Jean-Marc Chery
Analyst · Craig-Hallum
Thank you, Celine. Good morning, and thank you for joining ST on our third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Let me begin with some opening comments. Starting with Q3. As announced on October 1, 2020, net revenues were $2.67 billion, up 27.8% on a sequential basis, above the high end of our outlook range. This revenue performance was due to significantly better than expected market conditions through the quarter, demand for Automotive products, our engaged customer programs in Personal Electronics as well as Microcontrollers were the main factors that contributed to this result. Gross margin at 36% included about 140 basis points of unsaturation charges. Our operating margin was 12.3% and our net income was $242 million. For the first 9 months, net revenues grew 2.7% year-over-year to $6.98 billion, with an operating margin of 9.5% and a net income of $525 million. Looking at Q4 2020. At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect net revenues to be about $2.99 billion, representing sequential growth of about 12%, and gross margin to be about 38.5%, including about 70 basis points of unsaturation charges. For the full year 2020, we now expect net revenues of about $9.97 billion, at the midpoint of our Q4 '20 guidance, translating into 4.3% year-over-year growth and with a double-digit operating margin performance. Our CapEx plan for 2020 is unchanged at $1.2 billion. Year-to-date, we have invested $897 million. Now let's move to a detailed financial review of the third quarter. During Q3, market conditions improved progressively versus expectations. In early September, we communicated that net revenues would come in above the midpoint of our Q3 guidance and, as we preannounced on October 1, net revenues came in 690 basis points above the high end of our outlook range. Net revenues increased 4.4% year-over-year, with higher sales in Microcontrollers, RF Communications, MEMS and Analog, partially offset by lower sales of Automotive, Imaging and Power Discrete. Year-over-year sales to OEMs increased 7.5% and sales to distribution decreased 3.4%. On a sequential basis, net revenues increased 27.8% and all product groups grew revenues double-digit. Our gross profit was $959 million, a decrease of 0.8% year-over-year. Our third quarter gross margin of 36% came in at the midpoint of our guidance, decreasing 190 basis points year-over-year, mainly due to price pressure and unsaturation charges. Unsaturation charges were about 140 basis points. Moving to operating expenses, we continue to manage them. In parallel, we continue to execute on our R&D, sales and marketing programs, and transformation initiatives. Net operating expenses at $628 million were below what we anticipated when entering the quarter. Our third quarter operating margin was 12.3%, decreasing 80 basis point on a year-over-year basis. Both ADG and AMS operating margins decreased, while MDG operating margin improved. Our net income decreased to $242 million and EPS to $0.26 compared to $302 million and $0.34 per share, respectively, in the year ago quarter. Turning now to the revenue performance of the product groups on a year-over-year basis. ADG revenues decreased 4.9% on weaker demand in legacy Automotive and in Power Discrete, while AMS revenue has increased 3%, with MEMS and Analog higher, while Imaging sales were lower. MDG revenues increased 18.6%, reflecting double-digit growth in both Microcontrollers and RF Communications. In terms of operating margin by product group on a year-over-year basis. MDG operating margin increased to 17.4% compared to 15.7%, while ADG operating margin decreased to 5.8% from 8.5% and AMS operating margin decreased to 17.5% compared to 20.5%. Net cash from operating activities decreased 10.3% to $385 million in Q3 compared to $429 million in the year ago period. CapEx was $319 million in the quarter compared to $244 million in the year ago period. After the cash outflow of $76 million for acquisition to further strengthen the company's wireless connectivity capabilities and $33 million of accreted interest paid to settle the 2022 Tranche A of the convertible bond issued in 2017, free cash flow was negative $25 million in the third quarter compared to positive $170 million in the year ago quarter. In Q3, we paid cash dividends totaling $38 million. During the quarter, ST exercised the call option for the early redemption of its $750 million '22 Tranche A of the convertible bond issued in 2017. Simultaneously with the exercise of the call option, ST issued a new - sorry, $1.5 billion dual-tranche senior unsecured convertible bond due '25 and 2027. Let's now discuss the market and business dynamics. In Automotive first. Global demand picked up faster than what we were expecting in July. This acceleration was driven by car production volumes, which continued to increase in China and South Korea, and restarting faster than expected in Europe and in the U.S. Importantly, during Q3, we saw a progressive acceleration of key trends driving the increase in semiconductor content per car, electrification and digitalization, our strategic focus areas. In car electrification, the latest 2020 market estimates for hybrid and electrical vehicle production are for about 7 million and 2 million vehicles, respectively. Also, in car digitalization, the trend is positive, although with a different mix. The pandemic may delay Level 4 and 5 ADAS deployments, but demand is clearly accelerating on Level 2 and Level 2+. These dynamics are visible in our achievements during the quarter. In car electrification, we had again a number of new design wins for silicon carbide MOSFETs in application such on-board charger for electrical vehicles. We also won a number of sockets with complementary technologies, such as our MDmesh MOSFETs for a battery management system, low-voltage transistor in an integrated belt starter generator, VIPower products for our body electrification platform and with ultrafast and silicon carbide diodes. Overall, our silicon carbide engagements with customers has increased again during the quarter. As of today, we are engaged with 60 customers in 68 ongoing programs. We are extending our reach with electrical vehicle carmakers, with important production starts in Asia during the quarter. You will hear more during the ADG session of our Capital Markets Day on November 6. In car digitalization, we are focused on technologies and solutions for driver assistance and autonomous driving, V2X communications and embedded processing solutions supporting new car architectures. Here, we won a power-supply platform designed for ADAS applications with multiple Asian manufacturers and a design for a digital output tuner for a software-defined radio. As mentioned, we are seeing an acceleration trend on Level 2 and Level 2+, where we have already delivered, together with our partner, Intel-Mobileye, over 50 million vision processing chips to the market in the past 5 years. With our 32-bit automotive MCU embedded processing solutions, we won designs in a keyless access control application and in an integrated communication solution. We also had additional awards for our 28-nanometer phase-change memory microcontroller, called Stellar, which support the evolution of car architectures. We recently announced further details on our Stellar MCUs to show how the devices ensure execution of multiple independent real-time application. ST has developed this new technology with Bosch to meet future OEM integration demands. To conclude this Automotive review, I would like to mention that we also expanded our sensor business with automotive-grade motion sensors and accelerometers for key phone applications. Moving to Industrial now. The Industrial market dynamics remain mixed, but gradually improved during the quarter. This trend was visible across all geographies. Demand was strong for power tools and home appliance applications. We continue to see positive dynamics in power-related applications, motion control and factory automation, all of which are focus areas for ST. Distribution is an important element of our go-to-market strategy in Industrial. Here, the improvement of the situation in the channel is accelerating. In Asia, point-of-sales trends remained strong, up sequentially in a year-over-year, with healthy levels of inventory in our distribution channel across all product families. In the Americas and Europe, recovery is ongoing, with point of sale up sequentially. Here also, inventory is back to healthy levels across all product families. We address in this realm, end markets with our general purpose and secure MCUs, analog and sensor, power energy management solution. One of our strategic objectives in Industrial is leadership in embedded processing solution. Last month, we held the first module of our 2020 Capital Markets Day covering MDG. In the presentation, we detail how we are strengthening our embedded processing offers around the STM32 family in term of wireless connectivity, security and artificial intelligence. During the quarter, we had several announcements supporting this strategy, including acquisitions of Riot Micro and BeSpoon to further strengthen wireless connectivity, machine learning tools from a partner to support AI deployment and higher-performance top-end microcontrollers. In addition, last week, we announced the acquisition of SOMOS Semiconductor, a power amplifier and RF front-end module specialist. With this latest move, we are reinforcing our ability to play a major role in RF front-end modules for the IoT connectivity market. And we strengthened our RF front-end road map for 5G. Another strategic objective is to accelerate our growth in Analog and sensor for Industrial. In Q3, we won several new designs with our analog products for this kind of application. For example, we received awards for a new smart metering platform as well as in motion control and automation with our STSPIN product, which integrates an STM32 microcontroller. We also continue to expand our business in industrial sensors with wins for our inclinometer with a number of large players. The third objective for us is expansion in industrial power energy management. Here, we capture many wins for our power discrete products, silicon carbide MOSFETs and high-voltage silicon MOSFETs, IGBT, TRIAC diodes and intelligent power modules. These wins were for customers in applications such as power supply, air conditioning, metering, home appliance, power tools, solar pump and motor control. Moving now to the Personal Electronics market. In Q3, there was a strong restart of consumer demand for smartphones, combined by steady growth in wearables, tablets, hearables and game consoles. This was driven in part by the stay-at-home effect and by consumer demand for health and fitness devices. In Personal Electronics, we have 2 strategic objectives. First, to lead in selected high-volume smartphone applications with differentiated products or custom solutions. Here, we continue to have success with multiple wins in flagship devices with time-of-flight ranging sensor, motion sensor for image stabilization, wireless charging products, touch display controllers and secure solution such as ESIB and CQ in AMS with near-field communication. I would like to give you more detail on one win I mentioned last quarter. I can now confirm it is Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra smartphone, which use ST multi-zone direct time-of-flight sensor. Also, both the Note20 and the Note20 Ultra include our MEMS for pressure sensor, inertial measurement units and EEPROMs. Our second objective is to leverage our broad portfolio to address high-volume applications, such as true wireless [indiscernible] headsets, smartwatches, bracelet and gaming devices. Here, we had wins for sensor, analog and power products as well as microcontrollers. It's worth mentioning that we shipped a record number of MEMS sensors during the quarter. We also launched the laser scanning for augmented reality, so LaSAR Alliance, as an ecosystem to accelerate the development of augmented-reality eyewear applications. We see this as another potential high-volume application. In Communication Equipment and Computer Peripherals, during the quarter, we continued to see growing demand for homeworking-related product, while the demand for hard disk drives was softer. Our approach to this end market has 3 objectives. One is to address selected applications in cellular and satellite communication infrastructure. Here, I would like to mention a win we had with a new gallium-nitride-, GaN-, based product in the communication infrastructure application. This was based on our new MasterGaN smart power product, which combines a driver and a GaN set. In this area, we also capture multi RF-CMOS ASICs awards, an award for our new STM32 microprocessor and awards for our STM32 microcontrollers for 5G infrastructure. Our other objective are to address selected high-volume application with differentiated product or custom solutions while leveraging our broad portfolio. And here, I would like to mention wins with our FlightSense products, motion sensor and electronic fuses in personal computer and hard disk. Now let's move to a discussion of the fourth quarter and brief comments on the full year 2020. In the fourth quarter, we expect net revenues to be about $2.99 billion. This sequential revenue growth of about 12% at the midpoint is expected to be delivered by all product groups, except the RF Communication subgroup, for obvious reason. Gross margin is expected to be about 38.5%, including about 70 basis points of unsaturation charges. For the full year, we now expect net revenues at the midpoint to be about $9.97 billion, translating into 4.3% growth year-over-year. Based upon this plan, we expect to report a double-digit operating margin performance. We are maintaining our CapEx plan for 2020 at about $1.2 billion. Before concluding, let me remind you on the upcoming virtual Capital Markets Day, which are conducting through 4 modules. We had our first module on MDG on September 15. Thank you for attending that session. The 3 upcoming modules are ADG, November 6; AMS, November 20; and overall strategic update, December 9. To conclude, I would like to reinforce to 2 key points. First, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, we will continue to ensure both the ongoing health and safety of our employees and continuity of our business operations for our customers. These priorities remain of utmost importance for us. Second, ST fundamentals are solid. The strategic decision we've made years ago stem from secular growing market trends addressing key societal needs. The underlying principle of our strategy have not changed, and we remain determined to continue to make ST stronger, executing our sales and operating plan and outperforming the markets we serve. Thank you. And we are now ready to answer your questions.