Jordan Wu
Thank you, Jackie. As Jackie just mentioned in the guidance, we expect the second quarter gross margin to decline around 3% with slightly increasing revenues from the previous quarter. We fully realize that this quarter will mark a second consecutive quarter that we were [indiscernible] the first in our corporate history. While we remain committed to our big picture strategy, we are actively taking measures to get back to steady profitability. I will talk to you on the few of growth areas as I go through the outlook discussion below. The second quarter gross margin will decline for three major reasons. Firstly, the higher material cost of the large panel driver IC resulting from an industry-wide material shortage will lead to lower gross margin. Our large-size panel customers are going through a difficult period of increasing supply and lackluster demand right now. We thought it was prudent not to pass on the rising material cost to our customers during this quarter as we used to for the consideration of long term relationship. Secondly, the gross margin of the WLO business would also fall because of reduced shipment per an anchor customer’s demand which will lead to lower capacity utilization. We do expect the gross margin of WLO to return to a much-improved level in the second half when orders are expected to come back strongly, reflecting the anchor customer’s demand seasonality. I will elaborate on this a bit later in the [indiscernible] business discussion. Finally, smartphone segment gross margin would likely shrink a little for product mix change. We anticipate significant sequential increase in the second quarter shipment of TDDI for lower-end market and certain traditional discrete driver IC for smartphones. Both will generate gross margins lower than the corporate average. Okay, and I will provide more detail later. Based on our Q1 results and Q2 outlook, our first half ‘19 revenue would experience year-over-year decline as the current market conditions have not shown signs of improvement. The uncertain market conditions, including global economy, oversupply of TV panel markets, weak global smartphone demand and automotive sales, have led to pricing and cost pressure for us. Customers’ ongoing downward inventory adjustment in smartphone TDDI was also outside of our expectation. However, looking ahead into the second half, among our major product segments, we expect TDDI and WLO shipments to increase significantly, offset by shipment decline of the traditional discrete driver ICs for smartphones and automotive display drivers. Automotive display drivers are expected to stay relatively weak following several years’ strong and continuous growth. I will talk more about this product line later. Last but not least, we continue to tighten our cost and expense controls. As Jackie mentioned, we are in the process of bringing inventory down from an unusually high level which was built up in response to material shortage. We will begin to see reduction in inventory days and in absolute value in Q2. We are also putting close control in R&D expenses, targeting to continuing R&D activities across our strategic areas without raising R&D expenses over the last year. These include next generation display driver technology for 8K TV and AMOLED, 3D sensing for both mobile phone and non-mobile phone applications and AI-based ultra-low power smart sensing solutions. Total OpEx for 2019 is budgeted to be at around the same level as that of the last year excluding the anticipated increase of $4.9 million in depreciation arising primarily from the construction of the new fab. Now let me give you further insights behind our Q2 guidance and trends that we see developing in our businesses. As usual, let us start with the last panel driver IC business update. I just explained the background behind the second quarter margin pressure for our large panel driver IC business throw AC business [indiscernible] a panel market which is in over-supply and COF, the material needed to make large panel driver IC, which is in shortage. Q2 revenue in this segment is expected to decrease by mid-teens sequentially with lower gross margin, as mentioned earlier. While the large display market is still clouded with concerns of oversupply and waning demand, our current forecast for the second half is showing signs of revenue rebound, thanks to certain of our product upgrades and earlier design wins and, most importantly, our efforts to secure additional COF capacity which is leading to more allocation from our panel customers and even more design wins. The margin for large panel driver will likely still be under pressure during the second half but we are working on ways to improve the costs and margin. On technology development, I am pleased to report that we have started shipping 8K TV related ICs to one of our industry leading panel customers and expect a few more to come during the second half when more TV brands are scheduled to launch new 8K TV models Having said that, 8K TVs are still expected to hold a small share in the TV market because 8K content and transmission technology have not yet matured. But 8K TV is a strategic area for Himax as it will boost demands for higher LCD driver ICs and timing controller contents over the next few years. Now let’s turn to the small and medium sized displays driver IC business. Declining sales into the smartphone market has been the key factor causing our P&L pressure over the last few quarters, especially considering that smartphone market had been the number one contributor to our top and bottom lines for many years in the past. We are determined to take back market share by securing more Tier 1 customers with the existing TDDI products and advancing its technology to win the next generation TDDI market. With that, now let me start the small and medium sized display driver IC business update from a quick review on the first quarter’s smartphone business. Reflecting weak smartphone demand and a bigger-than-expected inventory correction by a major Chinese end customer, our first quarter TDDI shipment declined more than 30% sequentially. The fluctuation is high due to our rather concentrated customer base for the time being. Despite the unsatisfactory Q1 result, we made good progress in diversifying into other leading end customers, winning more strategic projects and starting to make production shipment of lower-end HD+ TDDI chips, primarily for a leading Korean smartphone end customer. As we said in the last earnings call, because of capacity constraint, we chose to limit our TDDI shipment to only higher end FHD+ projects previously as they yield higher revenue and better margin. We are particularly pleased with the expanded partnership with the leading Korean smartphone customer which has been a partner of ours for long time. We expect more shipments for other leading smartphone makers to begin in the second half and possibly expand our end product coverage of TDDI shipment to tablet market. Such new design-wins, new end customers and new markets will contribute to our TDDI sales in Q2 and a strong growth for the remainder of 2019. Looking ahead, we are in the forefront of offering new generation TDDIs which will further enable narrow bezel panel design without the usage of COF packaging. As I just described earlier, COF material not only is costly, but also suffers from serious supply constraint. This will provide a new option for smartphone design going forward. We are working on several design-in projects with our new generation TDDI with more customers in evaluation stage right now. I just mentioned that we could potentially start shipping TDDI chips for tablet market within this year. In fact, it won’t take long to also see the adoption of TDDI in automotive display, tablet with active stylus and even 2-in-1 notebooks. We are in the frontier in terms of exploring these opportunities and engagement with customers. Our TDDI for automotive display has started production shipment in Q1 to a leading panel customer for the use of a prominent car maker. The initial volume started small but the pipeline for next year’s mass production looks promising. This could potentially resume the growth of its automotive segment and strengthen its gross margin amidst the stagnant car market worldwide. On tablet, our TDDI chips are under verification by panel makers. We expect revenue contribution to start from Q4 this year with a number of leading end customers. Furthermore, we are leading the industry in TDDI with active stylus by partnering with the world's leading brands for pen tablets and interactive pen displays. While both segments are smaller than smartphone in terms of volume, they do represent growth areas for our TDDI solutions in the near future. In addition to TDDI, we’ve also seen a stronger second quarter for traditional discrete driver ICs in smartphone segment. Our design-win with a major Chinese smartphone maker went into production in March and shipment is set to expand strongly in Q2 per the customer’s forecast. Notwithstanding this rebound, the trend of the traditional discrete driver addressable market being quickly replaced by TDDI and AMOLED in smartphone will continue. We expect the traditional discrete driver for smartphone to decline substantially in the second half 2019. Combining significantly more shipment of low-end TDDI and discrete smartphone driver, our Q2 sales into the smartphone market is expected to increase by close to 50% sequentially. However, such growth in revenue will lead to lower overall corporate gross margin as both products generate lower gross margin than the corporate average. On AMOLED product line, we have been collaborating closely with leading panel makers across China for product development. We believe AMOLED driver ICs will be one of the long-term growth engines for our small panel driver IC business. In automotive market or in automotive display segment, as Jackie reported earlier, our panel customers were greatly affected by the weakened worldwide automotive market demand during the first quarter. Many were forced to reduce shipments to major European makers due to the new and tightened European Union emission testing rules. Suffering from high inventory, our panel customers are foreseeing a sequential decline of shipments in the second quarter for automotive segment. As Himax commands more than 30% of the global automotive display driver IC market, such wide range inventory correction has had a significant impact on our business. Q2 sales into this segment is likely to decrease by mid-single digit sequentially. Looking forward, on the backdrop of a feeble car market, the penetration of displays into vehicles is also maturing. Therefore, we may not be able to see the same kind of growth that it enjoyed in the past several years from automotive segment. However, we are still the leader in this space and we are leading the market in the introduction of new technologies including TDDI, AMOLED and local dimming timing controller. We believe such new technologies will rejuvenate the industry and bring our automotive sales back to a growth trajectory. Our tablet and consumer electronics businesses represented around 10% of our total sales in the first quarter. Although the overall markets remain weak, we expect tablet business to rebound during Q2 for additional shipment to a leading end customer and white box market, as well as improved foundry supply for this segment. As mentioned earlier, we also started to provide OEMs with samples for our world leading in-cell TDDI that supports the use of active stylus for tablet in the first quarter. We will report progress in due course. Combing tablet and consumer electronics businesses, we expect a sales increase of around 20% sequentially in the second quarter. For second-quarter small and medium-sized driver IC business, we expect revenue to increase by more than 20% sequentially. Now let me share some of the progress we’ve made on the non-driver IC businesses in the last quarter. First on 3D Sensing business update. We continue to participate in most of the smartphone OEMs’ ongoing 3D sensing projects covering structured light and time-of-flight or ToF. At present, Android smartphone’s front facing 3D sensing adoption is still hindered by the high hardware cost, long development lead time, and the lack of killer applications. Instead of 3D sensing, most of the Android phone makers have chosen the fingerprint technology which can achieve similar phone unlock and online payment functions with a much lower cost. Reacting to their lukewarm response, we started to work on the next generation SLiMTM 3D sensing total solution, aiming to leapfrog the market by providing high performance, easy to adopt and yet cost friendly total solutions, targeting the majority of Android smartphone players. Currently we have completed the feasibility study for its Gen 2 SLiMTM solutions covering detailed specifications, performance and cost. Our next step is to seek feedback from Android smartphone OEMs. With that, we will then determine the way forward for its 3D sensing total solution strategy. For the avoidance of doubt, we remain and are committed to be the leader in the optics for structured light 3D sensing where we are currently engaged in multiple development projects from multiple customers. Being a leading provider of 3D sensing technology, we are also an active participant in smartphone OEMs’ design projects for new devices involving ToF technology. We see ToF building momentum in such use cases as advanced photography, distance or dimension measurement and 3D depth information generation for AR. Unlike structured light 3D sensing where it provides total solution or just projector module or optics depending on customers’ needs, with ToF, we only – we will only focus on transmitter module by leveraging its WLO related expertise. I mentioned previously that 3D sensing can have a wide range of applications beyond smartphone. We have started to explore business opportunities in various industries that are typically less sensitive to cost and always require a total solution. Among such projects is a collaboration effort with Kneron, an industry leader in edge-based artificial intelligence in which we have made an equity investment, to develop an AI-enabled 3D sensing solution targeting security and surveillance markets. We are also working with partners/customers on new applications covering home appliances and industrial manufacturing. As to our CapEx investment for 3D sensing production capacity, while we still need to absorb the associated cost in the short term, the capacity is a strategic investment necessary to substantiate engagement with customers. The production capacity, which is primarily WLO fab, can be used not only to support its own SLiMTM total solution, it is essential for us to provide optics products to customers for their structured light or ToF 3D sensing projects. Furthermore, the WLO capacity can be used for various other product areas including, but not limited to, waveguide for AR goggle device where it is still getting frequent enquiries from top tech companies. As a matter of fact, having some readily available production capacity has become a competitive advantage to participate in leading customers’ new design projects at a time when the smartphone product cycle, and therefore the design lead time is getting shorter. With the capacity, coupled with our unique know-how in sophisticated diffractive optics design, we are often the partner of choice when customers are exploring advanced optical challenges Next is some discussion on our WLO business. As anticipated, the first quarter WLO revenue declined substantially due to an anchor customer’s lower seasonal demand. We expect further reduction for the second quarter. The much-reduced shipment will lead to lower capacity utilization and therefore negatively impact our Q2 gross margin. Himax’s WLO business has been largely dependent on one anchor customer for the past couple of years, despite good design-in pipelines and collaboration projects with multiple customers. We were informed of a product replacement decision by the anchor customer after our last earnings call on February 19, 2019. Foreseeing that WLO shipment volume in 2019 will decline significantly starting from the third quarter, we disclosed the information in our 20-F filing in March. The filing also warned of the additional negative impact the anticipated volume fall-off would cause to our 2019 margin and profitability as the substantial cut-back of WLO fab capacity utilization would lead to higher equipment depreciation and fab overhead on a per unit basis. As it turns out, we have very recently been notified by the anchor customer of their new decision. Contrary to our earlier warning, we now expect the second half WLO shipment to increase significantly to a scale comparable to that of the same period last year with therefore similar amount of equipment depreciation and fab overhead charges on a per unit basis. As a semiconductor company, we not immune to a customer’s supplier decision which can work in or against its favor. We believe the customer’s earlier replacement decision was a normal occurrence in the semiconductor industry and are pleased that its new decision has removed the concerns on the short-term impact over the revenue and profitability of our WLO business. Regardless, we believe such incidents would not affect our long-term partnership with the anchor customer. In fact, we are very optimistic about the growth opportunities we have with the customer. We have many ongoing development projects for their future generation products centering around our exceptional design know-how and mass production expertise in WLO and related technologies. On CMOS image sensor business updates. We continue to make great progress with our machine-vision sensor product lines. Himax and Emza unveiled the second generation WiseEye AIoT intelligent vision solution at the ISC West 2019 in early April. The solution is consisted of Himax’s industry leading ultra-low power sensor and ASIC designs with Emza’s unique AI-based, ultra-low power computer vision algorithm. The solution is uniquely positioned for AIoT markets featuring battery-powered human detection sensor, AI-based machine learning and always-on visual sensor, all operating at the edge device. Furthermore, it brings an enhanced user experience and better-informed decision-making running on minimal power and much better cost compared to similar solutions consuming much higher power. We are pleased with the status of engagement with leading players in areas such as connected home, smart building and security. In parallel, we are actively participating in the rapidly growing AIoT eco-system, which we believe will open up further future opportunities for Himax. For traditional human vision segments, we see strong demands in laptop and increasing shipment for multimedia applications such as car recorders, surveillance, drones, home appliances, and consumer electronics, among others. Finally, I will now give an update on the LCOS business, were our main focus areas, our AI driver devices and head-up display for automotive. In 2018, many AR goggle devices were launched, targeting primarily niche industrial or business applications, with top name multinationals continuing to invest heavily to develop the ecosystem, applications, software, operating system, system electronics, and optics. While AR goggles will take a few more years to fully realize its market potential, we believe LCOS remains the mainstream technology in this space. Our technology leadership and proven manufacturing expertise are evidenced by the growing list of AR goggle device customers and ongoing engineering projects. In addition, we continues to make great progress in developing high-end holographic head-up displays and high-end automotive. LCOS for both goggle device and HUD enjoy much higher ASP and better gross margin for us and represents a long-term growth driver for us. For non-driver business, we expect revenue to increase by mid-single digit sequentially in the second quarter. That concludes my report for this quarter. Thank you. We appreciate you joining today’s call and we are now ready to take questions.