eMemory Technology Inc. (3529) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to eMemory 2019 Fourth Quarter Webcast Conference. Today with us, we have Chairman, Dr. Charles Hsu; President, Dr. Rick Shen; Vice President of Business Development and Spokesman, Mr. Michael Ho; Director, Lin Ching; Director of Finance Department, Ms. Teresa Kuo. Today's meeting will be hosted by Chairman, Dr. Hsu, and operation results will be reported by President, Dr. Rick Shen. Following management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, and a webcast replay will be available 3 hours after the conference is finished. Please visit www.ememory.com.tw under the Investor Relations section. As usual, before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risk factors associated with semiconductor and IT business. Please refer to the cautionary statement as shown on Page 3 of today's presentation. Now I would like to turn the call over to eMemory's Chairman, Dr. Charles Hsu. Dr. Hsu, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We just released our January revenue, a new high in terms of U.S. dollar. This confirms our growth momentum resumed and a multiyear growth cycle has begun, driven by new applications, such as ISP, networking, multimedia and DRAM. Our existing DDI and -- display driver and power management IC business also show strong growth as higher ASP, such as OLED; increasing content, such as digital power; and market share gain. In addition, we begin to design various security IPs based on our NeoPUF for the application in IoT, AI, autonomous driving, blockchain and 5G, which will soon become our next growth engine. Now I will invite our President, Rick Shen, to report our operation results of Q4 and the outlook for the future. At the end, we will address the concern of the coronavirus epidemic. Dr. Shen, please?

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending eMemory's 2019 fourth quarter investor conference call. In today's presentation, I would like to report our operation results of Q4 and then the full year results of 2019, followed by the status update of our technologies and future outlook. First, I would like to report our 2019 Q4 results. Our Q4 revenue was TWD 362 million, an increase of 7.5% sequentially and a decrease of 11% year-over-year. The operating expenses of the Q4 was TWD 202 million, up 2.5% sequentially and down 9.1% year-over-year. Q4 operating income increased by 14.6% sequentially and decreased by 13.4% year-over-year. The operating margin of Q4 was 44.1%, with EPS TWD 1.74 and ROE at 30.2%. The full year revenue of 2019 was TWD 1.41 billion, a decline of 4.5% year-over-year. The operating expenses decreased by 1.9%, while the operating margin decreased by 1.5 percentage points. EPS decreased by 10.2% to TWD 7.3 and ROE down by 0.7 percentage point to 31.6%. In the following section, I will elaborate on the revenue contribution by licensing and the royalties. Licensing from Q4 accounted for 32% of the revenue, up 11.8% sequentially and down 7% year-over-year. Royalty contributed 68% of total revenue, increased by 5.6% sequentially but decreased by 12.8% year-over-year. The full revenue -- no, full year revenue of 2019 declined 4.5% year-over-year, with both licensing and the royalty decreasing by 4.3% and 4.6%, respectively. If we break down revenue by technologies, the results are as follows. NeoBit was accounted for 27.5% of the total licensing revenue of the quarter, decreased by 12.1% compared to the previous quarter, but up 7.8% year-over-year. Its royalty, accounted for 57.6% (sic) [ 67.6% ] of total royalty, decreased 6.8% sequentially and 20.7% year-over-year. NeoFuse was accounted for 56.7% of total licensing revenue of the quarter, up 36.9% sequentially and 9.4% year-over-year. Its royalty increased by 49% sequentially and 15.8% year-over-year because of increasing production from advanced nodes. The royalty of NeoFuse contributed 28.4% of total royalty. Our new technology, NeoPUF, has not contributed to royalty yet but has contributed 3% of total licensing revenue. With the ongoing engagement with leading customers, we expect more significant contribution from NeoPUF this year. For NeoEE and NeoMTP, licensing revenue decreased by 27.7% sequentially and 56.8% year-over-year. Royalty from MTP decreased by 28.4% sequentially but decreased by 17.6% year-over-year. In the full year of 2019, NeoBit contributed 26.9% licensing and 75.4% royalty, down 14.8% and 10% year-over-year. For NeoFuse, both licensing and royalty had an increase of 26.4% and 50.7% year-over-year. NeoEE and NeoMTP's licensing and royalty decreased by 44% and 43.3%. This is because of the focus of MTP is in the collaboration with leading customers for automotive applications and the engagement period is relatively long. In addition to that, our MTP team are working with partners on developing MRAM, ReRAM and AI memory. If we break down royalty by 8-inch and 12-inch wafers, 8-inch wafers, which accounted for 70% of royalty, increased by 10.4% sequentially but decreased by 9.3% year-over-year. Royalty from 12-inch wafers contributed 30% of royalty, decreased by 4.2% sequentially and 20% year-over-year. This sequential decline is due to DDI customers' inventory adjustment. For the full year of 2019, the contribution of royalty from 12-inch wafers was 30.7%, a decrease of 10.9% year-over-year. 8-inch wafers contributed to 69.3% of the royalty, down 1.5% year-over-year. There are a total of 98 product tape-outs in Q4 this year. We will provide more information in the management report later today. Next I would like to address our future outlook. For licensing revenue, we expect NeoFuse and NeoPUF to continue growing due to increasing advanced technology platform and more comprehensive PUF-related IP portfolios. For royalty revenues, royalty from DDI will increase due to higher penetration rate of OLED DDI by existing customers and new customers. PMIC will continue to grow as the content increase in 5G and higher ASP is migrating into advanced process nodes. New applications, like multimedia-related products, such as DTV, set-top box, surveillance, ISP; and the DRAM will continue to grow our royalty revenue. For new application development. NeoPUF was designed into leading customers' products for IoT applications. PUFrt, the IP of NeoPUF-based root of trust, was adopted by customers for AI application already. In addition to ISP, NeoFuse will also be used in CIS products to provide highly intelligent image recognition applications. Security platform with ARM already has customer adoption. Contribution from these development mentioned above will be seen this year. On new technology development, in addition to 5-nanometer technology platform, ReRAM, ARM security IP cooperation, which we mentioned in previous quarters, we are developing 6-nanometer and a 5-nanometer plus, N5P, technology with leading foundry partner. For security IP, after the completion of PUFtrng, that is the NeoPUF-based random number generator, and PUFrt, that is the NeoPUF-based root of trust, we are working with foundry partners to develop NeoPUF into embedded flash platform. In addition, NeoPUF-based IoT security solution, security elements and hardware security module IPs are under development. We are developing PUF-based hardware security open platform by integrating OTP, MTP -- OTP, PUF, security function IPs, encryption algorithm IPs to provide total security solutions for AIoT and the 5G applications. Lastly, regarding the new coronavirus epidemic, we see very limited impact on daily operation. All our employees are based in Taiwan, and our R&D cooperation with customers are through conference call, not impacted by travel restriction. This conclude my presentation. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] As there are no further questions, we now begin closing comments. Dr. Hsu, please proceed.

Okay. As a company with a wide range of technology platforms, we are confident that our continuous development of technology platforms and innovations in silicon IP will continue to bring more values to customers and industries. Particularly in the 5G era, security become a must for many applications. But we have expanded our OTP and PUF to create new security IPs for securing the AIoT devices, which will become our new growth curve. Thus, we are very confident about our long-term growth. Thank you very much for coming to this quarter's investor conference. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today. A webcast replay will be available within 3 hours after the conference is finished. You may now disconnect. Goodbye, and have a good day.