Emily Yang
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thank you, Brett, and good afternoon. In the fourth quarter, revenue increased 13.2% quarter-over-quarter on a consolidated basis and 7.8% organically which is at the high end of our guidance, primarily due to better-than-expected demand in Asia, followed by North America and Europe. Looking more closely at the fourth quarter revenue, POS revenue reached record level which is driving our expectations for the continued growth in the first quarter. Distributor inventory in terms of weeks decreased quarter-over-quarter, which is slightly below our defined normal range of 11 to 14 weeks. We expect distributor inventories to return to our normal range in the near term. Looking at the global sales in the fourth quarter. Asia represented 81% of revenue; Europe, 11%; and North America, 8%. In terms of our end markets, computing represents 23%, industrial, 23%; consumer, 22% of revenue; communication 20%; and automotive 12% of revenue. We achieved record revenue in automotive and computing end markets, with computing being driven by record quarterly revenue for our Pericom product. Now let me review the end market in greater details. Starting with automotive, Diodes continues its strong growth momentum, achieving record quarterly revenue and reaching 12% of the total revenue. This represents a growth of almost 24% sequentially and 40% year-over-year. There are three application areas where Diodes continue to gain significant traction including connected driving, which consists of ADAS, telematics and infotainment system, comfort, style and safety, including lighting and brushless DC motors as well as Powertrain, conference conventional, hybrid electric vehicles. In connected driving, we saw demand for our new product in infotainment, lighting control systems, speedometer, core alarm systems. More specifically, Diodes automotive-grade switching, TVS, linear diodes and crystal oscillators contributed to the growth in this application. In comfort, style and safety, we have strong success with our MOSFET brushless DC motor controllers, Vinex drivers and bipolar transistors in applications such as daylight raining light, styling, instrument lighting as well as gate driver ICs in interior wireless charging. Our LED drivers and our power transistors are also gaining market share in this space, hotel light, interior elimination and exterior lighting applications. Our unipolar hall-effect switch family is also gaining strong market traction for c-belt, c-position, sunroof as well as trunk and window openers applications. In vehicle Powertrain, Diodes supplies into conventional internal combustion engine, Powertrain, as well as for hybrid electric vehicles. Our SBR rectifier has been designed into many of these applications. We have also secured multiple design-ins and opportunities for switching and Zener diodes, rectifier and discrete MOSFET in battery maining system for electric vehicles as well as emerging applications like mini electric vehicles, micro MYO hybrid and e-scooter system. In the industrial market, revenue increased 18% sequentially as we continue to extend our momentum in applications, including solar power inverters, power distribution systems and smart metering system, all of which were the main contributors in driving growth for our products. We also continue to see strong demand for high-voltage rectified products in smart infrastructure solutions as well as adoption of our PCI Express package switch in the industrial applications to connect multiple PCIe endpoints with the CPU. Also during the quarter, we began to see increasing new design-ins for LED drivers in UVC lighting applications as well as numerous designing and design-ins for our yVLDL product family. We also saw rapid growth for our newly released AC-DC converters in LED lighting, e-meter, power tools and charging applications. Additionally, our series of voltage regulators and SBR devices continue to gain traction in DC fan applications with the MOSFET demand increasing for both discrete based inverters and module-based inverters. In the consumer market, shipments for the adapter power IC continued to grow throughout the year. We also saw high demand in the gaming and high-resolution display market as end users increasingly require high-quality video provided through HDMI and display port. As a result of this trend, our HDMI and display port ReDrivers are gaining traction with key chipset vendor reference design. We're also seeing an increased number of design-ins for our LED drivers as well as demand for larger monitor continues to grow. Also in the consumer, we continue to see strong interest for our discrete products, including bipolar transistors, ultra-small size transistors and Schottky barrier Diodes in applications like amplifiers, Bluetooth headphones and drums. Turning to communication market. Wireless communication application continues to expand, driving revenue generations for Zener TVS Diodes in Bluetooth ear box, smart speakers and smart lighting as well as point-to-point and point-to-multipoint links. Our high search TVS for smartphone power line protection has gained strong growth momentum in new fast charging applications along with video cameras, access control panels and audio broadcasting system. We're also seeing more design-ins and design-wins in mobile phones, cable modems, optical network terminals 5G CPE routers, radio remote units and base stations applications for our MOSFET, low saturated, high-voltage transistors, low voltage hall sensors and RF LDO products. Bipolar junction transistors, SBR and Schottky product are also gaining traction in applications like 5G Outdoor Access points, CPE, access point routers, power over ethernet switches, cable modem, WiFi routers, IoT gateways and mobile battery applications. Lastly, in computing, we reached record quarterly revenue driven by record quarterly revenue for our Pericom products. Due to COVID-19 shelter-in-place continue to drive demand for new and upgraded laptops, tablets and other related products. We are also seeing strong demand for power management, LDL, hall sensor, AC to DC converters, low switches and audio amplified product in the mobile and monitor applications. ESC protection for USB Type-C in the mobile and portable devices also continued to be a strong area there for our TVS, SBR, Schottky products. Also during the quarter, growth momentum continues in surfer applications, along with good momentum in our timing product family to support PCI Express Gen 4 and Gen 5 requirements. This provides flexibility to our customers with seamless migration from PCI Express Gen 4 to PCI Express Gen 5 in the future without changing the timing path design. In summary, we ended 2020, achieving the highest quarterly revenue in the Company's history and our guided for other quarter of growth in the first quarter, both organically and on a consolidated basis to set a stage for a strong year in 2021. This growth reflects the success we've been achieving with our total solution sales approach and demand creation effort to increase the content and share across new and existing customers and applications. We look forward to the capitalizing on the synergies and opportunities that Lite-On Semiconductors offers to Diodes across our end markets, product offerings, customers and manufacturing footprint. With that, we now open the floor to questions. Operator.