ENNOSTAR Inc. (TPE:3714)
Taiwan flag Taiwan · Delayed Price · Currency is TWD
66.60
-3.40 (-4.86%)
Apr 24, 2026, 1:30 PM CST
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Earnings Call: Q3 2024

Nov 7, 2024

Speaker 1

Hope that we will be able to maximize our influence in our market share overall. In other segments, among other customers, backlight demand slowed. We hope that our performance will improve when higher seasonality occurs in Q2. The other factor relating to idle capacity is associated with display. As mentioned, display accounted for a nice share of our revenue. With the resolution increasing for displays, the number of LEDs used per display has been surging.

So the overall market has been increasing. We are growing our market share along with our customers. To address idle capacity, we are leveraging our existing capacity efficiently, hoping to maximize the production volume to better control our idle costs and idle loss. In Q1, we think the demand will slightly be better than our expectations. So this concludes my remark. Thank you, Patrick. Next, Terry will go over Lextar's Q1 business outlook.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm Terry from Lextar. In Q1, Lextar's performance benefited from the rush orders that we received for TV and IT products. So we will likely be able to offset the negative impact of slower seasonality and fewer working days. We expect to see Q1 revenue grow in q-o-q and y-o-y. For the automotive segment in Q1, due to the market's inventory corrections, we believe our revenue will be flattish q-o-q but up y-o-y.

And we expect that we will see visible growth starting from Q2. Automotive lighting, automotive backlight, and automotive sensing will likely grow with the demand for electric vehicles and smart cockpit applications. As Patrick mentioned, interior and exterior automotive LED adoption has been increasing, making a substantial contribution to our revenue. We expect that our revenue of the automotive segment to grow by more than 50% y-o-y this year.

In terms of sensing, including wearables and surveillance business, due to increased volumes with existing customers and the introduction of new customers, Q1 revenue is expected to grow y-o-y and q-o-q. For the full-year results, we believe that we will be able to post double-digit growth.

For our backlight business, on the back of rush orders, it is expected to post growth q-o-q and y-o-y. We are optimistic about this year's outlook. Our IT and TV application LED sales will likely benefit from the IT replacement cycle this year and stronger demand triggered by Olympic Games, Euro Cup, and other large sports events. So this concludes my overview of our Q1 business outlook. Thank you, Terry.

Before we proceed to questions and answers, I would like to add that in 2024, our full-year CapEx is expected to be TWD 3 billion, and our 2024 full-year amortization and depreciation will likely be TWD 4.5 billion-TWD 5 billion. Now, I would like to open the line for questions. Thank you. We now start the questions and answer session. While we are waiting for investors to post questions, we would like to address the questions that we collected previously. First of all, you had a bigger loss in 2023. Will you be able to distribute cash dividends to our long-term investors? Paul, would you please?

Last year, we had a deeper operating loss. Of course, our management team has been working very hard to make improvements. We hope that this year our operating performance will improve significantly.

Moreover, we had asset impairment, but that will not affect our cash position. In addition, during our asset reorganization and restructuring process, we have been carrying out reorganization of our legacy investments or made disposals or asset revitalization efforts. Moreover, we have TWD 11 billion of net cash. Therefore, despite the bigger loss, we still believe that we should have reasonable rewards to our long-term investors.

Starting from this year, we will do our best. We hope that we will be able to adjust our investor rewards strategy. Previously, we generally did not have dividends returning to our investors during the years where we had a loss. Going forward, we hope that we will be able to make adjustments to that policy. We hope that we will be able to reward our investors steadily.

While the actual amount will still be subject to discussion, the amount will be at least a bit higher than personal capital cost so as to ensure reasonable rewards to our investors. Of course, our management team continues to improve our profitability, hoping to reward our investors. So yes, this year, we will be considering cash dividend distribution.

Today, at the board of directors meeting, we have been discussing this matter, and we will announce the number, the amount of cash dividend to be distributed this year. This is B.Y. speaking. Just to recap, Paul said that there will be cash dividend distribution to our investors this year. This morning, our board of directors have already passed the resolution. Despite we had a loss, to ensure our contribution to our long-term supporters and long-term investors, we will be distributing cash dividends from capital reserves so as to reward our investors.

This is Paul speaking again. One more comment. We worked on sorting out operating and non-op losses. So last year was the worst performing year of Ennostar. This year, besides improving our operating performance and non-op performance, is not expected to post bigger impairment. If there is any impairment, we will likely offset the loss through asset revitalization, hoping to minimize non-op impact on our performance, leaving enough room for our operating performance to play out. Thank you, Paul.

The next question, as Patrick and Terry both talked about the automotive segment, this question is all related to the automotive segment. We have been talking about the fact that automotive applications are important growth drivers for Ennostar and key growth drivers for our revenue and profitability. Could Patrick and Terry please provide longer-term views? Thank you, BY. Patrick from Epistar speaking.

About the automotive segment, I would like to have a quick overview. Based on market research and our shipment volumes, we have found that in the traditional LED rear lights and turn signal segments, as well as interior indicator lights and ambient lights, Epistar may have claimed more than half of the market. That is our own analysis.

Given the high market share, it will be a bit hard for us to expand the market share further. However, at the same time, a new trend has emerged in the turn signal and rear lights. Besides the traditional single LEDs, they have been increasingly replaced with Matrix LEDs, leading to a rising number of LEDs used. So we are actively engaging in the design of new projects. Based on these new applications, we will be able to adjust our LED designs to meet the demand of the cars.

There are two segments of the interior lights. One is ambient lights. In a premium vehicle, users get to adjust colors and lights. They can, based on their emotions and feelings, adjust the lighting and the colors. Ambient lights adopt RGB LEDs. As said previously, Epistar has a high ratio of display segment. We have been accumulating much experience in RGB design and applications.

By leveraging the experience in the ambient lights applications, we believe we will be able to grow our ambient light market share so as to grow our revenue in tandem. Secondly, when it comes to backlights, traditional backlights is also a very important segment of Epistar. However, today's trend has shifted toward full array local dimming as the number of LEDs used per panel is surging and automotive displays are getting bigger screen sizes. We see robust growth potential for backlights.

Headlamps claim the biggest share of the automotive LED market. In previous financial results conferences, we have provided details on this segment. Epistar has been working on this field for many years, more than five or six years. This year, we are integrating headlamps with daytime running lamps, which we call front lamps. Front lamps are daytime running lamps plus headlights. With our design, we are able to accommodate these two requirements.

This year, the revenue is expected to triple from last year. Of course, we had a pretty low base period, but we hope that this segment, once we are able to land our footprint in the headlamp segment, the ratio of our front lamps will be able to increase. The automotive market momentum is huge, and we have been investing much in this segment. Of course, it is a very challenging field.

We will continue to invest in our research and development resources, hoping to work with our end customers to boost our growth. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Next, we will have Perry to talk about Lextar's automotive applications. Thank you. In terms of our automotive applications, we mainly have backlights, sensing, and lighting. In terms of backlights, we mainly have our technology applied in dashboards and cluster panels.

As Patrick mentioned, to achieve full array local dimming, many LED products have been widely applied. Lextar has been working on many LED technology for years with our unique product strengths. We have landed business with U.S. and European car makers. It is now our key revenue contributor. Today, we are aggressively developing next-generation Mini LED COB technology, which will be able to apply to making thinner and curved panels and helping to achieve industry-leading low-power consumption performance.

In terms of our automotive sensing products, we mainly have pressure sensing components in the monitoring systems of cockpits. As countries around the world scurry to stipulate rules to make driver and occupant monitoring systems, or DMS and OMS, as standard configurations of vehicles, this segment has seen big growth recently. Lextar's DMS and OMS apply IR and VCSEL components, are able to deliver high recognition features, and our technology has been deployed in the car makers that are based in mainland China and America.

Starting from last year, we are seeing this segment to make a visible contribution to our automotive revenue. Now, about our automotive lighting products. Besides conventional rear lights, we also have interior and exterior displays. For interior applications, we mainly have ambient lights. For exterior displays, we have many mini RGB LEDs or the full array display applied in interactive front lights and tail lights.

This helps to boost the number of LEDs used per vehicle. Currently, we are seeing steady progress in this segment, and our products have been deployed in tier one European car makers. Because this is a new application, a new area, it will likely take two years to ramp volume. We expect that we will be able to deliver in higher volumes in uncertain. The revenue contribution of this segment is very significant. Currently, automotive backlight is our main revenue contributor.

By 2025 and later, automotive lighting will be another important source of our revenue. Thanks to the growth of the EVs and smart cockpit segments, interior and exterior automotive LED adoption has been surging. We are seeing our automotive revenue to post a CAGR of more than 30% by 2026. This concludes my remark, so this is a recap of our automotive strategy and roadmap.

Now, let's move on to the next question. As the company has announced a plan to sell our fab in Zhunan, could we provide more details about our outlook for the Micro LED market and what is the progress of our LED production line construction? Patrick, would you please? Thank you, BY. When it comes to Micro LED, we observed the market trend closely in 2021, but extensive adoption happened later than we expected. But that was not a bad thing for us. Originally, we purchased the fab in Zhunan to build a new fab. During that year, it would have lasted for more than a year. But we ran into labor and material shortage difficulties, as well as high material cost. So as we have observed, the market doesn't have such an urgency for a new Micro LED fab.

In addition, in 2023, we had a higher idle capacity, and we had lower loading rates for our Mini LED production line. As a result, we reviewed our fab operations and decided to relocate a few facilities so as to leave some more space for the production line of Micro LED. This also saved us the time to construct a whole new plant from scratch.

Of course, more importantly, this will also help us to avoid additional CapEx. Now, let's look at our existing operations. We built a 6-inch uncertain RGB production line two years ago, which is expected to have some commercial revenue contribution in the second half of this year. Using the existing space, we will be able to expand our monthly capacity to 5,000 sets. That is something that we can do using the existing space.

Moreover, by reshuffling the existing lines, we will be able to have more space to make another 10,000 sets a month. Of course, what kind of products are we going to make to fill up the production line? It will be something that we'll decide based on the market demand. But at least we will have the space and the facilities ready, and we only will need to make some minor adjustments for clean rooms. This will also help us to make more adjustments, real-time and efficient adjustments to our production lines based on market demands so as to meet the requirements of our customers.

So to recap, we will be using our existing lines to produce Micro LEDs. Besides that, in terms of the dedicated Micro LED production lines, currently we have 6-inch 667-set production line. And with the existing space, we will be able to deliver 5,000 sets a month.

By using the additional space from consolidating our facilities, we have enough room to deliver another 10,000 sets per month. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick, for your comment. Next, if you have any other questions, you may post your questions online. We don't have any other questions online. We will now hand over to the management team.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our conference this quarter. If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us at the IR Department of Ennostar. Thank you very much. We'll see you next time.

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