Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (981) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Interpreted] Welcome to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation's Fourth Quarter 2024 Webcast Conference Call. Today's call will be simultaneously streamed through the Internet and telephone. [Operator Instructions] Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Ms. Guo Guangli, Senior Vice President and Board Secretary to host the webcast.

[Interpreted] Greetings. Welcome to SMIC's Fourth Quarter 2024 Webcast Conference Call. Attending today's call are Dr. Zhao Haijun, Co-Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Wu Junfeng, Senior Vice President and Person In Charge of Finance. Let me remind you that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements that do not guarantee future performance or represent the company's expectations and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the forward-looking statements in our earnings announcement. Please note that today's earnings statement is presented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS, and all currency figures are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise stated. I will now hand the call to Dr. Wu Junfeng to introduce the company's financial status.

[Interpreted] First, I will report our unaudited operating results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024, followed by our guidance for the first quarter of 2025. The fourth quarter operating results are as follows: Revenue was $2,207 million, up 1.7% sequentially. Gross margin was 22.6%, up 2.1 percentage points sequentially. Profit from operations was $214 million. EBITDA was $1,280 million. EBITDA margin was 58%. Profit attributable to the company was $108 million. The company's unaudited results for 2024 are as follows: Revenue was $8,030 million. Gross margin was 18%. Profit from operations was $474 million. EBITDA was $4,380 million. EBITDA margin was 54.5%. Profit attributable to the company was $493 million. Capital expenditure was $7,326 million. Moving to the balance sheet. At the end of 2024, the company had total assets of $49.2 billion, of which, total cash on hand was $15 billion, total liabilities was $17.3 billion, of which, total debt was $11.6 billion, total equity was $31.9 billion, debt-to-equity was 36.4%, and net debt-to-equity was negative 10.6%. In terms of cash flow, in 2024, we generated $3,176 million cash from operating activities. Net cash used in investing activities was $4,518 million. Net cash generated from financing activities was $1,608 million. For the first quarter 2025, our guidance is as follows: Revenue is expected to grow 6% to 8% sequentially, and gross margin is expected to be in the range of 19% to 21%. This concludes the financial status. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Dr. Wu. Next, I will hand the call to Dr. Zhao Haijun to comment on operations.

[Interpreted] Greetings. Today is the Lantern Festival. Wish you all a belated happy Chinese New Year and a joyful Lantern Festival. Thank you for attending SMIC's Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Webcast Conference Call. Traditionally, the fourth quarter followed seasonal pattern, and the customers' willingness of taking goods was relatively low. However, on the basis of the incremental 28,000 12-inch wafer capacity in the quarter, the product mix was optimized and the blended ASP increased by 6% quarter-over-quarter, which roughly offset the impact of declining shipments on revenue and rising depreciation on gross margin. Combining the above factors, the company's revenue in the fourth quarter increased by 1.7% sequentially to exceed $2.2 billion, realizing 7 consecutive quarters of growth. Gross margin increased by 2.1 percentage points sequentially to 22.6%. Next, let's turn to the full year. The overall semiconductor market showed a recovery trend in 2024. The industry of design companies roughly returned to a healthy level. The main industry reshuffled to domestic supply chain at a relatively fast pace. In 2024, in order to meet market and customer demand, the company took steps to be fully prepared. The pace of capacity expansion was accelerated. The comprehensiveness of platforms was further improved and the new products of domestic customers were verified and ramped up quickly. Thus, quarterly revenue in 2024 continuously climbed, and revenue growth for the full year exceeded the original expectations at the beginning of that year. According to the unaudited financial results, the company's revenue in 2024 increased by 27% year-over-year to $8.03 billion, hit a record high. Gross margin was 18%, down 1.3 percentage points year-over-year due to the increase in depreciation and others. By region, revenue from China, Americas and Eurasia accounted for 85%, 12% and 3%, respectively. Among these, attributable to the reshuffling of industry chain and the increase in customer market share catalyzed by the demand for localized manufacturing, revenue from Chinese customers increased by 34% year-over-year. By size, wafer revenue from 12-inch and 8-inch both increased which accounted for 77% and 23%, respectively. Among these, revenue from 12-inch increased by 35% year-over-year, primarily attributable to the expansion of capacity scale and that the new capacity could be verified and pulled into production relatively quickly. Wafer revenue by application. Smartphone, computer and tablets, consumer electronics, connectivity and IoT, industrial and automotive accounted for 28%, 16%, 38%, 10% and 8%, respectively, attributable to the above-mentioned factors and the national policies of consumption stimulus. Revenue from consumer electronics, smartphones and other applications increased significantly year-over-year. By product platforms, for those advantageous technology platforms such as analog BCD, CIS, display driver IC and others, revenue continued to grow. In 2024, the process, iterations and product performance upgrade were rapidly implemented across multiple technology platforms. In the field of analog device, the company continued to expand high-voltage, large-current, high-performance and high-reliability 8-inch and 12-inch technology platforms quickly engaged various types of end market applications including customer electronics, industrial control, automotive, electronics and new energy. In the field of high-voltage display driver IC, the company continued to deliver the 28-nanometer high VC mode technology into mass production and to end market applications with ultra-low power consumption and performance enhancements. There were increasing customer demands that surpass the offering of capacities. In the field of CIS and ISP, the company offers CIS products with higher resolution, smaller pixel size and higher density and rapidly introduced image signal processor solutions with better performance and ultra-low power consumption. Meanwhile, the company closely aligned with customer needs, benchmarked the industry's leading process and the newly launched numbers of power discrete device platforms, which have realized mass production and contributed revenue, mainly used in smartphones, industrial control, new energy and other fields. In addition, the company continued to introduce high-performance, high-quality and high-reliability automotive, electronics technologies and services in order to meet IC customers and automotive OEM demands. For those platforms such as high-voltage, large current and high-reliability BCD platforms, ultra-low-power logic platforms, high-performance e-Flash platforms, automotive-grade high-V CMOS platforms and high-reliability memory platforms have all achieved automotive-grade certification, mass production and being applied into end market. Facing the future growth of the automotive market, the company strived for revenue growth by accelerating the deployment of customer products and comprehensively covering the vehicle applications such as infotainment, connectivity, powertrain, body, chassis and et cetera. The company's capital expenditure in 2024 was $7.33 billion. Monthly capacity was 948,000 standard logic 8-inch equivalent wafers by the end of the year. Total shipment exceeded 8 million wafers, and annualized capacity utilization rate was 85.6%. Overall, currently, the inventory of customer products is relatively healthy. Based on extensive communication with industry chain partners, we generally recognize that in 2025, except that AI is expected to continuously grow in a fast pace, demand is expected to be flat or grow moderately across other various fields in the market. Recently, we have observed 2 phenomena. Firstly, the reshuffling process to domestic supply chains for the automotive and other industries has moved from the verification state to ramp-up stage. Some products have been put into volume production officially. Secondly, driven by the national policies of consumption stimulus, the restocking willingness of customers are relatively higher. We see more replenishment orders and rush orders in the field, such as consumer, connectivity and phones. Overall, the first quarter represents an uptick beating the traditional seasonality. However, at the same time, the external environment has brought a certain degree of uncertainty to the second half of this year, and industry competition is intensifying. The company will overcome the difficulties and strive to do the best. Facing the challenges and opportunities, the company will target making SMIC stronger and bigger, continue to build up capacity, support customers to expand the market, focus on quality and efficiency. Combining the above factors, the company's first quarter guidance is as follows: Revenue is expected to grow 6% to 8% sequentially, and the gross margin is expected to be in the range of 19% to 21%. Based on the promise that there are no significant changes in the external environment, the company's guidance for the year 2025 are: The revenue growth is expected to be higher than industry average in the same market and the capital expenditure is expected is expected to be flat compared to that of previous year. Let me give some comments for the company's 2025 outlook. Firstly, the geopolitics has brought profound changes to the industry landscape in recent years. The company has focused on strengthening its management on security, reliability and resilience of the supply chain. In order to see the growing demand for localization, the company has made continuous high investments, driving its rapid growth in revenue. However, this has also brought higher depreciation pressure on the gross margin. The depreciation is expected to grow around 20% in 2025. Except the depreciation, the gross margin is also impacted by price, utilization rates and other factors. The company will always target sustained profitability through increasing the utilization rate against the depreciation and enriching the product mix against cyclicality. Secondly, localization has brought increased market demand, but homogeneous competition has led to intensive competition in structurally surplus capacity even under the market recovery situation. The company improves its core competitiveness and by customers by forging advantageous technologies and mitigate the pricing pressures by launching new products. The company maintains a consistent pricing strategy that follows the market price and does not initiate price reduction. However, when necessary, the company will directly face the price competition with our strategic customers to maintain our market share and competitive advantages across various fields. Finally, we would like to extend our sincere thanks and best wishes to friends who care and support the development of the company. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Dr. Zhao. Next is our Q&A session. Questions will be answered by Dr. Zhao and Dr. Wu. Chinese questions will be answered in Chinese. English questions will be answered in English. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to open up the call for Q&A. Operator, please assist.

[Interpreted] [Operator Instructions] First question comes from the line of Leping Huang from Huatai Securities.

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Our next question comes from Xiaofei Zhang from Haitong.

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Next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] Securities.

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Our next question comes from the line of Ziyuan Wang from Citic Securities.

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Our next question comes from the line of Hu Jian from Guosen.

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[Interpreted] I would now like to hand the call back to Ms. Guo Guangli for closing remarks.

[Interpreted] Thank you for participating in today's conference call. Thank you for your trust and support.

[Interpreted] This concludes SMIC's fourth quarter webcast conference call. We thank you for joining us today. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]