Thank you very much, Hans. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to GlobalWafers Q1 2022 Earnings Call. This is Leah Peng, the Deputy Spokesperson. We also have Doris Hsu, Chairperson and CEO of GlobalWafers in this call. This call will be started with opening comments by Doris, followed by my brief summary of the industry overview and the financial performance. Regarding the Q&A section, Doris will answer the questions we recently received first, then address the online questions raised in the call. Please visit GlobalWafers website for today's presentation, and kindly note that some information during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results or trends could differ materially from our forecast. Please refer to the safe harbor notice that appears on the page one disclaimer.
Please allow me to hand over the call to Doris for opening comments. Doris, please.
Hello, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry for some technical problems, so I delay 1 minute. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for joining GlobalWafers earnings call of Q1 2022. This is Doris. Our spokesperson, William Chan, he is not available to join us today for his personal matters. Leah Peng and the Deputy Spokesperson will guide us through the presentation material today. First of all, let me share some comments of our overall performance in Q1 2022, and also I will update our operation status as well. If you have the material, please move to page 2. Let me start from some financial highlights. In the first quarter of 2022, our revenue is TWD 16.3 billion, which is 10.1% YoY.
This is a record high for us. What's even better than this is that our growth momentum has been lasting for more than two years, starting from Q1 2022. Starting from Q1 2020, so it's over nine quarters of sequential growth. I think this is quite remarkable considering all of the headwinds like the pandemic, the rising commodity and transportation costs, and also quite a lot of geopolitical tensions in many regions. This is a good quarter, good performance on revenue. For gross margin and operating profit, we are doing pretty well in Q1 as well. In Q1 2022, our gross profit margin hit 42.6%. This is a sequential growth since Q2 2021. Our operating profit margin reached 36.1% as well.
Both of these two profitability indices, gross margin 42% and operating income of 36.1%, both of these two are our record high. Let me move to EPS. Our Q1 EPS is TWD 4.01. Although our Q1 2022, our overall performance is quite strong on revenue and also gross margin and operating income, and we also broke a lot of historical highs. Our GWC EPS in Q1 was not as good as previous quarters, which is mainly due to the mark-to-market loss on Siltronic shares we are holding now, which eroded our EPS by TWD 10.67 per share.
If we exclude the valuation loss of Siltronic shares, our Q1 EPS would've amounted to TWD 14.68 per share. We got a huge mark-to-market loss on Siltronic shares we're holding. I will share more details of our overall EPS impact of our Q1 in the Q&A section later on. Next item I would like to share with everyone is the prepayment status. We continuously have further increased on our prepayments from our new LTAs in Q1 2022. As of end of March 2022, our prepayment net prepayment amount has already reached TWD 33.1 billion. This is very close to $1.2 billion.
In one quarter, we increased 15% prepayment, and our net prepayment balance right now is TWD 33.1 billion. This is all-time high prepayment net prepayment all-time high for GWC. Today, we also announced our cash dividend payout payment plan for the second half of 2021. We resolve to distribute a cash dividend of 8 TWD per share for the second half of 2021. Total dividend payout for the second half 2021 is TWD 3.48 billion. For the whole 2021, the annual cash dividend is 16 TWD per share, and the annual payout dividend is TWD 6.96 billion. I will elaborate on the strategic rationale later on in the Q&A session for our dividend payout.
Next is the outlook of semiconductor industry. Though there are uncertainties in the world economy, the strong momentum in semiconductor industry is still obviously less driven by long-term mega trends such as 5G, EV, AI, server and cloud. All of these will consume much more semiconductors than before because of the increasing silicon content. The outlook for the semiconductor industry looks still very bright, notwithstanding the potential short-term volatilities due to supply-demand mismatches, as well as the changing macroeconomics and geopolitics. Also, we keep monitoring the impact from the Ukraine crisis very closely as well. The ongoing war will further increase the economic risk. So far, no order reductions have been seen from GlobalWafers.
We are still fully loaded, and we are still working on LTA discussions with our long-term customers right now. GlobalWafers, we closely monitor the development and cooperate with customers very closely and timely. We also have built multiple vendors to diversify the risk long before the crisis. So far, no particular impact on our operation from the Ukraine crisis. Next, I would like to update a little bit about our view on the automotive and wide bandgap semiconductors. This year, I think global automotive production will cut maybe as much as several million or even 10 million-11 million vehicles due to logistics, supply disruption and shortage of critical vehicle components. EV is still scaling up, backed by a government stimulus package to ensure a very smooth pathway to net- zero carbon emission.
There will also be robust demand for compound semiconductors, not only for EV vehicles itself, but also for the infrastructures, such as the charging stations and of course, a lot of onboard charge in the vehicle. We are seeing very strong demand for compound materials, including wide bandgap semiconductors like Gallium Nitride, Gallium Nitride on Silicon, silicon carbide or silicon carbide on silicon carbide. Next, I would like to update our China lockdown status. GlobalWafers has an operation in China. It's located in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province. Our production has been suspended from April second to end of April. Basically the whole April, almost very limited production due to local government's zero COVID policy.
However, with our GlobalWafers group comprehensive shipping channels and flexible allocation, GlobalWafers responded to this crisis with agility and minimized the impact on our customers. There is no material impact on financial and operational due to the China lockdown for our Kunshan operation, owing to our Kunshan operation weighs less than 5% of GlobalWafers group consolidated revenue. Basically, we are resuming our production in Kunshan gradually now. That's our current status. Last but not least, I announce that GlobalWafers is once again awarded the top 5% corporate governance evaluation among all Taiwan- listed companies for four consecutive years, demonstrating GlobalWafers continuous improvement in our corporate governance. The above are my comments, and next, Leah, please share more on the industry outlook and financial performance with the team.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, Doris. Let me begin with the global GDP growth forecast in page seven. IMF has downgraded 2022 GDP growth twice in a row because of the prolonged Russia and Ukraine conflict. The latest world growth forecast is 3.6%, down by 1.3% from last October. In page eight, in spite of the pressure on world economy, semiconductor industry, which serves as infrastructure carrier for innovations, bridge for connectivity, the most important emotional needs in the era of pandemic, is still robust and solid. It's anticipated to be a trillion dollar industry by 2030 at 7% CAGR, driven by computing storage, wireless communication and automotive electronics. Page nine shows 2022 is projected to be a very strong year for semiconductors as well. The average growth rate is at 9.5%.
On page 10, the world turbulence reinforces the call to reshape supply chain, stressing the necessity of local or regional supply. One of GlobalWafers' unique features is its global presence, which strategically locates neighboring major semiconductor players, favorable for timely response with a location flexibility, helping to mitigate geopolitical tensions and the macro instability. Page 11 is EV forecast, which will register substantial gains with net zero emission policy support. Also, the price gap between EV and the internal combustion engine cars will narrow over time with increasing fuel price and the decreasing battery cost, which in turn will drive strong demand for wide bandgap semiconductors such as SiC and GaN. These are our key products. Let's move on to page 12. Apart from electric vehicles, the rising levels of autonomous driving will augment chip market revenue, and will weigh 93% of automotive chips in 2030.
Page 13 demonstrates 5G megatrend that is already live in many geographies marked red in this world map. Its broadening adoption coupled with immense capital expenditures in mobile networks and the peripherals upgrade will consume high- value wafers, and the scale will extend further in the future. In page 14, silicon carbide's compact feature is very suitable for inverter, particularly ideal for renewable energy. Surging oil price in the backdrop of Russia and Ukraine war reveals the criticality of building a resilient energy system. SiC market will be exuberant with two pillars. The first one, electric vehicles, as previously mentioned. The second one is the ultimate driving force to combat the climate change. As a result, SiC market will grow further with the soaring capacity additions led by solar and wind. Now let's move on to our financial performance in page 16.
GlobalWafers has contributed a remarkable Q1, considering all the happenings in the world. Our Q1 2022 revenue grows 10% compared to last year, achieving TWD 16.3 billion. Gross margin is 42.6%. Operating profit margin amounts to 36.1%. These are all best ever. However, as Doris' previous comment, EPS is decreased by 10.67 due to Siltronic shares non-cash mark-to-market valuation. Without overseas earning distribution, the reverse of deferred tax liability generated 3.79 in EPS. GlobalWafers current Q1 2022 EPS is 4.01. However, the EPS would have climbed to record-breaking 14.68 if the Siltronic share valuation is excluded. Regarding ROE, fewer net profit coupled with higher shareholder equity, which is mainly due to the capital surplus recognized from equity component of convertible bonds, causing a relatively low ROE at 15%.
The increasing cash position by corporate bond and LTA prepay with fewer profits brought about the 3.5% ROA in Q1 2022. The chart in page 17 shows the sequential growth of revenue and gross margin. Revenue trends up since Q1 2020, and gross margin has also increased starting from Q2 2021. Page 18 is our EBITDA and EPS. Q1 2022 EBITDA is TWD 1.8 billion, with margin at 11.1%. If excluding Siltronic share valuation, EBITDA would have been TWD 27.3 billion with nearly 45% margin, and EPS would have been as high as TWD 14.68. These are all our best- ever- performance, and they will be further elaborated by Doris later. Next page. This is our income statement and balance sheet for your further reference.
Now, I would like to give the floor to Doris for the Q&A section. Thank you. Doris, please.
This is Doris again. As always, let me start from the questions. Answering the questions we received the past several hours and the last couple days. Okay, the first question we received is that GlobalWafers has contributed a robust 1Q 2022 in terms of revenue, gross margin and operating income. EPS is as low as TWD 4.00. Please explain the reason for this low EPS. Well, let me explain our EPS this time, this month. I think we have very good Q1 operational results, but we have two non-operational factors which affect our final EPS. These two non-operational factors are one is positive, one is negative. Let me start from the negative one.
The negative factor, non-operational factor is the impact from Siltronic, the shares we're holding for Siltronic shares. This is an unfavorable non-cash mark-to-market valuation on Siltronic shares. We are holding 13.67% shares in aggregate. This shares investment has been recorded as non-current financial assets at fair value on our financial statements, income statements. At end of Q1, Siltronic stock price was very low and also the fluctuation of euro against NT dollar. This exchange rates, both of these two factors, the stock price and the FX exchange rate, resulted in a loss of over TWD 6 billion for only this non-operational factor for Siltronic. For Siltronic shares only, we suffered.
We have a loss over TWD 6 billion. By this loss, non-cash mark-to-market valuation loss, this lowering our new EPS by around 10.67 TWD per share. This is a big hit for our Q1 and EPS. Consequently, our Q1 2022 EPS is very low. If there was no Siltronic, if we exclude Siltronic mark-to-market valuation loss, then our Q1 2022 EPS would amounted to TWD 14.68 per share. This is our first factor, first non-operational factor. As I said, this is a negative factor to our EPS. Another non-operational factor is our. If you check our Q1 corporate income tax, you will see that that's a big positive number.
This one is because that our Japanese subsidiaries, GlobalWafers Japan. Our Japanese factory's operations have already kicked off the expansion project we announced months ago. That project is now ongoing. The retained earnings of GlobalWafers Japan are still kept in Japan without distribution back to the parent company. Pursuant to IFRS principle, we have to reverse the deferred tax liability based on no dividend distribution of our Japanese operations earnings. This deferred tax liability reverse contributed to our EPS by TWD 3.79 per share. This is a positive impact to our EPS. We had two big impact in Q1. The negative one is from Siltronic, which is as big as TWD 6.67 per share.
We have a positive impact from the reversal of our deferred tax as a tax liability, which is TWD 3.79 per share. That's my explanation, that's my elaboration for our EPS performance in Q1. The second question is about dividend. Compared to previous, the question we received was that compared to previous high payout ratio, GlobalWafers proposed 16 TWD per share for 2021. This is not as high as the past few years. Could you please share with us your rationale? I think GlobalWafers has maintained a very strong cash generation with over TWD 20 billion EBITDA a year on average.
Although we maintain very strong profitability as usual, by strategic adjusting down the dividend payout ratio, we could retain more in cash on hand at much lower cost for our huge ongoing expansion projects. Please note that the global tide of rising interest rates is coming, so we are empowered to pursue future growth planned by CapEx in view of the industry uptick. That's why, because of the high expansion projects, high CapEx for our ongoing expansion project, we have to reserve a little bit more cash on hand to fund all of those expansion projects. That's why we make our dividend payout for 2021 slightly lower. Even this is a little bit lower, but such payout ratio is still in consistency with the semiconductor peers.
The dividend payout ratio is still higher than 58%. That's our answer for the dividend question. The third question is that seeing the rising global interest rates, while GlobalWafers' debt ratio has increased close to 70%. Please advise if this will cause unfavorable impact on interest and hinder your future operation. That's the question we received. You know that our debt ratio in Q1 2022 is lower than last year, but still very high. It's 68%. Our Q1 debt ratio is 68%. This is 2% lower than 2021, but maintains a relatively high level compared to our past record.
Our past record is always around 50% on debt ratio, but now it's 68%. Although the debt ratio is relatively high compared to GlobalWafers' past record, but the cash on hand is very high as well. As of end of Q1, our cash on hand is as high as TWD 65.9 billion. Both of our current ratio and quick ratio surpass 250%. We are very strong, very solid in our overall cash position, in which measuring weighted by deposit. Our financial structure remains very solid, and this is also reflected in Taiwan Ratings, which states that the very recent rating states that GlobalWafers improved capital structure underpins the strong rating, twAA- in February 2022.
We received this rating in February 2022, so we are still very stable and strong, very solid financial structure. Our debt ratio is 68%, but the debt is mainly composed of a prepayment, which is TWD 33.1 billion. In ECB, this is TWD 27.9 billion. In corporate bond, which is TWD 19 billion. These are the main components of our debt. Because, you know, for prepayment, we received huge TWD 33.1 billion prepayment, but on our balance sheet, prepayment is a part of our debt as well. With very low interest rates, these financial measures, for example, our ECB interest rate, actually our interest rate was negative, is - 0.25%.
Our corporate bond interest rate is as low as 0.5%-0.62%. Our interest rate is extremely low. Coupled with the accumulated cash from the lower dividend distribution, I think we will have a strong leverage insulating from the rising funding cost, and empowers GlobalWafers to expand our operation and build our long-term competitiveness with very manageable capital cost. If excluding prepayment, as I said earlier, prepayment is recognized as debt as well. If excluding prepayment, the debt ratio, GWC debt ratio would drop to 59%. GlobalWafers holds abundant cash on hand.
If we include restricted cash from repatriated offshore funds, then our total cash on hand is as high as TWD 74 billion as of end of Q1. TWD 74 billion cash, TWD cash. If we deduct the bank loan, which is TWD 6.4 billion, and corporate bond, which is TWD 19 billion, and we deduct prepayment TWD 3.1 billion, and also we deduct ECB, which is around TWD 27 billion, then the net debt is reduced to just around TWD 10 billion. It's very low. Our net debt is very low. It's just around TWD 10 billion. You know, as I said earlier that GWC EBITDA is on average, our EBITDA is around TWD 20 billion.
If our net debt is only as low as TWD 10 billion, I think our overall financial structure is very solid, very strong. From net debt to equity, you can see that our net debt to equity is as low as 0.23. Our overall financial structure is very strong. The fourth question is about China lockdown. The Chinese government has imposed a series of zero- COVID lockdown measures in an effort to quarantine the outbreak of COVID-19. GlobalWafers Chinese subsidiary located in Kunshan, Jiangsu, the outskirts of Shanghai, it was also locked down since April 2nd. Please elaborate the impact to GlobalWafers. Okay, here is our update for this one.
So far, the impact to GlobalWafers is not significant. First of all, SST, the Chinese subsidiary of GlobalWafers in China, has shipped out most of the finished goods by end of March, so no influence on the consolidated revenue for Q1 revenue. The main challenge is the limited workforce and lack of chemicals, which are under strict safety rules on daily storage volume due to the lockdown measure. We also take advantage of the comprehensive sales and production channels to flex the flexibility, allocate to minimize the impact. That's our China lockdown update.
The fifth question we received is that there are so many headwinds such as rising interest rates, spiking freight and energy costs, plunging stock market, COVID-19 spread, combined with automotive production cuts and slowing down in smartphone and notebooks. All of these are very critical headwinds at the same time. The question is that, please advise if GlobalWafers see any signs of customers' inventory correction and any demand change in terms of wafer size and applications. Here is our answer. Undoubtedly, rising energy costs and interest rates place a damper on all of our business. Nevertheless, we are not yet seeing demand pullback from any of our customers on an overall basis. There is some unevenness in the market with customer consumer demand slowing.
For example, smartphone and notebooks, those are slowing down a little bit, while the automotive, industrial and server markets continue to be very hot. The conclusion is that so far, although so many headwinds, so far all of our production lines are fully loaded and customer demands remain pretty strong in general. Except those weaker one, but we have some hotter demand, stronger demand to take over the overall capacity. All of our lines are still very strong. So far, no order cancellation or push out from any of our customers. That's our answer to the fifth question. The next question is that, per the previous earnings call, GlobalWafers forecast a very promising 2023 through 2025.
Please, illustrate if you still maintain same positive projection despite of the recent headwinds. Yes, I think that, here is our answer. We still see very strong demand, especially for 200 millimeter and 300 millimeter, and also for compound. For 2022, customer fab capacity is forecasted to have a second year of unprecedented growth greater than 8%, with the fab utilization rate greater than 93%. So far, our view for 2023- 2025 remain unchanged. Next question is LTA. The question is that: Please advise if customers are less willing to sign LTA, more hesitant to sign LTA under such volatile world circumstances. Have you closed any new LTA with customers recently?
These are the question, and we received so many messages asking for same question, the LTA question. Let me answer together here. With each passing week, we continue to keep working with our customer for new LTA. We continue sign new LTA, new customer LTA contracts, especially of larger diameter in advanced products, with 300 millimeter being our customer's primary target. Please note that, you know, if you check our financial statements from the net prepayment amount, you can see that our prepayment keeps increasing month by month in 2022. Our current prepayment is around 15% higher than end of 2021.
The answer to your question is that our customers are still positive and we keep finalizing LTAs with our customers, even in Q1 under so many headwinds, environment. Okay. The last question I want to answer here is about the CapEx. GlobalWafers announced CapEx plan in February. Please update the current progress, if there are any difficulties in construction or delay in ramp-up schedule after experiencing the aforementioned headwinds. Okay. We are having a brownfield expansion. We are having brownfield expansions in Taiwan, America, Italy, Korea, Japan and Denmark. These six countries, six operations. The common and major headwind is the tool lead time.
We are experiencing a much longer tool lead time than before. Although the tool lead time is getting longer, most of our brownfield projects are kept on schedule, because we have already placed the long lead time tools earlier. Basically, most of our brownfield projects are okay schedule-wise. Some expansion projects will delay a little bit by around 2 quarters due to a couple key tools delay. We are still working on the negotiation with our key tool vendors. So far it seems that some key tools lead time is still longer than our original expectation. Even with place B over D, still delayed the lead time a little bit. It's just some of our expansion project.
Most of our brownfield expansion projects will be kept on schedule. The worst one will delay around 2 quarters. That's the current status. We are still working very actively with our customers and vendors. We try to mitigate the delay as best as we can. We also try to work with our vendors, try to fully mitigate the impact from the long lead time as well. That's what we are seeing. By the way, actually I missed the last one. The last one is about greenfield. The last question is greenfield. GlobalWafers, we announced, we previously announced the expansion consists of both, not only brownfield, but also greenfield, investment.
Please update the status of our greenfield. Is GlobalWafers going to postpone the greenfield expansion or scale down? How about the location of your greenfield expansion project? Here is the status. We have reached the limit of our brownfield capacity. Greenfield is our only remaining expansion alternative. We will keep working on greenfield. Consistent with all of our scale strategy, we will continue to increase our capacity, but definitely all of our capacity will be linked with LTA and customers. We will not make an expansion if we cannot secure the LTA with very strong firm commitment with customers. So far, customers' commitments. Customers still hold their commitment.
Customers are still willing to sign LTA with us, so we keep doing our greenfield on schedule as our original plan. Regarding the location of our greenfield project, our original plan is to finalize the location and finish our site selection by end of April. We are at the final stage of our overall site selection discussion and analysis now of our several candidate location. We still have several candidate location. As I said last time, the decision for our site selection mainly rely on three factors. One is customer location. I hope that our new location will be close to our customer.
The second is that the total competitiveness of the location, including power, labor force availability and overall environment, the ecosystem. The third factor is government support. We are working on the final calculation and analysis of all these three factors with the candidate locations. That's why we are not able to finalize to announce our final location to date. I think that the final decision will be made in two months. In order to keep our expansion on schedule, we keep placing POs for our production tools right now. The location is not finalized yet.
It's, you know, in parallel, we are doing the site selection, calculation, analysis and check all the competitiveness, but at the same time, we order the tools. You know, the tools orders, no matter which location we choose, they can just ship to the right location, so no conflict. That's our update of the greenfield, and that's all of my presentation, my FAQ now, and I would like to open the Q&A session now. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Doris and Leah, for the details. We are now beginning the Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button on the screen and wait for your name to be announced. Maybe I can start with a few questions. Doris, regarding the supply and demand and price environments, which is lower demand for some tech end markets, as you just mentioned, could you rank the relative strength and weakness for wafer by diameter? Thank you.
Thank you, Hans. Thanks for your question. Yes, demand-wise, the strongest one is still 300 millimeter. Of all kind of 300 millimeter, including 300 millimeter Epi wafer, 300 millimeter SOI, 300 millimeter polished wafer. Number one is 300 millimeter. Another also I could say that, as strong as 300 millimeter is compound. Compound demand is very strong. When I say compound, I mean that, silicon carbide and gallium nitride, both of these two are very strong. But, as I said that our revenue for compound is still very low, so the strong demand for compound will not really contribute too much to our revenue for now.
Starting from next year or the second half of this year, we will see more revenue from compound. This is the second one. The third one is 200 millimeter. When I say 200 millimeter, this covers not only SiC 200 millimeter, but also Float Zone FZ 200 millimeter. The demand for 200 millimeter of Float Zone is extremely strong. This is the strongest ever I've ever seen for Float Zone 200 millimeter. We will have a big expansion for 200 millimeter. That is one of our big brownfield expansions as well. The weakest one, no doubt, definitely that is small diameter up to 6 inch. That is the weakest one. Quite some of our 3- and 6-inch small-diameter wafers are for automotive components.
In general, our small diameter production lines are doing still okay, but you can, you know, it's very obvious that the demand for small diameter is not as strong as 200 and 300 in silicon and compound. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. A quick follow-up on the long-term supply. With multiple greenfield ramps arriving from 2024, do you think your growing brownfield capacity and also increasing industry supply from 2024 will probably further push out your progress on the greenfield investments from 2024 - 2025? Also, what is the current progress on LTA negotiation with the customers on the greenfield? Do you think it takes longer than expected to secure sufficient commitment from the customers? Thank you.
Yes, most of our tools will be available by in 2024, mid-2024. I think that maybe our greenfield, our brownfield is totally fine. Most of the brownfield are okay. For greenfield, maybe it will be a little bit late. Maybe it will be 1- quarter delay, 1- quarter to 2- quarter delay due to two reasons. One is that the tool lead time is longer than our expectation, longer than the brownfield. You know, we ordered the tools for brownfield earlier. At that time, the lead time is not as long as what we are seeing today. This is the first reason, longer lead times for tools.
The second reason is that because we finalized the site selection a little bit late, so some of the customers were checking that we need to figure out what will be the impact of carbon emission and the schedule. It's that's one of the reasons that we are concluding the LTA. We are finalizing LTA a little bit later, longer than before. But for the LTA, we see very strong willingness from our customers to sign LTA with us, but we are still negotiating with our customers for the greenfield. It's still. We just started the greenfield negotiation, LTA negotiation. It's just starting from March. We are still working on this. Okay. Thank you very much.
Okay. Doris, please. My quick second question is about the profitability. Your gross margins have been improving to 40% levels, while operating margins also saw a nice jump to mid-30% levels in the first quarter. Although it might be tough to compare due to different business factors to consider, but would you think your gross margins can match the levels set by foundries at high 40% levels in the current positive price environment? Maybe you could also guide your OpEx for 2022 as it seems you are making a lot of efforts on the expense control. Thank you.
Yes. I think for gross margin, I think we have some room to improve our gross margin, but it's very hard to predict that how much we can reach for several reason. Because first of all, I think the energy costs and freight costs keep increasing, and we just don't know when those logistic costs or energy costs will be back to normal. We have no idea about this. Also FX fluctuation is much bigger than what we are. I think in the last several months, the FX fluctuation is huge. It seems that this kind of situation will be lasting for a while.
The third reason that it's hard to predict is that because of the carbon emission, the net zero goal by, you know, almost every country in the world, I think, more and more countries will start, we will have to pay a carbon fee or carbon tax. This fee maybe will increase year by year. So far it's very hard to predict that how much we have to pay. You know that for semiconductor industry, especially for ingot growing wafer, I think the whole process is pretty, it's power-intensive industry. It's hard for me to predict that if we really can reach the same gross margin like foundry or IDM company.
That's our goal, but we are still working on this. Of course, you know, when we have so many brownfield, greenfield, we will have a little bit higher depreciation. Of course, our ASP is improving as well. It's hard to say that if we can really offset all those uncertainties. Thank you.
Thank you so much. We will start the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button on the screen and limit your question to two. Okay. I think we have a question from Donny. Donny, you can go ahead. Thank you.
Thank you. Hello, is there anyone?
Yes. Hello. Hello, Donny. Good afternoon, Donny.
Thank you, Doris, for taking my question. Just two housekeeping questions. The first one I think follows up on Hans's question. Could you kind of give us some OpEx ratio guidance going forward? Because I'm not sure why the first quarter OpEx ratio was quite low. It's like only 6.something%. Like lower than our previous normal level, like 8%. Wondering if you could kindly elaborate more on that. Thank you.
Okay. Yeah. Sorry, I missed this question. I should clarify this point a little bit earlier. Actually, our standard OpEx is around 9%, 8%-9%. The reason that Q1 is low is because we have some reversal of our M&A costs. You know, we have some legal expenses and some special fees. We made some reserve in 2021. At the end of January, we know that the deal terminated, and so we calculate that, yeah, what's the actual expenses. We found that we over-reserved some expenses. We reversed those expenses in Q1. Because basically we closed everything of that M&A in Q1.
That's why our OpEx is a little bit lower. That is a part of the main cost.
Secondly, it's also a very housekeeping question. You mentioned about like around TWD 10.7 loss from Siltronic, so stock price from tier two. You also mentioned about around TWD 6 billion loss driven by the stock price. I calculate it's like the loss is like TWD 14 EPS. Just wondering if there's any slide in terms of the calculation. Thank you.
Right. Yes. Your calculation is correct, but that's not complete. You know, our loss from this one is over TWD 6 billion from the mark-to-market. But if there was no valuation loss, then we definitely have to pay corporate income tax. We have to deduct corporate income tax. If there was no such loss, we'll have a little bit higher employee bonus. You know, this is a whole series of numbers. If our profit is a little bit higher, then we have to have a 1% more bonus here than there, and also we need to pay the tax as well. That's why, when you put all the factors into consideration.
It's not a simple calculation, just TWD 6 billion divided by our capital. It's not like that. We have not only this, we have to take the tax and all the related expenses into consideration. TWD 10.67 is the right number. If there was no mark-to-market loss, then our EPS could increase by TWD 10.67.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you, Donny.
Okay. With the time constraint, Doris, would you like to make closing remarks? Thank you.
Yes, I would. Once again, thanks for everyone's participating in our earnings call. Appreciate. Thank you very much. I hope that we will meet you very soon next quarter. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Doris and Leah, again, and thanks everyone for joining GlobalWafers first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. You may disconnect now. Thank you.
Thank you.