Photronics, Inc. ($PLAB)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Photronics' Q2 Fiscal Year '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ted Moreau, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our review of Photronics Fiscal Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results. Joining me this morning are George Macricostas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Eric Rivera, President and Chief Financial Officer; and Frank Lee, Senior Executive for Asia. The press release issued earlier this morning, along with the presentation materials accompanying our remarks is available on Investor Relations section of our website and on the Form 8-K filed with the SEC. This call includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause Photronics results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the forward-looking statements disclosure included in our earnings release and in our most recent SEC filings. In coming weeks, we will be participating in investor conferences hosted by Bank of America in Temcisco, 3-part advisors in New York, D.A. Davidson National and Singular Research in Las Vegas. With that, I will now turn the call over to George.

Thank you, Ted, and good morning, everyone. In Q2, global photomask dynamics reflected a mix of supportive long-term drivers alongside temporary headwinds. Industry demand for leading-edge memory and logic chips for AI applications remains exceptionally strong. Manufacturing these chips requires a significant number of high-end photomasks, which creates a compelling multiyear growth opportunity for Photronics. We are taking several strategic actions to strengthen our position in this growing market which I will discuss later in more detail. Importantly, as a reminder, photomask demand is more closely aligned with semiconductor design releases than to wafer starts. In the near term, several factors have delayed design releases, including elevated fab utilization rates, memory supply constraints and geopolitical uncertainty. Eric will further elaborate on these factors. Given these unexpected near-term headwinds for certain ship design releases, the seasonal recovery following Chinese New Year has not occurred to the extent anticipated. As a result, our IC business decreased 5% year-over-year to $148 million, resulting in total fiscal Q2 revenue of $210 million, which was essentially flat year-over-year. Despite the near-term industry headwinds, we continue to execute against our investment priorities and strengthen our position in the robust high-end market segment. Our ongoing investments in our U.S. and Korea operations are designed to strengthen Photronics' long-term competitive position as we expand site capabilities into more advanced technology nodes. Both expansion projects remain on track. And over the next several years, we expect these investments to help us capture photo as demand and support a more geographically diverse revenue base. Strategically, these investments align us with the industry's ongoing manufacturing regionalization trends. They also position us to benefit from increased outsourcing opportunities from captive photomask producers, which will further shift our product mix towards more advanced geometries that carry higher ASPs. At our Korea facility, we are preparing our clean room for the arrival of key equipment to extend our capabilities down to 8-nanometer and below and we expect installations to begin later in the fiscal year. At our Allen facility, we are beginning production of qualification masks and continue to target initial revenue late in the fiscal year with a more meaningful contribution to revenue growth in 2027 and beyond. Over time, we expect the site will become an important mask supplier for U.S. onshore mainstream semiconductor manufacturing. For leading-edge AI chips, -- our high-end U.S. facility in Boise is qualified to produce masks at the 7-nanometer node and our teams are working closely with customers on even more advanced nodes. Photronics facility in Taiwan and the U.S. are also well positioned to capture the increasing opportunities in advanced chip packaging applications. Turning to FPD. Revenue of $62 million increased 13% year-over-year, reflecting our capability to produce more complex, larger mask sizes and our strong differentiation in AMOLED. Our market-leading high-end capabilities in the dynamic China market remains strong and should support display revenue growth in the coming years. In Korea, where we maintain strong market share, positive seasonality returned during fiscal Q2 after a slower start to the calendar year. The launch schedules of high-end consumer electronics particularly in smartphones and smart watches for Western markets remain on track. Encouragingly, these high-end consumer electronics have not been impacted by tight memory conditions. Our recently installed FPD mass freighter is entering production. This tool is expected to maximize our opportunity in G 8.6 AMOLED, which carries higher ASP mask layers and is anticipated to be more widely adopted later in the calendar year. We expect continued strength in the Korea FPD market ahead of this higher resolution upgrade cycle. Returning to while we are observing some signs of order recovery, near-term visibility regarding the timing of certain design releases remains limited. For the medium and long term, secular demand trends remain positive as highlighted at the beginning of my prepared remarks. We are excited about the benefits our expansion projects are expected to provide with initial U.S. revenue anticipated late in fiscal 2026 and and initial revenue from our Korea expansion by the end of fiscal 2027. Both expansion projects are expected to open additional leading-edge opportunities. I will now turn the call over to Eric to review our second quarter results and provide third quarter guidance.

Thank you, George. Good morning, everyone. Second quarter revenue came in at $210 million, roughly flat year-over-year and down sequentially following the strong performance in fiscal Q1 leading up to the Chinese New Year holiday. I see revenue of $148 million represented 70% of total revenue. High-end represented 38% of IC, while mainstream IC revenue was $91 million. Design releases and associated revenue, particularly from our foundry customers were shaped by several factors during the period. First, the semiconductor industry is currently experiencing higher-than-normal fab utilization rates. As a result, fabs have been unable to accommodate additional design releases from some of their customers because of this limited capacity. Additionally, many chip OEMs have prioritized revenue and profitability from existing products, which has led them to continue wafer production on current designs while delaying new releases. Second, the recent surge in memory prices and related supply constraints have contributed to delays in the launch of several new consumer electronic products as OEMs have worked to secure memory supply and manage rising product costs. The final factor contributing to delays for design releases is geopolitical developments, including the U.S. Iran conflict, which has increased macroeconomic uncertainty. Looking ahead, we expect our capital investments in the U.S. and Korea to begin generating revenue at the end of 2026 and 2027, respectively. As the new capacity goes into full production, we expect our revenue mix in fiscal 2027 and 2028 to shift in 2 ways. by node towards high NIC and geographically towards the U.S. and Korea. These investments are consistent with our long-term strategy to further diversify our revenue mix by geography and technology node. Turning to FPD. Fiscal Q2 revenue of $62 million increased 13% year-over-year and represented one of the strongest quarters in the history of our display business. Demand remains strong in the China market as activity shifted towards the high-end category. In Korea, we saw a reacceleration of business activity as customers prepare for regularly scheduled consumer electronic launches this fall. We foresee accelerated display market growth over the next several years following the increasing trend of G6 AMOLED applications. Display market growth is concentrated in China and Korea, which are competitive strongholds for Photronics. Gross margin of 31% reflects the combination of operational leverage inherent in our financial model driven by our significant fixed cost infrastructure as well as product mix. Operating margin was 20%. Diluted GAAP EPS attributable to Photronics shareholders was $0.54 per share. Excluding foreign exchange impacts, non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.42 per share. The strong performance of our display operations contributed to our earnings during the quarter. Operating cash flow of $47 million equates to a healthy 22% of revenue. CapEx was $46 million, reflecting investments in Korean expansion to support 8-nanometer production, the installation of new equipment in Allen, Texas, end-of-life tool upgrades and facility optimization initiatives. As we have previously discussed, we have entered a period of elevated capital investments to drive future organic growth. Our initiatives in the U.S. and Korea as endorsed by our customers will further strengthen our ability to capitalize on growth trends, including surging AI applications, increased captive outsourcing high-end node migrations, geographic diversification and regionalization. We maintain our fiscal 2026 CapEx guidance of $330 million with elevated CapEx focused on strategic investments in the U.S. and Korea along with peak end-of-life tool upgrades. Given the favorable long-term secular growth outlook of the photomask market, we continue to evaluate additional investment opportunities to further support our strategic priorities and long-term growth objectives. We will provide additional details as appropriate if and when we decide to move forward with these potential projects. Total cash and short-term investments remained flat at $638 million, including $477 million held within our joint ventures in which we hold a 50.01% ownership interest. Our capital allocation strategy remains focused on 3 priorities: Reinvestment in the business to support organic growth, pursuing strategic opportunities and returning capital to shareholders. We will continue to evaluate the most effective use of our cash and remain disciplined and opportunistic in our capital allocation decisions prioritizing investments that offer the highest expected returns. With respect to internal reinvestment, we will continue to emphasize projects that support future revenue growth and enhance long-term shareholder value. Before providing guidance, I'd like to remind you that demand for our products is inherently variable. Visibility remains limited with a typical backlog of only 1 to 3 weeks. Additionally, high-end mass sets carry significantly higher ASPs, meaning even a small number of orders can materially impact revenue and earnings. Demand is also influenced by IC and display design activity and to a lesser extent, by wafer and panel capacity dynamics. Given current market conditions and the influence of elevated AI demand on fab utilization and therefore, design starts, we expect fiscal Q3 revenue to be in the range of $207 million to $215 million. Based on those revenue expectations and our operating model, we estimate fiscal Q3 operating margin between 18% and 20% and non-GAAP diluted EPS between $0.39 and $0.45 per share. I will now turn the call over to the operator for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from the line of Maxwell Miles of Lake Street Capital Markets.

First 1 from me. In terms of visibility, when did things really start to get clouded in the quarter, just given the guidance for Q2 came in a little bit below that. So really when to visibility become cloud in the quarter?

Max, this is Eric. Thanks for the question. So it really started becoming cloudy when the conflict and in -- with Iran in the U.S. started during the quarter. Then after that, we started seeing fab utilization was also affecting us. Go ahead, please.

Max, I'd like to comment more on this. typically, we have a very strong booking before the Chinese New Year. And after Chinese New Year, there will be a temporary slowdown in. So -- but this year, the slowdown after Chinese is much longer than we anticipate. Of course, the headwinds, as George and Eric report highlight, maybe the factors causing this longer slowdown in the tape out after Chinese New Year. So we do see the slowdown right after Chinese New Year, which is in end of February.

End of February, Okay. And then I guess my second question and a follow-up to that would be when you're talking to your customers, I mean, have they given you any sort of rough time line of when they expect to bring in these new designs? Or is it they still have no idea either.

Our customers actually are still optimistic about the midterm outlook. However, in the near term, the visibility remains kind of a limit. So we see a lot of delay in the tape-out in Q2. However, at the beginning of Q3, we did see some recovery of those delays. A lot of tape-outs have happened since beginning of May. However, going forward, we remain very cautious. But at this moment, customer still optimistic about the midterm outlook.

Our next question will be coming from the line of Goshishri of Singular Research.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. I just wanted to get these customers that are deferring designs. Are they -- were they already in the pipeline? Or is this more about new designs that are starting to slow down? And do those recovery times differ?

Yes. Actually, whenever customer make a new design, they tape out the data to the foundry fab, then the foundry fab give the order to the mask house they select. This type, the new design slowdown actually happened at the end of the foundry customer namely the design house. So the design has actually has a slower new about new design release. So it's not in a pipeline. It's at the very beginning of the new design release.

Eric, on the margin compression side, -- are there any specific levers you guys can pull if the demand kind of stays soft for another couple of quarters. Are there any variable cost reductions available -- or is it fundamentally a cost business that these utilization to recover?

Yes, -- very little levers we can pull. I mean it's really the product mix that will be available to the market gives us is what we'll have. Most of our cost is fixed or a big portion of it anyway is very fixed. So we don't have much levers to pull there.

Got you. And on the alum side, so if we -- the Alan qualifies -- so if Alan begins delivering qualifications masks as planned and the demand kind of stays of till early 2027, does bringing the new Allen capacity online to a weak demand environment kind of adds depreciation costs making margins even more compressor? Is there the Alen cost structure kind of light enough at the qualification state that is a meaningfully impact P&L until commercial production?

Yes. So the on expansion already started -- we started qualifications already in Q3. So everything is moving according to our time line. We expect revenue generation to occur later in the year, and we do not expect that the current economic environment will depress the returns that we're expecting on our island expansion in the current year or in the next at the moment.

I'd like to add some comments to your question. Our area expansion is not only capacity expansion. We upgraded our technology. So the qualification basically is for the technology, which Alan cannot do at this moment. So once we qualify the customer, I think we will increase our market share in technology node, which Alan cannot produce right now. Also another purpose of adding expansion is we are planning to transfer some lower end of the high-end order -- so the high end of the mainstream from our voice side to Alan. So we can spend more capacity in our voice side to take higher ASP orders. So this is a win for bots and also a win for the Adansi.

And in terms of the memory supply constraints and OEM cost pressure headwinds I curious as to see whether you're seeing this evenly across your geography, for example, are your U.S. customers, Korean customers are behaving differently to your Chinese and Taiwan foundry customer in terms of deferring thesis? Or is it the passive based across all regions?

Yes. The memory shortage and especially also the price surgeon has a huge negative impact on the consumer product, especially the low-end consumer product. So those are mainly in Asia. So I think this impact happened in Taiwan and also in China.

And our next question will come from the line of Christian Schwab of Craig-Hallum.

Yes. Great. I understand the delays that you're seeing in design starts and thanks for all that clarity. But as we increase our capacity capabilities on lower geometry node chips, on kind of a medium-term basis. Can you give us an idea of either yearly revenue target or a market share goal? And then my second question along those lines is on the advanced node side is 7 or 8 nanometers is the best that we're going to be able to make? Or do we have aspirations to get down below that?

Thanks, Christian. This is Eric here. So starting with your last question first. In terms of our aspirations to go 8-nanometer, 7-nanometer, we're going to continue going down now. I mean, we have to do that because that's the -- that's our industry. We have to continue investing and we see a lot of opportunity there. So definitely, we plan to go below those ranges. Now with respect to the revenue that we expect to get out of our Allen facility with our recent investments, I'm not going to get into detail of revenue by site from that perspective. But that should give us an opportunity to expand our market share in the U.S. And we expect the U.S. to be at least in '27 to be heading us in the -- from a revenue expansion perspective or percentage of increase should be larger in the U.S. than anywhere else.

We're working -- we're working with customers to that. And Frank, maybe you'd like to elaborate?

Yes, George. Yes. I think our investment not necessarily for the capacity only because we are seeing a lot of ongoing onshore semiconductor manufacturing in the States. And Photonis we are actually the very -- we have a very unique strong position in a country that -- because we have the voice side, where we have the very advanced photomask technology. And also, we have added side where we can make mention photomask. So the capacity expansion and the technology upgrade by our CapEx is to serve our company's goal we'd like to be the main photomask supplier in the United States.

And I would now like to turn the conference back to Ted for closing remarks.

Thank you, Tanya, and thanks, everyone, for joining on the call today. We really appreciate your interest in Photronics. Look forward to connecting with everybody throughout the quarter. Have a great day.

And this concludes today's program. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you.