just restate it, please?

Richard Shannon, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC: Sure. You’ve said that after track 2, it’s going to increase your 300 millimeter silicon photonics and SiGe capacity for quadrupling. In order for us to quantify this, I think we need to understand what that mix of capacity between 200 and 300 would be at that point before starting that capacity increase. Trying to figure out, I wonder if you could answer what that split of capacity is at that point so we can try to calculate that.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Yeah. I just have to grab my notebook real quick. Sorry. I’ll be right back. One second. Sorry. Sorry, Richard. I would say that to begin with, after, I would say 2027, mid 2028, all of the growth that we have in SiGe and SiPho, and definitely in SiPho, will be in 300 millimeter. The 4X increase in capacity in Japan, the agreement with METI is really focused on optics, and it’s on the silicon photonics and silicon germanium. As a minimum, we would intend to be adding 20,000, 25,000 wafer per month silicon photonics capacity. That can go much, much higher than that. That’s the desire of the country. If you multiply that by 2.25, you’re dealing with very big amount of wafer capacity versus 200 millimeter.

Although I’m not sure why it’s so important for you to know that ratio to model something, the growth in silicon photonics is quite big, and the predominant portion coming out of track 1, almost 100% of it will be silicon photonics. You have the delta numbers in revenue from the previous model to the present model. When we go into the 300-millimeter facility, the actual split we’ve not yet announced, but the predominant portion of everything of that 4X growth will be in silicon photonics, and the next biggest portion of it will be in silicon germanium.

Richard Shannon, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC: Okay. Thanks for that. I’ll just state, Russell, I think everyone’s trying to figure out what the next update on the business model looks like. I think you said you’d update us kind of early-ish or some point next year here as we’re all trying to do that work ahead of time. We’ll look forward to more detail when you’re able to give it. One of my follow-on questions here is on NPO, and I’d love to get a sense of the degree to which this will be a meaningful contributor in SiPho revenues in 2027. How would you characterize the size either quantitatively or qualitatively, please?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: I think it will be significant. The exact %, I don’t yet know. I think it’ll be not in the single digits, but in the tens of the percentage of what we’ll be shipping, especially in the second half of the year.

Richard Shannon, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC: Okay, great. That’s very helpful. My last question is on advanced packaging here. I think there’s a little bit of contribution in the track 1 investments in Japan, but I think a bigger part in track 2. I’m going to ask you a little bit longer term question here, Russell, which is, think in the fullness of time here, after everything is built and how you think the market’s going to evolve, how much of your silicon photonics related revenues are going to be packaging related?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: That’s a very good question. I’m not sure how much of it necessarily is packaging related versus being packaging enabled. Even right now for the integrated laser, for an indium phosphide laser, we would see next year several tens of millions of revenue from integrated laser. The integrated laser is a chipped wafer bonding that’s packaging. It’s right now outsourced, but we’ll be bringing that in-house. It’s not that we’re getting paid per se for packaging and we’re not trying to compete with packaging houses. We’re bringing more capability in-house that we have control over the end result, and certainly much more control over the start to ship time of wafers rather than to depend on a supplier no matter how good they are. We are not looking at per se competing in packaging.

We’re looking at packaging being an enabler to grow our core business at the highest quality, best speed to production of any supplier that there would be. Hopefully that answers your question, Richard. We’re not going to separate a packaging revenue. We’re not focused on it as a packaging revenue rather than as an enabler for our silicon photonics platform.

Richard Shannon, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC: That is helpful and appreciated. That is all for me, Russell. Thank you.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Now we are going to take our next question. The question comes line of Cody Acree from Benchmark StoneX. Is open, please ask your question.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Yeah. Thanks for the quick follow-ups, guys. Russell, with all the capacity additions that have been happening around the industry, from some of your peers at their GlobalFoundries and

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Sorry, you broke up on the first part. I apologize. Could you start the question please?

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Oh, no. It’s fine. With all the capacity additions around the industry from some of your peers, GlobalFoundries, STMicro, Samsung, have all made announcements about planned capacity additions. If you can look out 12, 18, 24 months, can you maybe just frame your opinion of the supply-demand health of the industry with all of these differing tranches coming in line?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Supply’s certainly increasing. We have a definite benefit of anyone right now in that we’re qualified at the lead customers worldwide with very strong contracts lasting through 2028. At this point, given additional capacity coming online, strong interactions and discussions to maintain contracts well beyond that. I don’t necessarily have too good of a feeling for how much added capacity will be coming into the market. I’ve honestly not followed up on that so strongly. Our focus has really just been how we maintain sole share or majority share of our lead customers, and we’re in very good shape there. The most important thing is something I talked about within the script, and that is speed.

As long as we have programs going on for not just next generation, but generation plus two, in many cases, generation plus three, those programs always enable you to come to the market faster, stronger than anyone else. Tied to that, what’s very real from a business standpoint, if we’re working with a very large customer and we’re putting substantial resources into next generation or multiple generation in the future developments, there’s typically exclusivity agreements on both sides. We would enable a lead customer to have a head start, especially for any module that’s joint developed, and we would request 100% market share. I don’t, again, for part of your question, I don’t really have a good feel for how much capacity is additionally coming into the market.

What I think we have a much better feel on is the market share that we’ll be maintaining with our lead customers. We believe that will stay extremely high.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Russell, thank you for that. Is there, just for my own edification, a figure of merit, a stratification, I guess, that you can point us to that would be a good reference point so we can just keep an eye on your continued leadership in the industry?

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: The figure of merit that you’re referring to is what? Typically, a figure of merit is a technical achievement. What are you looking for? You’re looking for something to measure our market share?

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: Well, no, I guess I’m just trying to gauge some of the industry rhetoric about differing capabilities from your different competitors around the industry. I’m just trying to see if there’s something you can help us with to help us better understand where it is that Tower really differentiates.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Sorry, I don’t want this to sound facetious, we differentiate in figure of merit. Insertion loss is probably one of the biggest things that one could look for. If you have, at this point, a best-in-breed insertion loss, you really help the integrator, number one, by not needing to buy more expensive CW lasers because of greater output, but also the ability to reduce the amount of lasers that’s in the package. We’ve press released before, it was a press release with InnoLight, about our insertion loss being an enabler to have the amount of CW lasers that they need in the package. I believe it was a halving of it. I’d have to go back to the PRs a couple of years ago. That becomes really the biggest differentiator that we can have is to lead the industry of figure of merit.

If you’re looking at next-generation modulators, at the OFC conference, we did a joint PR with Coherent about being able to have done a 400G modulator in silicon. There’s no secret that we, and maybe some others, are working with thin film lithium niobate. We also are working with indium phosphide for a modulator. The best way that one could be looking at maintaining market share is how close are you at working at the next generation and/or two generations out, and how is your performance in those areas? If that answers your question, Cody. Hopefully, it does.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: It does. That was very helpful. Thank you. Lastly, you just did mention InnoLight. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance, I know you’re busy this morning, but to see some of the press reports that the administration is maybe looking to limit exports of Chinese technology into the U.S. from an optical standpoint. Just wondering if you had any thoughts there.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Many thoughts, nothing that I would want to say publicly.

Cody Acree, Analyst, Benchmark StoneX: All right. Thank you very much.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Now we’re going to take our final question for today. Just give us a moment. Question comes line of Lisa Thompson from Zacks Investment Research. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Good morning. Thank you. I just have a couple, two questions. First off, are you experiencing any shortages or supply chain issues for your own production? I know you worked on the indium phosphide issue.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Big picture, no. We’re in very good position across the board with starting materials and with what we would call variable materials that are needed to manufacture. We were under somewhat of a crunch for indium phosphide starting material, we believe that we’ve addressed that very nicely with the contract with IQE. Other than indium phosphide, which we had several ways that we went after to increase the amount of substrates during a difficult period, I think that we’ve gotten resolved as well. No, we’re in very good shape on supply.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Okay. My last question is, if we were going to do, let’s say, an error analysis on your business model, where do you think the most variability of outcomes is? Is it going to be expenses or timing or the prices you forecast you’ll get for your products? Where is the risk?

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Yeah, I think I addressed it in my prepared remarks, that we are based on a few assumptions which are important. One of them is the selling price per wafer. The second is the cost assumptions, the time of installation and qualification. The third one is that we will utilize 85% of the Fab, and this is the basic assumptions for the model.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: Right. Which has the biggest range of outcome, that could be the most important to look at?

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Usually it’s the selling price per wafer, because if you have more or less quantity, so you have more or less variable cost associated with that. If the price goes up, it goes all the way to the bottom line and vice versa. Maybe usually, but it’s a general statement. Usually the selling price is just 100% reflection over the margin.

Lisa Thompson, Analyst, Zacks Investment Research: All right, thanks. We’ll keep an eye on that then. Thank you. That’s my question.

Oren Shirazi, Chief Financial Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Russell Ellwanger for any closing remarks.

Russell Ellwanger, Chief Executive Officer, Tower Semiconductor: Firstly, as I started the call, I’ll end it with the same statement. I am extremely excited with where we’re at and what we’re doing, our future prospects. Enjoyed being able to share them with you. One of the most exciting things about being involved in high-tech business, and maybe in particular being in management or the CEO, is the fact that in high-tech, nominally, you’re interfacing, interacting with groupings of people that are, from any statistical standpoint, in the upper end of intelligence. That’s a wonderful thing, a wonderful place to be dealing with. When you couple that with people of very high character, it becomes fantastic and it’s wonderful interaction.

I can really state that if I look at across the board in business, but right now specifically on silicon photonics, every one of our customers that we have there with really out exception are just outstanding people that we deal with. Every interaction, it’s more than joyful. It’s a partnership to where you have open communication, you work with each other, and off of that you go into the next generations. We had a very good call the other day with a big customer with regard to having now announced Well, not announced, but to having very strong additional 300 millimeter capability and the partnership feeling, the way that we’re growing together, it’s really an amazing place to be.

One of my really greatest joys about leading Tower is the ability that I have daily inside the company to be dealing with very smart people that are of high character, and being able to interact with customers that are very smart, of high character, and seeing the integration of both together towards making new things. We’ve talked multiple times, and it was in the script as well, not just of Tower’s growth, but of Tower and our customers’ growth. In looking at things in that regard, in that respect, it’s a fantastic way to be. Truly, if we look at the financial model, if we look at achieving a 33% net profit, just very thrilled about where we’re at, where we’re going, and all of these opportunities in front of us.

The really extremely wonderful adventure that we’re entering into Japan to build out a hub of optical excellence for the SiPho, for the silicon germanium. We’re really at an amazing place that everyone, not that we haven’t in the past, but people come to work now even more excited than they did before. There’s so much happening, and that’s an amazing place to be. In stating that, my invitation to everyone that’s an investor, reach out. We’d love to talk to you. We’d love to have as much interaction as we can, help you better understand what we’re doing, where we’re at, and be able to share with you the strong results that we’re having in the company.

That being said, we look forward to engaging with the investment community at the upcoming Jefferies conference, August 25th, 26th in Chicago, and at the Benchmark StoneX Annual Conference in New York on September 10th. The invitation for interactions with investors, it’s real, and the better you understand our story, the better you understand where we’re at, where we’re going, we think the best for everybody. With that, I’d like to close and just thank you for your interest and for your support. Thank you. Bye bye.

Conference Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.