Jeffrey Andreson
Analyst · Needham & Company. Please go ahead
Thank you, Claire, and welcome to our Q1 Earnings Call. I hope that all of you and your families are staying healthy and safe. Today, we reported a record revenue quarter for Ichor, another strong quarter of financial results with Q1 revenues and earnings both at the high end of guidance. Revenues of $265 million were up 8% from Q4 and marked our eighth straight quarter of sequential revenue growth. Gross margin increased 30 basis points, operating margin increased 20 basis points, and net income grew by 10% compared to Q4. Our strong operational leverage of our business model and continued improvements in gross margin are evident in our year-over-year EPS growth of 46%. Compared to the same period a year ago, we have increased net income by $10 million on revenue on a revenue increase of $45 million, a net flow through to earnings of 22%. We also had another strong cash flow quarter with free cash flow of $20 million. So far in 2021, the underlying demand for wafer fab equipment or WFE has continued to strengthen. Over the past several weeks, the major players in foundry and logic have provided multi-year visibility into their heightened levels of investments, which will be put in place to support unprecedented levels of demand for semiconductors. At the same time, healthy market conditions in memory sector have led to further improvements in memory capital investments as we progress through the year. As a result, expectations of WFE growth in 2021 have increased steadily since our last earnings call, from about 15% in early February to current expectations of growth in the 25% to 30% range. The strengthening demand environment to date in 2021 is evident in our Q1 results and Q2 guidance, with upticks in demand witnessed among each of our key customers and among each of our business units. Our Q2 revenue guidance is a range of $270 million to $300 million or another 8% in sequential revenue growth at the midpoint. Our visibility remains very good, extending about six months or so, which along with the outlook provided by our customers, provides us with confidence that the second half of 2021 will be stronger than the first half. With widespread expectations of another growth year for WFE in 2022, we appear to be in the second year of a multi-year growth cycle, propelled by the convergence of multiple technology drivers, such as 5G, IoT, AI, and autonomous vehicles, as well as secular growth related to the progression of work from home and high performance computing. Semiconductor industry revenues are breaking out from the historical share of the global electronics market for the first time in 15 years. More recently, domestic semiconductor supply self-sufficiency is adding another layer of investment to these secular drivers. Together, all of these drivers are resulting in increased capital intensity for the semiconductor industry and higher levels of investment in fab technology and capacity. In other words, being an essential supplier to the semiconductor wafer fab equipment market and having a nearly 100% focus on the sometimes cyclical but strong growth industry is a great place to be. With that as a backdrop of our overall outlook for industry growth, I'll now turn to our key strategies to continue to outperform industry growth and in turn deliver strong operating leverage and cash flows. I'll begin with our strategic focus on some of the strongest markets within WFE. The three key markets for our products are etch, deposition, and EUV lithography, all of which are outpacing overall industry growth due to multiple technology drivers. In NAND, the industry is investing in the technology that will take them from 96 layers to 128 layers and beyond that to 256-layer devices. At each step in the process, there is more etch and deposition. You may have heard on a recent earnings call that it's mostly etch and deposition equipment that's required to continue to fill these taller stacks. Similarly, with DRAM, as we go from 1Y to the 1Z node and then to 1-alpha and 1-beta, there is more of a need for etch and deposition, and we are the leading provider fluid delivery subsystems into these markets. In logic, transitions to 5 nanometers and 3 nanometers require more complex geometries and more precise control of fluid delivery. There has also been an increase in the number of gases used for technology advancements in both logic, as well as DRAM over the past several years. In each case, as these geometries become more complex, this drives the need for faster etch rates, better material selectivity, and more precise control of the processes. The key takeaway as it relates to Ichor is that these advanced technology nodes are requiring more etch and deposition intensity, and especially in the case of logic and DRAM, more fluid delivery content per system. Our other key market is EUV lithography, which is growing at rates well exceeding overall industry growth. Annual system shipments are expected to continue to increase at strong double-digit growth rates for the foreseeable future and as such we are witnessing steady increases in our EUV gas delivery sales run rate each year. In total, each of these key technology transitions across all three device types is driving increased opportunity for all three of our key markets. This is a key driver for our revenue growth outperforming the overall industry and our increased share of WFE from 0.9% five years ago to 1.5% in 2020, or more than a 70% increase in our share of industry spend. Our increasing share of WFEs is also due to our continued market share gains and the complementary and accretive acquisition that further enable the expansion of our product offerings and global customer footprint. Before I update you on the progress we are making in our next generation gas panel product development program and our other product and regional growth initiatives, I'd like to update you on our capacity plans. As I noted earlier, we are in the second year of a multi-year growth cycle, with leading industry OEMs and analysts forecasting another year of growth in 2022. Given this outlook and to support the success in our new product initiatives, we are already or are actively adding capacity in our gas panel integration, machining and weldment businesses. On our last call, we highlighted that our CapEx expenditures this year would be above our typical range of 1% to 2% of revenues and be in the range of 2% to 3% for 2021. These investments in capacity will enable Ichor to achieve quarterly revenue run rates in excess of $400 million. Now, I'll update you on the progress the team has made on our strategy to leverage our engineering capabilities and IP portfolio to develop new products that will result in longer-term expansion of our share of our served markets, as well as drive the operating model towards increased levels of profitability. We have made very good progress over the last quarter with our proprietary next-generation gas delivery solution and we'll ship our first beta unit in late May. In the third quarter, we expect to ship a beta unit liquid delivery module to a North American customer. We expect the qualification period to extend through this year with first revenues occurring in 2022. Additionally, we're in the final stages of completing two precision machining part qualifications in the second quarter and expect to see first revenues in the third quarter. These qualifications will increase both our proprietary content on a gas panel and will be margin accretive. As I noted earlier, we are in the final stages of increasing capacity in both our Minnesota and Mexico machining operations to support the revenue associated with these two qualifications. In our geographic expansion initiatives, we continue to have active dialog with several of the major OEMs in Asia, but the COVID-related impacts continue to limit travel and customer visits, resulting in delay in the qualification of our liquid delivery systems at a Korean customer. But this is still a very large opportunity for us, and as we move past these limitations, we will be putting on a full-court press. In summary, the team did a phenomenal job ramping the business once again in Q1 to address the historic levels of demand from our customers and delivered a record revenue quarter for Ichor. Our second quarter revenue guidance indicates our expectation for continued sequential growth above Q1 and year-over-year growth of 22% to 35% versus Q2 of last year. At the midpoint of Q2 guidance, the first half 2021 is expected to grow 24% from the first half of 2020 and be up 16% from the very strong second half of 2020. We are also driving continued incremental improvements in gross margin and operating margin as we are steadfastly focused on making meaningful progress towards our target model and a continued very healthy business environment, which brings us to Larry's discussion of our financial performance and further details on our outlook. Larry?