Welcome to Ennostar's 2023 Q4 financial results conference. Before the meeting starts, all lines are being placed on mute. After the presentations by the management team, there will be a questions and answer session. Now, I'd like to hand over to Mr. Damon Tzeng, Ennostar's IR officer.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I am Damon Tzeng, Ennostar's IR officer. On behalf of the company, I would like to welcome you to participate in our 2023 Q4 financial results conference. I'm joined by four executives: Paul Peng, Chairman of Ennostar; Patrick Fan, Chairman of Epistar; Terry Tang, Chairman of Lextar; and B.Y. Chang, Ennostar's CFO. The agenda for today is as follows. First of all, our CFO will go over 2023 Q4 results, and Chairman Paul Peng will have an opening remark. Then Patrick and Terry will talk about their Q1 outlook respectively.
After that, we will open the line for questions. So that is our agenda for today. Before we delve into more details, I would like to remind you that all forward-looking statements contain risks and uncertainties. Please spend some time to read the safe harbor notice on Slide 2 . Thank you. B.Y., please.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm B.Y. I would like to firstly go over our Q4 results. Our consolidated revenue in Q4 fell 9.5% to TWD 5.574 billion, amid the weaker macro conditions and slower seasonality. Epistar's revenue came in at TWD 3.647 billion NT dollars and Lextar's TWD 1.785 billion.
While the gross margin was dented by the reduced revenue and loading rates due to the inventory controls, the higher margin automotive and special lighting products enjoyed relatively steady demand in Q4, allowing us to partially offset rising costs with product mix improvements. As a result, Q4's gross margin was flattish QOQ, resting at around 8%. We posted relatively big non-GAAP loss in Q4, mainly due to an asset impairment of TWD 3.45 billion, which we announced on January nineteenth. After verification by accountants, the entire amount was recognized in the Q4 of 2023. Owing to these factors, Ennostar's loss attributable to the parent company in Q4 reached TWD 3.962 billion, representing a per-share loss of TWD 5.27. Without the one-time asset impairment, the loss per share would have been TWD 4.58.
For Q4's regular operating results, EPS was negative 0.69 TWD, slightly low, narrower than Q3's negative 0.89 TWD. Full-year statements. Full-year net revenue in 2023 was affected by the weaker macro conditions, which also affected the revenue of our Mini LED products, dropping 22.8% YOY to TWD 22.3 billion. However, automotive products, which are an important growth driver of Ennostar, took up 20% of the revenue in 2023. Including a one-time asset impairment of TWD 3.45 billion in 2023, the net loss attributable to the parent company was TWD 6.783 billion, with an EPS of negative 9.02 TWD. Next slide. Epistar's Q4 and full-year results for your reference, which I will not go into details. Next slide. Epistar's revenue by application.
As explained just now, although Epistar's revenue dipped by 3.7% QOQ in Q4, the demand for automotive and special lighting products was relatively stable, resulting in revenue share gains for the two segments. Automotive took up 27%. Mini LED applications, including NB products, accounted for 13%. Next slide, Lextar's Q4 and full year results, also for your reference here. Next slide. Lextar's revenue by application. Lextar has a higher proportion of backlight products, which were hit by weak backlight demand in Q4, leading to a QOQ revenue slip of 17.8%. However, like Epistar, the demand for automotive and special lighting was relatively steady in Q4, so the revenue shares both increased, with automotive claiming 14%. Next slide, consolidated balance sheet. At the end of 2023, Ennostar's cash and cash equivalent was TWD 15.5 billion.
The net cash after bank borrowings was TWD 11.1 billion, translating to a sufficient cash position. Inventories continued to drop in Q4, with an inventory turnover of 77 days. Ennostar will continue to manage inventory and ARs actively and foster integration within the group, hoping to further improve our asset utilization and accelerate asset activation, thus leading to healthier and steadier cash flows and cash position. Next slide, Q4 cash flows. Despite the deeper operating loss in Q4, we had cash inflows from operating activities. CapEx in Q4 was TWD 367 million. At the same time, thanks to the adequate cash position, we also actively repaid bank borrowings in Q4, further bringing down our loans, which in turn translated to savings in interest expenses. Next slide. This is also the last slide, our 2023 cash flows....
Ennostar's full year cash flow from operating activities was TWD 2.38 billion. The full year depreciation and amortization was TWD 4.84 billion, CapEx TWD 2.034 billion. Overall, our cash flows and cash position in 2023 was very steady and healthy. This concludes the briefing on Ennostar's Q4 results. Now I'd like to hand over to Paul for an opening remark.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to our Q4 financial results conference. I would like to quickly go over our performance. Q4 is the traditional off-season for consumer electronic components. Amid the weaker demand, our revenue fell by 9.5% QOQ. The full year revenue was TWD 22.3 billion, down by 23% from 2022, mainly due to the weaker macro conditions and the reduced demand for commodity products.
However, there are still some aspects here that are worth mentioning. For one, the automotive segment, which we have been working on for a very long time, accounted for 20% of our revenue in 2023 and is expected to see double-digit growth this year. Special applications such as sensing and horticultural lighting also posted steady growth. The demand for consumer products was relatively weak, especially for Mini LED and direct-lit products. Due to the industry's inventory corrections last year, consumers' purchasing activity was depressed, which caused our loading rates to lower, thus leading to increased idle capacity and negative operating margin. For six months or so, we have been vigorously reorganizing our assets. We removed or wrote down non-performing assets that were not profitable. Therefore, losses widened in Q4 due to an asset impairment.
But I think that is necessary evil when we are reorganizing our assets, and it will not affect our cash flow. At the same time, we are reorganizing our factory operations and improving the efficiency of our fabs, which leaves us with enough space to prepare for Micro LED production in the future. Meanwhile, we took the opportunity to revitalize the Zhunan fab that we purchased two years ago. In addition to recovering cash, it also helped us to save the original planned factory construction cost of more than TWD 2 billion. The review of the assets is still ongoing. Within this year, we should be able to complete the review of the legacy investment projects or idle assets, and then proceed to make and implement further plans.
Our balance sheet shows that we have a net cash of TWD 11 billion, which is adequate for us to meet long-term development goals. We are also controlling our CapEx prudently, which led to a fairly healthy balance sheet. In response to relatively weak demand, we also strictly control our OpEx, hoping to quickly improve profitability. As for our 2024 outlook, first of all, I want to talk about Micro LED. We believe it is the key point where our company's competitive advantages and differentiation rests. We will maximize the group synergy in several applications, such as wearables, automotive, interior and exterior applications, and displays. We have launched projects with customers. In addition, large size splicing TV displays will enter mass production this year. Q1 is the slow season. Due to the Lunar New Year holiday, there are relatively fewer working days. Our revenue is expected to decline slightly.
We will strictly control the inventory level and adjust our loading according to actual demand. At the same time, we will continue to restructure production capacity, decommission lower value production lines, and improve manufacturing capabilities and productivity so as to improve our overall competitiveness. The review of our investment entities is still underway, and this year will be a year of consolidation and reorganization of our legacy investments. With the review, we hope to increase strategic investments in the ecosystem with a healthy balance sheet, so that our future long-term development can yield maximum benefits. Overall, we anticipate our performance to go steady, steady upward quarter by quarter. The company will also work hard to increase the proportion of our value-added products.
On the other hand, we will strictly control the CapEx and OpEx, focus on the integration and improvement of our production capacity, and prepare for the mass production of high-end products and Micro LED, hoping to drive long-term profit growth. So this concludes my overview on the Q4 results and Q1 outlook. Thank you very much for your participation.
Thank you, Paul. Next, we will have Patrick to talk about the Q1 outlook of Epistar.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.... I'm Patrick from Epistar. Following up on Paul's remark, I would like to also provide an overview of Epistar's performance. First of all, for the automotive segment, although the growth of the car market was rather depressed, the number of LEDs used per vehicle has been surging as more direct backlights and ambient lights are being adopted, and exterior lights have adopted Matrix and transparent designs.
The number of LEDs applied per car has been rising rapidly. This trend has started with luxury cars and expanded to mass market models, helping to boost the automotive LED market. In terms of our Q4 outlook, Q4 performance rather, the automotive segment posted growth in revenue. In Q1, due to the fewer working days, the revenue is expected to be slightly lower. However, in terms of demand, we will likely return to the peak demand experienced in Q3 2023. We hope that we will be able to maintain a nice market share, strong supply position, positioning in the supply chain, to sustain our growth in the automotive segment in 2024. The second aspect I would like to share with you is horticulture lighting. Historically, horticulture lighting enjoys stronger demand in Q2 and Q3, and slower demand in Q4 and Q1.
Thanks to the advancements of our energy-saving performance, we were able to hit our target for 2024 at the end of 2023. As a result, our end customers feel convinced that, that they have been able to place orders ahead of time, hoping replenish their stocks during the slower season. Therefore, our horticulture lighting revenue beat our expectations. In Q1, we have been receiving advanced orders from our end customers. Our performance in the slower season has been better than the previous off-seasons. This also give us more confidence to our order momentum in Q2 and Q3. We owe this to the leading performance of our technology and products, helping us to hit our targets ahead of time. In 2023, the main cause of our loss was the idle capacity. Previously, we have been investing much in Mini LED lines.
However, due to industry's inventory corrections, demand slowed visibly. At the same time, we have been working very hard to boost our Mini LED market share, and we are delivering our products and services at a higher quality so as to serve our end customers. Today, we think the Q1 revenue will be higher than that of Q4 and Q3 last year. We also hope that this growth momentum will carry into Q2 this year. We are maintaining close interactions with our end customers every quarter, so as to grow our market share, not through lower unit prices, but through higher quality of services, as well as to lower the idle cost. Moreover, in terms of intelligent sensing, mainly applied in wearables, we have expected the segment to be to see weaker demand. However, the Q4 of last year was better than expected.
That was also a good direction that we have been able to observe. However, our high-end sensing products are higher unit items. We have to observe the impact of the macroeconomy in 2024. To avoid the negative impact of the macro weakness, starting from two years ago, we have been engaging with other and more end customers. We expect to see some initial results coming out in the second half, and these results are expected to be bigger next year. At the same time, we hope to expand our reach in the top three wearable sensing customers, so as to enhance our product diversity and lower the impact of the macro weakness. In terms of intelligent sensing, we 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. Another 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 cost 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 receive 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 QOQ and YOY. For the automotive segment in Q1, due to the market's inventory corrections, we believe our revenue will be flattish QOQ, but up YOY, 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, in interior and exterior automotive, LED adoption has been increasing, making substantial contribution to our revenue. We expect that our revenue of the automotive segment to grow by more than 50% YOY 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 YOY and QOQ. 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 QOQ and YOY. We are optimistic about this year's outlook. Our IT and TV application LED sales will likely benefit from 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 director 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-GAAP losses. Last year was the worst performing year of Ennostar. This year, besides improving our operating performance and non-GAAP 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-GAAP impact on our performance, leaving enough room for our operating performance to play out.
Thank you, Paul. The next question, as Paul 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, B.Y. 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 light LED, single LEDs, they have been increasingly replaced with Matrix-type LEDs, leading to 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 vehicles, 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 light 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 Terry 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, Mini LED products have been widely applied. Lextar has been working on Mini 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 applied in 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 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 Mini LED, Mini RGB LED, 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 2022. 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 plan to sell our fab in Zhunan, could we provide more details about our outlook for Micro LED market? And what is the progress of our LED production line construction? Patrick, would you please?
Thank you, B.Y. 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 saves 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 six-inch, 667-set 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 this 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 more efficient adjustments to our production lines based on market demands, so as to meet the requirements of our customers. 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 pose 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.