Emily Yang
Analyst · Shawn Harrison from Longbow. Your line is now open
Thank you, Brett and good afternoon. As Dr. Lu and Brett mentioned, we had a record year in 2019 with revenue growth once again outperforming our served markets. Looking more closely at the fourth quarter, revenue reflecting there is no softness in inventory adjustments that are typical of our industry at the end of the year. POS was down slightly, mainly driven by the slow down during Christmas Holiday in North America and Europe. Distributor inventory in terms of weeks was flat in the fourth quarter, which is within our normal range of 11 to 14 weeks. We expect distributor inventories to remain within our normal range of 11 to 14 weeks in the near term. Looking at the global sales for 2019, Asia represented 75% of revenue, Europe 15%, and North America 10%. In terms of our end market distributions for the whole year, the industrial market represented 28% of total revenue, consumer 23%, communication 23%, computing 16%, and automotive 10% of revenue. Now, let me review the end markets in greater details. For the automotive market, we continue to see significant growth in this market as we capture both increasing market share and content gains, despite the overall challenges with the decrease unit output of outsource autos during the year. Revenue in this end market grew more than 14% in 2019 to 10% of the total revenue, representing a 29.4% CAGR since 2013. Our abilities to secure an increasing number of design wins have been a key factor to our success. In particular, for application in connected driving, including ADAS telematics and infotainment as a result of the record increase of electronics in today's highly connected cars. In addition, robust USB protection is becoming increasingly more important and our productions products offer high reliability and high performance solutions in ESC protection that covers the entire spectrum for connected driving applications. We are also seeing continued success with our proprietary SBR technology. These products are optimized by high surge capability to ensure greater protection against negative spikes inducted low surge, thereby you will need increasing revenue and reliability in often noisy automotive applications. These product areas is suitable for wide range of applications in connected driving, power steering, battery management, lighting, body control and central infotainment display. Additionally, we continue to expand our content in comfort, safety, and lighting area. Our new Zener diodes product family is gaining momentum in automotive lighting applications, and we also have strong momentum for bipolar transistors in lighting, radar, and wireless charging. Also in the automotive space, diodes leading PCI expressed Gen 1 package switch solution were broadly adopted in the next generation telematic designs and will start to ramp this year. During the quarter, we also continue to expand our leadership position by releasing additional Pericom products, including a PCI Express Gen 2 packet switch family that meets the AEC-Q 100 grade 2 for higher temperature requirements and low standby power consumption to satisfy the always on requirement. In the industrial end market, revenue grew 14.7% for the full-year over 2018, representing a six-year CAGR of 14.6%. Brushless six years, CAGR are 14.6%. Brushless DC motor LED lightings are key industrial applications for Diodes [small size] product. We have addressed this application using our SGT MOSFET technology for low power loss, as well as normal density trench market technology for better safe operating areas. We are also addressing new meter applications with our SASP and widening LDLs with the record adoption of high speed interfaces across multiple end applications in IOT industry. ESC protection is increasingly more important for this data links. Diodes data line platform features ultra low capacitance with industrial leading search handling and ESD protection characteristics. For the industrial DC fan and lighting markets, our SBR and Schottky products offers cost performance in high-temperature operating environment that is ideal for this application. Schottky diodes offers low and stable leakage under the high thermal stress, while I rectify a package in the ultra thing CSP package are growing in priority for the space saving in DC fan applications. We're also seeing our latch and omnipolar hall sensors gaining momentum in the security cameras [indiscernible] applications. Turning to consumer space, quick charges and direct charges have gained momentum in the response to the market need to reduce the charging time of batteries. The ultimate solution of USB power delivery is to propel the ultra power to a higher level. With Diodes advanced SGT Technology, 40 to 100 low MOSFET offers synchronized rectification and secondary synchronized rectification to support a wide voltage range of adapted technologies. Additionally, wireless power charging also gained momentum because of the convenience of use to increase the wireless transmitter power 20 to 30 MOSFET in smaller package are required, which diodes offers. Also, in the consumer market, Diode's protection products, including TVS, DC-DC, LDL, SPR, and Schottky families are gaining tractions in channels. In the communication market, mobile communications have profoundly changed people's life with a 5G emerging as the key solution to meet the significant speed upgrades and large bandwidth requirements. Diodes is seeing increasing demand in this area for our products that helps improve 5G amplifier performance both the power in the base station and also safe on power consumption. Diodes PCI Express Gen package switch family are designed into 5G mobile routers and 5G CPE home routers. Diodes also released our next generation [indiscernible] switch for cell phone applications with higher resolution capability and superior performance under [indiscernible] further delivers the highest system performance for camera picture quality supporting 5G phones, which are expected to hit the mainstream market in 2020. Lastly, in the computing market, our SASP products are a resurgence of revenue growth in local PC applications in GPP rectifiers and bridge rectifiers, as well as TVS products. As mobile and PC markets continue to adopt USB Type-C, this application is emerging as the next big growth engine for power protection. We have current solutions to protect all teams on Type C connectors and are also developing custom solutions for customer specific usage on Type C applications. Additionally, Diodes comprehensive product portfolio for docking stations continues to provide customer solutions for interface and switching need. Our newly released PCI Express Gen 4 crossbar switches offers a best performance with high bandwidth and low centre lock, while also being designing for connecting the mobile to [indiscernible] at major OEMs. In summary, our achievement of record annual results and growth that exceeds our served markets is further testament to our success of our total solution sales approach that has resulted in a market share gain and contract expansion at key customers. We are well positioned to continue driving further growth and margin expansion in the coming year and looking forward to reporting our ongoing success and milestone achievements towards our long-term financial goals. With that, we’ll now open the floor to questions. Operator?