Earnings Labs

Himax Technologies, Inc. (HIMX)

Q4 2023 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 6, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Himax Technologies Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over your host, Mr. Mark Schwalenberg from MZ Group. Please go ahead.

Mark Schwalenberg

Analyst

Welcome, everyone to the Himax's fourth quarter and full-year 2023 earnings call. Joining us from the company are Mr. Jordan Wu, President and Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Jessica Pan, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Eric Lee, Chief IR/PR Officer. After the company's prepared remarks, we have allocated time for questions in a Q&A session. If you've not yet received a copy of today's results release, please email himx@mzgroup.us. Access the press release on financial portals, or download a copy from Himax's website at www.himax.com.tw. Before we begin the formal remarks, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the statements in this conference call, including statements regarding expected future financial results and industry growth, are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those described in this conference call. A list of factors can be found in the company's SEC filings, Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2022, in the section entitled Risk Factors, as may be amended. Except for the company's full-year of 2022 financials, which were provided in the company's 20-F and filed with the SEC on April 6, 2023, the financial information included in this conference call is unaudited and consolidated and prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting. Such financial information is generated internally and is not been subjected to the same review and scrutiny, including internal auditing procedures and external audits by an independent auditor to which we subject our annual consolidated financial statements and may vary materially from the audited consolidated financial information for the same period. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I will now like to turn the call over to Mr. Eric Li. Eric, the floor is yours.

Eric Li

Analyst

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. My name is Eric Li, Chief IR/PR Officer at Himax. On today's call, I will first review the Himax consolidated finance performance for the fourth quarter and full-year 2023, followed by our first quarter 2024 outlook. Jordan will then give an update on the status of our business, after which we will take questions. We will review our financials on an IFRS basis. We are delighted to announce that Q4 2023 revenues and profits both surpassed the guidance, while gross margin was in line with the guidance issued on November 9, 2023. This was primarily attributable to better-than-expected order momentum in major product categories, as well as cost improvements. Fourth quarter revenues registered $227.7 million, a decrease of 4.5% sequentially, but exceeding our guidance range of 5% to 11% decline. Gross margin came in at 30.3% within our guidance range of around 30%, but down from 31.4% last quarter. Q4 profit per diluted ADS was $0.135, surpassing the guidance range of $0.09 to $0.13. Revenue from large display driver came in at $33.6 million, reflecting a sequential decrease of 23.1%. The decline was predominantly driven by prevailing weak macroeconomic conditions amidst the traditional peak seasonality in the fourth quarter. Our TV IC sales declined mid-teens sequentially due to ongoing strict production and inventory control measures of leading customers. Monitors and notebook IC sales both declined double digit quarter-over-quarter caused by slowdown in order momentum as customers put forward their inventory purchases during prior quarter. Sales of large panel driver ICs accounted for 14.8% of total revenue for the quarter, compared to 18.3% last quarter and 16.6% a year ago. Exceeding the guidance range, small and medium-sized display driver segment revenue reached $163.1 million, a sequential increase of 1.2%. This was…

Jordan Wu

Analyst

Traditionally, business operations in the first quarter decelerate due to the Lunar New Year holidays. This year, exacerbated conditions due to sluggish demand are causing panel makers to strategically lower factory utilizations, in an attempt to support panel pricing and profitability. In tandem, OEMs and end customers are maintaining their cautious approach with heightened procurement scrutiny, even with inventories now at more manageable levels, this shift has resulted in short-term forecast and more frequent last-minute orders, ultimately constraining our visibility, particularly in consumer electronics products. To fortify the resilience of our operations, we are actively implementing strategies to optimize costs and diversify suppliers in both foundries and backend sources to enhance supply flexibility and cost-effectiveness. The recent partnership with Nexchip for the automotive market illustrated our supplier diversification strategy. It also highlighted our strategic approach to better align with customers' regional supply policies, particularly addressing the surging demand in China's automotive industry. In addition, our recent presence at the CES provided a comprehensive outlook on our strategic focus for the upcoming years, covering automotive, WiseEye AI and optical technologies. In automotive, our primary revenue contributor, we remain as optimistic as ever, given our extensive, unparalleled product portfolio across a broad spectrum of technologies, from mainstream LCD technology to the emerging OLED technology. Notably, within the automotive LCD display sector, we have secured 100s of design wins in TDDI and local dimming Tcon and continue to see ongoing expansion in our pipeline. The majority of these design wins are slated for mass production in the next two years, underscoring our continued market dominance moving forward. Furthermore, our expansion into automotive OLED displays covering all of DDIC, Tcon, and touch controller bolsters our market share leadership by offering customers an integrated bundle solution. As a reminder, our automotive driver business represented 36%…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I'm showing no questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Jordan Wu for closing remarks.

Jordan Wu

Analyst

As a final note, Eric Li, our Chief IR/PR officer, will maintain investor marketing activities and continue to attend investor conferences. We will announce the details as they come about. Thank you and have a nice day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.