Russell Ellwanger
Analyst · Drexel Hamilton. Please go ahead
Thank you, Noit. Welcome to our conference call. I thank you for joining us. The first quarter, we had revenues of 330 million beating guidance, up19% year-over-year, resulting in EBITDA of 101 million, up 30% year-over-year and gross profit of 85 million, up 38%. These results demonstrate the operating leverage inherent to our business model. We also generated a record free cash flow of 42 million allowing further flexibility to support growth plans and strategic initiatives. Looking ahead, we see growth into the second quarter and our expectations and guidance are for revenues up 345 million, plus or minus 4%. 345 million represents a new record revenue level with growth for approximately 13% and 5% sequentially. We continue to target growth throughout the year. I'd now like to discuss our various business units, reviewing main focuses, achievements, activities and growth drivers. During the first quarter we saw strong even outside demand for our RF HPA platform serving both the mobile and infrastructure markets with visibility for the mobile market well through the third quarter and optical infrastructure visibility through the end of the year. Within the mobile market, demand was strong for both our RF SOI and silicon germanium technologies. We continue to migrate more products into our San Antonio facility to enable capacity for further growth. We were informed by key executives from several major customers of designing wins or first year mobile players using our high value platforms for expected volume production in 2018, 2019. Within the infrastructure market, we're experiencing significant increase in demand for our high performance silicon germanium platform. As stated this demand is about previous customer forecast driven by new data center connectivity both upgrades and existing data centers and additional new data centers. Our high performance SiGe platform is used for many of the devices in 10, 25, 100 and now even 400 gigabits fiber optic connections that carry data within data centers, between data centers and throughout data networks around the globe. To further enhance our offering in this fast growth and high margin area, we announced in Q1 the release design chips for our latest silicon germanium technology H5 which can help address the newest 400 gigabits applications. We also announced early 400 gigabits design wins with Broadcom. In addition, we launched a new development effort that was also press released in Q1 data silicon photonic process to our foundry offering. Silicon photonics are used to couple light from a fiber and convert it to an electrical signal that is then used by our SiGe components to communicate with the rest of the system. Once in production next year, this offering will allow us to add more content to many new high speed data connections. Our power management business unit continues to grow, given also strong demand from the market. We continue to focus on expanding and improving our power management offering to be the best in class in multiple assets, offering the lowest Rdson over a wide and scalable builder change. In parallel we continue to cooperate closely with our long term customer partners as we expand this power management road map. During the first quarter we received and shipped our first high volume order based upon a specialty BCD platform, optimized in cooperation with a lead power management for differentiated electric car stack battery management system. For generations which may require even further battery stacking, we recently released a 200 volt power management SOI based technology further enabling this capability. This technology also provides superior performance over a wide range of analog and power application such as motor drivers including home and industrial appliances and for electric vehicles. Technology has added benefits for the ultra-fast drivers enabling the high efficiencies and transit to high speed of nitrate switches as well as requirements for multiple channel medical through sound application. The 200 volt SOI process is based on and compatible with TowerJazz's advanced 180 nanometer bulk PCD platforms. Hence, customers can reuse elements that they're familiar with leading to faster transfer market with high confidence of first time success, with the ability to extend the designs up to 200 volts. This advanced technology offering addresses a significant of vendor applications within the automotive and industrial power management IC markets, which end product markets according to Databeans a market research firm, are expected to grow from 3 billion in 2017 to approximately 5.3 billion in 2021. For additional capacity and versatility in order to optimize our revenue, we've started to ramp our TF18 technology at our San Antonio Fab with customer prototypes expected by the end of 2017. This will place us in a unique position, a pure plate foundry, with four versatility at three sites running with our leading power management platforms. With regard to the CIS business units, in the first quarter we continued to grow our business mainly in the industrial sensor and medical X-Ray sensor markets. We saw and continue to see a growth in customers demand. This is in combination of our customer market share growth combined with the growth of the total market. In the industrial market, we already announced the release of the 2.8 micron state of the art global shutter pixel. This pixel is being used by our lead customers of which each of the announced release of their end family of high resolution global shutter sensors. The technology is available in our RI 110 nanometer Fab in Japan and will become available in Mid Atlantic [ph] as well in 2018. This allows us to support large format high resolution state of the art global shutter centers. In parallel we developed a near IR version for this technology mainly to support sensitivity and low light conditions as well as to support the 3D and just direct condition market. The main growth of our global shutter technology is another 8-inch Fab namely RI in Japan and Fab 2 in Israel. However we're now transferring this technology to our Uozu 12-inch 65 nanometer line to support other high volume applications. We continue to grow our high end photography market share both in still sensors or DSOR and mirror less cameras and in video, namely in the cinematography and broadcasting video segments. The main growth activity in these areas are in our 12-inch line. The automotive market growth is a major focus for CIS business namely in the LiDAR, light based radars that is a key component for the autonomous driving vehicles. This requires high sensitivity, accurate and low cost LiDAR which requirement can be met with our Avalanche photodiode technology. We expect to see steady growth in the CIA business unit throughout 2017 driven by the industrial, medical security and high end photography market segments or getting more design wins in the automotive and augmented and virtual reality segments, which both segments are contend on our 3D time applied or structure light disk based technology. We believe that these sectors will continue to drive our growth over multiple years. The TOPS business unit achieved record growth in 2016 and we see continued strong growth during '17. The business unit's operations expanded to all TowerJazz Fabs including all sites in Japan enabling flexibility in capacity loading to support our customers' needs. Our growth increase came from long term business partnership as well as several new customers ramping their production. TOPS customers' applications range from the screen power devices to advanced memories, RF SOI and other specialty centers; MEMS and other analog sensors will be our main focus for 2017, with the number of projects presently under development with market leaders with high volumes that will be maintained through the next decade. Now to spend a few moments talking about our current utilization and available capacity, as previously explained we calculate utilization as a ratio of actual photo layers processed, ratioed to total photo layer capability. Our operational model is drawn 85% utilization which provides for us maximize Fab productivity. The following were the utilization rates for the quarter, Fab 1 Fab 1 in Migdal Haemek, Israel our 6-inch factory was at 87% utilization. This is strong evidence of our analog business model that a factory built in 1983 wanted model utilization 34 years later. Fab 2 Migdal Haemek, Israel our 8-inch factory in Israel was at 89% utilization; Fab 3 Newport Beach, our 8-inch factory, Newport Beach, California and other 8-inch factory was at 87% utilization; the three Japanese factories at an average utilization of about 50%. Fab 9, our San Antonio was at 60% utilization, we're now starting to see the upward moves in utilization as the function of new business on top of the maximum long term supply agreement. As we previously stated our capacity across all Fabs is at around $1.6 billion revenue capability. We have internal available capacity namely in San Antonio, as well as Uozu the 300 millimeter factory in Japan. Our current strong customer demand provides us with multiple pathways to ramp the Uozu 300 millimeter Fab, but also gives us the ability to focus on and enter into new and higher margin areas in all of our factories. For example, during the quarter we took the position to increase our silicon germanium mix in Newport Beach Fab 3 in order to have a higher margin mix in a factory which is at high utilization. As previously stated, we see very strong demand for the silicon germanium offerings in that factory. Therefore, given the same nominal way for output at the facility, we've increased our internal RF HPA revenue growth forecasts. In addition, we're increasing CMOS image sensor mix at our Migdal Haemek Fab, while continuing across qualification activities and operating some power in other CMOS products into Tonami Fab in Japan. We also increased our capacity in Tonami as well, which reported the 2016 CapEx purchase. We expect to see the positive results from this capacity expansion during 2017. We're also in the process of adding additional capacity in our San Antonio facility, mostly based on a customer pre-payment business model with the focus of enriching the mix of this facility with some special tools needed to qualify flows for new business avenues. Our focus in the coming year will be to enable TowerJazz to grow beyond its current capacity. Based upon our strong balance sheet, we're evaluating multiple optional avenues to invest in our growth. Our goal for the coming year is to add capacity to either M&A for the adoption of new business models or partnerships which will provide us with high value incremental capacity. In summary, during the first quarter, we demonstrated strong year-over-year growth and noted continued robust demand across our chosen analog markets with several substantial 2018, 2019 assignments having been communicated by major customers serving first year mobile players. Our goal for the year ahead remains to continue our growth by successfully executing on our company's proven successful business model, namely partnering with customer market leaders to enjoy high value capacity growth. Our second quarter 2017, record high mid-range guidance is a short term validation that we're continuing in the right direction. At the same time we look to further our market potential and competitive advantage by investing and focusing on higher growth and higher margin markets. We focus on value creation for our customers while providing the right platform to support their current and future needs to capitalize on the trends that are prevalent and with our partners to be ready to supply into the emerging trends which will be driving the world for years to come. With that I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Oren Shirazi. Oren?