Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Monolithic Power Systems Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.
At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.
To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.
To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Arthur Lee. Please go ahead.
Arthur Lee
Earlier today, MPS released a written commentary on the results of its operations for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2026. This document can be found on our website.
Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that in the course of today's presentation, we may make forward-looking statements and projections within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risk and uncertainties. The risk, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements are identified in the safe harbor statements contained in the Q3 2026 earnings commentary and in our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K and Forms 10-Q, which can be found on our website.
Our statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update this information. Now, I would like to enter the call over to Tony.
Tony Balow
Thanks Arthur. Good afternoon, and for us, good morning from Shanghai, and welcome to our Q3 2026 earnings call.
In Q3, MPS achieved another significant milestone, exceeding $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time. Q3 revenue of $1.2 billion was 22% higher than the second quarter of 2026 and 63% higher than the third quarter of 2025.
During the quarter, our capacity surpassed $6 billion in annual revenue support. We expect to have $8 billion of capacity in place by the second half of 2027 on our way to $10 billion in support of our rapidly expanding business.
In our enterprise data and market, we saw strong demand across existing customers, which we expect to continue into 2027. In addition, using our in-house developed AI design tools, we significantly expanded our customer base in traditional areas, as well as landing new wins in applications such as desktop AI designs.
Beyond our strong enterprise data growth, in automotive, we received first orders for 48-volt power solutions and expect design wins for 48-volt and zonal architectures to be a driver of growth in 2027. We started ramping robotic solutions with sensor and motor control products across multiple geographies.
We continue to increase our SAM with the ramp of our high-speed memory products. We landed our first large data converter design win, which we expect to ramp next year.
We continued to build out our high-voltage portfolio and began sampling GaN-based solutions for use in 800-volt data center architectures, complementing our existing silicon carbide-based designs. Finally, in Q3, we repurchased over $450 million of our own stock.
Overall, we see accelerated growth. Our diversified growth strategy is paying off.
Operator, you may now open the webinar for questions.
Operator
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again.
In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Our first question comes from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Your line is now open.
Tore Svanberg
Yes, thank you. Michael and Tony, congratulations on that billion-dollar milestone, and to you Tony, congratulations on your CFO appointment.
I guess for my first question, you talked about accelerated growth, was hoping you could maybe elaborate a little bit on that. I'm sure you're not going to give us calendar '27 guidance, but you are on track to growing 50%, 60% this year.
Especially in light of your $8 billion capacity and then $10 billion, when could we potentially see $10 billion capacity in place? Thank you.
Michael Hsing
Yeah. Thanks, Tore.
See, as Tony mentioned, it's only a few items. We see beyond that.
I see this explosive growth period, okay, in the next few years. Even this year, you see the first nine months, okay, and we don't see anything, any sign to slow down.
Tony Balow
The only thing I'd add is I think as we've come into the second half, you've started to see growth across multiple of our end markets, including auto, which the ramp started here in Q3 and we've talked about continuing here through the second half. Then as we start to see applications like robotics begin to ramp, we'd expect that then to continue into the future.
I think it's not just the existing businesses, it's adding on the additional growth areas over time, which is really giving us confidence going forward.
Tore Svanberg
Very good, and as my follow-up, you mentioned the 800-volt GaN product sampling. Now that you are sampling GaN, could you maybe elaborate a little bit more, help us understand a little bit more the positioning there?
If this is a vertical GaN, is it horizontal GaN? Is it your own process?
Any more color you could help us there, and when do you expect to start to see some 800-volt GaN revenue? Thank you.
Michael Hsing
It is based on MPS's own development. Which is later than we developed silicon carbide device.
We start sampling. This type of solutions, we let our customer choose.
GaN is a new technologies for everyone, okay, and for everyone adopted in the data centers and the industrial automotive type of applications, okay. This is the first time.
We're always very cautious about the reliability. We want to achieve below 1 ppm failures.
For these modules. We let our customer choose, okay, GaN or silicon carbide.
Silicon carbide is known, okay, we know the data. That's a very high reliability product.
GaN, we have to ship somewhere around 50 million units before we can say this is good, this is new, okay, but we'll let our customer choose.
Tony Balow
I'd just add on, I was just going to add a few things there. Just the experience we've already gained in data center, I think puts us in a really good position to do what Michael's talking about in terms of making sure we can meet all the standards the customer requires.
You asked a question on the timing of it. I think right now we've always kind of been late in '27 for I think kind of the 800-volt kind of architecture ramps, with probably more in '28.
I don't think our thinking in that has changed. We're just obviously getting ahead of that design work now.
Michael Hsing
Even for our customers, they use both. They don't want to have a baby either.
They use the both solutions.
Tore Svanberg
Makes a lot of sense. Congrats again.
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Rick Schafer with Oppenheimer & Co.
Your line is open. ):
Rick Schafer
Thanks, and congratulations to you guys, and congratulations Tony on the appointment. If I could ask a question on storage and compute for my first one.
I was hoping maybe you could level-set us on some of the moving parts in there. How does that segment split now if you look at SSD, HDD, DDR5 PMIC, versus the PC, the Vcore power piece?
Because I know, we all see PC units tracking down about 20% here in the second half. I'm just curious, is that kind of what you guys are seeing on the PC side of that segment, and then, how much is the storage piece growing, and what's it contributing?
Thanks.
Tony Balow
Rick, well, let me start and then I'll let Michael come in. I think just kind of mechanically if you look at it, the big driver of growth in that segment has been the DDR5, primarily on the PMIC solution.
As we've said, we're just starting the high-speed journey on the DDR5. We have seen pretty healthy growth over the past year or so on the hard disk drive and SSD part of that storage business as well, but clearly DDR5 is the biggest portion of that.
On notebook, sort of tactically, yeah, I think we've been talking about this and that's what we're seeing as well, right? We're seeing not the same strength on notebook due to what's happening downstream with some of the memory constraints.
I think if you look forward, I think we're still pretty bullish on notebook in the long term because we have really good technology and good share. Then I think there's applications around AI that will continue to build out over time at the edge, of which notebook will play a part.
I think what you're seeing in the short term around notebook tracks with what you're seeing, Rick, but I think long term, I think we're still pretty high on what notebook can be for the company. Michael?
Michael Hsing
Yeah. For that segment, okay, we have a new product, like clock drivers and RCD, these all lined up.
In addition to our power management product. These will be all lined up for revenue 20 27 or '28.
We see even '28, these products will really ramping up, okay. That part of TAM is much bigger than power management.
Notebook, as Tony mentioned, we will see this is the very fast-growing market segments because is after the manufacturing capacity opens up, that's the segment will grow even along with the desktops.
Tony Balow
To sum that up, Rick, a little bit, what we've said for kind of the segment overall with the puts and takes, it could be kind of flattish up a couple of points year-over-year is kind of how we've positioned it. It's really a tale of two cities, as we've talked about, with really strong storage and then the TAM just being limited on the notebook side.
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Rick Schafer
Got it. If I could, Tony, this is your first call with the CFO marker, and I'm curious how you look at OpEx growth going forward.
Any meaningful changes to the prior targets that you guys have laid out? At these type of top-line growth rates that Tory called out, 50%, 60% that top line, how fast can you actually scale R&D, etc.?
Seems like you guys are set for some pretty material operating leverage to be flowing through the model. Is that the right way to be thinking about it?
Any rules of thumb in there?
Michael Hsing
Let me answer that part of question, okay. I never believe the big dollars R&D spending to bring that bigger results.
For our business, it's inversely proportional. To that, we just need some good ideas, good people, that's going to make everything happen, okay.
Tony, you can answer that.
Tony Balow
No, no. I think, Rick, you're not going to see us necessarily change our model.
What we've seen pragmatically, though, as we start to get the higher levels of growth, that we start to fall below our model range in terms of you just can't spend money that fast. I completely can agree with Michael on that.
It's about the efficiency of the R&D and the people that you get versus just spending more. In general, I'd say at the growth rates that we've seen, for example, this year, you're going to fall below the model from an OpEx perspective.
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Rick Schafer
Got it. Thanks again, and congrats to you guys.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company.
Your line is open.
Quinn Bolton
Hey guys, I'll echo my congratulations, and Tony, congratulations on the new role. I guess I wanted to start with enterprise data.
Last quarter you gave us a floor of 130%. With September results and December guidance, kind of looks like you're tracking to maybe 150% growth.
Wondering, Tony, if you might be able to level-set us what a new floor growth for enterprise data might be. Then, I know it's early, but any sort of thoughts on that segment as you look into 2027, what kind of growth rate you might be looking at in a forward case?
Then I've got a follow-on in the comms business.
Tony Balow
Sure. Let me start just kind of to answer your question straight.
I think at this point, given what we've seen in Q3 and Q4, we're comfortable raising the floor from what we were at 130% year-over-year, but to your point, I think we're comfortable with a floor of 150% year-over-year now going forward. On 2027, I think it's a little early for us to go put a percentage out at this time, but I'll start, and Michael, I'm sure, will follow up in that structurally the growth drivers that we're seeing this year are all intact, right?
Whether you see the diversification of customers, the growth in modules, the content gains as new platforms roll out. I think over time, as you start to see even stronger growth in CPU, potentially driven by the agentic AI workloads, that's going to be even a further tailwind out in time.
While a little early to call next year, I feel really good about the growth drivers.
Michael Hsing
I see even in the next years and beyond next years, and I'm very excited to see that we build our own data centers. As Tony mentioned earlier, the result is a tremendous, okay, improvement.
This is not in the data centers, okay, and MPS's own servers, and all these servers, I believe it will change. It changed to agentic type of servers, okay.
That the hardware will change, and that will trickle down to a desktops and even a notebook, I said earlier. That these type of growth, it will trickle down in the next year and the year after.
We see those trends, these design activities, it's already happening. This is not only this year, not only the data centers, okay, it will trickle down to all other areas.
Tony Balow
You had a follow-up on comms?
Quinn Bolton
It's obviously congrats on the nice growth. I think it was 43% sequentially.
Really looked like it was a breakout quarter in September. Wondering if that was primarily driven by optical modules or are you seeing a broader set of contributors to that growth?
Just any thoughts into the December quarter, does that sort of pace of growth continue into December?
Tony Balow
No, it's a great question. To take us back here, obviously coming into the year, we obviously had very strong growth in optical modules.
What we added beginning of the year is what we've been calling the switch business. I know I've talked about this before, but to answer your question, why you're starting to see the acceleration of growth in that particular end market is because you are adding both of those growth drivers together and we saw the effect really in Q3.
I think for the year, how we've been positioning it is, I think comms is going to be our second fastest-growing end market, for sure. Not quite as fast as enterprise data, but certainly won't be far behind.
Just like enterprise data, I think if you go into next year, all of those growth drivers are intact. On optical modules, you see the transition to 1.6.
That's not just a volume play, but there's a content play there as well. Then certainly, as we continue to build out additional sockets in the switch business, that's going to be a driver of growth as well.
I think right now we really like the comms business, not just this year, but going into next year.
Michael Hsing
Yeah. I'm not macroeconomy and, okay, market segment predictions.
I only care what is the design activity and what our customer's excited about it, what we excited about it, okay. All these new technology, new product introductions.
I said earlier, okay, all these segments, we introduced a new product and all the design activities, that gave us indication clearly the growth for even beyond next year.
Quinn Bolton
Thank you Michael.
Michael Hsing
Yeah.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Joshua Buchalter with TD Cowen.
Your line is open.
Joshua Buchalter
Hey guys, thank you for taking my question. Congrats on the results, and echoing the congrats to Tony on the CFO gig, best of luck.
I'll stick with policy and ask one on enterprise data and then one on another segment. Maybe can you comment on the diversity of enterprise data?
How has that business evolved over the last year or two, and looking into 2027? I would just be curious to hear how much you see coming from GPUs versus ASICs, or even any comments you can help us on how much is coming from modules versus discretes at this point and expectations into '27.
Thank you.
Tony Balow
You start?
Michael Hsing
Yeah. For modules versus the chip design, chip power suppliers, or ICs, and all of it, okay.
Even for the server sides, and we see many activities. They're going to using modules because the higher current, high power demand.
That's my comment, okay, and it's all segment, okay. From that, all right, the real growth percentage let Tony to that.
Tony Balow
All right. I think it's an important point around this customer diversity.
That starting in the middle of 2025 until now what we've seen is really rapid growth in a lot of the ASIC customers, which again are primarily using modules over time. That's benefited us from a revenue diversity perspective, as those carry the higher ASP associated with that.
I think furthermore, what Michael was talking about in terms of how we've been using AI to create scale to allow us to go address even a longer tail of small customers out over time, which may be big customers in the future. That's really what we try to do, go win every socket not knowing who in the ultimate long term might grow into a sizable customer.
Michael Hsing
We clearly see is we have the huge beneficial from these artificial intelligence, all these based on these large language models across MPS, all the internal. It benefit us, will benefit for everybody.
That's what I'm very optimistic about it, and our growth trend will continue.
Joshua Buchalter
Thank you both for the color there. Maybe in the same theme of starting with small sockets that become big opportunities, any context you can provide on how much revenue contribution we can expect from the initial high-speed data converter design win, and how big is that TAM as we think about you growing into this new market?
Thank you.
Michael Hsing
We can't tell, okay, because we just call it, okay, these are conservatively well over 6,000 products, okay. We'll continue to develop newer product.
What we do is we do every segment in our best. Far better than or to meet the new market demand.
We are much faster than any our competitors. As long as we do this segment to the best, and the revenue will come.
We just don't know which segment. Seven, eight, nine, probably eight years ago, we look at our product lines, look at the optical market segment.
Was a perfect example. We didn't know today is will that high demand.
We got it in there, we serve our customers, regardless a large or small. That's what happened today.
I cannot predict next 10 years, next five years, what will be bigger, and we serve our small customers well.
Tony Balow
I think and again, to Michael's point, we're not ready to call the long term. We're just beginning that process, I wouldn't necessarily say it moves the needle here in 2026.
I think as we get into next year, we'll talk more and see how that ramp goes.
Joshua Buchalter
Understood. Thank you both.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Will Stein with Truist Securities.
Your line is now open.
Will Stein
Great. Thanks for taking my question.
First, on data center vertical power, I think there's still one meaningful customer doing lateral, and I'm wondering if you can comment as to whether you think that converts to vertical in the coming year, and whether that would necessarily require a module from you instead of some other sort of solution.
Michael Hsing
Certainly, okay, I don't want to speak for our customers, okay, a particular one one customer. I said earlier, and what we did in 2000 we predicted in 2006 2016.
For the server market, MPS solutions so small, and we had to use a adapter to meet the common footprint. When for the server market segment, we predicted and if you go above 600, 700 watts and you run out of peripheral, and you have to use a smaller footprint.
The server CPU never get that, okay, never get to the 600, 700 watts, but the GPU did, okay. A GPU power increased, I don't have a GPU have numbers, okay.
The power goes up, you run out of peripheral, you have to do vertical. We said this is many years earlier, okay, I still believe that.
Very logical to me,
Tony Balow
okay. I'm just going to echo Michael.
I think that we won't speak for that. Most of the industry has already moved to modules, right, and that's what we've seen in terms of content gains as well as the volume gains as we've gone through enterprise data.
I think that will be a great question for our customers.
Michael Hsing
You can ask them when you get them on the time.
Will Stein
Great. A different topic.
Someone asked about the OpEx leverage, and I guess I understand that for the time being, with the rapid growth, you're going to sort of undershoot on spending, overshoot on margins. What about gross margin?
I think the company's talked for a long time about 10 to 20 bips per quarter gross margin expansion. There was a time when you weren't in that range, and it seems like you are today.
Any likelihood that because of the growth you could exceed that expansion rate, or should we still think about 10 to 20 as likely, or any update there would be helpful. Thank you.
Tony Balow
No, and thanks for calling it out. You saw that we obviously did increase 10 basis points here in Q3.
The midpoint of our guide in Q4 is kind of another 10 basis points. I think we're kind of squarely in the model that we like, right?
55% to 60% is the sweet spot for sure, and within that, being kind of slow and methodical about expansion. I think we're going to continue on that path.
Structurally, I feel pretty good about that. will see what happens in the future.
Remember, what we don't want to do ever is put a bunch of gross margin in one quarter, then take it away the next quarter and move it around a bunch.
Michael Hsing
We think that... We don't do that.
In the during the capacity constrained, okay, we don't gouge our customers. We want to deliver to you guys, okay, and very consistent stories, okay, and I don't want to answer a question when the margins, okay, drops, okay.
I want MPS to keep the same business, same performance year over years,
Tony Balow
okay, quarter over quarter year year over year. That's right.
I think the model still holds. I'm very comfortable with that.
I think you called it out, but I'll highlight it again. I think if you look at the flow-through to operating margin, we've been growing operating margin, it's kind of a point a quarter almost.
Really seeing a lot of expansion on the operating margin line recently.
Michael Hsing
We're in the making money business, and that's all we think about.
Tony Balow
Next question, operator.
Operator
Next question comes from Chris Caso with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Chris Caso
Yes, good afternoon. Just following from the prior discussion, maybe you could talk about how you're dealing with rising cost.
Obviously, costs are going up a lot of different places, there's a lot of talk of foundry wafer prices going higher. To what extent are you passing that along, and as you go forward, is any of that result in pricing or any kind of revenue tailwind as you have to absorb some of those costs and pass them along to customers?
Michael Hsing
We definitely absorb some of the cost increase. No, we don't increase the price, okay, and we share the cost increase with our customers.
Tony Balow
I think that's right, Chris. I think if what you're asking is from some of the results, how much of that is from pricing, it's really not a significant contributor to the revenue growth that we've had.
We're more just making sure that we don't dilute ourselves on the gross margin line.
Michael Hsing
Yeah. Our customers have a very long memory.
Chris Caso
Right. Okay.
Thanks for that. As a follow-up, it's a question on the 800-volt transition.
I know there's a lot of noise out there with regard to the pace of that transition. In terms of MPS, how important is that to you in '27?
I guess maybe the question is, is it really 800 volts a very material driver of content in the ED segment, or is the majority of that still going to wind up in the existing low-voltage designs?
Michael Hsing
We don't want to add more noises, okay. Right.
We don't talk about it until when the revenue for sure will come, okay. I do see the revenue for sure will come.
Not this quarter, not next quarters, okay, probably end of the '27 and '28. It's clearly the DC supplied for high power demand.
Will be the trend. What will be the data centers, okay, trend, all will converted into that.
Power savings is I think beyond single-digit percentage improvement versus the traditional power supply. I see this is even beyond the data center.
What if the data centers can improve the, let's say, 5%, where do you get the 5% money returns? All the commercial building, even residentials, they all can be like this.
400 In Europe will be 800 volts, in US will be 400 volts. These will be a significant power savings across the board.
That's why I excited about this opportunity.
Tony Balow
I'll even try to just address the question the other way, which is when we talked about how we were excited about growth in enterprise data, it's not because we have a big built-in ramp on 800-volt. It's really around the existing customers, the new customers, transition to modules, all the things that we've been talking about, Chris.
If you're kind of trying to figure out how much of that excitement was just to 800-volt, I really think the business we have today is what we're confident in.
Michael Hsing
MPS now, we're using our own building do a lot of experiments, okay, using these 800 volts, and okay, using these technology, and see what the power saving is.
Chris Caso
All right. Thank you.
Michael Hsing
Next question.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sebastien Naji with William Blair.
Your line is open.
Sebastien Naji
Good afternoon, or good morning for you guys. Thanks for taking the questions, and congratulations Tony on your appointment.
I wanted to maybe just ask my first question, given some of the news around integrated voltage regulators and the acquisition of Empower by Analog Devices, maybe could you just give us your view on this technology, and whether you see it as a competitive risk in the AI data center or the larger data center?
Michael Hsing
We don't comment in other company's activities, okay. We have our own solutions.
We can deliver whatever customer wanted. There's a lot of BS talks, okay.
We do have multiple beyond the noise levels. We have those technologies and we can deliver, okay.
The GPU evolves very quickly, the power levels, okay, the architecture, and in terms of power delivery. We don't talk about those until we clearly see where the revenue will come.
Sebastien Naji
Okay. Great.
That's helpful. I'll look forward to those announcements when those products are ready.
Maybe moving to something that's a little bit closer to your heart, Michael, which is the building automation opportunity. I think last quarter you talked about $40 to $50 billion in size, but that the real bottleneck was the software still needed to catch up.
Can you maybe just talk a little bit about the progress that's been made here as we get to the end of the year?
Michael Hsing
Good questions, okay. That's my baby project.
We just have installed in our a million square feet building, that's in China, and we, as I said just a minute ago, we're experimenting our own AC-to-DC power. These are for 800-volt supply, and for across the building.
These projects just started. Turning to a $50 billion revenue, it will be take some times.
We don't know how to get there yet, but the goal is very clear. will get there.
It's a lot of software to involved in it, okay. On the hardware side, we pretty much have every single component.
Our components, our chips, our modules technology is a far better than I'm sorry to say these are the currently existing technology, these are 50 years old. We will do some significant improve on it.
Sebastien Naji
Great. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kelsey Chia with Citi.
Your line is open.
Kelsey Chia
Hi Michael and Tony, congrats on the great results again, and Tony, congrats on your well-deserved appointment. My question is on the switching business.
To what extent is that contributing to the strong communications growth that we saw in third quarter? How should we think about the ramp as we head into 2027 and if that business is accretive to gross margins?
Tony Balow
I'll start on that one. We're obviously not going to start guiding sub-end markets a little bit, but certainly from just a percentage basis, it's been growing very quickly, probably on a percentage basis the fastest-growing sub-end market inside of communications, just because it started from a very low amount at the beginning of the year.
As we go forward, again, I still think that and optical modules are going to be significant growth drivers for communications into 2027. On the margin side, I think if you look at all of our end markets, plus or minus, they'll all operate around the corporate average, because to Michael's point, we have north of 6, 7,000 products.
If you look at the distribution of that, basically what we've said is as we grow this, we don't think growing one end market over another will necessarily take us out of our model. Right now I would still take MPS as a total, kind of in that 55% to 60% range, with sort of the slow methodical expansion when we can provide it, versus worrying about whether growth in one end market would take you out of model.
Yeah.
Kelsey Chia
Got it. My second question is on the industrial end market.
Very strong growth this quarter as well. What drove that strong growth this quarter, and if you could talk about the ramp of the robotic solutions, and how do you see that ramping in 2027?
Michael Hsing
The robotics, okay, I tried to enter robotics in the 2016 on a Analyst Day, we talk about robotics, okay, that's the area we focus on, okay. We have a product for these sensors and motor controls, okay, and I didn't know what I was talking about, okay.
The revenue didn't come, okay. Now it shows up.
I think it's still at the very beginning, okay. Once the vision visual recognitions and improved from using the AI-based vision improvement technology, these robots as and they will propagate in our everyday life.
I see that's the future, and revenue will be significantly higher than now,
Tony Balow
okay. I think the only thing I'd add kind of in the overall segment is I think this year we still look at it as just piling up design wins.
In robotics and other places, and really look for more of that in 2027. The growth in the quarter was fairly broad-based, but I think you start to see a lot of these other design wins come to turn into revenue in the future.
I think that in kind of consumer and industrial, 2026, I think really does still remain mostly about winning all the designs that support future growth.
Kelsey Chia
Got it. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe Quatrochi with Wells Fargo.
Your line is open.
Joe Quatrochi
Thanks for taking the question, and my congrats as well Tony. Maybe just to kind of a finer point on the expansion of capacity to $8 billion.
I can appreciate that you can't grow OpEx as fast, and you don't need to grow OpEx as fast, but how do we think about maybe some of the investments you have to make on the working capital side or go-to-market side to support that?
Tony Balow
I think on one of the nice things about being in a fabless model, right, is we don't have to dig a hole and pour concrete into anything.
Michael Hsing
We don't make anything. Our brain generates.
Tony Balow
That's right. I don't anticipate at this point seeing a large increase in capital intensity just to go ramp this capacity, right?
It gives us a lot of flexibility. As a matter of fact, I am personally just amazed at the amount of capacity we've been able to put on this even over the last year, and I think the operations team's done a tremendous job.
I don't see it necessarily inflecting the overall OpEx at this point or any kind of change to our capital structure just to put on that extra capacity.
Joe Quatrochi
Thanks. Then maybe as a follow-up, I think auto's continuing to see some inflection.
Can you just talk about the breadth of demand you're seeing there from a geographic perspective, and how we think about the design pipeline looking into 2027?
Michael Hsing
It's across the geographic, okay, and US side, Europe side, okay, and also in Asia, China, okay. We see in China particularly, we see a lot of activities.
That's for the worldwide, and we, as I said earlier, we can't predict which market segment. That's our diversified growth strategies.
Some years, okay, some years, one segment's good, other even with a mature market, and some years, one market segment's good, and the other one's not so good, okay. In the last few years, okay, all of a sudden, the GPU market happened, or the optical market and revenue happened, okay, and so we didn't anticipate it.
We just provide these are the best, highest-performance product, our customers will realize it.
Tony Balow
The only thing I'd add is I think the reason we've been pretty confident on the ramp in the second half is because it is so diverse amongst customers and regions, and not dependent just on one. You've seen that same level of customer diversity grow in auto over the past several years, like we've been talking about in enterprise data.
The pipeline is similar, right? It's very geographically diverse, very customer diverse.
We're just very excited to start seeing some of the architectural transitions that we've been talking about in sort of 48 and zonal, because those sort of form the next wave of growth for us.
Michael Hsing
We're not to predict where the market is. Next question, operator.
Tony Balow
Last question?
Operator
Thank you. Our last question comes from Gary Mobley with StoneX.
Your line is open.
Gary Mobley
Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for squeezing in my question, and congrats Tony again.
I wanted to ask about what you might be signaling in your capacity milestones. You're currently at $6 billion in production capacity, which I assume supports your 2027 outlook, doesn't take much to get there, just extrapolating out Q4 revenue guidance.
You're expected to be at $8 billion in capacity exiting fiscal year '27. Should we think about that in terms of the revenue velocity exiting fiscal year '27?
Michael Hsing
Doesn't take much to get there? Oh, come on.
It's not just to move the numbers, okay. There's a lot of work behind that,
Tony Balow
okay. Right now, I think what we're trying to strongly signal is that just like we've been doing the past 20 years, we're making sure that capacity stays ahead of the business.
In a world where there's a lot of narrative around there being tightness, we wanted to be very clear to you and our customers how we're growing capacity to support that business. I think, again, it's too early to go right in a quarterly revenue ramp for what that means for 2027, but what we wanted to make sure was loud and clear was that we see the demand coming and we're going to make sure capacity is there to deal with it.
Gary Mobley
Thanks for that. On inventory, I would just want to confirm that distribution inventory is still within that normal five to eight-week range, and then it looks like your internal inventory down to 117 days based on a forward revenue guide basis, and that's been trickling down.
Are you inventory properly just to support sales, I guess is really the question?
Tony Balow
I think right now we're still on the channel side certainly on the lean end of our range, like we've been for some time now. Internally, I think we grew dollars kind of on a gross basis, right, but obviously as the revenues ramped, that's come down from a days perspective.
I think that our range certainly hasn't changed, and it's something that as we increase our capacity and our wafer starts, we'll make sure that we're positioned for the business, but right now it's not limiting us on the business.
Gary Mobley
Got it. Thank you all again.
Michael Hsing
Okay.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session.
I would now like to turn it back to Tony Balow for closing remarks.
Tony Balow
All right, thank you operator, and thank you all for joining us for this conference call today. I look forward to speaking with you on the next call for the fourth quarter and full year 2026 revenue guidance.
Thank you again, and have a great day.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.
You may now disconnect.