Emily Yang
Analyst · Longbow Research. Your line is open
Thank you, Rick, and good afternoon. Looking more closely at fourth quarter revenue distributor POP was down by 6% and POS decreased 9.8% sequentially. But yes, POS was up 16% year-over-year. Outside of Asia, POS remains strong, channel inventory increased 5.6% sequentially driven primary by Asia region in preparation for the pre-Chinese New Year deals as is typical at this time of year. Outside of Asia, channel inventory was flat. Looking at global sales in the fourth quarter, Asia represented 79% of the revenue, Europe 10% and North America 11%. In terms of our end markets, industrial was once again our largest representative end market at 25% of revenue. Consumer represented 24%, communication 24%, computing 18% and automotive 9% of revenue. Starting with automotive market growth continues to be strong especially in Asia, with 2018 revenue increasing almost 38% over 2017 to 9% of total revenue. Diodes continues to secure new design wins across multiple products including MOSFET on the brushless DC motor, electric power steering, water pumps, power windows, electric horn, infotainment, battery management and advanced driving assistance. In addition, USB power delivers being added to automobiles, which is driving design wins of our solution in infotainment and mobile wire and wireless charging applications. Additionally, our diodes and rectifier products has seen solid momentum in the automotive space, driven by the need for a robust electric discharge protection in the connected cars. We also saw strong demand for day time running light and body control modules as we continue to introduce new products like bipolar junction transistors, and LED linear controllers. In the industrial market, we also achieved strong full year growth of more than 29%, accounting to approximately 25% of total revenues. During the quarter, we secured multiple new design wins for our normal density trench MOSFET technology, data line platform, hall sensors, short key [ph] SDR and BJT products for our broad range of applications including brushless DC motors, LED lighting, DC fan, power tools and e-lock applications. We also continue to see strong demand for our SASP products. In fact, with the record adoption of high speed interfaces across multiple end application in the IoT industry. ESC protection is becoming more important for this data links. Diodes' SBR and Schottky product remain strong in the DC fan and lighting market where we offer products suitable for high temperature environments. We also saw strong momentum for our recently introduced Gate Drivers designed into battery test systems, regulators into DC fans, as well as transistors and synchronize controllers into power applications. In our consumer end market 2018 revenue grew 10% over 2017, as we continue to achieve strong momentum across a wide variety of applications, such as low power USB Type C charging and power deliveries, wireless power charging, argumentative reality, panels, earphone, wearable, portable devices, OLED displays, smart speakers, gaming, Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi trackers. In addition, USB Type C is gaining market traction and expanding its footprint to new end products, such as the set-top boxes as well as Type C adapters to convert the Type C battery Type A for the existing install base. Our wide signal switching and market portfolio covers all this application's need. Additionally, our audio product are achieving significant revenue increases, driven by the high demand for our audio alarming features in the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tracker applications. We also secured key design wins for our Gate Drivers and synchronize controllers for home appliance applications, such as air conditioner, fans and refrigerators. In communications, Diodes has been actively engaged in this market with our comprehensive small footprint DFN and CSP MOSFET portfolio and have been achieving design wins and revenue growth. We also continue to expand our portfolio of battery protection MOSFETs to address this market and also see strong demand for LDOs and hall sensors in smartphones to help reduce power consumption and increasing battery life. Our design win activity also continued for AC/DC charging solutions of smartphones, chargers and adapters. Also within communications, mega data center applications are driving the 100 gig and 400 gig optical transistor market to address the bandwidth need of data communications. High-speed transceivers require high performance and low jitter oscillators as our timing reference. Diodes brought portfolio of small form factor ultra-low jitter XL product, position us well in this growing market. Further, we continue to see strong demand for our single [ph] switches along with strong demand for applications for ultra-fast recovery rectifier in the low profile package in the mobile phones, base stations, wireless charging applications. Also within communications, we're also seeing very strong design win activities in 5G applications with a wide range of Pericom products, including PCI new packet switches, cross IC, crystal and crystal oscillators, lasso [ph] shifters and high speed MOSFETs and with Diodes product including low noise LDOs, plus converters and MOSFETs. 5G is only in the beginning stage of the infrastructure build out and as Dr. Lu mentioned, we see this area as a key growth opportunity for Diodes in 2019 and beyond. In Computing, during the quarter we secured new design wins for PCI new gen-4 products from the Pericom product line, including multiplexers, ReDrivers and active marks in the gaming and server applications. We also saw significant opportunities for USB Type C and USB 3.1 ReDrivers in tablet and PC applications. In fact, USB Type C connectors continue to gain market traction, as new applications are adapting USB Type C connector options. For example, the latest stocking station for commercial logos supporting USB Type C would require USB and display port signal masters. Diodes solution supporting USB Type C alternative mode for signal switching and signal integrity continue to expand our designing activity in tablet, notebook and docking station applications. Hall sensor are also gaining traction in the notebook and tablet applications by reducing power consumption, while maintaining reliable performance. Additionally, our broad portfolio of Schottky retrofire technology continues to win design-ins in applications such as USB Power Delivery and ATF power supply. In summary, we are very pleased with achievement of record annual results across our product business driven by our past design win momentum, expanded product offerings and increased market share and content at customers. Additionally, our continued focus on automotive industrial and our Pericom products has further constituted to our growth, while also offered additional higher margin opportunities across a wide variety of applications. We expect this strategy will continue driving profitability growth and cash flow for Diodes in the years to come. With that, we now open the floor to questions. Operator?