Earnings Labs

Magnachip Semiconductor Corporation (MX)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 17, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MagnaChip Semiconductor’s Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. At this time all participants in a listen-only mode. Later we will have a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today’s conference, Mr. Robert Pursel. Sir, you may begin.

Robert Pursel

Analyst

Thank you for joining us to discuss MagnaChip’s financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2015. The fourth quarter earnings release we filed today and other releases can be found on the company’s Investor Relations website. A telephone replay of today’s call will be available shortly after the completion of the call and the webcast will be archived on our website for one year. Access information is provided in the earnings press release. Joining me today are YJ Kim, MagnaChip’s Chief Executive Officer; and Jonathan Kim, our Chief Financial Officer. YJ will begin the call with a discussion of the company’s recent operating performance. Following YJ, Jonathan will provide an overview of our financial results. YJ will then discuss the company’s overall business strategy as well as financial guidance for the first quarter of 2016. There will be a question-and-answer session following today’s prepared remarks. During the course of this conference call, we may make forward-looking statements about MagnaChip’s business outlook and expectations. Our forward-looking statements and all other statements that are not historical facts reflect our beliefs and predictions as of today, and therefore are subject to risks and uncertainties as described in the Safe Harbor discussion found in our SEC filings. During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, but are intended to illustrate an alternative measure of MagnaChip’s operating performance that may be useful. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our fourth quarter earnings release available on our website under the Investor Relations tab at www.magnachip.com. I would now like to turn the call over to YJ Kim. YJ?

YJ Kim

Analyst

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon to everyone on our Q4 earnings conference call. We came in at the high end of our revenue guidance and beat our gross margin forecast in Q4 despite a choppy macro environment. The improvement in our financial performance stands primarily from three factors. One, we saw an unexpected surge in demand for AMOLED display driver ICs in the back half of Q4 primarily from smartphone makers. Two, we achieved higher than planned factory utilization in our 8 inch fabs, as a result of strong AMOLED demand. And our 6 inch fab ran at full capacity in order to fulfill last time orders for end-of-life products. Three, we were highly disciplined with our cost controls and we reduced spending across the board by $13 million in Q4 and by a total of over $50 million for the year. Our CFO, Jonathan Kim will share more details about how we far exceeded our 2015 cost reduction goal later in the call. Turning to our Q4 2015 financial results, we reported revenue of $152 million, a 1.3% decline compared to $154 million for the third quarter of 2015, and down 9.1% compared to $168 million for the fourth quarter of 2014. Standard Products Group revenue was $86 million in the fourth quarter and Foundry Services Group revenue $66 million. Looking back on 2015 as a whole, we made substantial progress towards meeting our commitment to rebuild our business and turn the company around. We focus our priorities around a set of core initiatives, streamline the organization from top to bottom and strengthen our product portfolio to better suit the requirements of key customers in gross market. We exited 2015 on some of footing when we enter the year. And we now have a growing sense of confidence…

Jonathan Kim

Analyst

Thank you, YJ, and good afternoon, everyone. MagnaChip reported on a GAAP basis revenue of $152 million and gross profit of 19.6% for the quarter ended December 31, 2015. On a sequential basis, revenue declined 1%, and declined 9% year-over-year. As YJ mentioned, our fourth quarter revenue of $152 million was at the high end of the revenue guidance we provided in October, as a result of the growing adoption of our AMOLED display driver ICs by companies in China. While our core agents’ foundry business remained somewhat muted in the fourth quarter, our pipeline of new projects continues to grow. Based on recent customer acceptance of successful production file runs, we expect some of these new products will began generating revenue in the second half of 2016. Gross profit was $30 million or 19.6% of revenue for the fourth quarter compared to 22.5% for the third quarter. As you may recall, third quarter gross profit benefit from a one-time reserve adjustment of approximately $3.6 million. When you exclude this adjustment or just the gross profit was 20.1%. Fourth quarter gross profit exceeded our guidance range primarily due to a surge of higher margin AMOLED products today in the quarter. Manufacturing labor costs also came in lower than expected in Q4 as we encouraged our factory workers to take advantage of the holidays to take time off, reducing our vacation of pool requirement. As an update on our 6 inch fab, in December of 2014 we announced our intention to shut down our 6 inch fab. Fab closures scheduled for the end of February and although the fab equipment will need to go through a decommissioning process to be sold, we already received the deposit for the full value of the equipment from a potential buyer. The 6 inch fab…

YJ Kim

Analyst

Thank you, Jonathan. Here’s how I see our business shaping up in 2016. We still face headwinds particular in Q1, which is typically our seasonally weakest period, but the overall tone of business has stabilized. We usually don’t offer financial guidance or try to quantify key business metrics for more than one quarter. However, on a qualitative basis, we currently believe that the business outlook beyond Q1 is beginning to look more favorable as the foundry pipeline – business pipeline fills, new designs ramp up on our 8 inch lines and our AMOLED products continue to ramp up. The steps we’ve taken to streamline the company, reduce spending, strengthening our product portfolio and change our go-to market strategy, all have set the foundation for what we now believe is a gradual recovery in our business over the course of 2016. Our current factory loading schedule suggests that fab capacity utilization is at or near projected low for the year, and anticipate it will steadily increase throughout the balance of 2016. We also believe revenue from our 8 inch fab lines hit the bottom in Q4 2015, and we now expect revenue from our 8 inch fab to begin a gradual recovery beginning in Q1 and to gain momentum through the remainder of the year. When you take everything into consideration, we now anticipate total revenue will begin to increase sequentially in Q2 and continue the trends through the remainder of the year. On our Q3 earnings call last October, I made a comment that manager was making step by step progress and he’s heading in the right direction. Those words are true today as when I said them back in October of last year. The make over of manager this far from complete but our 12 months schedule plan in 2015 has laid the foundation for what we see as a gradual recovery in our business beginning in Q2. Turning now to our forward-looking guidance, we anticipate revenue in the first quarter typically our seasonally weakest period will be in the range of $141 million to $147 million. This would represent a sequential decline of between 3% to 7% despite a sequential loss of more than $10 million in revenue from our 6 inch fab, which will close at the end of February. And gross profit will be in the range of 21% to 24%. I will now turn the call over to Robert. Robert?

Robert Pursel

Analyst

Thank you, YJ. So, Bridget this concludes our prepared remarks. Before we open the call for the Q&A I’d like to say that questions regarding strategic alternatives and the strategic review process cannot be addressed beyond the language provided at the end of our Q4 earnings release. With that being said I will now open the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

Robert Pursel

Analyst

So Bridget it looks like we don’t have anybody in the Q&A queue. So let’s conclude our fourth quarter earnings conference call. Please look for details of our future events on MagnaChip’s Investor Relations website, and thank you for joining us today.