Peter Kirlin
Analyst · Needham & Company
Thank you, Troy, and good morning, everyone. Early this morning, in addition to releasing the third quarter results, we announced details of our planned investment in the China IC market. This morning's call, I want to briefly review our Q3 results and discuss our outlook and spend the rest of the time sharing our China plans with you. For Q3, we achieved results that were generally in line with our expectations. High-end logic is showing strength as sales to Asian foundries improved during the quarter. Memory demand fell as DRAM industry conditions are causing foundry memory customers to delay new product introduction and we experienced the decline of the Micron business coincident with the conclusion of our JV. Mainstream IC is doing well as general overall semiconductor industry activity that drives demand for legacy nodes is strengthening. On balance, given all of the external opportunities and challenges, I would say our IC business is performing well, while IC demand has been mixed, FP demand remained healthy and our capacity was sold out throughout Q3. New applications and product innovation in this industry continues to grow. As the market and technology leader, we're in great position to grow in 2017 as we take delivery of the tools that we ordered last quarter. For the balance of our fiscal year, the high-end IC photomask market should see increased demand for logic, while memory remains subdued. Mainstream ICs should continue to slowly build as overall market conditions continue to improve and we expect to see one quarter of temporary softness in FPD as the industry leaders transition capacity from LCD to OLED. We think this will be a quick transition and expect overall FPD demand to build in early 2017 and beyond driven by OLED displays for mobile application. As I mentioned earlier, we believe we have timed the delivery of additional capacity such that we can effectively support our leading customers’ AMOLED ramp expected to begin in late spring of 2017. Looking at the business through a different lens, while we've been challenged to achieve consolidated growth year-to-date in our top line, we've been able to deliver solid earnings and cash flow. It should not come as a surprise, relentless focus on managing costs is part our culture, and year-to-date operating profit is up more than 5% despite a 2% drop in sales. Shifting to the balance sheet, net cash is up a $150 million since the beginning of the year, as a result of operating cash flow generation, debt reduction and a cash payment from Micron. Two of our key strategic objectives were to grow our high-end IC business and expand geographically into the regions where we see opportunity for long-term growth. Today's announcement regarding our China investment, should enable us to make significant progress in meeting both of these objectives. Growth in the semiconductor industry continues to migrate on a global scale. The U.S., European and Japanese markets are now mature. Korea and Taiwan have been active over the last decade. It’s becoming more and more apparent that these markets have plateaued. This is even truer with the merchant photomask market. Within this changing landscape, we've been able to make selective investments to drive growth, but this has largely been share shifts at the expense of the competition rather than new business. Looking at China over the past 10 years, we see a dramatically different story. Rather than maturing, China has progressively become a more important region for the manufacturing of advanced electronics. And more than 50% of the world's supply of semiconductors is now being purchased by Chinese manufacturers. As a result, the State Council of China is now heavily promoting the semiconductor industry, providing incentives for a greater percentage of chips consumed by Chinese companies to be manufactured within country. And there has been a rapid expansion of the semiconductor manufacturing activity. This growth is from both domestic suppliers, as well as international companies building capacity in China. For example, nearly all of the leading foundries have or soon will have a manufacturing presence in China. This is clearly the region where growth will occur in our industry. Our investment will provide us with the state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in China to serve existing customers and penetrate new business. Location of Xiamen was chosen due to the presence of our largest IC customer. It's also located within a technology park, ensuring needed infrastructure, available workforce, and proximity to other firms within the supply chain. We are installing a number of tools, including new, used and transferred to enable us to meet anticipated high end demand, while also providing the ability to manufacture mainstream products. Current industry investment in China covers the entire spectrum of the IC landscape, memory and logic, mainstream and high-end. Our investment in proven process technology will allow us to serve all the customers and all the technology nodes. As a leading merchant mask producer, we're well positioned to establish leading position in China, which is presently lacking a strong domestic supplier. This investment is a logical step in our progression from technology follower to market and technology leader. We already have a strong presence in Asia and this led to further strengthen our position. Many of the leading domestic producers plus all the multinational firms investing in China are already customers. I believe that our investment in Xiamen will allow us to build new and solidify existing customer relationships. Due to financial diligence and discipline we've exercised over the last several years, our balance sheet is strong and more than capable of supporting the $160 million investment we've planned for a new Chinese factory. One thing that is constant in our industry is that it is always changing. Long-term success requires good technology in a low cost format along with the willingness to adjust your manufacturing footprint to be aligned where the growth opportunities present themselves. Given our current position on these attributes relative to our competition, I'm more optimistic now regarding our growth prospects than anytime during my career at Photronics. On the IC side of the business, our largest customers are pulling us into China. For FPD, the transition to OLED and then many innovative technologies this move will spur is setting up a very attractive investment opportunity for us that should extend over the next several years. Moreover, our balance sheet affords us options that were not available in the past, including M&A to consolidate the photomask industry as well as explore potential adjacencies to diversify revenues. It is truly an exciting time at Photronics, and I look forward to updating you as we progress. Before turning the call over to Sean, I'd like to thank all the Photronics employees for their commitment and hard work during the quarter. Sean will now provide more details on our Q3 performance and outlook. Sean?