Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Elmos Semiconductor SE Analyst Conference regarding the fiscal year 2020. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dr. Arne Schneider, CEO.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to our fiscal year 2020 analyst conference and earnings call. I'm very happy to present to you the highlights and preliminary financial results of a very special and challenging year. As usual, you have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of my presentation. At the beginning, I would like to present a short overview of the Elmos Group, especially for those participants who are new to our company, shown on page two of the presentation available on our website. Elmos is one of the world's very experienced semiconductor companies for the automotive industries, and on average, six Elmos ICs are installed in every new car. We develop, manufacture, and distribute mixed-signal ICs for more than 35 years. Our roots and headquarter are located in Dortmund, but we have continuously expanded our international presence.
With 16 locations around the globe, we serve all regions and are always close to our customers. Seven R&D centers worldwide and more than 350 experienced engineers turn our deep understanding of our customers' needs and future trends into beautiful microelectronics. We have implemented a successful and flexible fab-lite manufacturing strategy, processing wafers in-house in our own fab in Dortmund and externally at our foundry partners. We organize ourselves in six main product segments, which all support the global mega trends and offer very attractive growth potential. Our sales are mainly attributed to Europe and Asia, where the majority of our customers' factories are located because we show you a distribution by shipping location. Our automotive ICs are used in cars all over the world and are present in all the well-known brands.
In 2020, we have been impacted by COVID-19 as everybody else, resulting in lower sales and profits. Despite the global pandemic, we have further intensified our R&D activities with a record spending of almost EUR 48 million last year. Elmos is a crisis-resistant company, thanks to our strong balance sheet and a very solid financial position. With an attractive dividend and major share buyback offer, we could further increase shareholder value in 2020 when many other automotive suppliers were heavily struggling to finance their business. Elmos products provide innovative solutions for automotive mega trends with cutting-edge ICs for ADAS, up to autonomous driving, safety, comfort, user experience like gesture control and powertrain electrification, and page three gives an illustration. Elmos has a leading role and number one positions in important automotive application fields.
Of course, I will not read the entire product catalog now, but let me just give three examples. We are global leaders in semiconductors for ultrasonic distance measurement. Our new generation of ultrasonic semiconductors processes signals considerably faster and in higher resolution than previously possible, delivering an additional gain in traffic safety. Our new LED rear light applications are also promising high potential for growth. We offer OEMs a large extent of design freedom, as well as cost advantages over conventional solutions because we save an ECU and thus system cost. Elmos applications for the optimized configuration of front grill and air flaps are convincing solutions, especially for electric vehicles, providing a smart and efficient power and battery management. As I mentioned before, despite the significant effects of the corona pandemic, we have not reduced the R&D activities last year, so many more and exciting products are to come.
These assets, combined with the IC market growth expectations and increasing IC content per vehicle, provide a very reasonable basis for future growth of our company. Let me now move to some of the highlights of the last year on page four and five of our investor presentation. The past financial year was a special year for our company. We had to manage a global crisis, but at the same time, we were able to successfully continue with our strategic course and consistently exploit new opportunities. At Elmos, we have recognized the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic early on. For the protection of our employees and to safeguard our business operations, we have implemented the first corona measures at the end of January 2020 already.
As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, we also intensified protective and cost-saving measures, including short-term work in our Dortmund fab, voluntary salary concessions of the management board, senior executives and employees, personnel reductions, and further cost cuts. Finally, we could suspend the short-term work program from November 2020 onwards in the light of increasing orders from our customers. We also achieved important strategic milestones during the last year. With Samsung, we found a prominent new partner and signed a foundry cooperation agreement for the manufacturing of ICs on wafer level for automotive application in Samsung's state-of-the-art facilities. This is a consequent next step in our fab-lite manufacturing strategy and gives us access to advanced process technologies. During the crisis, we used our strong financial position and successfully completed a public share buyback offer for around 8% of owned shares, now holding roughly 10% in total.
With the conversion into a European stock corporation, as of July 1, 2020, we have successfully completed a step towards the international and future-proof positioning of Elmos. Towards the end of the year, we acquired the Dortmund-based software engineering provider, Online Engineering, which will help us to offer our customers even more comprehensive system solutions in the future. We also had, as we had planned a long time ago, the CEO handover between Toni Mindl and myself. During his 15-year term as the CEO of Elmos, Dr. Mindl played a major role in shaping the successful development and the strategic realignment of the company. We at Elmos are all very thankful for his outstanding commitment and his great achievements for our company. The global automotive market has been hit very hardly by the corona crisis last year, which is shown on page six of the presentation.
Overall, car sales dropped 16% year-on-year, with a decline of -22%, Europe has been impacted the most of all regions. In China, the market could recover very quickly, posting strong increases, especially in Q4 of last year. Also other regions could recover from the low point of the crisis, however, somewhat later and less positive than the Chinese market. You all know that this V-shaped recovery is currently leading to a very dynamic growth, and all sorts of challenges. More of that later. Let us now have a look at our financial results, starting with the sales and gross margin development on slide seven. Just as a clarification, the previous year figures are based on our continued semiconductor business only, as we sold SMI in Q3 2019. In fiscal year 2020, sales decreased by 14.9% to EUR 232.6 million due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our 2020 sales finished at the upper end of the guidance range, which was between EUR 227 million and EUR 233 million. Please also note that after our turning point in Q3 last year, Q4 showed 68% sequential growth. The decrease in gross margin is the result of lower fixed cost absorption rates from the underutilization in production. Especially in Q3, demand was significantly lower than what is needed for an efficient and profitable production. As expected, we benefited from the recovery of the automotive market and stronger IC demand in the last quarter of the year. The Q4 2020 sales increased to EUR 68.7 million, which was the highest quarterly sales level in 2020.
Turning to page eight. At EUR 8.7 million, the EBIT in fiscal year 2020 ended also at the upper end of the guidance range. It was heavily impacted by the sales decrease and lower fixed cost absorption. The implemented countermeasures, such as short-term work, layoffs, voluntary salary cuts, and other cost savings, could not fully recover the negative impact of the lower top line, but prevented a further deterioration of our profitability. As volumes increased at the end of Q3, we were able to achieve a very fast turnaround in Q4, with an EBIT margin approaching pre-crisis performance levels already, despite the fact, by the way, that October was still impacted by short-term work. Let us now have a look at some of the other KPIs on pages nine, 10, and 11.
In the last year, we were very restrictive with investments in new equipment, as we did not need additional capacity due to the lower demands. Therefore, CapEx was significantly lower than in the previous year, totaling to only EUR 18.8 million, or 8.1% of sales. As I mentioned, we invested a record amount of almost EUR 48 million in new products in 2020, which underlines our long-term perspective and our long-term ambitions. Our cash flow from operations declined year-over-year, mainly due to the lower income. Despite the overall challenging business development with declining sales and lower income levels, we still could achieve a positive adjusted free cash flow in 2020.
At the first look, this looks, by the way, significantly less than last year. Please keep in mind that the free cash flow in 2019 shows the cash inflow from the SMI transaction. This is not really comparable. We have clearly shown Elmos is a crisis-proof company, supported by a very solid financial foundation, as you can see on page 11. The further increase of the equity ratio to 78% at the end of the year 2020 underlines the financial solidity of Elmos. Total equity at year-end was EUR 310 million. The dividend of EUR 9 million and the 2020 share buyback, about EUR 27 million, is of course reflected. These two topics are also reflected on the cash side.
Ladies and gentlemen, despite the massive impact of the global pandemic, Elmos equity and financial base is stronger than ever. We have successfully managed the 2020 crisis year and are now in a very good shape. At the end of my presentation on page 12, I would like to give you an outlook for the current quarter.
The beginning of the new year is characterized by a very high demand for semiconductors, not only for automotive applications. Our main focus is to manage the available capacities and to secure our deliveries to our customer. The automotive market is expected to grow by 14% based on the low level of 2020. The further course of the pandemic, ongoing lockdowns and their impact on the global economic development and on the automotive demand cannot be precisely predicted at the moment. Our forecast ability is also significantly affected by the current allocation within the IC market. Some cars may not be built, some components may not be available. Currently, things are well, we do not know what the future holds. We provide a comparative forecast for the full year 2020, we do that for regulatory reasons.
Our, and maybe also your focus, should be on the Q1 guidance. We have started the new year very positively with a substantial growth momentum. In the Q1, we expect sales to reach EUR 76 million, ± EUR 3 million. The Q1 EBIT margin is expected at 14.5% midpoint, ± 1.5 percentage points. Ladies and gentlemen, as I said at the beginning of my presentation, 2020 was a very special year, and the coming months will also be challenging, but also very exciting. Elmos is well-prepared and perfectly positioned to benefit from the market recovery and the long-term trends within our industry. We have the perfect setup composed of innovative products, a very strong financial position, and highly motivated and very skilled and experienced employees. This is a great recipe for long-term success.
That is why the management board has decided to raise our midterm EBIT margin goal from 15% to 17%. Please let me repeat. This is our midterm target, not immediately for 2021. We strive to reach it in the midterm, and we are pretty confident that we will. Before the crisis, we have already managed to achieve an EBIT margin of 15%. We are confident that we will be able to further increase our profitability in the coming years. We have the right setup, a good product pipeline, combined with strong financial structure to finance our future growth. We are all very determined and highly motivated to continue our successful path. Thank you very much. I'm opening the floor for questions now.
The first question comes from Johannes Ries from Apus Capital. Your line is open.
Yes. Good morning. I think you can hear me now. Hello?
Yes, I can hear you.
Okay. Yeah. Good morning there. What a difference a quarter makes now if you look to Q3 back. Maybe a couple of questions. First, design wins, because you have this very long design in phase, only a feeling maybe as a direction for the mid to longer term. How have design wins developed over the year compared to the years before? How much had been influenced even by the pandemic? That's the first question.
Well, we had, and this was a little bit against my expectations, a very good design win year 2020. I thought that with the travel restrictions and everything, it's going to be hard. In the end, I believe our strong product portfolio prevailed, and we ended with a very good number. This is something we are actually very happy about because it proves that it's not just traveling and being at our customers that helps, but it's also products and virtually meeting that somehow also does the job to a very good level. We also started well into the new year, but a month is too early.
It's clear. Next question. There's a big elephant everywhere in the room at semiconductor conference calls at the moment, especially also in the auto sector. You also, in some regard, discussed it a little bit before. What is maybe the right view on the sector? What is maybe overbooking in this boom because of the shortage we have in the sector on semis? How you see the inventories at your customers and in the channel? Do you share the opinion of Melexis that the second half year will be weaker or you are more in the camp of Infineon who is more optimistic?
Far, what's your feeling despite you have also not 100% view, but only from the hard facts you see out of maybe how much the inventories look and how much is structural, even that maybe some of the growth and the shortage in areas which are now really booming because of change in the market, like EV, electrical vehicles, e-powered vehicles and new lightings and things like this, maybe new features which are now in much more cars. Therefore, the demand is much higher. The market is not prepared for this.
Well, fundamentally, I think we have a good momentum with our products. Even if we would not grow as a number of cars this year, and of course this won't happen, we would still grow at Elmos and also in a nice way. Of course, we will grow much more because the number of cars will rebound. To what number exactly, we cannot tell. If we turn to IHs, this will be some 84 or 85 million light vehicles. You can deduct something for the chip shortage. You can add something for coming out of the COVID crisis. We cannot be sure about that. The competitor said their orders are more in line with 95 million cars as compared to the IHs 85 million, which suggests overstocking.
On the other hand, I think we went into the year with a relatively low stock level at some of our customers through the value chain. Maybe it's just restocking and not overstocking. Who can tell? We would be overly optimistic in our forecasting skills if I could tell you exactly where Q4 or even Q3 will come out. This is, with so much moving pieces, really hard to tell. Today, we are very optimistic because our order situation is super bright. We try to smooth out orders over the year to put the butter evenly on the bread, and not only have a very much front-loaded year. This is our aim, and let's hope that we are pretty successful with that.
That's the reason why you don't give an exact number of book-to-bill. Maybe you can only give us a direction. I think the book-to-bill at Infineon was 1.6 in the automotive space. Is that a number which is, maybe you would say it's not unusual in these times?
Yeah. We would consider that number probably be a little above one. I believe we said we are substantially above one. Our book-to-bill reflects our good mood.
It's really high in other words. Not only 1.1 or 1.2, it's higher.
Yeah. More I wouldn't comment because then we're ending up at a statistic of our book-to-bill.
Sure.
Significantly above one, and you would of course guess that if you see our guidance for Q1. You know the numbers for Q4 last year. Yeah.
Next question, how much you are limited in growth by capacity? How much the growth can supported by Dortmund? How much you really get capacity at your foundry partners, because I think maybe you are more in the nodes which are really tight. I heard the tightest nodes are the nodes between 28, 40 and above now. They're not the high-end. Although you signed a new foundry partner with Samsung, did you get enough capacity to really fulfill all your needs?
The whole industry is struggling and discussing because we all go to the same facilities, mostly in Southeast Asia. As Elmos, we of course load our own fab to the maximum extent, and if we can below the maximum, if that is possible. It is of course also suppliers in assembly for wafers, where we have to rely on. I believe currently the automotive industry as a whole finds itself in a situation where there's a lot of demand from the home office and lockdown-based electronics, that somehow partially tries to crowd out the automotive chips. There are counter reactions. You have read in the newspapers, that the German Minister Altmaier wrote to the Taiwanese that automotive had to get a priority. There are a lot of moving things right now and a lot of struggle to get capacity.
We are, of course, also part of that struggle. To claim that things are easy right now would be wrong. I believe we are holding up. We are serving our customers well. We are not the reason that there are line downs at the OEM. Let's knock on wood that that stays so forever. We are, yes, we are of course struggling like everyone else, but I believe we are holding up reasonably well.
Good. Last question from my side to keep the line free. How much the growth in this year is driven by maybe the ramp-up of really new growth products, or maybe the ramp-up of products which have maybe started last year, now get really volume? For some structural internal Elmos growth in some regard.
Well, we are looking at pretty nice structural internal Elmos growth. Of course, the rebound in the number of cars also helps. It would be wrong to say coming from 70 something to maybe 85 or so that that doesn't help. Of course, it helps. We have very nice product and very nice momentum. We have new ultrasonic generation ramping. It's pretty broad, actually. We have a list of ramp-up project. I believe it goes to 15 or 20 that we monitor, just to ensure the ramp-ups are smooth. You learn from that. We also actively monitor our ramp-ups, because ramp-ups are special situations for products, and you need to take extra care that things are happening in the way it is planned.
Okay. Super. Sounds good. Thanks a lot. Good luck for the year. You have a very good, maybe last comment. With 10% of your shares, indirectly, you have now, I think if I'm not wrong, holding EUR 110 million in liquid assets. That's not bad. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our financial situation is okay.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Stéphane Houri from Oddo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Good morning, everyone. I still have a few questions, either or Johannes. The first one would be about your manufacturing strategy. You've been talking about the Samsung deal that you've made. What is, in your view, the target in term of insourcing, outsourcing for manufacturing in light of your new 17% EBIT margin long-term target? That's the first question. Second question is about your R&D. Where should we think about the right level for R&D for the next years? Because it has come up pretty significantly as a percentage of sales. I know sales were down, but still the level was still pretty high. What should we expect going forward?
Some of your competitors, and maybe sometimes bigger, like to present themselves, and explain how much of their sales is for green, how much for their sales is for ADAS, they give a kind of rough image of what they are doing. Can you play that game and maybe tell us what is the size of your ADAS/green sales in the turnover? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Stephane. On your first question, our fab-lite strategy. We move to new technologies with the Samsung agreement. That is good, though there will be no serious production in the very short term in very high numbers. This will ramp, of course, over the years. We have a set of products that is in development now, and that is coming out all according to plan and very nicely. It's a big strategic advancement for us. I wouldn't say this is the only driver of our 17% margin, though. There are a lot of more drivers behind it. This is not linked to that single event that we tell you about the things now at the same time. We will continue to load Dortmund to 100%.
We believe this is the best and the most clever strategy to keep our own fab fully loaded, thereby very cost efficient and to have the rest on the outside. Of course, as we grow, the share of internal production, which we do not substantially increase in terms of an absolute number will, over the years, a little bit decrease, because with growth, we need more wafers. It's more or less fixed amount that we get out of Dortmund, and we squeeze out a little bit more maybe each year, but it's getting harder and harder. On your second question, the R&D, yes, it was a record last year. We built up the Düsseldorf R&D team. We built up other resources in R&D in the previous years.
I think we will probably have a year or two or three, let's see how it develops, where R&D is a little bit more flattish. We do not plan to open a new site in the immediate future. I would not expect that the R&D line is a straight line that can be extrapolated in the future. It will be a little flatter.
In absolute value, right?
Yeah, in absolute value. It may decrease a little, it may increase a little. That is also, of course, an effect of capitalization, which is very hard to predict. We do not plan really significant adding of resources this year. It's going to be a flatter line overall. Looking to the green and ADAS, we are not going to do the same as others do and have revenue shares by product. I believe we have a very substantial exposure to the trends. The ultrasonic portfolio is a key part of the more and more autonomous driving, and it's a good share of our business. Our sensors help in many ways.
But also in ways, I believe some two, three or four quarters ago, we had a little discussion around it, that we use our pressure sensors for thermal runaway detection in electric batteries, which I believe would be in the green category if you want to. Many other products that we do for the EVs would probably be in the green category. In general, I believe the microelectronics help a lot for the car to become greener. We had a kind of back-on-the-envelope calculation of what CO2 do we actually use to produce our semiconductors and how much CO2 is saved by semiconductors. The CO2 that is saved by the semiconductors and also our semiconductors is a multiple of the CO2 that we need to produce our product. Overall, we consider ourselves very sustainable and if you want to, yes, green company.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Malte Schaumann, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
With respect to the CapEx required investment, I mean, obviously you had lower investments last year, given this environment. Should we think about the return to kind of similar investment levels, which were pretty high seen in 2018, 2019, owing to the expected future growth?
Well, CapEx is very much correlated to our general mood, which is then very much correlated to growth. I would see that your statement, similar levels that we've seen in the past are possible this year, is not wrong.
Yeah. Okay. With that respect, maybe some more color on the outsourcing in the back end, which was historically more or less not outsourced. Where are you in the process, and when will the next milestones be reached?
Yeah. It is one of the key strategic initiatives going forward to also achieve the equivalent of a fab-lite concept in the back end. We were a little bit slower in pushing for it during the last year due to coronavirus, travel was a little bit restricted and also we had less need. This year will be a bigger push, and I believe next year we will have a markedly increasing share. It's in a way as planned. We prepare, we execute, and then with all the qualifications, with all the customer agreements that we need, this will start to run.
Yeah. Okay. On the sales bit in your presentation, I think there was a number like 85% automotive, 15% industrial. I would have assumed non-automotive, non-industrial. I would've assumed a slightly less favorable ratio, so more automotive after the sale of SMI. Did that ratio increase more substantially last year, or was that just kind of a coincidence or just my perception from in earlier years?
SMI also had an auto part, and it was small. If you look very closely, you will actually find an SMI effect. It's not that huge, actually.
Yeah. Sure. Okay. More or less the same as in all the other years, basically.
Yeah. This is just minor effects, but we also had some of the non-auto sales to be a little bit more stable last year than the auto sales. This also contributed then again, a little bit. Yeah, that's the results overall.
Anything on the horizon that could change that ratio in the near to midterm? Anything like new interesting designs or design teams that could be acquired, something in that respect?
Well, nothing that I would be aware of. The smallest changes could just come out of the portfolio, but a big change would have to be an organic, and this is not on the horizon.
Yeah. Right. Okay. Thanks.
Thank you, Mr. Schaumann.
The next question comes from Robert Sanders, Deutsche Bank.
Yeah. Hi, good day to you. I have a few questions, although Johannes did ask a lot of mine at the beginning. Thanks, Johannes. My first question is, if you think about line stops, I know you're not contributing to those line stops, but it does seem like both MCU and some specific sensors are to blame. Given that most of these sensors are on 200 mm and car companies are now asking for higher inventory stocks, do you think the chip shortage can actually realistically be over by year-end? I have a few follow-ups. Thanks.
How much stock you feel fine with, you can theoretically have very, very high stocks, and you would need time to build it. If you haven't reached your stock level that you want in the end, I wouldn't say that is a real shortage. The real shortage is when there's a line down. This is the essence of the shortage, and I think we should come out of this line down situation somewhat in the first half, if not earlier.
Okay. These rocket lots that the foundries are doing, you think can basically solve the issue quite quickly? Okay. In terms of the wafer pricing from foundries clearly going up, I assume you're able to pass on the higher cost foundry wafers to your customers. In the context of higher pricing, how long can you lock in higher pricing? Infineon is increasing some products by 20% in 2021. Presumably, given the tightness in industry and you're in allocation for some products, surely there's an opportunity to increase prices and lock in prices for longer.
Well, it is too early to really comment on that. You mentioned, yes, with our suppliers, there are demands and higher prices. With some we haven't discussed what it will finally be. It is way too early to comment how this whole price change, both on our customer side as well as on our supplier side, in the end turns out.
Okay.
We are in the middle of that dynamic. I really cannot guide you where it ends because I don't know.
The current month and next month is the main season for price agreements, right?
Well, we would usually have these finished by the end of the year, but we are living in the allocation now. What will happen will also depend how the allocation continues.
Just related to this rather interesting story out of the E.U. I know you are moving in a more fab-lite direction, but it does look like the E.U. wants the automotive supply chain to be de-risked from Asia. Is that not a risk to you guys if your competitors, some of which are in Europe, start to build up production in Europe while you are outsourcing to Asia? Don't you think that's a potential issue for your ultimate customers, a lot of them being European-based car companies?
Well, we have a very global customer base. We will not differentiate the wafer source by the end customer. Most of our products go in every well-known brand. It would be very hard to secure wafers that then are transferred to a Tier1 or even to multiple stages in the value chain, and to have that linked to the OEM where the OEM has maybe its main production sites or maybe its headquarters. I think we are having a very good setup with the partners that we do have and our own fab here in Dortmund. I wouldn't say that there's any strategic risk in that.
Got it. Just last question would just be on inventory. I think a lot of products in automotive are on consignment. I'm not sure how much are for you, but based on your historic experience of looking how the behavior is happening as these customers pull from consignment, what is your level of worry on double ordering and triple ordering, based on what you're seeing? Because some of like X-FAB is just saying the booking number is a bit irrelevant because it's almost an automated ERP or SE supply chain management thing that is leading to a lot of these bookings, which could just be the result of Tier1s hoarding. What is your assessment of the inventory level at Tier1s and OEMs?
Well, we do think that currently where there are some chips are very short and some are medium short or some are in halfway okay availability, that there is of course a tendency to play it safe. On the other hand, we try to keep the situation at our customers also a little bit in check and try to smooth things out. Anyone who would now come and say, "I need 30% extra share for the next quarter," we would of course ask questions, because it's a difficult time for such extra demands. We do not have, of course, full transparency of what happens through the whole value chain. Where we do see in our consignment stocks, we wouldn't see this extra hoarding.
These are at very reasonable levels. People take out at the run rate that they really need. Stocks are not too high. These are just for operational needs. Overall, through the value chain, it's hard to tell.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Antje Kullrich, Börsen-Zeitung.
Good morning. Just one question. Is Elmos planning to pay a dividend for 2020?
Well, you've seen the year 2020, which was not exceptional, but you've also seen the excellent financial condition that the company is in. I probably wouldn't ask for an increasing dividend, but that we pay a dividend, I think this is likely. We will take all factors into account and let's see what comes out of it. I'm not negative on dividend payments.
Thank you.
There's one follow-up question from Johannes Ries.
Yes, maybe a follow-on question to a previous question asked, especially by, can you give us maybe an overview how much of the demand is coming from OEMs and how much is going in distribution, how much this has changed? For distribution, normally, is it jumping harder up and down? Is it the same? Has there unusual increase of sale?
Well, we have as kind of a pure demand driver distribution that's not just there for logistical purposes, but kind of own demand. It's a pretty small share with us.
Okay.
That statistic may not lead to anything really fundamental. What we do find is if we look around the world, that, of course, China is very strong, which is in line with car sales, in line with expectations. This is what we can distill out. We also see rebounds totally across the board. All other markets are also strong, but not kind of in that super strong. We do see that the distributors are passing on and doing their job well, but there is no kind of hoarding of parts or so that we would see.
To the regions, as U.S. is still quite small with 2%, in the past, you mentioned you are getting traction with the new teams you installed. Could U.S. see a stronger growth going forward, maybe next year also, because given the long design impacts, and so forth. We will see maybe even some impact on the sales sooner or later from the success this new team had there.
Yeah. This is not really correlated. In our internal reporting, where we think more about where is the design win, where are the relevant people that you talk to get the chip into the car, of course, the U.S. is a lot stronger. The U.S. Tier1s heavily rely on Asian electronic manufacturing services to put the chips on boards. A lot of the ICs that you see ending up in the U.S. had a little stint in Asia, which may be our shipping address. We report by shipping address because we cannot track them to the final destination and the final customer. If you tear down a U.S. car, you'll still find a lot of Elmos chips.
Okay. Finally, your most close peer, Melexis, talk about they have roughly 13 chips per car. You mentioned six, and Melexis expect in the mid or longer term that could move to 20. Is it also maybe comparable to you that you see that your number of semiconductors at average per car could increase maybe in the same range going forward?
Well, we were at five, we're now at six. You do see the trend there. Yes, we think that scales up. 20 sounds like a long-term plan. This is all possible. This is achievable within our market without straying to foreign lands. I believe we do have a solid base for our growth. The number is a good illustration for that. We don't give a number like be at X in some years and at Y two years later, and then some years later, even higher. We do think this trajectory is pointing in the right direction, and indicating good growth.
Super. In the talk about the 20%, I thought maybe percentage-wise, you could go from 6%-10% or so. 20% even better.
It's a question where the long term ends. We do see opportunities, and it's also a little bit a question of portfolio composition. For the little cheaper chips, you reach a higher number quicker. If you do a very big ADAS chip for a lot of money, that adds little to the average number, but a lot to revenue. In the end, we are more revenue-focused, but of course, the number of chips is really a nice illustration.
Okay, super. Thanks.
Also there's one follow-up question from Robert Sanders.
Yeah, hi. Just one other question was, you know this idea that General Motors puts out that semis co. should hold 12 months of inventory. Can you just run through the different products in automotive semis? What products you can actually hold as inventory, even theoretically? Are there some that for quality reasons or change reasons, you actually would never hold 12 months of stock for? I think Melexis is a little bit different because they have a lot of products that are non-perishable, and there's not a lot of change issues for them.
This is the same with us. In your ramp-up, you will not have 12 months. In your ramp down, the 12 months will be eaten up at the end. In the middle of the life cycle, yes, theoretically, you could do that. This adds a lot to working capital. In the overall scheme of things for an OEM, this may all seem small. For us, this would be very relevant, and we would have to find arrangements. In terms of the physics or the engineering, you can have chips for 12 months. That's not a limit.
The only mitigator then, obviously your working capital would short-term go negative, you would obviously want more higher pricing in response. That's the only way that would ever work.
Yeah. You can find these solutions. It has to be a viable one, of course, for all parties.
Okay, thanks.
There are no more questions at this point. Back to you, Mr. Schneider.
Thank you very much for your participation and your interest. I would like to remind you that we will publish our final results and our annual report on March 17th. The conference call for the Q1 result is scheduled for May 6th. Finally, I would like to wish you all the best in these challenging times. Goodbye from Dortmund. Take care, stay healthy, and stay confident. Thank you.