Jordan Wu
Thank you, Jackie. Before I discuss our business outlook for the third quarter, I would like to comment on overall industry trends that are currently impacting our businesses. As we mentioned last quarter, market conditions have been challenging and we do not see them improving in the near term. Uncertainty in the global economy continues to overshadow the marketplace where we are seeing softness in all industries that consume display. This combined with prevailing industry-wide capacity oversupply has led to severe pricing and cost pressure for panels, which has directly impacted our sales and margin. Against the backdrop of an unfriendly market environment, we have faced multiple challenges that have had an adverse effect on our overall financial performance over the past 12 months. First, the large display driver IC and small/medium driver IC markets experienced chip-on-film or COF and wafer capacity shortages respectively. The severe shortages significantly affected our ability to fulfill customer orders in the back half of 2018, which not only impacted our 2018 sales, but also jeopardized our ability to win new projects with customers at the time. While these constraints were resolved towards the end of 2018, we are still suffering from the repercussions of the loss of new projects as we did not get to take part in the mass production of those projects, many of which started in the second or third quarter this year. Second, beginning earlier this year, there has been a major pullback in demand for DDICs as panel makers facing an industry-wide overcapacity and uncertain economic outlook, cut back their production and, in the meantime, attempt to lower their DDIC inventory which they built earlier to address the IC shortage concern. The combination of these two factors has negatively impacted our performance in the second half of 2018 as well as full year 2019. Separately, in the smartphone segment, new model opportunities which we count on to boost our new generation TDDI product shipment have been limited so far in 2019 due to a slow smartphone market. In summary, while we expects strong TDDI growth in 2019, its contribution to our overall sales will be offset by decreases in large panel and automotive DDICs, which have been negatively impacted by the unfavorable market environment. Notwithstanding the current business headwinds, we are committed to the long-term strategy of achieving a balanced portfolio of DDIC and non-DDIC products. Looking forward, we believe that as a market and technology leader in DDIC we are positioned well to regain market share in both large and small/medium display segments where we have seen major new project opportunities emerging with our customers. At the same time, we are working towards capitalizing on the unique nondriver technologies where we have invested heavily in the last few years, particularly 3D sensing and ultra-low power smart phone sensing. I will elaborate on some of those areas in a moment. Last but not least, while we are making good progress in the development of strategic technologies, we have kept R&D expenses approximately flat compared to last year. These include next generation display driver technology for 8K TV and AMOLED, 3D sensing for both mobile phone and nonmobile phone applications and the ultra-low power smart sensing solutions. We are committed to our overall strategy and continue to invest in technology to drive our long-term growth. Now let me give you further insights we have on 3D – our third quarter guidance. As usual, let us start with the large panel display driver IC business update. During the second quarter our business, and the overall market, remained weak due to panel overcapacity and high inventory on the backdrop of an uncertain global economy. Panel makers have reduced production output, resulting in decreased demand and price erosion for DDIC products. We expect these trends will continue into Q3 and the remainder of 2019. Another major factor affecting our large display driver IC business is the material cost. Although COF demand has started to show signs of relaxation, the supply remains tight and prices in Q3 remain high. The overall outlook of our large panel DDIC business for the second half of 2019 has reversed since our last report due to the reasons mentioned above. We now expect our third quarter revenue in the large display driver IC segment to decrease sequentially by high-teens with lower gross margin. Based on the information currently available, it is unlikely that overcapacity and weak demand in the large panel will change in the near future. As a result, we expect revenue to decline further in Q4 for this segment with continued margin pressure. Despite the short-term weak outlook we are making good progress securing new design wins from our existing customers. We expect to return to growth starting Q1 2020. Our technology development 8K TVs will continue to hold a small share in the TV market because 8K content and transmission technology are still early in its lifecycle. But 8K TVs remain a strategic area for Himax and are expected to boost demand for higher LCD driver ICs and timing controller contents. Now let’s turn to the small and medium size display driver IC business, beginning with an update on our smartphone segment. The global smartphone market is expected to decline in 2019. On the one hand we are pleased with the strong TDDI growth in the second quarter driven by a more diversified customer base and enriched product portfolio. On the other hand, the speed of growth of TDDI has not been to our satisfaction and we are concerned that the TDDI market is maturing while at the same time experiencing rapid ASP erosion caused by increased competition. Moreover, sluggish smartphone demand and shorter product cycles have led to our slower-than-expected inventory reduction. For the third quarter we expect TDDI shipment to be down by low single digits and revenue to decline by high single digits from the previous quarter due to ASP erosion. As Jackie mentioned earlier, we have taken more aggressive action to control inventory levels and adjust for the weak market environment. We expect a further reduction in inventory level in the third quarter. As highlighted in the previous earnings call, we remain the industry leader in developing next-generation TDDI’s solutions such as MUX6, dual gate and high screen refresh rate TDDIs. We have already begun new design-ins with major smartphones names but do not expect those to take – to make a meaningful contribution to our sales until 2020. Increased competition in TDDI market combined with accelerating AMOLED display adoption will limit our TDDI growth for smartphone application in Q3 and the remainder of 2019. I mentioned in the last earnings call that we could potentially start shipping TDDI chips for the tablet market in 2019. We expect to see a small revenue contribution during Q4 of this year with a number of leading end customers. Furthermore, we are the industry leader in TDDI with active stylus by partnering with the world’s top brands for pen tablets and interactive pen displays. We are pleased to have begun shipments during Q1 of our TDDI for automotive display to a leading panel customer for a prominent auto manufacturer. The initial volume started small but the pipeline for next year’s mass production looks promising. While both segments are smaller than smartphone in terms of volume, they enjoy better margin and growth opportunities for our TDDI solutions in the near future. As expected, our traditional discrete driver IC sales into smartphone increased strongly in Q2 as our design-win with a major Chinese smartphone maker went into production during March and a significant shipment took place in Q2. Despite this rebound, we are seeing the traditional discrete driver ICs’ addressable market being quickly replaced by TDDI and AMOLED in smartphone. As a result, we expect traditional discrete driver ICs for smartphone to decline substantially in the third quarter of 2019 and beyond. Combining shipment of TDDI and discrete smartphone driver, our Q3 sales into the smartphone market is expected to decrease by around 10% sequentially. A major development we are seeing is increased utilization of OLED display designs for smartphones, triggered by increased AMOLED capacity and under-display fingerprint sensing technology which is currently only applicable with AMOLED displays. Although we expect this trend to negatively impact the demand for TDDI and corresponding ASP’s, we have been collaborating closely with leading panel makers across China for AMOLED product development. While we don’t expect revenue contribution anytime soon, we do believe AMOLED driver ICs will be one of the long-term growth engines for our small panel driver IC business. In the automotive display segment, the market has been depressed by declining new car registrations, particularly in China. We continue to face weak demand and expect Q3 sales to be flat sequentially. Looking forward, against the backdrop of a feeble car market, the penetration of displays into vehicles is maturing. Therefore, we don’t expect the same kind of growth that we enjoyed in the last – in the past several years in the automotive segment. However, we will continue to lead this space by bringing new technologies to market including TDDI, AMOLED and local dimming timing controller. We believe such new technologies will help rejuvenate the industry and bring our automotive sales back to a growth trajectory. Our tablet and consumer electronics businesses represented around 12.4% of our total sales in the second quarter. As the overall markets remain weak we expects tablet business to decrease by more than 30% in the third quarter mainly due to a major end customer’s inventory adjustment. As mentioned earlier, we have started to provide OEMs with samples for our world leading in-cell TDDI that supports the use of active stylus for tablet during the first quarter. We will report progress in due course. Combing tablet and consumer electronics businesses, we expect sales to decrease by around 25% sequentially in the third quarter. For the third quarter, revenue for the small- and medium-sized driver IC business is expected to decrease by around 10% sequentially. Now let me share some of the progress we made on the non-driver IC businesses in the last quarter. First of all, 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. As I reported earlier in the past, our structured light-based 3D sensing total solution targeting Android smartphone’s front-facing application was unsuccessful due to high hardware cost, long development lead time and the lack of killer applications. Since then we have adjusted our structured light-based 3D sensing technology development to focus on applications for non-smartphone segments which are typically less sensitive to cost and always require a total solution. We teamed up with industry-leading facial recognition algorithm and application processor partners to develop new 3D sensing applications for smart door lock and have started designing projects with certain end customers. Separately, we are collaborating with partners who wish to take advantage of our 3D sensing know-how to automate traditional manufacturing and thereby improve its efficiency and cost. A prototype of the cutting-edge manufacturing line is being built on our premises and we believe this project can represent a major step forward in our alternative 3D sensing applications.We are still in the early stage of exploring the full business potential for structured light 3D sensing technology but we believe it will be applicable in a wide range of industries, particularly those demanding high level of depth precision or accuracy. On ToF 3D sensing, we have seen increasing adoption of world-facing solutions to enable advanced photography, distance or dimension measurement and 3D depth information generation for AR applications. Very recently, thanks to ToF sensor technology advancement, some OEMs are also exploring ToF 3D for front-facing facial recognition and payment certification. As a technology leader in the 3D sensing space we are an active participant in smartphone OEMs’ design projects for new devices involving ToF technology by offering WLO optics and/or transmitter modules with our unique eye-safety protection design. Next is some discussion on our WLO business. As anticipated, the second quarter WLO revenue declined sequentially due to reduced shipment to our anchor customer as per their lower seasonal demand. The sequential shipment decline led to lower capacity utilization and therefore negatively impacted our Q2 gross margin. That being said our shipment to the anchor customer – our shipment to the anchor customer in the first half of 2019 recorded a nice growth from last year. Furthermore, based on the customer’s shipment forecast we expect the third quarter WLO revenue to rise significantly with the strong momentum expected to carry through the second half of the year. Our advancements in technology have enabled us to remain an industry leader and an active ecosystem participant for the creation of breakthrough products and technologies. In addition to 3D sensing for smartphone applications we have various engagements in other markets. For example, the automotive sector is developing as an attractive market with substantial opportunities for our WLO product line and 2D/3D in-cabin optical sensing for driver monitoring and identification and advanced parking assist system. Next on WiseEye, our ultra-low power, AI-based, smart sensing solution. During Computex 2019, in partnership with Quanta Computers, the world’s largest notebook ODM, we unveiled the world’s first human-aware intelligent vision solution for notebooks, WiseEye 2.0 NB. This solution was built on Emza’s unique AI-based algorithm as well as Himax’s proprietary computer vision processor and CMOS image sensor, all built with ultra-low power design. Emza, based in Israel, is Himax’s wholly owned subsidiary and a pioneer specialized in AI-based algorithm for ultra-low power intelligent image sensing. WiseEye 2.0 NB enables seamless integration of sensor – of sensing user context awareness for an improved notebook user experience and extended battery life. New product features include, among others, device wake-up when user is present, screen lock when absent, screen dimming when disengaged and privacy alerts when a second person is identified in the field of view. Additionally, the AI-based always-on sensor can detect user engagement levels based on presence and face posing, to enable power management of the display and maximize battery life. Since Computex we have extended our dialogue to most OEMs who are all looking to include AI low-power sensors into their platforms. We are targeting their next generation product launches for the 2020 back-to-school season. While our focus is currently on notebooks, intelligent ultra-low power human detection and people counting can be widely used – utilized. In the future we will expand into residential security, smart home, smart building, consumer appliances, automotive and industrial segments. On CMOS image sensor business updated. For the traditional human vision segments we see strong demand in notebooks where we are one of the market leaders, and increased shipment for multimedia applications such as car recorders, surveillance, drones, home appliances and consumer electronics among others. Additionally, we have seen increased shipment and new design-wins in our automotive segment, covering before-market solutions such as surround view and rear-view cameras. CMOS image sensor is a critical component in the WiseEye solution I mentioned earlier. We have made a huge effort to combine the capabilities of high quality HD image capturing and ultra-low-power, low resolution visual sensing into 1 single sensor, the industry’s first with such design. With this 2-in-1 sensor, notebook manufacturers can simplify their product design and save the cost for an additional camera needed for context awareness. The first generation of the 2-in-1 sensor is designed with state-of-the-art stack-die technology to achieve a die size small enough to fit in to the industry’s next generation ultra slim notebook computers. In addition, our sensor has incorporated an RGB-IR design to enable Windows Hello facial recognition. The new 2-in-1 CMOS sensor will be available by the end of 2019. I will now give an update on the LCOS business where our main focus areas are AR goggle devices and head-up display or HUD 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 ecosystem, applications, software, operating system, system electronics and optics. While AR goggles will take a few more years to fully grow into its market potential we believe LCOS remains the mainstream technology in this space. Our technology leadership and proven manufacturing expertise has made us a preferred partner with AR goggle device customers for their ongoing engineering projects. In addition, we continue to make great progress in developing high-end holographic head-up displays for 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 IC business, driven by strong growth in WLO and CIS, we expect revenue to increase by about 30% sequentially in the third quarter. That concludes my report for this quarter. Thank you for your interest in Himax. We appreciate you joining today’s call. And we are now ready to take questions.