Diodes Incorporated (NASDAQ:DIOD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Diodes Incorporated (NASDAQ:DIOD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 6, 2024
Diodes Incorporated isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Diodes Incorporated's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of today's conference call, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Tuesday, February 6, 2024. I would now like to turn the call over to Leanne Sievers of Shelton Group Investor Relations. Leanne, please go ahead.
Leanne Sievers: Good afternoon and welcome to Diodes fourth quarter and fiscal 2023 financial results conference call. I'm Leanne Sievers, President of Shelton Group, Diodes’ Investor Relations firm. Joining us today are Diodes’ President, Gary Yu; Chief Financial Officer, Brett Whitmire; Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Emily Yang; and Director of Investor Relations, Gurmeet Dhaliwal. I'd like to remind our listeners that the results announced today are preliminary, as they are subject to the company finalizing its closing procedures and customary quarterly review by the company's independent registered public accounting firm. As such, these results are unaudited and subject to revision until the company files its form10-K for its fiscal year ending December 31, 2023.
In addition, management's prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, the company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements that is contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Forms 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, any projections as to the company's future performance represent management's estimates as of today, February 6, 2024.
Diodes assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future, as market conditions may or may not change except to the extent required by applicable law. Additionally, the company's press release and management statements during this conference call will include discussions of certain measures and financial information in GAAP and non-GAAP terms. Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP items, which provide additional details. Also, throughout the company's press release and management statements during the conference call, we refer to the net income attributable to common stockholders as GAAP net income. For those of you unable to listen to the entire call at this time. A recording will be available via webcast for 90 days in the Investor Relations section of Diodes’ website at www.diodes.com.
And now I'll turn the call over to Diodes’ President, Gary Yu. Gary, please go ahead.
Gary Yu: Thank you, Leanne. Welcome everyone to our results conference call. I'm pleased to be joining you today as Diodes' recent appointed President, effective January 2. As announced at the end of last year, my promotion was part of Diodes' multi-year CEO succession plan. Dr. Lu will continue to serve as Chairman and the CEO until at least May 31, 2027, which is consistent with current employment agreement. As many of you may know, I have previous served as Diodes' Chief Operating Officer and have been with Diodes since 2008. I'm very excited to be serving in this new role and leading Diodes into the next stage of growth which will focus on developing a broad portfolio of innovative products to enable customer success in the market we serve.
In terms of our 2023 result, this past year proved to be a challenging as the consumer computing and the communications market experienced an extended slowdown, coupled with inventory rebalancing in the industrial market late in the year as well as softness in certain area of automotive market. Despite this global weakness, we make notable progress on improving the quality and a mix of product portfolio. We continue to focus on automotive and industrial markets through expanding design wins and increased investments in new product development which result in the over 350 new automotive-compliant products. The combined revenue from those two markets expanded to 46% of product revenue in 2023 compared to 42% last year. Our product mix improvements were especially evidenced in our ability to maintain full year gross margin near 40%, meeting our target model despite lower annual revenue.
Throughout the year, we continue to drive manufacturing cost reductions, operating efficiency while also further developing our process technology for expansion of our internal facility utilization. Overall, we maintain strong cash generation in 2023 that enable us to reduce total debt by $124 million to $62 million, maintain a solid cash position over $315 million and increase total cash less debt by 67% to approximately $253 million. Additionally, we renewed expand our line of credit to approximately $315 million to provide added financial flexibility. As we look to 2024, we remain focused on driving further improvements in the quality and mix of our portfolio with our analog and a power discrete product, including our newly introduced SiC product family, especially target at automotive and industrial markets.
We also continue to make a good progress ramping our previous acquired Fab, a CFAB and a GFAB in term of a process and product qualifications which will support future utilization and further complement our hybrid manufacturing model. We believe our total solution sales approach that has been successful in the past, along with a further emphasized place on key account development, will continue to deliver increasing content opportunities, design wins and profitable growth in the future. With that, let me now turn the call over to Brett to discuss our fourth quarter and the full year financial results as well as our first quarter guidance in more detail.
Brett Whitmire: Thanks Gary and good afternoon, everyone. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 was $322.7 million compared to $404.6 million in the third quarter 2023 and $496.2 million in the fourth quarter 2022. Full year 2023 revenue was $1.7 billion compared to $2 billion in 2022. Gross profit for the fourth quarter was $112.5 million, or 34.9% of revenue, which reflects the lower revenue impacted by product mix as well as our wafer service agreements. This compares to $155.9 million, or 38.5% of revenue in the prior quarter and $206.2 million, or 41.6% of revenue in the prior year quarter. For the full year, GAAP gross profit was $658.2 million and GAAP gross margin was 39.6%, effectively at our target model of 40%. GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $91.8 million, or 28.4% of revenue and on a non-GAAP basis were $89 million, or 27.6% of revenue, which excludes $3.8 million of amortization of acquisition-related intangible asset expenses and $1 million in a restructuring cost gain.
This compares to GAAP operating expenses in the prior quarter of $102 million or 25.2% of revenue, and in the fourth quarter 2022 of $109.7 million, or 22.1% of revenue. Non-GAAP operating expenses in the prior quarter were $95.6 million, or 23.7% of revenue. Total other income amounted to approximately $7.2 million for the quarter, consisting of $4.8 million of interest income, $3.5 million of other income, $1.8 million unrealized gain on investments, a $2.5 million foreign currency loss and $0.5 million in interest expense. Income before taxes and non-controlling interest in the fourth quarter 2023 was $27.9 million compared to $60.5 million in the previous quarter and $94.8 million in the prior year quarter. Turning to income taxes, our effective income tax rate for the fourth quarter was approximately 9.9%.
For the full year 2023, the tax rate was approximately 17%, which was within our expected range. GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $25.3 million or $0.55 per diluted share compared to $48.7 million or $1.05 per diluted share last quarter and $92.1 million or $2 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Full year GAAP net income was $227.2 million or $4.91 per diluted share compared to $331.3 million or $7.20 per diluted share in 2022. The share count used to compute GAAP diluted EPS was 46.3 million shares for both the fourth quarter 2023 and the full year. Non-GAAP adjusted net income in the fourth quarter was $23.4 million or $0.51 per diluted share, which excluded net of tax, $3.1 million of acquisition related intangible asset costs, $2.8 million gain on investments, $1.4 million non-cash mark to market investment value adjustment and a $0.7 million gain on restructuring costs.
This compares to $52.5 million or $1.13 per diluted share in the prior quarter and $79.6 million or $1.73 per diluted share in the fourth quarter 2022. For the full year, non-GAAP adjusted net income was $222.8 million or $4.81 per diluted share, as compared to $339 million or $7.36 per diluted share in 2022. Excluding non-cash share based compensation expense of $5.9 million net of tax for the fourth quarter and $24.4 million for the full year, both GAAP earnings per share and non-GAAP adjusted EPS would have increased by $0.13 and $0.53 per diluted share, respectively. EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $58.4 million or 18.1% of revenue compared to $90.6 million or 22.4% of revenue in the prior quarter and $129.6 million or 26.1% of revenue in the fourth quarter 2022.
For the full year, EBITDA was $404.2 million or 24.3% of revenue compared to $520.4 million or 26% of revenue for 2022. We have included in our earnings release a reconciliation of GAAP net income to non-GAAP adjusted net income and GAAP net income to EBITDA, which provides additional details. Cash flow generated from operations was $38.4 million for the fourth quarter and $280.9 million for the full year. Free cash flow was $11.1 million in the fourth quarter, which included $27.3 million for capital expenditures and for the full year free cash flow was $130.1 million, including $150.8 million for CapEx. Net cash flow was a positive $20.9 million and for the full year, net cash flow was a negative $22.6 million, which includes the net paydown of $124.3 million of total debt.
Turning to the balance sheet. At the end of fourth quarter cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash plus short-term investments totaled approximately $329 million. Working capital was $794 million and total debt, including long-term and short-term was $62 million. In terms of inventory at the end of fourth quarter, total inventory days were approximately 160 as compared to 124 last quarter. Finished goods inventory days were 49 compared to 34 last quarter. Total inventory dollars increased $46.1 million from the prior quarter to $389.8 million. We increased inventory during the quarter in order to support short lead time orders and also prepare for the lower output expected in the first quarter due to Chinese New Year holiday. Total inventory in the quarter consisted of a $34.6 million increase in finished goods, an $8.1 million increase in work in process, and a $3.4 million increase in raw materials.
Capital expenditures on a cash basis were $27.3 million for the fourth quarter or 8.5% of revenue, and $150.8 million or 9.1% of revenue for the full year and within our target range of 5% to 9%, as we continue to invest in the future growth and expansion of our business. Now turning to our outlook. For the first quarter of 2024, we expect revenue to be approximately $305 million plus or minus 3%. We expect GAAP gross margin to be 34% plus or minus 1%. Non-GAAP operating expenses, which are GAAP operating expenses adjusted for amortization of acquisition related intangible assets are expected to be approximately 28.7% of revenue plus or minus 1%. We expect net interest income to be approximately $2 million. Our income tax rate is expected to be 18% plus or minus 3% and shares used to calculate EPS for the first quarter are anticipated to be approximately 46.5 million.
Not included in these non-GAAP estimates is amortization of $3.1 million after tax for previous acquisitions. With that said, I will now turn the call over to Emily Yang.
Emily Yang: Thank you, Brett and good afternoon. Revenue in the fourth quarter was down 20% sequentially and slightly below the midpoint of our guidance. Our global POS decreased in the quarter and our distri inventory increased slightly, remaining above our defined normal range of 11 to 14 weeks. Looking at global sales in the fourth quarter. Asia represented 78% of revenue, Europe 14% and North America 8%. For the full year of 2023, Asia represented 71% of revenue, Europe 17% and North America 12%. In terms of our end markets, industrial was 23% of Diodes fourth quarter product revenue, automotive 18%, computing 25%, consumer 19% and communication 15% of product revenue. Our automotive and industrial end markets combined total 41% of the fourth quarter product revenue, representing the seventh consecutive quarter above our target model of 40%.
For the full year, industrial was 27%, auto 19%, computing 23%, consumer 18% and communication 13%. Auto and industrial revenue in 2023 reached a record 46% of product revenue compared to 42% last year. Now let me review the end markets in greater detail, starting with the automotive markets. In the fourth quarter, automotive was 18% of our total product revenue, which is a slight decrease from the last quarter, 19%. We began seeing some slowdown along with inventory rebalancing in Q4 and believe this will continue into the first quarter. For the full year, revenue reached a record 19% of product revenue compared to 15% last year, which represented a 28% compounded annual growth rate from our initial launch into the auto market in 2013, which was only about 3% revenue at that time.
Over this time period, our contact per car increased from $28 in 2013 to over $160 in 2024 and Diodes focus will continue to be on the compact expansion going forward. In 2023, we introduced more than 350 new automotive compliance products, demonstrating our commitments to this market segment. New product continues to drive the expansion of our design pipeline and total available market, while also improving our product mix. Even though we still see pockets of softness in the automotive market, design momentum has remained very strong for Diodes. During the fourth quarter, our TVS diodes and ideal diodes controllers continue to gain traction while our LDOs got designed into applications for ADAS, smart cabin, telematic and infotainment. The adoption of our USB Type-C re-drivers, DisplayPort active crossbar MUX and MIPI switches have increased significantly in the rear-seat entertainment, smart cockpit, ADAS and active cable designed for automotive applications.
We also achieved several design wins for our crystal oscillators and PCI Express Clock Generators for the development of new ADAS designs. Our newly updated USB power delivery controller portfolio that supports extended power range is gaining traction from in-vehicle infotainment system and USB Type-C charging functions. Our SBR products are also seeing momentum in battery management system, display, lighting and headlight systems. Also during the quarter, we saw positive design momentum for our newly released N-channel MOSFETs, specifically targeting the growing demand for silicon carbide solutions in electric and hybrid electric vehicle automotive subsystems. These MOSFETs are tailored for applications such as battery charger, onboard chargers, high efficiency DC-DC converters, motor drivers and traction inverters.
Additionally, our SBR and Schottky product shipment have ramped up significantly for EV applications. In the industrial market, fourth quarter revenue represented 23% of total product revenue, which was a three percentage point decrease sequentially due to the weaker demand and inventory rebalancing we mentioned last quarter. Since our last call, we have seen this market witness broaden. For the full year of 2023, industrial represented 27% of product revenue. Even despite the market softness, our design pipeline remained very strong throughout the year and we continue to see new application opportunities as our content has expanded. In terms of progress on the product initiatives, our PCI Express 3.0 packet switch are winning designs across diverse applications including artificial intelligence of things, automation, inspection, power plant controllers, test instrument applications.
This packet switches enable SoC to connect to various endpoint devices such as wired, wireless network, SSD storage and specific industrial controllers over the industrial standard PCI Express bus [ph]. We secure new design wins for a range of essential components like HDMI, USB Type-C DisplayPort, MIDP re-drivers and MUX switches in commercial displays, drums and robotic applications. One area of strength in the industrial market has been solar where our SBR product has gained traction in residential roof solar panels along with our real time clock being used in solar systems and our TVS product being designed in for data line protection in battery management system for solar energy storage battery cells. Additionally, our silicon carbide MOSFET has been gaining traction in industrial motor drivers, solar inverters, data centers and telecom power supplies.
Turning to computing markets, fourth quarter revenue represented 25% of product revenue, which is flat to last quarter. Full year revenue represented 23% of total product revenue compared to 24% last year. After few quarters of inventory adjustment, we are seeing customer inventory levels returning back to normal levels. Due to the impact of Chinese New Year holiday on the first quarter revenue, we expect to see some recovery beginning in the second quarter and progressing in the second half of the year. In terms of design wins and secure new designs and ramp production for our SBR and Schottky diodes in notebook adapters and power applications, server [ph] as well as notebook motherboards. Protection devices for high speed data line are being designed into Chromebook to protect the Type-C port and our TVS product are being used to protect the power sourcing line of the solid state drive modules for data center server.
We have also gaining momentum for signal integrities and connectivity product for various protocol in computing applications including workstation, gaming, notebook, desktop docking stations and add-in cards. We also secure new design ins for PCI Express clock buffers, crystal oscillators and silicon carbide Schottky diodes in servers, machine learning and for various power factor correction applications in servers. In the communication market, fourth quarter revenue was 15% of product revenue, which is an increase from 12% in the third quarter. Revenue for the full year represented 13% of product revenue compared to 15% last year. After few quarters of inventory adjustment in the smartphone, specifically, we are seeing customer inventory level returning back to normalization level in the telecom and networking market, inventory rebalancing continues.
In terms of design wins in the quarter, our timing products including clock buffers and crystal oscillators are seeing new wins for smart NIC and connectivity products like MIPI switches and our TVS protection products are seeing adoptions in smartphone applications. And lastly, in the consumer market, fourth quarter revenue represented 19%, which is a one percentage point increase compared to last quarter, similar to the inventory situation in computing market and also in smartphones. After a few quarter of rebalancing, customer inventory is now mostly clean. Following the Chinese New Year holiday and the typical seasonality for consumer in the first quarter, we expect to see some recovery late in the second quarter and into the second half of the year.
For the full year, revenue in consumer market represented 18% of product revenue compared to 19% last year. During the quarter, we have seen strong adoption of our USB Type-C display, active crossbar MUX, USB Type-C display re-drivers and re-timers, PCI Express clock generators, real-time clock and signal conditioners in various applications like tablets, docking stations, USB Type-C optic cables, cable extenders, cameras, televisions and monitors. We also secure design wins for our MOSFETs and MIPI switches and re-drivers in gaming and VR/AR applications. In summary, although the 3C market has been slower to recover and overall global demand remains soft. We are encouraged by the continuous progress we have made over the past year in the automotive and industrial market.
Our team remains focused on driving new product introductions, product mix improvements, design win momentums, as well as a focus on key account development. Diodes strong cash generation has enabled us to remain investments in support of the future growth and expansion of our business. That positions us well as the global market improve throughout the coming year. With that, we now open the floor to questions. Operator?
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