Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We'll take our question from Aaron Rakers with Wachovia.
Aaron Rakers - Wachovia
Yeah. Thanks, guys. I have got a couple of questions, if I can. I guess first, just a clarification for me. Looking at the HPA business, you had mentioned board products were relatively healthy offset by a decline in ASICs. According to my model, it looks like ASIC revenue decline quite substantially, even cut in half this quarter, can you help me understand that a little bit and how do you expect that to trend here into the current quarter? I am assuming that you're talking about the mainframe cycle from IBM.
Mike Rockenbach
Yeah. Hi, Aaron, this is Mike. We do see and we have seen historically that that the ASICs piece of our Host Several Products business does tend to be pretty lumpy. It is tied primarily into one customer. And then, so when they get near a product launch cycle going into that for the quarter too prior, we tend to see that business slowdown and then we do see it ramp-up pretty nicely when they get ready to launch the products.
Aaron Rakers - Wachovia
So, I guess, my question is then: are you assuming a ramp-up in that revenue stream this next quarter or is that more of a June quarter story?
Mike Rockenbach
We expect that it's going to ramp-up in the March a bit, yes.
Aaron Rakers - Wachovia
Okay. So that should offset a typical seasonal decline in the HBA business in the March quarter?
Mike Rockenbach
Within host several products, yeah, and then for the total topline, we're expecting to see some pretty nice growth in the Embedded Storage products as well. But it will also offset some of the seasonality in HBA.
Aaron Rakers - Wachovia
Okay. Fair enough. And then my other two questions, I guess the first one here on the five customer wins or design wins in ESP that are expected ramp here in this next quarter, can you help us understand when you say significant, how many of those you would categorize as Tier 1 relative to some of the smaller players in the storage market?
Mike Rockenbach
Aaron, I would say about three out of five is what we would class as Tier 1 customers.
Aaron Rakers - Wachovia
Okay. And then final question for me: You mentioned, I think for the first time looking out over the next couple of quarters the potential for a shift from chips selling board-level of products, when do we expect that to happen? And can you give us any feeling for quantifying what the potential impact of that could be?
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
