Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to BizLink's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings English Conference Call. This is Mike Wang, Investor Relations Manager. I am joined by Roger Liang, our Chairman, Felix Teng, our CEO, Florian Hettich , our COO, and Charles Tsai, our CFO. Our results were just released and are available on our IR website, where you can download the latest earnings release materials as well as access them from MOPS. This one-hour call will begin with Charles to highlight our financials before we switch to Florian to highlight our operations, and then end with Felix to highlight corporate-wide items. We will then move to Q&A before concluding this call.
Before we continue, please kindly be reminded that today's discussions may contain qualitative forward-looking statements based on our current expectations, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, and may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in these qualitative forward-looking statements. We are not obligated to update these statements, which are to be used for information purposes only. We will not provide any quantitative forward-looking comments. Please refer to the Safe Harbor Notice in our earnings deck for more details. I would like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded. This recording and these prepared remarks will be uploaded onto our IR website within 24 hours after the conclusion of this call. We sincerely appreciate Sinopac Securities for hosting today's call. With that, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Charles.
Thank you, Mike. First, let me talk a little bit about our income statement. We successfully pulled multiple levers in our operating leverage this quarter. This led to a noticeable improvement in our overall financials, as EPS headed back to world-record highs. Our gross margin continued to grow, increasingly closer to 30% on a more favorable product mix and on progress in our excellence effort. There were minimal inventory impacts. HPC sales rose 39% quarter-on-quarter and 74% year-on-year, and accounted for 19.9% of total sales. Semiconductor sales rose 35% quarter-on-quarter and 56% year-on-year, and accounted for 11.5% of total sales. The sales for these two major drivers were a total of 31.4% in the third quarter of 2024, which is versus 24.8% in second quarter 2024 and versus 20% in the third quarter 2023.
We kept OPEX under control, seeing just a minor increase since the first quarter of 2022, as we raised investment in some businesses and adjusted it for others. Operating margins rose to new all-time highs. Our operating expenses-to-sales ratio fell back down to historical averages as our sales continued to slowly recover. Non-OP was negative as we saw some foreign exchange losses due to a weaker US dollar, which was partially offset by lower finance costs and by some investment income. We further deleveraged with our liability-to-asset ratio falling back to historical ranges, reaching our 2024 year-end target in one year and ahead of time. We are persistently working toward improving our global tax structure, which led to our tax rate falling to just above 30%, and efforts are ongoing.
Net profit also rose to new all-time highs by ECB conversions, totaling 16.8 million in new shares, led our EPS improvement to not reflect our record profitability. There is less than 8 million shares outstanding left to be converted or less than 4% dilution left, and we expect to see further conversions in the months to come. On product sales by segment, industrial IT Datacom and auto sales were in line directionally, while electrical appliances sales were stronger than expected. Year-on-year industrial sales were slightly positive, and this was mainly driven by semi-cap. Year-on-year IT Datacom sales were significantly positive, and this was mainly driven by high-speed compute. Year-on-year auto sales, which was still negative, improved both on a quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year basis. Finally, year-on-year electrical appliance sales were positive again for the third straight quarter.
On a quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year basis, we achieved some sales growth in North America, but sales growth in Asia was much more pronounced, while sales in Europe remained weak. Sales in Southeast Asia have grown 41% from the first quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2024 and reflect our successful ongoing footprint expansion there to support our customers' regionalization effort in the region. On balance sheet and cash flow, our market capitalization recently rose to above $2 billion, and it is just a stone's throw away from reaching $3 billion as our share has doubled following pricing some of our HPC sales and profit growth potential for next year. Our result also reflected ongoing group-wide initiatives in sales, operation, and finance and accounting for further efficiency and productivity gains.
This effort was initiated about a year to a year and a half ago, and our work is not yet done. We have been putting our robust balance sheet to work as we position ourselves to realize more growth in the coming quarters, and I actively selectively deploy capital to support our multi-year growth plans. Operating cash flow was still elevated despite falling quarter-on-quarter as we utilized our working capital to maximize our benefit from improving demand conditions with rising HPC order volumes and with longer semi-cap lead time. Capital intensity was still high but was lower versus the prior three quarters as we finished construction of two new sites last quarter. We are preparing them for mass production.
Free cash flow was barely positive, and third quarter 2024 was the eighth consecutive quarter of net cash generation, totaling over TWD 8.3 billion in free cash flow this past two years and closing in on our historical nine-quarter record. Cash conversion cycle further improved, and it will eventually stabilize within a certain range. However, it will be above historical levels given the regionalization of our supply chains. Our results show sustained operating efficiency, robust cash flow sustainability, greater liquidity and financial strength, and strategic flexibility. On a bigger picture, we have high expectations for continued growth as we enter deeper into this new multi-year growth streak, and our execution is showing its initial returns from our long-term investments. We're not new suppliers in HPC and semi-cap and have established strong customer relationships, reliably delivering capability and capacity on time.
HPC sales have grown from under 10% of industrial data com in 2018 to 20% of total sales now, with organic sales rising eight to nine times from the first quarter 2019 to the third quarter 2024 so far. Semiconductor sales have grown from under 10% of industrial in 2019 to under 10% of total sales now, with organic sales rising 31-32 times from the first quarter 2019 to the third quarter 2024 so far. We're riding the growth wave in these two businesses, with achievable potential for them to become much bigger in the next few years as we win new projects and new customers. M&A remains a core part of our corporate strategy, and we just closed two new deals, Easys and The Cable Connection, with sales of EUR 44.5 million and of $22.3 million respectively in 2023.
These two deals will help boost our NPI and box build and system integration capabilities and capacities. As an industrial insider, we look for targets that present us with a win-win scenario, and emerging HPC, cable, and semi-cap wire harness opportunities are the result of CDBG and IMBG synergy. Our EABU, SPD, and IMBG are all generating cash for the group, with EABU already having and SPD about to have paid back their deal value, achieving strong payback for BizLink. If you map our gross margin from the first quarter 2017 to the third quarter 2024, you will see that after it bottomed in the first quarter 2018, there has been a general uptrend since then, with the third quarter 2024 levels just shy of the first quarter 2017 levels.
From a financial perspective, you can see our execution over the past two to three years leading to a leaner and a stronger BizLink across profitability, asset conversion, and capital structure. There are many spending projects incoming, as well as lots of ongoing customer engagement, and we'll continue to evaluate opportunities to accelerate development in market and customer penetration. HPC and semi-cap need solid financials to successfully realize them. The successful diversification of our global business to create resilient supply chains for customers has given us many options to grow with HPC and semi-cap, being the latest ones.
However, we remain nimble and highly adaptable to change as this quality is central to our Silicon Valley corporate identity. We aim to achieve profitable and healthy long-term growth like our global peers, and this race in HPC and semi-cap is not about price but about developing a proven track record by delivering quality on time. Florian will now provide us updates on our latest quarterly operational takeaways.
Yeah, thank you, Charles. So, let's start with a near-term outlook. We are seeing various demand situations across our globally diversified business, with some areas growing increasingly stronger and some areas still trying to find a bottom. HPC and semi-cap remain our key highlights. Factory automation and electric vehicles are still the key lowlights, and healthcare continues to slowly grow. These five drivers account for just under two-thirds of total sales. Industrial is still the largest segment, followed by IT data com. Automotive continued to be the smallest segment from last quarter, with electrical appliances getting progressively bigger than that. Looking into the fourth quarter 2024, industrial and IT data com will stay strong. Automotive will remain weak, and electrical appliances will enter into a seasonally slower period. Now, let's look at IT data com.
Deep diving into our HPC business, we delivered on increases in customer demand for high-speed data and high-power cable and connector solutions. CSPs are aggressively building data center capacity, and they are depending on proven and agile suppliers they trust to supply critical high-value components. The current challenge is ensuring the ability to deliver the required quantity, quality, and timeliness of the current platform and on the design specifications for future platforms, rather than focusing on determining who will supply what and when.
We continue to expand our capacities and capabilities in more locations with Southeast Asia and with Taiwan to become important production or competence centers. Key customers have recently reported their results, and while there is a worry of an AI bubble, we concur with other companies in the HPC supply chain that AI is real and that it is here to stay. Customer demand in terms of specification and volumes continues to move up despite recent market chatter, and we will be realizing some of them in our sales and profits next year.
We are shipping 400G high-speed data cables in volume and have started to ship some 800G as well, which will support networks that are multiplexed to 800G or to 1.6T respectively. We are also shipping AC 30 amps and AC 60 amps high-power whips, as well as various bus bars to support 33-70 kW power shelves and up to 100 kW rack power. Many of the latest specifications that we are developing with customers will not be realized next year in volume as technology is moving faster than our shipments nowadays. Landscape is very fragmented, but our ability to consistently design and supply high-capability solutions in more locations is an important winning factor.
We are successfully building a strong track record with existing customers and are winning new ones, including other cloud service providers and infrastructure providers. Now, coming to our industrial segment, deep diving into our semi-cap business next, we delivered on increases in customer demand for cable assemblies, wire harnesses, box build, and system integration solutions. Semiconductor production equipment companies are expanding their footprint in more regions while dealing with advanced chip scaling, 2.5D packaging, power efficiency, and yield challenges for tomorrow's silicon. The issue is now being able to supply not just simple cable assemblies and wire harnesses, but more complex industrial-grade integrated electrical mechanical systems. We continue to expand our capacities and capabilities in more locations with Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe to become important production or competence centers.
Key customers have recently reported their results, and while there was some worry last month, we have only seen business conditions continuing to strengthen. Customer demand in terms of box build and system integration is very strong and growing, and we are working to fulfill all of them heading well into 2025. Projects are becoming more complicated, with high-complexity system integration needing 4,000-5,000 components and about 10,000 process steps, but lead to more content and margin. We are fulfilling cable assemblies and wire harness demand for both high-spec engineered-to-order and high-efficiency build-to-print projects covering more ground together. We are slowly seeing cable assembly and wire harness engineered-to-order demand needing faster time to market and box build and system integration build-to-print demand needing design work. We aim to win them and upgrade our capabilities.
Customer requirements remain high for all categories despite differences in business models, and we are executing to plan with market share gains materializing. Now, if we look at the bigger picture perspective, many projects start off in the new product introduction stage, and having this capability in more of our sites is a key part of our winning ability with existing and new customers. Providing fast responses reliably to customers allows us to realize their new ideas together, constantly innovating for tomorrow's solutions.
Capability expansion is ongoing with our two new sites and with our two new acquisitions, providing customers with more options to serve them from. Global supply chains continue to be broken up to de-risk from future disruptions, future restrictions, and to service future local demand much faster. HPC and semi-cap customers are moving into this direction, and this trend will accelerate next year. BizLink is there to help future-proof our supply chains.
We will achieve strong year-on-year HPC and semi-cap sales and profit growth this year, and this will persist in 2025 as we roll out new projects and new customer contribute. We are still many things that we need to do, and we are seeking strategic partnerships and actively evaluating acquisitions to develop technologies for future growth waves. We have kicked off post-merger integration activities with Easys and The Cable Connection, and synergies with them will materialize next year within the industrial segment. We are actively working with various business groups and business units in realizing additional efficiency and productivity gains with the goal to produce more at higher quality.
This is benefiting our cost of goods sold and operational expenses, and we will see more gains in the coming quarters as we progress through these efforts, some of which are in tracking already and some of which are in enhancing phases now. We are encouraging more cross-talk and more cross-work between various levels of our global operations and see many projects in the pipeline or about to be launched soon. We will enhance our R&D efforts to develop solutions with customers internally, but we will also continue to use M&A to add to our resources and bring in new businesses. We are greatly boosting our agility and our endurance to fulfill demand in an ever more complex and volatile operating environment and at ever more higher customer requirements.
We continue to strive towards greater corporate sustainability, and we have shared many initiatives to achieve our ideals over the past few quarters with more to come. It has taken some time, but we are slowly closing in on our global peers and are being recognized as a competitor in some areas or as a target for smaller peers. We have been able to catch up on the latest technology and specification to ensure our market relevance is a viable and reliable alternative to our global peers. Felix will now provide updates on our latest quarterly corporate takeaways.
All right, thank you, Florian. From a bigger picture perspective, BizLink has come a long way from our founding days, but the key to our sustainable growth has been the constant building of a solid base of customers, capability, and capacity. Customers come to us to help solve their problems, which nowadays means designing innovative solutions and mass-producing them across more regions. The process from quotation to production is the same despite different end applications, but this changes when the complexity of the solution rises. This is quickly becoming the new norm.
Deeper and prolonged customer engagements in their industry give us insights on where we can elevate, where the next opportunity is, and if we need M&A to achieve it. It might not just be technology that needs to be upgraded, but it can also be a critical process central to improving efficiency or to validating a design. Breakthrough developments do not happen by chance. We have transformed from a commodity-focused supplier to a customized-focused one over the past few years, and we have had the privilege to know our customers' thoughts and their strategy in depth.
This customer relationship is a competitive edge. Knowing their roadmaps allows us to be involved with new projects very early to have more time to meet cost, quality, supply chain, and volume needs. Being physically located near many customers allows us to regularly make this shift as the distance at some sites is very close, allowing for faster response and showing we highly value them. Quick turnaround means having the flexibility and the speed to adjust to change, which is vital in a quick-moving technology industry like in HPC and in semi-cap.
We are raising our in-house know-how and boosting our vertical integration and are dealing directly as a tier-one supplier with customers without sacrificing margins for profitable growth and to gain market share. The breadth and depth of solutions that we offer customers and our willingness to tailor them to their needs while meeting stringent specs give us staying power. We do not compete with them. HPC and semi-cap have large and growing talents, and our customers have high and are gaining market share in their respective markets. So our growth has been a steady stream of strategically conscious decision.
We are following closely defined global peers in select business and solutions despite our smaller scale through agility and resilience. It has been a technical challenge to keep up, but we can quickly reinvent ourselves to gain new opportunities and use M&A to accelerate market and product developments. It is not just about being able to follow technological and customer demand trends, but eventually, gradually being able to anticipate them.
Our growing list of well-known global brands and brand-name customers is proof that we are still doing well. Our landscape continues to shrink even as end markets continue to grow bigger. The boom cycles have already started, and we are riding them. There are multi-year growth cycles having a minimum of two to three years of growth from the 2023 lows. On IT data comp, sharing our view on HPC first. We expect sales growth over the next few years to outpace total sales growth, resulting in a steadily higher mix. The trend for higher speed and higher power solutions to support widespread bandwidth and wattage needs for newer high-performance compute is capital-intensive.
Achieving 400G and 60M does not mean that our R&D stops, but it immediately goes to 800G and 100M even before mass production, as it is a continual process. We need to be able to grab opportunities in target platforms to be in advantageous position to grab opportunities. Traditional racks used to cost $300,000, but now GB200 racks cost well over $3 million, and system integrators are seeing their sales reflect this jump in ASPs. The challenge is to be able to produce the same products in more locations, not just due to geopolitical, but also to grab regional opportunities. AEC is quickly becoming the mainstream high-speed data solution for Ethernet, given its best cost performance and Ethernet's open source, encouraging widespread adoption and leading to better scalability and power efficiency.
AEC is here to stay, and its distance sweet spot is up to seven meters, but it is possible that copper solutions may eventually hit physical and engineering limitations at some future bandwidth rate. This may be when CPO comes in, as it may have more favorable cost performance at that time. We are developing relevant capabilities for optic interconnects and system integration support. There will be a massive growth in levels of power needed to support future data centers. Using liquid cooling does not reduce the amount of power needed, and so there has been a trend towards tapping into nuclear. GPUs with two kilowatt power requirements are possible within the next years or so, and B200 is just one kilowatt, essentially meaning a doubling in power density needed per rack.
Power is platform agnostic, and while it is possible that there is less overall content in racks, total HPC load can potentially be bigger than data. Market forecasts usually talk about data center load in terms of gigawatt hour, which is a power measurement, not data, and so sufficient power supply is essential. There are lots of new technologies emerging, and this provides customers with more choices, so we must choose the correct one to ride the growth wave and to survive, and we have thus far executed very well. On industrial segment, sharing our view on semi-cap labs, we also expect sales growth over the next few years to outpace total sales growth, resulting in a steadily higher mix.
Geopolitics is also forcing regionalization of semi-cap manufacturing, leading to the building of supply chain ecosystems with Asia quickly growing, North America emerging as next in line, and Europe likely to be the last one. Smaller players are disappearing or are becoming acquired as customers want suppliers with staying power and those that they can see a future with, which is similar as in HPC. The growing install base of lagging edge tools with service commitments and the need for them to be maintained or even upgraded to squeeze out additional productivity and efficiency gains benefits our semi-cap business, as does the need for the latest and greatest tool. We have raised our capabilities and upgraded our capacities and upgraded our capabilities over the past few years, leading to sizable value-added opportunities by becoming our customer's go-to global solution provider.
There are multiple business models that work in semi-cap, from cable assembly and wire harnesses to box build and system integration, as well as from build to print to engineering to order. We are experiencing multiple business exposure transitions to the higher end, and customers want their partners to fulfill non-critical or overflow areas or design for their next generation tool. Customers want one-stop shops. This means having a strong balance sheet and maybe efficient process R&D resources, different cost cleanrooms, special equipment, and unique raw materials. Semi-cap tools may be operating in high vacuum, necessitating high precision, high cycle times, high endurance acceleration value, zero dust, and high-performance flexible cables.
Customers may want cable assemblies, wire harnesses, box build, and system integrations that do not need such strict cleanliness requirements, sending us back to manufacture them, but they need high efficiency. However, customers may send specs that need to be improved upon and/or may want their suppliers to design new specs for them, both needed R&D resources. Strong supply chain management, continual process improvement, and advanced MES shop floor with automated vertical modular lift inventory systems are must-haves, especially for more complex projects.
This often deals with thousands of components, thousands of process steps, and thousands of artisan manpower hours to ship out these HMLV, high-mix raw material orders. We have essentially become an EMS for semi-cap, but there is a very different business nature compared to HVLM, high-volume, low-mix consumer electronics, as our solutions are only for industrial-grade applications. Finally, we are starting to see liquid cooling in enclosure projects, which means in-house testing and installation capabilities will be needed. Now, let me turn the call over to Mike.
Thank you, Felix, Charles, and Florian. This concludes our prepared statement section. Now, let us begin the Q&A section. Please type in your questions, and then we will answer as many of them as possible in the time remaining. I see some questions about our acquisitions. I see one: Has the firm completed the acquisition of Easys? Is it possible to offer more color on what it does and what's the financial impact of business, including revenue margins and related expense? More color on the Easys deal and potential impact on P&L. For this one, I'd hand it over to our CFO, Charles, to provide some feedback.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for this question. Actually, we're excited to bring the Easys and Cable Connection team to BizLink, and we look forward to their contribution. We just get their 2023 audited sales during the prepared remark portion of this call. The blended 2023 audited gross margin is just slightly above our corporate average right now. Now, their sales will be added to our monthly total from this month onward, and post-quarter 2024, we have two months of their contribution. Post-merger integration activity has commenced, and their respective team have joined our relevant business unit. We anticipate seeing their initial synergy early next year.
Thank you, Charles, and as well as to Peter Terry and Daniel Heller for those questions. We continue to see a lot of questions about our M&A activity. Every quarter. So for this one, any specific segment looking for M&A, or will we stop looking for non-organic growth from here? For this question, I'd like to hand it over to our Chairman Roger.
Yeah, of course, we will continue looking for M&A target, okay? So it seems that we get this question every time, and it shows to me that the market is looking forward to our M&A deals. It is encouraging that we are doing both deals without too much additional external funding, as it shows that our finances are strong enough to be able to do this. Trust me or not that our target generates both cash and profit over time, and we thank our various teams for making the entire integration smooth and timely so that we can all realize additional gains together sooner and with less headaches.
Felix also earlier noted that customer relationship is one of our competitive advantages. Long-term trust is a continuing test, and it will endure over many years. HPC and semi-cap are high-stakes businesses with extremely low tolerance for error, and we need to ensure that we can handle the complexity. We have been able to show that we can ramp up our capacity to meet fast-growing customer demands.
Our supply chain resilience and agility are very important, and we have shown to our customers that we are excellent partners. Our mutual cooperative sustainability is also vital, and you cannot buy this. We continue to be interested in areas that will boost our long-term growth, and we are the most optimistic on HPC and on semi-cap. We will, of course, look at all deals, but we are selective on our targets, as we have explained during this call. Our M&A deals are not just about strengthening our customer capability and the capacity base, but also about bringing fellow industry professionals and their experience, expertise, and relationships in-house, from sales to engineering to management. Our results are proof that this works. Thanks.
Thank you, Roger, for that insight. Thank you, Daniel Heller, for that question. This question for this next one is asking about any further fundraising, the debt borrowing plan. What will be the key purposes, including M&A, capacity expansion? For this one, I'd like to hand it over to Charles.
Okay, thank you. Actually, we do have good cash in the bank and strong cash generating capabilities so far. So our financials do not really call for us to have any fundraising plan in the visible future, but no, it's never off the table. If we need extra capital to realize foreseeable opportunity, we will weigh our options and decide on the best possible course of action to take. We believe in the long-term potential of business. So we're working toward realizing this potential.
We aim to maximize our value to our stakeholders and our R&D and experience from [audio distortion] in effectively communicating our efforts and our results that we recognize for our never-ending effort. We have shown our strong cash generating ability for the past two years and our strong HPC and semi-cap sales growth over the past few quarters. Our funding in early 2022 and in early 2023 were the sources of the fund that made all this possible. So ample gains do not come by luck nor do they come overnight.
Thank you, Charles, for the colorful commentary there, as well as for the question from Viva Flores. Wow, I see quite a few questions still about the high-performance computing side of our business. Let me read a couple of them. Business has been undergoing an industry status upgrade with GB200 track record. What could be the firm's next new major product line that is developed organically? There's another question. There are more and more connector companies declared that they've broken into GB200 supply chain.
How about the competition of AI connector market and the competitors of BizLink? I'll just read another one so everyone has an idea of the kind of questions that we're seeing. Once again, I would like to ask if you have sensed more competition in AI products for now versus three to six months ago. That said, have you noticed more competitors trying to supply more AI cable products for lower prices? Any potential negative impacts investors need to monitor? And then the last one, or can we rest assured that BizLink has the same positive outlook for AI server sales contribution? That's quite a lot, but for this one, I'd like to hand it over to Florian.
All right, thanks. This is quite a lot of questions, so I try to tackle them. The future total addressable market for HPC is actually much too big for only one company to benefit from it. It takes a lot of time and money to successfully ramp up production and also to deliver the solutions. We have lots of interconnect peers on a global, but also on a regional level, but also on a higher or lower-tiered level. When you look at HPC, you need to look at the bigger picture, I think. It takes a lot of resources to realize the growth that we have achieved. It's a multi-year and high-spending and strategically directed endeavor. So smaller regional peers, they do not have this kind of resources, so their realizable opportunity will be limited by this condition.
So the further we get ahead, the harder it will get for those smaller regional peers to catch up. They may eventually get small wins at customers' diversifying to prevent any single suppliers from having a competitive advantage over them or dictate business terms, but not all components are high value and are critical to the ecosystem. And not all suppliers have a track record of strong execution. So the price is usually their way in, but they are not directly dealing with CSPs like we do. They make lower profits in the business, and that needs to continue actually to invest in tomorrow's specifications. So their resources are tied in ramping up their wins, and cadences for next-generation ecosystems are shrinking, meaning the R&D for them starts before these gains are realized.
So finally, the closer we are in the timeline for the opportunities that have yet to come, the lower the chances are for large changes, and then the issue becomes entirely on execution. And on the other side, larger global peers have more businesses, and they are usually a lot larger, meaning they need more total resources. But this tends to make them also less agile and less willing to make last-minute changes due to sudden shifts in customer requirements.
However, HPC and semi-cap are very quick-moving and high-demanding tech industries. These larger global peers are usually the tech leaders, and we have managed to keep up with them. Our global teams are working to ensure we meet these table stakes need to not fall behind. Eventually, there will be a few larger suppliers that will see the bulk of this growth, but we are also here in the game.
Our third quarter 2024 sales is already almost at the prior peak, and the bias from us is strongly pointing upwards. We expect this growth wave to last at least for a few more years, and I can tell you that HPC business is not the only one that we are achieving growth in, and actually also our semi-cap business will not be the last one to also see this kind of growth, and I think hopefully I answered most of the questions, and back to you, Mike.
Thank you, Florian, for the insights. I do realize there are quite a few other questions talking about AI as well, but we'll try to answer as much on that as we can. We do also see quite a few on semis, particularly in VB1. How do you expect the semi-capex cycle to impact orders in your or our CapEx plan? For this particular question, I'd like to hand it over to Felix.
All right. Yeah, our third quarter sales already passed its R&P and its higher, and the bias is also strongly pointing upward. What the market seems to ignore is that semi-cal and HPC are highly correlated. In fact, the correlation coefficient for our HPC and semi-cal sales is 0.75, which orders a very strong association. So more SPE tools are needed for the most advanced compute, given the various challenges in chip scaling, power efficiency, and packaging. And not all of these tools are directly tied to lithography. Our specialist tool-making customers have high market shares in their respective processes, although we have the most upside in more generalist tool makers, given our exposure now.
The entire universe of front-end tool makers are spending more time and effort in their core business, means product R&D as well as sales and marketing. So customer demand is rising for cable assemblies and wire harnesses in both built-to-print and engineered-to-order categories. But we are seeing an even bigger demand increase for more complicated box build and system integration, including control boxes, power distribution units, IMCs, and enclosures, which all have higher contents and higher margins.
This has mainly been built-to-print, but we are slowly seeing engineered-to-order too. We have become an EMS supplier for these ultra-complex projects. Enclosures can have 10,000 parts in it. For cable business, it's typically in the hundreds. How many companies can manage this kind of complexity? Engineering capability and supply chain management are essential. As you can see, the ongoing semi-cap upcycle means we will also see our semi-cap sales grow. Our CapEx plans will focus on the area that we have highlighted throughout this call so far. Back to you, Mike.
Thank you, Felix, for answering that question, and for UBS's Ellie for that one. Let me see. Talk a little bit more about our. Could you provide some color regarding order visibility across business subsegments, for instance, high-performance computing, semi-cap, auto, and factory automation? Which end applications are gaining more visibility and which shorten? For this one, I'd like to hand it over to Florian.
All right, thanks, Mike. So the order visibility actually differs a lot across our various businesses. We see at HPC and also semi-cap, first of all, being the strongest outlook at the moment, but also we have good visibility, which is extending well into next year. On the other side, factory automation and electric vehicles remain weak and still are subject to short-term changes, and the visibility is rather low, and the uncertainty is quite high. Healthcare, on the other hand, somewhere in the middle, has slowly improved recently, and we get more growth momentum here in the last couple of weeks.
EA is somewhere in between. We have seasonality here, which is towards the year-end increasing, and then after the Christmas business also going down again. And peripherals, I mean, is an area where we will continue to de-emphasize as it undergoes its transformation, as we noted also in the last couple of calls. That's basically the overview about the visibility and also for different businesses. So back to you, Mike.
Thank you, Florian, for replying to numerous questions. Let me see what other questions there are in the queue. For the next question, is the company participating in the design of next-generation AI servers? How does the company view its potential benefits from these future server developments? For this particular question, I'd like to hand it over to Felix.
Yeah, Mike. So actually, as I mentioned earlier, the development or evolution of the AI actually is very fast. So while we are designing, we are making prototypes for the first one, for the current one, actually, we are already working on the drawings or on some of the spec with our customers for next generation. So actually, we are talking about not just next generation, but next two generations.
So this is actually the whole thing has been changing, especially for the AI because of the development speed of this. So that's why it's very important for us to work directly with either Tier 1 or even the chip makers directly on the new spec, okay, so that we can provide a fast response to our customers, okay, and able to participate and also have time to work on the next one or opportunity to work on the next generation or next two generations. So yes, we are doing that.
Thank you, Felix, for the feedback on that question, and to, I believe, it was Eric that asked that question. Let me see. For the next one. For the next question, there is one from Mirta. Inventory write-back in the third quarter 2024. I'd like to hand this over to Charles to give some insight on that.
Okay. Thank you, Mike. Actually, I believe in the prepared remarks session, I already said that inventory impact our minimum. Yes, there are still some minor write-back, but as we enter into third quarter and inventory end of 2024, I believe most of the inventory that we rolled up in 2022, most of them already disposed of. So I wouldn't expect it wasn't really a meaningful impact in the third quarter 2024, and I wouldn't expect it to have a lingering effect into the foreseeable future.
Thank you, Charles, for that, as well as Mirta for the investor for that question. For this question, also from Eric as well, has the market share for AEC products seen stronger than expected demand, and are customer needs exceeding initial projections? For this one, I'd like to hand it over to Felix again.
Yeah, I think both answers are yes. Actually, we have been seeing a stronger than expected and higher than expected the demands. Also, as I mentioned in earlier remarks, that this has become more and more standard. I think more end customers, whether it's the CSP or the other market players, they are looking into solutions with AEC. Yes, we are seeing that, and it's quite significant.
Thank you, Felix, for the feedback. Again, thank you, Eric, for the question. Let's see. Let's see. The other questions in the queue are quite similar to the ones that we've already responded to or are in the prepared remarks section. With that, thank you, Roger, Felix, Florian, and Charles. This concludes our Q&A section. A replay of the conference call today will be available on our website within 24 hours from now. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to the BizLink investor relations team. We thank you very much for joining today's call. You may disconnect.