Hey, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear analysts, fund managers and investors. We are going to have our first quarter institutional investors meeting. This meeting will be hosted by me, Daniel, and our CEO, Johnny. This page is routine, say, covered disclaimer. Several points. This meeting will be English. If you need Chinese presentation slides, please go to the MOPS to download the Chinese version. Of course, Johnny and I, we are Chinese is our mother tongue. If you want to ask questions in Chinese during the Q&A session, you are so welcome.
Or you can write down your questions through the Zoom message function. Please add your name and your company's name onto your message. During the Q&A session, please use the Raise Hand function. We can unmute you for your question. This video and audio content will upload to MOPS. It may take about 1-2 hours after the meeting. If you want to watch the video record, please go to the MOPS or our website. First, let Johnny to go very quick about the company.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Johnny Shen, President and CEO of Alchip Technologies. Thank you for joining the investor conference meeting. Yeah, we appreciate the opportunity to share our Q1 result and provide a future outlook. In case some of you are not familiar with Alchip too much, allow me to have a brief company update. Yeah, our company is founded in 2003, IPO in 2014. Our current market cap is approximately $3 billion. Headcount, 600 employee. Last year revenue, $460 million. Yeah, we've been successfully tape out more than 500 designs. For FinFET, we have more than 55 tape out. Our current capacity is at 20-30 NRE per year.
Majority of our revenue, 80% is coming from HPC application. Our market focus is HPC/AI, plus recent adding automotive. We are one of the VCA member for TSMC, and also we are recently we just joined TSMC 3DFabric. We are one out of the seven who joined the 3DFabric for TSMC. Quick update for Q1. Q1 we have another record-breaking quarter. Our revenue is TWD 188 million. Operating income at TWD 20.9 million. Net income, TWD 19.1 million. Combined with EPS, TWD 8.1. Although our revenues are at historical high, but our net income and EPS just slightly increased compared to previous quarters.
The main reason is due to seasonal low NRE revenue in Q1, also few project delay and postpone from China region. Historical high MP revenue plus lower NRE caused a notable gross margin reduction. Fortunately, our NRE picked up pretty well this quarter. Gross margin will be improved starting from Q2. Our mass production revenue from HPC application remains very strong. With most of our capacity limitation resolved, we are expecting tremendous revenue growth from now till year 2025. Alchip continuously holds a great position in leading-edge technology business. We have successfully diversified our business concentration from China to other regions. In Q1, North American revenue contribution is over 60%. We have a several design win and many inquiry from top-tier customer there. Majority of our pipeline business are N5 or even N3 technologies.
Quick update for automotive business. Yeah, we have a couple of design won, plus pipeline business from many car maker in China and US region. The area we are focused is the ADAS, L2-L4 type of ASIC application. Target technology are N5A or N3AE. Note the design cycle for automotive project will be longer than other applications, but also designed to generate very reasonable NRE during the design period, and produce a fair amount of MP revenue during the production. Yeah, we truly believe the automotive application will be another driver, revenue driver for us starting from May 2024.
Lastly, I would like to emphasize Alchip's neutral position and diversified business condition again. Similar to our foundry partner, Alchip will never make a product to compete with any customer. For China leading-edge technology business, we are taking more cautiously approach and working with the partner closely, review customers background, end user, and design spec before accepting the projects. We still believe in and support China business as long as they comply with the rule and regulations. In terms of headcount, we implement more aggressively hiring plan to increase our engineering and supporting resource in Japan, Taiwan, U.S., and Southeast Asia. This effort will provide more sufficient and cost-effective solution to meet our customers requirements. Overall, we have the confidence to say our business are very healthy. 2023 will be another outstanding year for Alchip. Thank you.
This page is for the first quarter numbers, putting routine work for the investor meeting. For the first quarter, the total revenue is $188.1 million, is 26.8% quarter-over-quarter and 101.2% year-on-year. The operating income for the first quarter is $20.9 million, which is 4.5% quarter-over-quarter and 7.0% year-on-year. For the net income is $19.1 million in for first quarter, translating into EPS of 8.1 TWD. The list says it's for the revenue breakdown by application.
You can see, the HPC remain our top contributor in the first quarter. In first quarter, HPC related revenue contributed about 81% of our total revenue, while the niche market accounts for 7% and the networking 1% are consumer-related products accounted for 10% of our total revenue in the first quarter. For the yearly breakdown, we only have one quarter for this year, so the yearly numbers is identical with the first quarter numbers. For the revenue mix by process, though, in the first quarter, you can see the 7 nanometer or more advanced technology node revenue accounted for 83% of our total revenue in the first quarter.
The 16, 12 nanometer related revenue accounted for 9%, and the rest is the 28% was the more legacy technology nodes. For the regional distribution, yeah, you can see quite significant change quarterly or yearly. Of course, it is because the strong shipment of the infrastructure to North American customer. For the first quarter, revenue from North America accounted for 63% of our total revenue. While the revenue from Asia-Pacific, which include China, Taiwan, accounted for 25% of our total revenue. Japan accounted for 5%. The others, including Middle East, Europe, other region, accounted for 7% of our total revenue.
From the yearly breakdown, you can see a quite significant difference between 2021, 2022 and the, of course, first quarter this year, which I believe indicates our focus has gradually shifted from China to North America. For the first quarter business review, like I just mentioned, contributed by the soaring AI chip shipment to North American customer. The first quarter revenue went 27% quarter-over-quarter and 101% year-on-year respectively. We don't see strong constraint from ABF supply or the CoWoS capacity supply. We get really, really good support from the vendors, our partners this year.
we don't see this, we don't see similar situation happened last year to happen again this year. This year, we believe the shipment will be much more smooth than last year. Someone may throw in lies on the slides. Okay. For the profit margin, as our CEO just mentioned, the growth margin went down quite a bit in the first quarter to 21%. This is, first of all, the seasonal weakness for our NRE revenue. In the past, if you follow our company that the NRE revenue usually accounts for about 40-plus% of our total revenue. But for the first quarter this year, the NRE revenue only accounted for less than 20% of the total revenue. That's the major reason for the growth margin.
The non-operating income, you can see about TWD 3 point something million non-op contribution this quarter, mainly from the interest income and then the FX gains. For this year's business outlook, you may not see it from the MOPS website. We believe for this year, the AI chip shipment to North American customer will still be the major growth driver to our sales. The production of this product will likely keep climbing up, given increasing demand from the customers. We understand that the market is saying that the demands for the data center will be sluggish this year, given the impact from macro environment.
For our customers or for our sector or for this product, we don't see weakness for this year's scheduled shipment. We still expect sequential growth in the second quarter on increasing sales for both NRE, which is design revenue, and the production revenue. We believe our profit margin to rebound in second quarter, starting in second quarter. The NRE sales will account for a much higher % in the second quarter than in the first quarter. We expect the first quarter growth margin will be the trough for all the quarters this year. For our design pipeline and the design revenue demands, which is still strong in particularly North American market.
The number of pilot pipeline projects increased, and the process know of the projects from North American market keeps on moving towards N5. Even like Johnny mentioned earlier, we will have N3 related revenue contribution this year. For the HPC and the automotive applications, they are appears to be the major categories for our future growth for sure. For our diversification for both the customer, the revenue and our engineering, most importantly, our engineering resource, we are drastically expand our Japan team, and we are relocating some engineering resource from China to Japan office. The same thing in Taiwan, except we cannot, by regulation, we cannot shift our engineer, our China engineers from China to Taiwan.
For Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia, we already have our plan, and we will soon build up a design center, most likely in Malaysia very soon. That's our diversification plan for our engineering resource. We are targeting to have 50% of our total engineering resource outside of China within 3 years. That's our target. I think that's pretty much all the things for today's company part of the meeting. We are going to enter the Q&A session. If you have questions, please use the raise hand function to Zoom. We will unmute you for your questions. Thank you. Okay, Randy from Credit Suisse.
Okay, Randy, can you unmute yourself and ask question directly? Okay, probably some problem happens, Randy. Shiho, please.
Hello, Johnny, Daniel. Two questions from me. First one regarding engineering resource diversification. Will we speed up the process given the changing geopolitical environment?
excuse me? the resource allocation.
Oh.
Thank you. Okay. Oh.
Y-y-yeah.
Okay. Yeah, let me take your question. Yeah. Yeah, for, to be honestly, I know the resource constraint become one of the concern for the company. I think, to be honestly, a lot of the U.S., a lot of customers, especially from U.S. hyperscaler customer request, doing design out of China. Yeah. We do have a very aggressive hiring plan in Taiwan, Japan or Southeast Asia. In the meantime, yeah, we already have a urgent supporting plan by sending engineer from China to work in Japan and Taiwan. Yeah, we already double confirmed with the older customer, as long as the design not doing in China will be acceptable for them.
Immediately, we'll have a 40 to 50 engineer will be working in Japan within 2 months. Yeah, that will ease some of our concern from our existing customer. I do some calculation that can be. Most of project can be supporting well. By the end of this year, we're going to have 100. Within two months, we're going to have 50 non-China engineer working in Japan.
I see. I see. All right. Same question on the gross margin side, right? Definitely the Q1 will be the bottom. Can you give us more color on the gross margin improvement for rest of the year?
We for the whole year, for last institutional investor meeting, we are shooting for high teens, high twenties. We are still shooting for high twenties, even with the 21% gross margin in the first quarter.
Oh, okay. All right. That was great. Last one. Regarding the share placement plan you guys mentioned early, I think, not long ago, have we identified the investors? Can we assume those investor more like a strategic investor rather than just as financial investors?
Okay. Because by the regulation, we cannot disclose the potential investors. I can assure you this is a strategic alliance. We will have, we will work with the investors in many, many different angle to win business. That's what we can tell you for this moment.
Okay. Fine. Okay. Thanks for that.
It is a strategic investment by them. It is like a strategic alliance by those by all the parties.
Oh, absolutely. Okay. All right. Thanks.
Thank you. Randy, please.
Okay. Yes. Thank you for taking my question. Sorry for the technical issue, trying to get the unmute going. T he question I wanted to ask on your top U.S. customer. If you could give an update on the roadmap, some of the projects you've been bidding, visibility or timeline on that. If you could just discuss the status for some of the future projects.
Okay. To be honestly, it is really a sensitive timing right now to comment on it, because as you know, we have pretty strict NDA with the customers. I can say, for the current product, we have been working very well with our customers. For the future business opportunity, I would say, many investors following our company for a while on the news that we are competing for a very important next generation project. For this moment, I can tell you, we are even more confident than 1 month, 2 months ago. We believe we are currently leading in the competition.
Most likely we will soon, not soon, the vendor selection schedule will come out in the late second quarter, or there might be some alteration for the whole story. When everything becomes more clear, we will let the investor know how it goes. Currently, we are pretty optimistic, winning future projects, with this customer.
Okay. Abe, could you frame just, maybe 2 questions on the outlook for this year? I think The Street has been around $800 million or so in that range versus $460 last year. If you could give a framework how you feel, comfort with that estimate. Within that, your top customer kind of rough contribution within that range.
Okay. I think for the first quarter revenue number, if you are talking about revenue numbers for the first quarter, we should be ahead of the expectation or in my previous guidance. For the second quarter, we just announced the April revenue numbers. I believe our April revenue should exceed the market expectation again, and of course, my guidance to the outsiders. We are still very confident for the numbers you just mentioned, TWD 800 million revenue this year. For now, of course, we won't say we will be very aggressively to do some upward revision. For this moment, no, but we are really, really confident for the numbers you just mentioned.
Okay. To just think about, I know I'm jumping into next year, given the good revenue momentum with your U.S. customer, could you frame, just a rough downside scenario if. Because you mentioned they could revisit or make some changes. Is there much dependent next year or risk, I would just say, if it went the wrong way, if there's a way to think about, the risk side and then maybe frame the upside if it does come through, like what it could do to the business or concentration.
Okay, I will say this way, the possibility for the downside risk for next year is getting smaller and smaller as I just mentioned, we are pretty optimistic for winning projects in the North American market and this market demand is really, really strong. For this year, in addition to the customers, we already told to the investors, there will be new customers, of course, hyperscalers and automotive new customers. I will say the timing right now for ASIC providers like us is really, really good. Usually when people, when investors ask me about next year's outlook, I would say usually we target 20% year-on-year growth every year. For now, of course, for next year, if the $800 million target we can achieve this year, for next year, we definitely will challenge $1 billion revenue next year.
Okay.
Let me add more. Just like Daniel mentioned, yeah, we are very optimistic continuously support our number one customer. In additional to this customer, in fact, we do have, the mass production demand for other customers increased quite a bit. Overall, I think internally we always target, I guess, over 20% year-over-year. Right now, target, I think we consider it still very reasonable.
Okay. The last question, then I'll jump out of the queue. Actually two things that came up earlier. The China, I think in the prepared remarks, you discussed a bit of delay on China project. If you could talk, maybe the factor for that, how much impact if you see it on track. Then a clarification on, I think CEO asked about the margin? Is the high 20s, now that NRE comes off seasonality, is that where you see now kinda from second quarter into second half, that's kinda reasonable range for gross margin? Yeah, thank you for that.
Okay. For the China market, I think, I will talk, a general feeling, by me. We have been talking about the China market for now, for quite a long time, that, the number of project, the demand, for the project, the service, is still good. The technology, node, the process node migration slowed down quickly because of many things. Maybe the funding, the funding environment for those startups in China is much more difficult than in the past. Another reason is, because of the geopolitical concern, we try to focus on some projects, that, is definitely not subject to some, concerns or geopolitical disputes. I think we are lucky that, we have the opportunity, this year to, starting from last year, to shift our focus. I would say the demand in China market, the design demand in China market is still strong.
Okay. Yeah. Let me try to add more. Since the last year, October 7, I think again, I think the situation changed quite a bit in China, especially for the leading-edge technology. Before we have a lot of pipeline, we have a lot of customer choosing 5 nanometer as a pipeline project. They all changed to 7 and 6. They consider 5 nanometer eventually will be easier to be slowed down. For us, I think, just like Daniel mentioned before, the China business is still strong. It slowed down quite a bit since October 7 in Q1. Somehow starting from this quarter, recovered quite a bit.
Right now I think it's a important decision for us whether we show taking more China project or continuously focus on US. There's a drawback in between trade-off between these two regions. Internally, we will decide continuously to support China existing customer. Their current project, if they have a pipeline for the next project, we will take it. Focus more on automotive application, which we consider will be more geopolitical insensitive. Other than that, we are focused at US business more. To answer your question, I think China business is still starting from Q-two, recover quite a bit and we will focus existing and automotive plus US customer. For your growth margin questions. Of course, based on regulation, we cannot...
I cannot go into very detail about this. I will say this way, the most important factor influence our blended growth margin is the percentage between NRE and the production. Like I said, the first quarter we believe it is slow for our NRE revenue. We expect the growth margin to recover to the reasonable range of our company. For this year, since the production revenue grows significantly, we see it is kind of difficult to let our growth margin to go over 30%. We are still shooting for 20, high 20s. That's the guidance for our growth margin.
Okay, great. Great. Thanks. Thank you, Daniel and Johnny.
Thank you.
Charlie, please.
Hey, Johnny, Daniel. My first question is about your potential other major customer from the U.S. Meaning other cloud service provider, for example, Google or Microsoft. Do you have any progress at these big customers?
Okay, I'll go with the official feedback. Johnny will provide more detail to you. Official feedback, yes, we are in talk with almost all the hyperscalers in North America, including our existing customer, Microsoft, Google, Meta, those kind of customers for new projects. No matter it is for data center or for the end devices, we have multiple engagement with them already.
I think, let me add more. In U.S., I think right now we are doing quite well with strong support from the major supplier. Supplier from Foundry, supplier from IP. We've been successfully getting to the door of the largest giant company. I think after a few talking, I think we consider the chemistry and also the track record quite match. Personally, I'm kind of optimistic to win some of them. May not happen immediately, but if we just continuously working with a potential customer closely and provide a solution, provide a reasonable business model, I think sooner or later we will be their service provider.
Okay, thanks. I am also concerned about your 2 things, right? 1 is the human resource to get additional giant customers. 2nd is the TSMC CoWoS capacity because we are aware that that is already in a short supply, and next year it will be even in a big shortage. How can you help your customer to get the sufficient CoWoS supply from TSMC? Because it's pretty strategic right now.
Okay. Yeah, resources stuff, let me emphasize again. to be honestly, if we want me to hire additional resource, 100 people, 200 people immediately outside of China, I can consider that's almost impossible. Fortunately, most of our China engineer treating this as an opportunity. If any of them has a chance on a project base to work outside of China in Japan or in Singapore or Malaysia, they all consider that's a good opportunity. in order... if you want us to move the engineer, immigrant engineer to other country, I think it's very important. It's almost impossible. Project-based support, one year, half year, I think they are so...
Most of our engineer are so positive for this. I think for this year, after some detailed calculation, I think we can meet most of our customers' requirement. Okay. As for the CoWoS capacity, I think this is a little bit challenging for us. Before, we already get a full commitment from the supplier to support the CoWoS capacity. Because of additional order from customer, we are fighting the CoWoS. We try to get more CoWoS capacity from TSMC. Unfortunately, the CoWoS is. As you know, CoWoS is a kind of application independent.
We are our project is fighting with other technology known, like a 5 nanometer or 3 nanometer. Hopefully we can get additional allocation from the suppliers. So far, we already get some. To be honest, it's not 100% fulfill our current customer's demand at this moment. Okay, Charlie, is it, does it answer your question? Okay, anyway, maybe some technical issue of Charlie. Bill. Bill, BOE, please.
Yes. Hi. Hi, Johnny. Hi, Daniel. Thank you for taking my questions. I have 2. One will be on your R&D capacity. You mentioned about that will be 50% in 3 years outside of China. Besides reallocation, does that suggest are we gonna see a significant revenue in terms of the RD people, you know, from the current number? Also, would these people be capable for some of the advanced foundry design?
That's a very good question. The R&D, the main, the major R&D activity we still keep in the headquarters or, many in Taipei and in Shanghai. In terms of project execution, we will send our engineer to work in, work in the region outside of China. In terms of capability, I think for this year, I don't have any concern because the majority of the project is supported by the existing engineer. We may encounter some training challenge once we start to do the more aggressive hiring in other area, for example, Malaysia. We see the result and adjust this hiring plan and shipping plan accordingly. The goal is by the end of next year, I would like to have 50-50 engineer between China and non-China.
I see. Does that mean that we're gonna see a significant jump in terms of RD numbers? Does that implies that we're gonna be getting more project in the future going forward? Be capable of doing that? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Yeah.
Okay. Got it.
The-
Okay, sorry, my second question would be on the 3nm. Because you previously announced that you have been taping out on the 3nm, you know, earlier this year. I'd just like to get to see as what kind of contribution are we expecting from this project. How about going forward for this year and next year? How we seeing a 3nm project contribution? Thank you.
Okay. I would say for this year, the contribution from 3 nanometer will be small. This year, I would say the majority will still be the 7 nanometer because of the product shipment to the North American customers. We believe the 3 nanometer, we will see increasing revenue contribution starting from 2024. In 2024, we still don't believe the 3 nanometer revenue contribution to be the mainstream. That's the current status. Let me add some. Right now, our majority revenue contribution is from production. Obviously, 3 nanometer go to productions need some time. Starting from this year, the contribution from 3 nanometer will be NRE only. We have a pipeline business. We have a couple of HPC business plus automotive, N3AE. The contribution from 3 nanometer will be NRE only.
I see. Got it.
Yeah.
Even including that tape out, we probably is not going to see much of the mass production on the 3 nano.
Right. I don't think the 3 nanometer tape out is hardly happen this year. Yeah, we start to do the design work. I believe the tape out you mentioned could be the test chip. Yes. Yes.
I see. I see.
Yeah. That one is proven the 3D IC and D2D kind of a connection.
Okay. Got it. Okay. I'll jump back to the queue. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you, Bill. Okay, let me answer a question from a message. Brittany Lane, asking about our revenue mix in the first quarter. Can you comment on how come HPC at 81% is lower quarter-over-quarter with the ramp-up in AI inference production?
What will be the likely NRE % in the second quarter and 2023? Billy, I think you are too harsh on us with the HPC % from 85% to 81%. Not a very significant difference. For the consumer part, the increasing part is from the consumer, we take our consumer product, which is, I can't remember the process now, but it is quite an important project of us. This project will be in production later this year. This is for the image signal processor for some consumer products. We also expect the production revenue from this project.
Other consumer project customers in Japan also contribute, I would say pretty good revenue to us in the first quarter. That's the major reason. For the likely NRE percentage, I don't want to guide specific for the quarterly numbers. I would say for this year, I would say the NRE percentage will account for about 30-something% of our total revenue yearly. For the quarterly numbers, it is really difficult for me right now to commit or to guarantee the numbers for you. Jeffrey, Macquarie, please.
Yes. Daniel, thank you for the questions. I guess my first one is, can you talk about the ramp-up of your Israeli AI customer? How is that going this year?
excuse me? I don't get your
Your AI customer from Middle East. How is that mass production ramp up going this year?
Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. I knew that. I totally must last say there is a 5 nanometer project, which is our first 5 whole mask 5 nanometer project from Israel customer. Unfortunately, that project due to some engineering issue of our customers, the project did a major update. They revisit their previous design to a new design. The project is still living, but in 2 different phase. Yeah.
Okay. Is there a 7 nanometer mass production ramp up?
Sorry? I don't get.
Is that customer, though, ramping up mass production of the 7 nanometer product?
You say this customer, 7 nanometer?
Yes.
No, no.
No. Even the project delay a bit, they still tackle the 5 nanometer technology. I think design is still ongoing. Yeah, we have another 5 nanometer, probably, Daniel share with you before. Also from original from Israel company, now it's recently been acquired by U.S. customer. That final 5 nanometer design will be go to production very soon.
Okay. Next question, your overall design resources, how tight are you? I know the last couple years you had to turn away some potential projects because of the number of design engineers. Semiconductors slowing down a bit this year, are you less stretched for resources on the engineering side or is it okay?
You are right. The, right now the capacity we can say is not 100%, to be honest with you, especially the resource in China. Because we kind of have turned down many budget in China due to many reasons. Right now, I think after shifting some engineers, sending some engineers to Japan, our capacity will be around 95%-100%. Yeah, this, by the end of this month.
Okay, great. Last question, can you talk more about some of the new North American projects? You know, Yeah, obviously you can't maybe say customer names, but can you talk about what type of products they are? Are they AI focused? Are they, you mentioned auto. Anything else you can highlight?
Various different projects like, of course, AI is one of the majority application, and data center related service accelerator, the video transcoding, many, many projects in different applications in North America right now. Yeah. to make it simpler, yeah, because we're taking so many, if we categorize it into detail, so many different application, AI training, inference, machine learning, data center. For TSMC's definition, we call all of them HPC, high performance computing. Overall, in U.S., two type of business, HPC and plus some consumer. Yeah, consumer product, we have some sandbox and also AR/VR, those kind of application. Yeah, other than that, it's all HPC.
automotive.
automotive.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jeffrey.
Okay. From the message box, Herbert asked about in the case of moving engineers to Japan or other sites out of China, is there any working visa issue or local regulation on the percentage of the foreign workers at the new site? How would this arrangement impact the cost structure? Are the clients willing to pay for the cost differences?
Yeah. Herbert, I think that's a very, very good question, actually. That's a very, very good question. A lot of people has this kind of concern, after we apply the visa, I think the problem we can say is that it's not so serious. We have a Japan office for more than 20 years, since the very beginning. Japan operation, Japan used to be our number one revenue region for the first 10 years. We have so many senior engineer and operation very well and smooth. We have a certain credibility. After we apply, like 20, 30 people, I think it's we get a visa in a very short period. In terms of cost, there will be some additional costs. We do some calculation.
If we send a senior engineer, if we send senior engineer to Japan, the overhead will not be too high. The junior engineer, I think the overhead is up to about 20%. Yeah. Overall, junior engineer, the cost is not so significant. Most of our U.S. customer are willing to digest these costs. As you know, the cost in U.S. and also in other region, like India, are much higher now. Yeah, engineer, cost is, the ratio is 1 to 3, yeah, between U.S. engineer and Japan engineer.
Okay. Gavin Moore ask, will Alchip be looking to hire internally and build out own team or work with external partners in Japan and Southeast Asia countries like Singapore and Malaysia?
I think we plan to do both. Of course, one, the organic growth, we will build up our own team in Southeast Asia, like Singapore and Malaysia, and Malaysia, like I mentioned. The external, we will look for engineering resource partners also in South and East Asia countries like Malaysia. Actually, we already build our relationship with the engineering resource providers there. As you all know that we are focusing on the leading-edge technology nodes. We can be supported by outside engineering resource for some low-level block design jobs. For the system level integration, something like that, we will still do it through our own team.
Internally, in Southeast Asia or, in Japan or in Taiwan for those projects that, cannot be done in China.
Okay. There's no more new questions in the message box. Is there any other questions? Horizon. Okay, a new message box from Horizon Capital. The first quarter 23 OpEx is well controlled. How do you see OpEx rate next few seasons or whole year? Daniel just mentioned 2023 whole year NRE portion is around 30%+. Do we expect NRE revenue become fourth quarter higher than third quarter, higher than second quarter? Okay, for your first question, the OpEx, we are pretty proud that we control our expense pretty well, which means my salary is not going up significantly. Just kidding. For the OpEx control, we have been have very good track record in previous years.
I believe all the analysts, all the investors, following us for years, they can understand that. For this year, usually we do the budget from the top-down angle. For this year, my guidance to the outsiders, we will manage to control our full year operating expense under $84 million-$85 million for the whole year. For the seasonal pattern, because the salary adjustments begins in the second quarter, you can see expense to grow in the second quarter, but not significantly. For the NRE, yeah, I'm sorry that as I just mentioned, I prefer to give the yearly guidance for the quarterly. Because for now, any given milestone could be in a big number.
Any slip or delays for a milestone from second quarter to third quarter might have quite significant impact for the percentage numbers. I'll prefer to give the yearly numbers rather than the quarterly numbers.
The trend, the Q4 better than Q3, better than Q2, not only for NRE, also for mass production, that's our operating target. Each quarter gradually increase.
Okay. Is there any questions? Okay. If not, thank you for joining today's meeting. Thank you for your continuously support for to Alchip. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Bye.
Bye. Take care.