Tom Rohrs
Analyst · Stifel. Your question, please
Thank you, Claire. Welcome to our Q4 conference call. The fourth quarter was a challenging quarter for Ichor and for the industry. We saw demand and build plans that were lower than expected as our customers got very serious about protecting their inventory positions. This weekend demand environment resulted in our revenue and earnings coming in at the low end of our guidance for the quarter. Despite the softness in semi equipment, we were able to generate $31 million in free cash flow during the quarter. Looking at the full-year. 2018 was Ichor's strongest year on record. Revenues of $824 million increased 26% year-over-year. This reflects approximately 9% growth in our core markets of gas and chemical delivery, which outperformed the overall industry growth. But, we also saw significant growth in our weldment and precision machining businesses. We delivered on our objective to further increase our gross and operating margins year-over-year with new record set on both counts and delivered record earnings of about $3 per share. Over the last four years, we have delivered an annual growth rate of 35%, unmatched among our peers and customers in the industry. And we grew our earnings per share at an annual rate of 57%. In 2018, we had our strongest profits and cash flows on record. With net income of $75 million, we generated over $60 million [ph] in operating cash flow. And we also return $90 million to our shareholders through share buybacks. Probably the most important accomplishment during 2018 was that we exhibited strong profits and cash flows at business levels well below the peak spending environment seen in the first half of the year. I felt that we did an excellent job of adjusting to weakening business conditions as we executed a rightsizing plan in late June. We did the same in Q3, as we saw the fourth quarter demand drop. We were caught a bit off guard with the level of inventory corrections in the second half, but we have since implemented another round of rightsizing and I believe that we have the right balance of resources for the current level of business. Our operating model is holding up well, thanks to our variable manufacturing cost structure and decisive action to manage expenses in response to changes in demand. We remain confident that we will continue to make solid profits during this multi-quarter slowdown in industry spending. And we will be in a strong position to demonstrate, both our financial and operational leverage as the industry recovers. Now, I want to spend some time discussing what we see in Q1. Our revenues for Q1 will be flat to down 7% from the fourth quarter, which shows we are holding up better than many of our peers and customer semiconductor businesses. We believe this is due in part to some of our market share gains starting to hit the scoreboard. It also means that inventory correction, which primarily impacted our components businesses during the second half of 2018, should be behind us by the time we exit Q1. We believe our gas and chemical delivery business is once again closely aligned with our customers’ build plans. We are now positioned to be solidly profitable at today's business levels during this period, while ensuring that we can respond quickly when demand increases, which we currently expect to occur in the second half of 2019. We will continue to have contingency plans in place for any additional softness we may experience, but I believe that brunt of the downward revisions are behind us as we bounce along the bottom. While there's good reason to remain cautious, we also have a number of tailwinds for second half recovery that are worth noting. These include our incremental market share gains, which will have an increasing contribution to our P&L as we move through the year, as well as our exposure to ASML, which guided to 50% increase in sales in the second half. In addition to these factors, we anticipate we could start to see a replenishment of inventories for our component businesses in preparation for improved demand for etch and deposition process tools. We are continuing to execute against our plans to gain incremental market share. As we entered the fourth quarter, industry analysts were anticipating about a 5% reduction in wafer fab equipment in 2019, and we sized our incremental revenue opportunity at about $100 million. Given that it's clearly evident at this point that the industry will see a much larger correction, which for process tools could be down as much as 20% this year, our opportunity will probably be $20 million to $25 million less than what we thought a year ago -- or excuse me, a quarter ago. Nevertheless, these market share gains remain a very significant growth driver for Ichor to once again outperform overall industry spending. There will be share gains in weldments, in precision machining and chemical delivery, and gas delivery systems. I continue to be very pleased with the progress we're making against these organic opportunities. I will give you an update on this progress, starting with the first meaningful incremental market share revenue kicking in during the first quarter. In our weldment business, we have been qualified on the first and second waves of parts with a new customer and are in process on a third. These phases of qualification represent nearly half of what we are pursuing for the year. We have all the capacity in place to support the opportunity as we have leveraged the capability that we acquired via our Cal-Weld acquisition. In our precision machining business, the qualifications have a slightly longer cycle time than what we are experiencing on a weldment side of the business. But, we are nearing the completion of the first phase this quarter, and we will see the first revenues in Q2. In our gas delivery business, we are often asked by investors where customers will move from an outsourced manufacturing strategy to an in-source strategy during these downturn periods. We are seeing quite the opposite as we are awarded incremental share at one of our largest customers in the fourth quarter with the first revenues getting now in the first quarter. We will also see growth in the gas delivery systems for our third largest customer in 2019, as their products ramp. In our chemical and liquid delivery business, we have gained incremental share outside of our proprietary liquid delivery module. This revenue also will begin in late Q1. The largest growth driver, however, will still be our proprietary liquid delivery module. Sales there are still very limited today. However, the end users technology transition is progressing very well. And we expect to see meaningful levels of LDM revenues in the second half. Our IAN Engineering acquisition gave us a foothold in Korea where there is roughly a $2 billion equipment market. The business is expected to continue to be negatively impacted by the low levels of memory investment. But once this recovers, we will see share gains and gas delivery there. Our equipment -- excuse me, our engagement with our largest customer in Korea on the liquid delivery module though is continuing and we plan to be able to demonstrate the product this year, leading to another leg of growth in Korea. As you can see, we are making solid progress on our incremental revenue initiatives. While market conditions have muted the 2019 opportunity, the total opportunity is significant and will exceed $100 million, once industry returns to higher levels of WFE spending. I'll continue to update you on our progress each quarter. To sum up, in Q4, in addition to delivering strong cash flows and profits, in spite of weakening business conditions, we also made great progress in addressing the needs of our customers. And we're beginning to fill our promise of market share gains. As we enter 2019, our strategy is unchanged. We are semiconductor equipment company, concentrating on fluid delivery technologies. We believe that through the cycle, semiconductor equipment will continue to grow faster than most other industrial businesses. As I mentioned at the beginning of my prepared remarks, over the last four years, we have outperformed the wafer fab equipment 12% annual growth rate with our own annual growth rate of 35%. We fully expect that as we execute on our opportunities with share gains, we will continue to go faster than the WFE market. I am confident that Ichor will emerge from this period as a stronger company with significant operating and earnings leverage. And now, let me turn this over to Jeff to provide more detail around our fourth quarter financial performance and our guidance for the first quarter. Jeff?