Okay, let's get started. Good afternoon and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Advantech's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Patrick Chen, our Head of Research at CLSA Taiwan, and I will be your moderator today. It is our honor to have Mr. Eric Chen , our CFO and President of General Management, Mr. Miller Chang, President of Embedded IoT, and Ms. Grace Liao, Investor Relations Manager, with us today to discuss about the third quarter results and the business outlook. Grace will start with the third quarter results briefing, followed by Eric's commentary on business update and full-year 2022 guidance. Lastly, our remarks and Q&A sessions, hosted by both Miller and Eric. Now, without further ado, let me turn this call over to Grace. Grace, please go ahead.
Thank you, Patrick. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your time today. This is Grace Liao, the IR Manager. In section one, I will give attendees a briefing regarding the third quarter's 2022 financial results. As usual, please take a few seconds to read the safe harbor notice. For third quarter financial results, both top line and the bottom line performance set company's new records. For Q3, revenue reached TWD 18.6 billion, increased 20% year-on-year and 11% quarter-on-quarter. Gross margin rate was 36.4%, declined 2.2 percentage points compared to the second quarter due to the impact of strong U.S. dollar and unfavorable product mix and the changes of PPV, purchase price variance.
Operating profit was TWD 3.38 billion, while operating profit rate was 18.2%, improved from 16.8% in third quarter last year. Benefits from expenses control and operating leverage. For amount of items, Advantech booked TWD 259 million for FX gain in third quarter. For the third quarter, effective tax rate was 18.99%. Third quarter net income reached TWD 3.18 billion, increased 40% year-on-year and 30% quarter-on-quarter. Earnings per share in third quarter reached TWD 4.1. In the right side is the year to third quarter 2022 performance. For sales, revenue reached TWD 51.6 billion with 20% year-on-year growth. Gross margin rate was 37.7%, while operating margin rate reached 18.4%, both improved year-on-year basis.
For year to third quarter, effective tax rate was 20.1%. For three quarters, net income reached TWD 8.21 billion, increased 37% year-on-year. Accumulated revenue and profit also set new records of the company. Year to third quarter 2022, earnings per share reached 10.59 TWD, almost equal to 2021 annual EPS. For regional performance in terms of U.S. dollar, year to third quarter 2022 revenue reached $1.77 billion, increased 16% year-on-year. Major three markets, North America is the biggest contributor with 34% year-on-year growth. Europe market increased 23% year-on-year in terms of U.S. dollar, while in Euro, local currency enjoyed over 30% growth. Drivers in North America and the Europe market, including smart medical, networking, and gaming projects.
For China market, slightly declined 2% year-on-year due to COVID control and the channel partner inventory adjustment. Also, last year is a high base. For the North Asia, total increased 9% year-on-year in U.S. dollars. Actually, both Japan market and Korea market enjoy over 20% year-on-year growth in local currency. Drivers including strong demand in smart medical, semi equipment, and IEM systems. For emerging markets also outperformed due to strong demand in smart cities, smart medical, energy, and transportation. For the performance by segment, the industrial IoT is the biggest contributor for over 29% of the total revenue. However, industrial IoT was flattish year-on-year, mainly due to the China market slowdown. Embedded IoT increased 18% year-on-year, driven by strong demand in medical, automotive, smart factory, and gaming projects. Applied Computing Group, ACG, increased 56% year-on-year, mainly contributed by medical projects.
Geographically, strong growth in North America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa markets. For Service IoT, year-over-year grew 30%, driven by smart medical, smart city, and also mobile BMS projects. For the balance sheet, this is my last page. Both inventory dollar amount and the turnover days declined quarter-over-quarter basis. As you can see, the third quarter inventory turnover days are 117 days, lower than 125 days in the second quarter. We expect the inventory turnover days by end of this year will back to the Q4 last year's level, which approached to 100 days. The overall progress right now is on track. That is the financial briefing of the quarter 2022 results. Now I'm hand over the time to President Eric Chen. Thank you.
Thank you, Grace. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to join the conference today. This is Eric, and I would like to start with some comments on the third quarter results, then followed by the first quarter guidance. The summary in the third quarter was slightly better than our predictions. It was mainly due to the firm order, on-time delivery, and the released material shortages. In addition, due to the New Taiwan dollar depreciation of top line in TWD in Taiwan dollar terms was 4% ahead of U.S. dollars. As to the regional performance, the China region is still struggling with the strict COVID control. As a result, the P/B ratio has dropped below one from July. For the rest of the areas, the U.S., Japan and Korea still show a positive growth momentum.
Europe is another region we need to pay attention to. The energy price was sky-high recently, which might slow down their overall business demand. From the product aspects, IIoT suffers from weak demand in China. The China region accounts for 50% of IIoT revenues, which led to a flat result. On the other hand, EIoT, SIoT, and ACG performers were good, mainly driven by the solid demand from the medical sectors. In terms of gross margins, the strong U.S. dollar and the product mix negatively impact our gross margin performance. Compared with quarter four, the strong U.S. dollar bring a negative impact on our gross margin by over one percentage point. Also, higher margin products in IIoT sales were stoked, while middle margin product in EIoT and ACG were strong, leading to a 2.2% gross margin decline in the third quarter.
Overall, with the data top-line and the reasonable control in all paths, even the gross margin was below our estimate, the operating profits end up in line with our guidance. This is a comment regarding the three quarters. Regarding the trend of the P/B ratio, as you can see on this page, the P/B ratio reached its peak at 1.72 in the first quarter of 2021. This year, in quarter one and quarter two, the P/B ratio was maintained at 1.26, and to 1.24. Starting from quarter three, the P/B ratio was below one to 0.87. The reason why P/B ratio dropped mainly have two.
The first reason is in the past several months, due to the component shortages and the selling price adjustment, most customers place their order in advance to get high priority of shipment with an adjusted price. The other is the COVID control in China make the situation even worse. Our China partners start to review their inventory and make the adjustment due to restore market demand. Overall, the year-to-month P/B ratio was 1.07, close to our historical data at 1.08. Next page, please. Forecasting the fourth quarter, even though the component shortage situation has improved a lot, the demand in China still has no strong signal to rebound. There is also a conservative attitude in the market.
We expect fourth quarter revenue to be between $550 million-$570 million, based on the exchange rate assumption of $1 to TWD 32 . In terms of margin, the fourth quarter gross margin is expected to be between 37.5% and 38.5%. The operating margin is expected to be between 18% and 19.5%. This concludes all my comments. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Eric. Grace, may I confirm that we will do the Q&A session directly?
Yes
Without any prepared remarks first?
Yes.
We'll do the Q&A directly. Sure. Now let's kick off the Q&A session. If you like to ask a question, please press the Raise Hand button, and unmute yourself when your name is announced. Alternatively, you can type your questions in the Q&A box, and I will raise it for you.
Actually, Patrick, we do have. We gathered several questions beforehand.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, I have.
Let's, um-
In this slide.
Let's go, yeah, go ahead with the prepared Q&A first. What I just mentioned still holds. Please raise hand and I'll call your name in the order of, you know, acceptance. Yeah. Now go, please go ahead, Grace.
Okay. For the, actually, this is the question list that we gathered beforehand. For the section one, financial and outlook related questions, may I invite Eric Chen, President, to answer all the questions from 1.1 to 1.5. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Grace. The first question is regarding the P/B ratios, they have been one since August. The question is, worry about the IT industry may turn down and the 2023 outlook and the key drivers and potential risks. Let me try to answer the questions. At Advantech, we don't serve IoT industry. As you may know, the IoT market covers a lot of industry sectors such as medical, factory automation, power and energy, and et cetera. However, we encountered that the demand from China has dropped since July, especially in the factory automation sectors. Our IPC, HMI, and I/O card mainly serve these sectors, and there is low demand in the factory automation sectors, leading to the IIoT revenue being flat.
For 2023, as ESG becomes a more and more valuable topic and the global aging population issues, the key driver will mainly come from the power and energy sectors, such as EV batteries, energy storage and related applications. Medical sector also play a key driver in Advantech. We have a lot of design win case in the U.S., China, Japan and Israel, which will secure ourselves in the next 2-3 years. Besides, network infrastructure is also a key driver as the ransomware threat is still evolving. As to the risk side, the high inflation rate directly impact the consumer market, in which the demand for retail, gaming and the cable related sector will slow down. Also, the energy price in Europe has risen a lot.
We are afraid some critical component made in a European country may postpone production schedules, which might cause the next wave of global supply chain issue again. Besides, the impact of the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act still need to be determined. We are worried that it will lead to the downtrend in the semiconductor industry in the longer term. The IEM sector in Advantech mainly serves the semiconductor industry, and it's also a key driver in Advantech Taiwan, Korea and China. Last but not least is a strong U.S. dollar. As a result, we suffered the local currency depreciations, which might cause the high inflation rates slow some local market demand and increase employment costs. Taking our Turkish subsidiaries as an example, the local currency lira has depreciated by over 50% compared with one year's quote.
Thus, we must quarterly adjust our employee salaries to cover the inflations. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, the strong U.S. dollar also negatively impact on our gross margins. As the question, the key drivers still will come from the medical sectors, the network infrastructures and the IEM sectors. For the risk category, a strong U.S. dollar and also the inflation rate we are worried about. For the longer term, the CHIPS and Science Act still need to watch. This is my answer for the first question. The second question regarding the quarter three GP and the guidance for the GP trend in 2023. Also the SP have the chance to suggest.
My answer is our margin performance highly relates to raw material costs, product mix, and the distribution channels. IIoT is our main margin driver with more than 50% gross margins. Three go-to-market channels include general account, key account, and channel with different gross margin. In quarter three, in addition to the product mix, two additional factors lead to the gross margin to grow lower than our guidance. For the first factor, IoT performance was flat, just as we mentioned earlier, while EIoT and ACG all had excellent performance. The product mix is the first factor. The second factor was the inventory provision accrual. Our inventory level was high, so we need to accrue the inventory provision expense based on our accounting policies, which also brought a negative impact on our gross margin performance as well.
The next was the New Taiwan dollar depreciation. In the past, the exchange rate was never an issue. The unfavorable exchange rate of the New Taiwan dollar in the third quarter hurt our gross margin performance by more than 1% compared to the second quarter. Combined with the product mix, inventory provision approval, and the strong U.S. dollar three factors, we failed to meet our gross margin guidance. For the first half of 2023, we foresee weak demand in consumer market. Therefore, we have a great chance to optimize our raw material cost. Also, we expect that material shortage issue will ease, and the high panic buying in the raw material market will no longer exist. Also, the inventory level will be lower than current status. The inventory provision expense accrual will become a positive factor.
Thus, we have a great chance to improve our gross margin level in 2023. However, the formal guidance will be released in the first quarter IR meeting in February 2023. As to the ASP, considering the supply chain status, inflation, and the FX impact, we don't have a plan to lower our ASP in current stage. But we still will watch the market closely to reflect a reasonable ASP if the key material price is so favorable. So this is my answer for the GP guidance for the next year's outlook. The next question is regarding the inventory situations and now outlook. For Advantech in-house inventory, the turnover day was 117 days.
We sell around $540 million in the third quarter, given the impact of component shortage is no longer a critical issue. The management teams are starting to reduce the inventory level below $500 million by the year-end and improve the turnover days by more than 10 days. The end result will be close to 100 days. For inventory level of our channel partners, the different regions have different practice. For example, in China, most of the channel partners are selling Advantech standard products such as IPC and I/O card. They are doing box moving business and intend to build a certain inventory level to fulfill their customer needs in a reasonable lead time. The inventory level compared with other regions is high.
In the third quarter, our China region booking was slow because the channel partners started to adjust their inventory level. However, for other regions, this is not the case. In the U.S., most of our business are driving by key account. The channel business is relatively small. In Europe, most of our channel partners are domain-focused system integrators, and their net demand highly rely on their ongoing projects. Therefore, they have no intent to build excess inventory due to their business natures. Besides the inventory level of the channel partners, we also pay attention to our key account project fulfillment. We did encounter a few projects that postponed their delivery schedule recently. Overall, the project business delivery schedule is still on the right track.
In summary, the channel partner inventory is quite high in China, but they are ready to reduce stock from quarter three. For the channel inventory in the U.S. and in the Europe region, they are under average level because they have no intention to build their excess inventory. This is the question regarding the inventory for Advantech side, also for the channel side. The last question is regarding the CapEx. As you may know, Advantech is an asset-light business model. Our annual capital investment is not high. This year, the CapEx total in Advantech is around $50 million, mainly for the Linkou Campus phase III project and the new buildings purchased for the service center in Korea.
In the upcoming 3 years, the CapEx will be slightly higher than this year's. Mainly coming from two spending areas. One is the ongoing project at the Linkou phase III Campus. Now the construction work is nearly 60% complete. We will start office decoration in the second half of 2023. The total spending for Linkou Phase III is around $60 million. We expect a $30 million investment in the next two years. The other spending area is the new regional headquarters in Southern California, United States. Expected to be complete by 2026. The total construction cost for phase I is around $88 million, which includes the design fee, hard cost, and office furnishings. From now to the year 2024, the total expenditure is about $10 million.
Besides, we plan to have two extra SMT lines installed in China and Taiwan next year. Right now, Advantech have 23 SMT lines, 11 in China and 8 in Taiwan and 4 in Japan. In addition, investing in automation tools such as R&D tools, production equipment and enterprise software is also under planned. As to the geopolitical risk this year, in our annual risk assessment update with our management team, the geopolitical risk ranking shift from the low risk category to the high. Hence, we will turn the issue and have a formal discussion in our risk management committee in the year 2023, and submit our proposal to the board of meeting for further discussions. Once we have a clear decisions, we will have a press release.
This is the question, answer regarding the CapEx and the geopolitical risk. The last question is regarding the impact of strong U.S. dollar . Actually, the strong U.S. dollar will favor our consolidation revenue since U.S. dollar revenue accounted for 51% of our total revenue. I take YTD sales figure as an example. The local consolidation revenue was 4% higher than in U.S. dollar. However, our U.S. dollar procurement portion accounted for 80%. Most high-value key components such as CPU, memory, and flash are all quoted and paid in U.S. dollar. Therefore, the strong U.S. dollar will bring a negative effect on the cost results. In terms of FX gain and loss, the strong U.S. dollar will be a positive item. In our YTD non-operating income, we gain around $9.5 million from the strong U.S. dollar.
Combined with the positive impact on the revenue and FX gains and the negative effect on the cost of goods sold, based on our estimate, the overall operating margin will decline slightly. This is my answer regarding the strong U.S. dollar. Thank you.
Thank you, Eric, for your comprehensive answer from the question 1.1 to 1.5. For the next section, for the RBU regional performance and also regional opportunity, I would like to invite President Miller Chang to answer question 2.1 to 2.3. Thank you.
All right, thanks, Grace. Let me answer the three questions first. The first one, 2.1, is regarding the end demand by the region. Actually, Q3 was not good. The demand was not good, as you can see, our booking. Although our shipment achieved a little high, but booking is quite low. China and Taiwan region had a significant demand drop in Q3. Refer to our YTD P/B ratio with a 1.0. However, from North America, Europe and North Asia and Japan and Korea region still remain positive. YTD year to month, the booking numbers still better than our shipment number. That's the reason, so we see they are still positive. Also we see some recovery in our October bookings.
Yeah, this is a good sign for us, but still too early to say to confirm that Q4 demand will recover. This is to answer the 2.1. Regarding for 2.2, overall demand outlook in China, actually China demand is slowing down from Q2 this year and continue to Q3 this year. Some positive demand, such as the market, some positive growth and market like medical equipment, smart building, medical industrial equipment manufacturing, IEM and also transportation or in some infra, like 5G networking. We have quite a big market potential and also strong position there in China. Also some new area, new market with high growth potential like clean energy, renewable energy storage, for example. These are still positive in China.
Of course, some weak markets like CC, consumer machine builder and also, as I just mentioned, our channel, our distributor. Some of them have cash flow issue or even high inventory issue, so they are still weak. Okay. This is to answer the 2.2 question for the China market. For 2.3, about the policy support or change after the 20th, 30th Congress, China. There's no specific policy change at the 20th Congress. However, some strategic direction that we are executing, for example, like China chip, China net product, we have established the regional product division in our Shanghai, Kunshan campus to work with our China local CPU and silicon partner to offer the industrial computing platform for China market.
To really execute the China chip, China silicon, China design by our team, and so China net and service by our China colleague, totally local. This is to answer the 2.3, and then you also. The expectancy that we have demand recovery. Frankly, I don't have the good answer now. Internally, we are working with our global regional leadership to set up the target and focus for 2023 next year. We may have a clear picture for overall market sales in later Q4 that we update you. We hope Q3, Q4 is the pattern. We'll watch out carefully to the market, especially in China and our key customer and also our channel partner, the feedback for the business. That's the update and feedback for 2.3.
Thank you, President Miller. For the following two questions, for the question 3.1, it's the revenue breakdown by vertical and also the rough percentage between custom or the consumer related and the public spending policy related sector. I would like to pass the question to Miller. Thank you.
The revenue breakdown by vertical, our service market are very diversified. Our service industry is seeing more than 10 service industry. Also different focus by different country or region. However, the major focus market are the IEM, industrial equipment manufacturer. This is IIoT service market. MEB, medical equipment manufacturer. This is IIoT service market. They are all big service industry for Advantech contribute more than 10% revenue each. Others like POS market, Kiosk market, gaming, networking, military, et cetera. I don't have the exact number on hand, but that may be contribute at least than 10%. So there's quite a diversified for Advantech. Okay. Most of these are with mainly industrial focus, okay, and B2B business, as you may aware of our business model.
I don't think that we make any consumer product to the market. Okay. However, our customer in their business may be getting to leveraging our industrial PC to build up the factory equipment to support, to build up to manufacturing the consumer devices. They may get some impact from the economy function. Okay. This is the answer for the 3.1. Also for 3.2. Okay. The IIoT sector are weak this year. Yes.
I think the main reason of the business impact for our IoT sector is China region. The big impact by China region. Do note that they in China region it contribute around 45% of the business to our IoT sector. So this is quite a big portion actually. You may also aware of the semiconductor industry, and also we get equipment makers are slowing down from the Q3. It also impact to our IoT sector business in North America. About the question, the policy support application. Yes, the green energy, as I mentioned earlier, EV charging station, for example, also PAC and also 5G networking. Those markets are very focused to develop the solution to service the new market application.
Our IoT and also SIoT sector and EIoT sector team are very focused on developing our new solution and products and to accelerate the emerging market. We are very positive to enter those new areas. Yeah, this is the answer for 3.2. Right.
Okay, thank you, Miller. I will pass the time to Patrick. I saw some questions in the chat room.
Yes. Couple questions regarding third quarter results. How much is the impact from the inventory provision in the third quarter? Can it be reversed? Also related to third quarter results, why does the strong U.S. dollar result in a non-cash FX gain? Do you hold cash in U.S. dollar ? These two are related to third quarter results.
Let me try to answer the questions for the inventory provision. Yes, it is reversible, because our inventories was high. The inventory age is getting older, so we need to accrue the inventory expense based on our IFRS and GAAP policy. In Q4, we aim to draw down our inventory to $500 million. The turnover rate reduced to over 10 days. The inventory provisions will reverse again. For the quarter, for quarter-to-quarter, the inventory provision in third quarter have a negative impact around 0.2% compared with quarter two. This is my answer regarding first questions.
The strong U.S. dollar , actually, just as I mentioned earlier, U.S. dollar accounts for around 51% of our total sales revenue. It's not realized, again, it's just half of non-operating gains came from the realization because we have a larger portion of U.S. dollar on hand, and half of them is under the book value. Because all of our sales order, just as I mentioned before, it accounts for 51% of the AR and of the receivables and all the receivables are denominated in U.S. dollar . This is the reason we have non-operating gains in quarter three.
Thank you. The second question is regarding the progress on the software platform. How does that tracking against your expectations, please?
Allow me to answer the question first. Maybe Miller can give some comments on this. I think for the software and solution questions, the focus region will be China, Taiwan, Asian regions. The quota we are assigning to the software solution BU, internally we call WISE-IoT, is around TWD 20 million this year, and the YTD achievement was on track. Internally, we have set up some indicator to monitor the progress, such as number of revenue, for example, industrial app available in the WISE-Marketplace and number of co-develop partner and the co-developers. I think we don't have the intention to gain a lot of revenue from our software solutions. The main purpose is to add value to our embedded computing platforms.
Also try to help our solution partners speed up their Industry 4.0 deployment, like that. By doing so, it will accelerate our hardware platform strategy and form an entry barrier for the industry. This is my point of view regarding the software business and the solution business. Maybe Chris and Miller can add some comments on it.
Yeah. Just second the comment from Eric Chen. Actually our WISE-IoT solution business division.
Gradually they are focusing on four areas, like energy management system, iEMS. iFactory, intelligent factory, and also retail. The last one is machine management. Okay. Gradually consolidate all their focus in the market and resources put on these three or four markets. They are integrated our internal resources, and also not only developing resources but also sales resources. Okay. Fourth demo, we will consolidate the leadership in China, appoint the high-level leadership to focus on the China-wide IoT business development. Okay. We see that venture in Taiwan and China region, we have a more larger resources, I should say, to engage our customers by providing our support and engage our new business.
Overall investment, we are still invested resources, as I mentioned earlier, not only engineering resources in Taiwan and China, but also business development and sales resources in Asian region. The only one issue I could say not make a big progress is in western side, like, say Europe and also North America. We did not see a big progress. We will watch out, maybe identify the key markets, one or two, and put some resources to test the market first. That's the answer. Thanks for this question.
Thank you.
This is Grace. I would like to echo Eric and also Miller's comment on the WISE business. There's a key message to deliver in our second quarter investor conference in early August that we would like to accelerate our WISE business and also enter the subscription model in the future, which would start to gather our own resources in Asia and also Southeast Asia and focus on, like, a smart energy management iEMS solution in the beginning. Subscription model will be our focus area in the future and hope we are able to deliver, like, local solutions to our customer, which will be greatly lower the technical entry barrier for our enterprise customers.
We are hoping in the future to add more ARR, annual recurring revenue from the subscription business in the future. That is my add-on information on the WISE business. Thank you.
Thank you, all. Let's go with Gary first. Gary, please unmute your line.
Great. Thank you very much. Can you hear me well?
Yeah, we can hear fine.
Okay. Regarding the P/B ratio , obviously in third quarter has hit the recent low. But if we look back further into history, how does that compare to the lowest point ever, maybe during the global financial crisis? Usually when we are at this kind of point, how long the low P/B ratio could last, please?
Thank you.
Can you try to answer the question again, first, because I have no exact figures on hand, yeah, on my mind.
Yeah. Thank you for Gary's question. I will try to answer this question. Actually, our average P/B ratio is around 1.08. I think last year, as you can see in this chart, last year in 2021, the P/B ratio is unusually high due to the supply chain tightness and also the long lead time of the components. I'm trying to say that last year, the high P/B is not a normal level, and actually this is the consequences of supply chain imbalance. It's starting from this year 2022, with the component shortage is getting relieved. Also we are gradually through the capacity expansion also in Taiwan and Mexico, and so the order fulfillment is gradually improved.
The P/B ratio is back to normal since the beginning of this year. Yes, the booking situation, especially in China markets, is kind of weak recently for more than three months. This is definitely the key indicators we are going to monitor because we do see the, like a channel partner inventory adjustment is beginning in July this year. Also double booking issue is also in the adjustment period recently. We will closely monitor the real demand in China and all the indicators like new booking behavior and also order postpone and also canceling indicators in China. Yes.
While we are on the P/B topic, we have a written question. Is it possible to get the P/B ratio by region?
For the public disclose the information, actually, we can only provide the company as a whole P/B ratio. It's not just split by the region. However, maybe we are considering next year. Maybe next year, we will actually trying to. The frequency for the P/B ratio will be adjusted from monthly disclosure to quarterly disclosure. However, besides the overall P/B ratio, in next year, we are considered to disclose the three major markets by different regions. Okay? But in this current moment, in Q3, I don't have the specific P/B by region on hand. Maybe Eric and Miller can add on more color on this question.
Yes, I have discussed this question before. We will formally raise our P/B ratio, start from next year, from monthly to quarterly. Our P/B information will get more detailed. We will break down the P/B ratio by three major regions, for the U.S., Europe and for China. We will do it by next year.
Thank you. Do you have any follow-up, Gary?
Yeah, I do. Thank you. During 2021 and 2022, this has been our fastest sales and profit growth years. The years before that, since 2015, the organic CAGR may be mid-single digit plus some M&A. I'm just wondering, during the last two years, is it purely the fast industry growth because of the supply chain issue, or we gained some market share because we managed the procurement better?
Well, I will answer the question first, and maybe Eric can add on more information. For this, revenue CAGR for the past 20 years is around 10% for the company. Yes, for the first 8 quarters this year, our top line is reached like around 20% year-on-year growth, which is higher than historical level. I think this is mainly due to the recovery opportunity from the COVID and also the new applications from IoT, especially for the new energy, new infra and like a smart factory upgraded opportunity. I think yes, this year is a fast growing than before. Looking forward, we are maybe internal profit, maybe this, we will maybe be in 10% CAGR in the future.
This also depends on the global macro situation and also the global trend. We will adjust and also announce our official guidance quarter by quarter as the company policy.
Okay, got it. On looking forward the next six allotment, let's say, do you think the industry has pulled forward the demand too much in the last two years, such that the growth in the near term might not return to. Well, obviously not return to 2021, 2022, but possibly return to 2015-2020, which is like mid-single digit or so, because you just pull too much forward, then now we have a period where the growth has slowed to what we saw back in 2015-2020.
Well, I guess it's too early to comment on that. Maybe Eric can give everyone more color on that.
It's too early to say.
Yeah.
We have a very strong demand from the energy and power, from the medical sector, especially from medical. Just as I mentioned earlier, we have a great demand in the U.S., in China, and in Japan as well. Also, the network infrastructure sector shows a very positive forecast. It's too early to say for next year what the situation will be. Yeah, it's still too early.
Okay. Thank you, Eric, and thank you.
Hey, thank you.
Thank you, Gary, for your question. We have two more written questions. Has the competition in China become more or less intense in the downturn? What's the reason to keep the same GM guidance in 4Q compared to third quarter, even though the U.S. dollar become even stronger in 4Q?
I can also answer the questions about China competition. Actually, we did not see the big competition in our existing business. For example, like, our IPC team, strong IPC position, about strong embedded position in China, we did not see the big competition there. Okay? For the existing business, we see the issue is only compound demand. Okay? It's a demand issue. Most important is for the new business. We call emerging business, they were supported by the government policy, for example, or some new emerging sector like energy, as I mentioned, wind power, infra, 5G, et cetera. Those that we need not only product development to speed up to the market, but also for the sales to engage with our customer, for the new customer, new market approaching.
I would think that we will refocus on those new business opportunities to develop the opportunity for future growth. Whatever the situation and the business, the market is in downturn or in upturn. Okay? I think the most important is our internal product division and also our sales division. It can cross cooperation more together to adjust the new market in China. Okay, that's my answer.
Thank you, Miller. The gross margin guidance for 4Q, what are the drivers, and why is it still in the same range as in third quarter?
I think the main driver comes from two factors. The first one, just as I mentioned earlier, the human provision expense will be reversed based on our human travel. This is one driver. Another driver is the material shortage issue will ease. Actually, we do a lot of spot buy in the gray markets, and all the prices are very high. After the material shortage situation is getting better, the gray market spot buy in gray market will no longer exist. It could mean material cost will tend to a stable and slowing pattern. Another key driver is the material cost will become more reasonable than the quarter three.
Combined with two factors, maintain guidance nearly the same as quarter three, given the U.S. dollar still stronger.
Thank you, Eric. For the interest of time, we probably will have to conclude the call now. But before we go, I mean, Eric, Miller or Grace, do you have any closing remark or key message for the investors to take away?
Well, I would like to thank you for the investors again, for your participation. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email to the IR email box or CLSA. Maybe Miller or Eric do have another remark.
Thanks for all the participants and also the investors to join today's earnings call. If there is still unclear information, we will provide it later on. Thank you for your joining today.
Thank you all, for your participation. You all have a great evening. Take care.
Take care. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.