YJ Kim
Analyst · ROTH Capital. Your line is open
Thank you, Bruce and good afternoon to everyone on our Q2 2017 conference call. When we announced results for the fourth quarter of 2016, we told investors that our primary focus in 2017 would be to improve gross margin and overall profitability. Our financial results in Q1 of this year show that we were on the right track and moving in the right direction. The Q2 financial results we have reporting today continue to demonstrate that were executing according to our plan. As a management team, we closely tracked several profitability metrics but we believe gross profit margin and adjusted EBITDA are particularly good indicators of our progress because they provide a snapshot of the ongoing operational performance in our core business. Let's first review our gross margin performance in Q2 and then move on to adjusted EBITDA. Total gross margin in Q2 was 28% which exceeded the high end of our previous guidance range and was at the highest level in more than four years. Gross margin benefited from slightly higher fab utilization, a favorable product mix and earlier than expected cost benefits from departures of manufacturing employees who participated in our 2017 voluntary headcount reduction plan. Our eight inch fab utilization, a key driver of gross margin reached the low to mid 90% range in Q2 as compared with approximately 80% in Q2 of 2016. Foundry services gross margin in Q2 was 28.7%, an increase of about six percentage points from 22.8% in the second quarter of 2016. Gross margin in the Standard Products Group was 27.2% in Q2 or so up approximately six percentage points from 21.4% in the same period a year ago. Turning now to adjusted EBITDA; adjusted EBITDA in Q2 was $20.3 million or 12.2% of revenue, up 146% from $8.6 million or 5.2% of revenue in the second quarter a year ago, and up 55% from $13.1 million in the first quarter of 2017. Adjusted EBITDA of $20.3 million in Q2 reached the highest dollar level in any quarter since the first quarter of 2013 and adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue increased for the fourth straight quarter. A discussion of improved profitability would not be complete without mention of total revenue which came in at the high end of the guidance range for Q2. Revenue was $166.7 million, about flat with the second quarter a year ago and up 3% from Q1 of 2017 despite previously disclosed [indiscernible] in the OLED business. The headway we've made to improve profitability can be traced back to business strategies we've implemented and key operation decisions we've made. Here are three recent examples beginning with our decision to reduce the workforce in the first half of this year by over 12%. Example number one; in Q2 we completed a voluntary headcount reduction plan that led to a reduction in our labor force of 352 employees since the beginning of the year. The reduction in the workforce which was more than twice the size of a similar action taken in 2016 is expected to generate annual cost savings of approximately $24 million with a payback period of less than 1.5 years. Example number two; we've made great strides in our drive to improve gross margin in our power standard products business, we optimize our product portfolio to emphasize higher margin products till the weak margin performance, streamline the organization and install a new R&D top management. As a result, the gross margin in the power standard products business which had been unacceptably low has increased by nearly 10 percentage points over the past two years with more than half of gaining coming in the last twelve months. We continue to optimize the power product portfolio and explore opportunity to grow the business and further improve margins. Example number three; more than two years ago we made a strategic decisions to focus our foundry business on analog technology to better align our internal capabilities with the needs of global IC players. At around the same time, we introduced 0.13 micron BCD and each square from analog process technology for power management solutions in smartphones, IoT devices, and for industry and USVC applications. Fast forward today, the broad customer adaption of this high density analog process technology helped foundry revenue grow by 31% in Q2 as compared with Q2 of 2016 while foundry gross margin increased by six percentage points. The key takeaway is that we have multiple operation levers to pull to improve profitability, and while profit improvement may not always be linear from quarter-to-quarter, our number one goal is to improve overall profitability for the company as opposed to enhancing the profit picture in any of our business lines or operating segments. Speaking of our operating segment, let's turn to our high level review of their performance in Q2 beginning with foundry. Revenue in the foundry of business was $81.5 in Q2, up 30.8% from revenue of $62.3 million in the second quarter of 2016 and 5.2% sequentially from $77.5 million in the first quarter of 2017. In Q1 of last year, we closed a legacy six inch fab that was a drag on gross margin leaving us with two highly efficient eight inch fabs. Our eight inch fab utilization, a key driver of gross margin increased in Q2 of this year to over 90% as compared with approximately 80% in Q2 of 2016. Our foundry gross margin profit dollars in Q2 totaled $23.4 million, an increase of 65% from $14.2 million in Q2 of 2016. Foundry revenue from new business which we define as product running in volume in the fab for one year or less increased by approximately 50% in the first half of the year as compared to the same period a year ago. New business accounted for approximately 20% of our total foundry revenue in Q2 which was indicative of a healthy foundry pipeline. Our BCD EE from analog process technology continue to be a winner for MagnaChip. Revenue from this pure analog technology increased 81% in Q2 from Q2 of 2016. We have said this before but is worth repeating, we may be the only foundry able to combine the BCD technology with high density EE technology in a single process note at 0.13 micron and we believe we have one of the smallest EE cell size in the industry. Now turning to the Standard Products Group; I've already highlight the margin improvement in our Standard Products Group, so let's focus on our revenue performance. Revenue in the Standard Products Group was $85.1 million in Q2, down 18.7% from the second quarter a year ago, and up 1.1% sequentially from $84.2 million in the first quarter of 2017. Revenue in the power standard product business in Q2 was $35.3 million, an increase of 16.9% from revenue of $30.2 million in the second quarter of 2016 due primarily to increased demand for super junction MOSFET and BE MOSFET for the UHD television and industrial markets. Power revenue in Q2 was about flat with Q1 of 2017 although demand for premium products like Power IC, super junction MOSFET and IGVT devices set a record. Now turning to display standard products business line. Before I described the result in our display business, please take a note that going forward we will from now on refer to our analog display drive IC as OLED display drive ICs. We are making this change in order to be consistent with commonly accepted industry naming practices for this product category. Revenue for display standard products was $49.8 million, down from 33.1% from $74.4 million in the second quarter of 2016 and up 1.8% from the first quarter of 2017. As we've said in the past, the year-over-year decline reflects previously disclosed seasonal factors and a timing mismatch between the expected drop-up in revenue from our existing OLED products and the introduction of our new OLED products. This decline was partially upset by a 34% increase in demand for non-OLED display product as compared to Q2 of 2016. Our non-OLED display drivers are now designing to 32 different models of large screen UHD televisions. The automotive market accounts for more than 10% of our non-OLED display business. Now let's talk about our OLED business. On our Q1 conference call back in May we shared our qualitative view of the state of our OLED business. At that time we described our OLED business as bumping along the bottom and said that we expect OLED revenue growth to resume in Q3. We also said that we expected the OLED business to gain traction in Q4 and set us up nicely for 2018. I can tell you now that the qualitative view we provided back in May still holds true today. We are confident that OLED revenue hit bottom in Q2 and that sequential revenue will resume in Q3 as we begin volume production from the new design wins that we shared with you in our last conference call. Our 55-nanometer flexible OLED display driver IC which eliminates side-to-side bezel [ph] and our 40-nanometer bezels OLED driver IC are expected to begin volume production during Q3. I also told you on the last call that we have another new product in the pipeline and today I'd like to share with you that today we expect to sample another 55-nanometer flexible bezels OLED driver IC for high-end smartphones. We expect this design to begin volume production in first half of 2018. In addition to the 40-nanometer and 55-nanometer design wins I've just mentioned, we recently won two other new designs using our 110-nanometer OLED display driver. This display driver has been designing to two new mid-range smartphone models from a major Korean smartphone maker with volume production for one program expected to commence in Q3 of 2017 and Q4 of this year for the other program. The bottom line is that our OLED business is now beginning to recover despite some lingering softness in China smartphone markets, we believe we'll achieve a modest rate of sequential growth in Q3 in our OLED business followed by a further growth in Q4. We remain upbeat about a more robust recovery in 2018. We believe we have an opportunity for our OLED business to once again substantially exceed the industry rate of growth in 2018 which several analysts have pegged at 25% to 30%. We based our confidence and resend design win activities, new products in the pipeline, and I believe that smartphone makers will introduce mid-range and high end models with the latest features to compete with new OLED phones being introduced from the leading global brands. Now let's turn to the Q2 actuals for OLED. OLED display driver revenue accounted for 31% of display in Q2, down from 65% display revenue in Q2 of 2016 and 33% in Q1 2017, a widely acknowledged slowdown in China smartphone market may have contributed to the decline in our OLED revenue. To sum-up on OLED, MagnaChip is the worlds only independent and volume supplier of OLED display drivers with many built-in competitive advantages. We have a 10-year track record in OLED, unparalleled design expertise, unique IP, and a foundry partner to manufacture newer generations of OLED drivers in volume using our proprietary process design kits. Perhaps most important, we are the only second source supplier of OLED display drivers to the Top Two OLED panel makers in Korea who currently could use over 95% of all OLED panels in the world according to analysts. That relationship with panel makers helped form a competitive moat [ph] and a high barriers to entry. Now I will turn the call over to Jonathan to review our financials. And then I will come back to sum-up and provide financial guidance. Jonathan?