Earnings Labs

ChipMOS TECHNOLOGIES Inc. (IMOS)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 15, 2018

$42.60

-0.63%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the ChipMOS Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. David Pasquale with Global IR Partners for ChipMOS. Thank you. You may begin.

David Pasquale

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Welcome everyone to ChipMOS' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Results Conference Call. Joining us today from the company are Mr. S.J. Cheng, Chairman and President; Ms. Silvia Su, Senior Director of Finance and Accounting Management Center. S.J. will review business highlights and provide color on the operating environment. Silvia will then review the company’s key financial results. We are also joined today on the call by Mr. Lafair Cho, Senior Executive Vice President, COO and spokesperson; and also Strategy Investor Relations, Deputy Director, Dr. G.S. Shen. All company executives will participate in the Q&A session after management’s formal remarks. If you have not yet received a copy of today’s results release, please email Global IR Partners at imos@globalirpartners.com, or you can get a copy of the press release off of ChipMOS' website at www.chipmos.com. As with prior quarters, we hosted a call in Mandarin after the close of the Taiwan Stock Market a few hours ago. This is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to broaden investor and analyst following in the domestic Asia market, given the full Taiwan listing. The prepared comments management will cover here are the same as those covered on the earlier call. The second call is intended to give the company’s English-speaking investors the same opportunity to both hear directly from management and ask questions pertaining to results and the operating environment. With that said, we must also make a disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. During this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended; and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual performance, financial condition or results of operations of the company to be materially different from any future performance, financial condition or results of operation implied by such forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these risks, uncertainties and other factors is included in the company’s most recent annual report on Form 20-F, which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and in the company’s other filings with the SEC. At this time, I would like to now turn the call over to the company’s Chairman and President, Mr. S.J. Cheng. Please go ahead, sir.

S.J. Cheng

Analyst

Yes. Thank you, David. Welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full year 2017 conference call. Hopefully, you all had time to review our earnings release. 2017 was the important year for ChipMOS. We can predict major initiative central to the company near and long-term success. This includes business, customer and geography diversification program. We remain focused on building up on our technical expertise, geography footprint and strong base of customer always. As we support customer effort in new market, including the high growth area, like auto industry and smartphone – smart mobile devices. We were able to build up our business and create shareholder’s values. And while we have met considerable progress, the benefit to the revenue growth have been offset by the allocation decline in our largest memory customers. We had talking about this on prior calls, giving the impact to our business. This is still a headwind, but we had did risk, the potential for revenue decline in 2018. The customer represent nearly 20% of our consolidated revenue in prior years period. As we ended 2018, thus revenue contribution have been reduced to a middle to high single digit level which we expect it to maintain. Despite a reduction, we maintain a very healthy relationship with the customer and work closely together on many programs. Without going into too much details, some of program are in auto sector. They qualify ChipMOS and want to continue working with us. This had given us a bit of stability and even the potential for growth. We are now modeling our future on the customer being a growth driven, rather we will try to maintain the current middle to high single digit level. The other area of our business have been generally positive. We have been successfully in our diversification effort…

Silvia Su

Analyst

Thank you, S.J. All dollar amounts stated in our presentation are in U.S. dollars. We have provided both U.S. dollars and NT dollars in our press release. The following numbers are based on exchange rate of NT$28.60 against $1 as of December 29, 2017. Net earnings for the fourth quarter of 2017 was $0.13 per diluted ADS compared to $0.13 per diluted ADS in Q3. This represent net income of $5.5 million and $0.01 per basic and $0.01 per diluted common share in the third quarter of 2017. For 2017, total revenue was $605.3 million, net earnings for 2017 was $2.36 per diluted ADS, with $0.12 per diluted common shares in the same period. Our operating expenses in Q4 were $12.4 million or 8.4% of our Q4 revenue compared to $13 million or 8.7% of our revenue in Q3. Other operating expenses in Q4 was $1.6 million and net nonoperating expenses in Q4 was $4.1 million. Income tax expense for Q4 was $4.1 million compared to $1.7 million in Q3. On a segment basis, revenue breakdown of fourth quarter was 26.6% in testing, 26% in assembly, 29.8% in LCD driver business and 17.6% in bumping. Total capacity utilization was 74% for the fourth quarter of 2017 compared to 76% for the third quarter of 217. Our Q4 testing capacity utilization was 79% as compared to 75% of Q3. Assembly capacity utilization was running at 60% in Q4 as compared to 63% in Q3. LCD driver capacity was running at 85% utilization in Q4, as compared to 87% in Q3 and bumping utilization was 66% in Q4 compared to 77% in Q3. We spent $35.6 million on CapEx in Q4 compared to $37.7 million for our third quarter 2017. The breakdown of CapEx for the third quarter was 7.4% for testing,…

Q -

Analyst

Operator

Operator

Thank you, [Operator Instructions] Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. There are no questions at this time, I’ll turn the floor back to management for any final comments.

S.J. Cheng

Analyst

Yes, thank you, everyone to join our Q4 2017 and full year’s conference call. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.