Young-Joon Kim
Analyst · Roth Capital. Your line is now open
Thank you, Bruce, and good afternoon to everyone on our Q4 2017 conference call. We continue to execute our business strategy in Q4 despite facing multiple headwinds and exited 2017 in a better competitive position and with a stronger P&L and balance sheet than when we entered the year. Q4 revenue of $174.6 million and gross margin of 28.3% both came in slightly above the midpoint of our guidance range. We achieved these results despite the well-known softness in the China smartphone market that impacted our OLED business and an increase in raw wafer prices that kept a lid on gross margin. Total gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2017 was $49.4 million or 28.3% as compared with gross profit of $46.1 million or 25.5% in Q4 2016. On our Q3 conference call in early November, we identified an industry-wide increase in wafer prices as a headwind to gross margin. We are highlighting again today because if left unmitigated, the worst case impact on gross margin is estimated to be about 2% to 3% for calendar 2018. We have no intention of letting this happen. We've already taken several decisive steps to mitigate the full impact of higher wafer prices, and Jonathan will provide more color on this a little later. But to give you just one example, we raised prices on select power-discrete devices, and we have also reached out to our foundry customers to discuss pricing options. The steps we are taking are intended to help recover and potentially make up for the lost ground later in the year. As for OLED, we believe we weathered a protracted smartphone slowdown in 2017. And now based upon our current business visibility, we are well positioned for a sharp rebound in 2018. Let's review. When we reported Q3 results, we said we had expected a slight up-tick in OLED revenue in Q4 as compared to Q3, but that did not turn out to be the case. In fact, OLED revenue was $14.3 million in Q4, down 19% from $17.6 million in Q3. OLED represented 26.6% of the total display business in Q4 and 30.7% in Q3. Here is our perspective on what happened and where we go from here. As we all know by now, the China smartphone market was soft in Q4 2017. In addition, the launch of many new models was delayed while smartphone makers waited to see and hoped to match new features in a smartphone from a global brand. The later than expected launch of that smartphone caused China smartphone makers to shift the timing of their own new models using our latest OLED drivers into very late 2007 [ph] but mostly into early 2018. As a result, demand for older smartphone using our legacy OLED drivers was weak, and the timing shift of new models using our new OLED drivers resulted in lower-than-expected OLED revenue in Q4. During 2017, we introduced to the market a new portfolio of 4 feature-rich OLED display drivers for the next generation of smartphones. Our new 40 and 55-nanometer OLED drivers are low-power and best-in-class. They allow for the development of latest bezel-less and flexible smartphones and offer the ability to achieve aspect ratios up to 21:9 and screen resolution up to QHD+. The drivers are packaged using low-cost 1 layer or highly complex 2-layer chip-on-film technology. The market apparently liked our new OLED product lineup. When we reported Q3, we said we had secured about 12 design wins for new smartphones models. By the end of Q4, that number had grown to a cumulative 18, including 2 design wins using our 110-nanometer drive IC at a leading Korean global phone maker. We are pleased so far with our design win success, but we are not standing still. We have already won more designs in Q1 and fully expect to win more designs in 2018 and already are in the later stages of development of next-generation 32 and 28-nanometer OLED drivers that may be introduced as soon as late this year or early 2019. Largely because of our new design wins and based upon our understanding of launch plans, we now anticipate that we have the potential for OLED revenue to increase by more than 75% in Q1 2018 as compared to Q4 2017. If achieved, this would put us within range of the OLED revenue we achieved in the first quarter of 2016, which marked the beginning of a great run. The rate of growth we're anticipating for Q1 2018 would be hard to sustain even the best of circumstances, but the takeaway is that we are bullish about OLED and confident that OLED revenue is on track to exceed 50% growth as compared to 2017 or clearly exceed $100 million in 2018. In fact, to support this anticipated OLED growth, we have qualified a second external foundry. Now let's turn to the financial highlights of our Foundry and Power business lines, which both turned in impressive performances in the fourth quarter and full year. Revenue for Foundry and Power edged up in Q4 over Q3, defying the typical seasonal pattern, and revenue for both was higher as compared to Q4 2016. In fact, Power revenue reached its highest level since Q4 2013 with a much improved gross margin. When looking at the full year revenue performance, Foundry and Power revenue both showed double-digit gains for the calendar year 2017, as compared to results in calendar 2016. Gross margin in Foundry was 31.7% in Q4, which was the highest level achieved in 4 years. We don't break out Power gross margin, but we can share with you that gross margin has increased by about 15 percentage points over a full year period. Contributing to the improvement in gross margin in both business was high fab utilization, a favorable product mix and portfolio optimization. Let's do a deeper dive on the Foundry business. We continue to build a solid product pipeline and track a diversified customer base in our Foundry business in Q4. Fab utilization in Q4 was in the low 90% range despite typical seasonal softness in the Foundry business. New products accounted for more than 20% of Foundry revenue in the quarter, which is a good indicator of how we refresh this dynamic business on a regular basis. New products accounted for a similar percentage of revenue in the prior Q3. Our specialized BCD EEPROM, 0.13-micron process technology, which is ideal for power management and IoT applications, once again, was in high demand and accounted for 40% of Foundry revenue in Q4. For the 2017 calendar year, our BCD EEPROM business grew 50% compared to 2016, and we anticipate this technology will contribute nicely to Foundry growth in 2018. Bottom line, we are executing successfully in the Foundry business and moving in the right direction. One more note of interest about the Foundry: to provide the highest level of services to global IC customers, of course, requires a specialized analog processes but also top-quality and high-efficient fab operations. 2.5 years ago, we hired a top-quality expert from a Tier 1 semiconductor company, and the results have been impressive as he displayed recognized MagnaChip with its best quality award last 2 years, and we also won a highly prestigious supply award from another top customer last 2 years. We recently hired a top manufacturing efficiency expert from a Tier 1 semiconductor company. Our new manufacturing team already has identified cost savings and efficiency methods to improve throughput and line yields and reduce downtime, all of which would benefit gross margin over time. Now let me offer some perspective on the Standard Products Group, starting with Power, followed by Display. A few years ago, our Power product portfolio had far too many commodity fab fillers, and the business was a drag on corporate margin. Fast forward to now, we optimized the product portfolio by killing many undifferentiated products and by developing higher-value premium products that carry better margins. Premium products, including Super Junction, IGBT and Power ICs accounted for more than 40% of Power revenue in Q4, up nicely from Q3 and up by nearly 40% from Q4 2016. If we include high-margin vary [ph] fab, the portfolio mix is even healthier. As I've mentioned previously, profit margin in the Power business has increased by about 15 percentage points over 4 years and profit margin continued to improve in Q4 over Q3 2017. Our Power business is on the right track as we begin 2018. Our Display business is comprised of OLED business and what we referred to on past calls as the non-OLED business. The non-OLED business is a group of LCD display drivers sold in highly competitive, price-sensitive markets as well as in the high-margin automotive segment. On our Q3 call, we identified the low margin portion of this business as a headwind because portions of it often fall short of our internal profit objectives. In some ways, this business resembles our Power business a few years ago, which is why we are actively pursuing a similar portfolio optimization strategy. As an example, we have recently walked away from low-margin, non-OLED Display business, which will temporarily affect the revenue and fab utilization in Q1 but which is consistent with our strategy of improving product mix and MagnaChip's overall profitability over the long run. OLED is a different story. Despite a challenging market in 2017, the gross margin in our OLED business exceeded our annual corporate average for the second year in a row. And with a new product lineup, our OLED business is once again poised to be a key growth driver for MagnaChip in 2018. We believe we are in the early stages of market adoption for OLED technology, which is quickly becoming the de facto standard for a wide range of mobile devices, UHD televisions and virtual reality devices. We also believe that OLED display technology eventually will be adapted into other large and growing markets, including IoT, foldable smartphones, new foldables and automotive. This is an attractive market that inevitably will draw in competitions. But for now, we are the largest independent supplier shipping high-resolution OLED display drivers in volume. We are particularly well positioned to capitalize on future market trends and by having close ties to world's top 2 OLED panel makers that command overwhelming panel market share. They also happen to be our neighbours in Korea. With that, I will turn it over to Jonathan. I will return afterwards to wrap up and provide our business outlook and financial guidance for the first quarter of 2018. Jonathan?