Diodes - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 revenue of $366.2M grew 10% q/q and 14% y/y, exceeding company guidance and marking a third straight y/y growth quarter, while non-GAAP EPS was $0.32; gross margin held at 31.5% as mix and underloading costs capped expansion.
• Results exceeded S&P Global consensus: revenue $366.2M vs $352.1M* and non-GAAP EPS $0.32 vs $0.247*, with stronger interest income and tight OpEx control aiding EPS upside.
• Q3 2025 guidance calls for ~$392M revenue (+7% q/q, +12% y/y), GM ~31.6%, and lower non-GAAP OpEx at ~26% of revenue, with AI-related computing in Asia and China EV demand as key drivers.
• Setup: Channel and internal inventory days declined further; Asia POS rose double digits; consumer led growth, while auto/industrial stayed 42% of product revenue; catalysts include continued AI server content wins and improving utilization from internal fab qualifications.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Revenue beat and strong sequential growth as AI-related computing demand in Asia and new consumer ramps drove upside; “our above expected revenue results represent our third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth”.
  • Expense discipline and higher interest income supported earnings; non-GAAP OpEx 27.3% and interest income ~$7.0M boosted bottom line.
  • Channel/internal inventory reduced and POS strength in Asia (double-digit growth); “channel inventory being reduced further with both channel and internal inventory days decreasing”.

• What Went Wrong

  • Gross margin held flat at 31.5% as product mix skewed toward consumer and underloading costs persisted, limiting expansion.
  • Automotive and industrial stayed “effectively flat” as a share of revenue; ongoing digestion and pockets of inventory in these markets constrained mix quality.
  • Currency losses ($6.4M) were a headwind within other income; FX volatility offset some positives in the quarter.

Transcript

Speaker 5

Good afternoon and welcome to Diodes Incorporated's second quarter 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of today's conference call, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. If anyone needs assistance at any time during the conference call, please press the star key followed by the zero on your touch-tone phone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Thursday, August 7, 2025. I would now like to turn the call over to Leanne Sievers of Shelton Group Investor Relations. Leanne, please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Good afternoon and welcome to Diodes Incorporated's second quarter 2025 financial result conference call. I'm Leanne Sievers, President of Shelton Group, Diodes Incorporated's Investor Relations firm. Joining us today are Diodes Incorporated's President and CEO, Gary Yu, CFO, Brett Whitmire, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Emily Yang, and Director of Investor Relations, Gurmeet Dhaliwal. I'd like to remind our listeners that the results announced today are preliminary as they are subject to the company finalizing its closing procedures and customary quarterly review by the company's independent registered public accounting firm. As such, these results are unaudited and subject to revision until the company files its Form 10-Q for its quarter ending June 30, 2025. In addition, management's prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions.

Therefore, the company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements that is contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore we refer you to a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Forms 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, any projections as to the company's future performance represent management's estimates as of today, August 7, 2025. Diodes Incorporated assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions may or may not change, except to the extent required by applicable law. Additionally, the company's press release and management statements during this conference call will include discussions of certain measures and financial information in GAAP and non-GAAP terms.

Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP items, which provide additional details. Also, throughout the company's press release and management statements during this conference call, we refer to net income attributable to common stockholders as GAAP net income. For those of you unable to listen to the entire call at this time, a recording will be available via webcast for 90 days in the Investor Relations section of Diodes Incorporated's website at www.diodes.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Diodes Incorporated's President and CEO, Gary Yu. Gary, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call. As announced in our press release earlier today, our above-expected revenue result represents our third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, indicating the ongoing improvement in market conditions and the demand. Product sales increased sequentially across all regions, with double-digit growth in Asia. The increasing demand in the quarter also contributed to channel inventory being reduced further, with both channel and internal inventory days decreasing. While we continue to see positive signs of a broader market recovery, our consumer end market experienced the strongest growth during the quarter, contributing to less favorable economics, combined with our higher margin in automotive and industrial markets remaining effectively flat as a percentage of total revenue. Additionally, the channel inventory depletion continued to limit increased loading at our manufacturing facilities, resulting in underloading costs also being a headwind to gross margin expansion.

Even when considering those dynamics, we continue to increase gross profit dollar and deliver non-GAAP earnings growth of almost 70% sequentially as we continue to closely manage expenses. As we look to the third quarter, we expect to extend our strong growth momentum with revenue anticipated to increase 7% sequentially and 12% year-over-year at the midpoint, mainly driven by strong demand in Asia for AI-related computing applications and the increasing demand in the EV automotive market in China. With that, let me now turn the call over to Brett to discuss our second quarter 2025 financial results as well as our third quarter guidance in more detail.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Gary, and good afternoon everyone. Revenue for the second quarter 2025 was $366.2 million, an increase of 14% over $319.8 million in the second quarter 2024, and a 10% increase over $332.1 million in the first quarter 2025. Gross profit for the second quarter was $115.3 million, or 31.5% of revenue, compared to $107.4 million, or 33.6% of revenue in the prior year quarter, and $104.7 million, or 31.5% of revenue in the prior quarter. GAAP operating expenses for the second quarter were $105.9 million, or 28.9% of revenue, and on a non-GAAP basis were $99.8 million, or 27.3% of revenue, which excludes $5.8 million amortization of acquisition-related intangible asset expenses. This compares to GAAP operating expenses in the second quarter 2024 of $103.7 million, or 32.4% of revenue, and $103.4 million, or 31.1% of revenue in the prior quarter.

Non-GAAP operating expenses in the prior quarter were $97.1 million, or 29.3% of revenue. Total other income amounted to approximately $43.8 million for the quarter, consisting of $29.6 million in unrealized gains from investments, $13.7 million in gains from disposal of a subsidiary, $7 million in interest income, $0.4 million in other income, $6.4 million in foreign currency losses, and $0.5 million in interest expense. Income before taxes and non-controlling interest in the second quarter 2025 was $53.2 million, compared to income of $12.8 million in the prior year period and a loss of $2.8 million in the previous quarter. Turning to income taxes, our effective income tax rate for the second quarter was approximately 17%. We continue to expect the tax rate for the full year to be approximately 18% plus or minus 3%.

GAAP net income for the second quarter was $46.1 million, or $0.99 per diluted share, compared to net income of $8 million, or $0.17 per diluted share in the prior year quarter, and a net loss of $4.4 million, or $0.10 per diluted share last quarter. Share count used to compute GAAP income per share for the second quarter of 2025 was 46.5 million shares. Non-GAAP adjusted net income in the second quarter was $15 million, or $0.32 per diluted share, which excluded, net of tax, $23.4 million non-cash unrealized mark-to-market gain on investment value adjustment, $12.7 million gain on disposal of a subsidiary, and $4.8 million of acquisition-related intangible asset cost. This compares to non-GAAP adjusted net income of $15.4 million, or $0.33 per diluted share in the second quarter 2024, and $8.8 million, or $0.19 per diluted share in the prior quarter.

Excluding non-cash share-based compensation expense of $4.6 million for the second quarter, net of tax, both GAAP net income and non-GAAP adjusted net income would have increased by $0.10 per share. EBITDA for the second quarter was $84.5 million, or 23.1% of revenue, compared to $41.1 million, or 12.8% of revenue in the prior year period, and $26.2 million, or 7.9% of revenue in the prior quarter. We have included in our earnings release a reconciliation of GAAP net income to non-GAAP adjusted net income and GAAP net income to EBITDA, which provides additional details. Cash flow provided by operations was $41.5 million for the second quarter. Free cash flow was $21.1 million, which included $20.4 million of capital expenditures. Net cash flow was a negative $18.2 million, including approximately $49.2 million from an increase in equity investment and $10 million for a stock buyback program.

Turning to the balance sheet at the end of the second quarter, cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, plus short-term investments totaled approximately $333 million. Working capital was approximately $871 million, and total debt, including long-term and short-term, was approximately $54 million. In terms of inventory at the end of the second quarter, total inventory days were approximately 173 as compared to 187 last quarter, down approximately 14 days sequentially. Finished good inventory days were 71, a decrease of 9 days from the 80 last quarter. Total inventory dollars increased $11.7 million from the prior quarter to $482.7 million, consisting of a $9.7 million increase in work in process, a $9.1 million increase in raw materials, and a $7.1 million decrease in finished goods.

Capital expenditures on a cash basis were $20.4 million for the second quarter, or 5.6% of revenue, which was at the low end of our targeted range of 5% to 9% of revenue. Now turning to our outlook for the third quarter 2025, we expect revenue to increase to approximately $392 million plus or minus 3%, which represents 12% growth over the prior year period at the midpoint, which will be the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. GAAP gross margin is expected to be 31.6% plus or minus 1%. Non-GAAP operating expenses, which are GAAP operating expenses adjusted for amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, are expected to be approximately 26% of revenue, plus or minus 1%. We expect net interest income to be approximately $1 million.

Our income tax rate is expected to be 18%, plus or minus 3%, and shares used to calculate EPS for the third quarter are anticipated to be approximately 46.5 million. Not included in these non-GAAP estimates is amortization of $4.8 million after tax for previous acquisitions. With that said, I now turn the call over to Emily Yang.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Brett, and good afternoon. Revenue in the quarter was up 10.3% sequentially and above the high end of our guidance, mainly driven by strong demand in Asia, especially AI-related computing and consumer ramp-up for new programs. Our global POS increased across all regions, with double-digit growth in Asia, and our channel inventory decreased again this quarter, both in terms of dollars and weeks. We are also seeing this momentum extend into the third quarter with strong beginning background. During the second quarter, we further extended our new product initiative with over 100 new part numbers introduced, of which over 50% were automotive parts. Looking at global sales in the second quarter, Asia represented 78% of revenue, Europe 12%, and North America 10%. In terms of our end market, industrial was 23% of Diodes' product revenue, automotive 19%, computing 26%, consumer 18%, and communications 14% of product revenue.

Our automotive industrial markets combined totaled 42% again this quarter. We are beginning to see signs of gradual demand improvement in these markets, but there are still pockets of channel inventory to work through. Now let me review the end markets in greater detail. Starting with the automotive market, during the quarter, we continue to see improvement, even though there continues to be inventory digestion as some customers have mentioned. We're also beginning to see increasing demand and strength in the EV auto market in China as we move into the third quarter. The China automakers are increasingly focused on the in-cabin experience with more features like ADAS, infotainment, smart cockpit, telematics, and lighting, which is driving demand for Diodes' products and our content per car.

Specific to the second quarter, we saw increasing adoption and growth of USB Type-C redrivers, retimers, switches, and active crossbar boxes, along with new design wins for TVS and ESD protection devices in rear seat entertainment and smart cockpit applications. We also received solid demand for overcurrent protection switches in electronic control unit systems and are also gaining design win momentum for protection devices in vehicle displays and power distribution unit applications. We're also seeing strong demand and design wins for our automotive-compliant DC-DC devices, LDOs, ideal diode controllers, as well as our SBR products for ADAS, telematics, and infotainment systems. Additionally, Diodes LED controllers are winning designs in ADAS front lighting applications, and our linear LED drivers are winning designs in the rear exterior lighting and EV car charging indicator applications.

Also, during the quarter, we added multiple new products through the introduction of LV MOSFETs for DC-DC battery management systems, brushless DC motors, 80 volt and 100 volt TO-LL products, and 1,700 volt and 1,200 volt silicon carbide MOSFETs. Turning to the industrial market, even though the inventory situation is improving, some customers are still going through adjustments. We expect this will last another quarter or two. From a demand perspective, we are seeing good recovery and strong momentum for applications such as AI, robotics, medical, and automation. During the quarter, we continued to gain strong design traction for our silicon carbide Schottky barrier diodes and photocouplers in energy storage systems and our silicon carbide MOSFETs in EV charging platforms for fast charging infrastructures.

We have also secured new designs for our Schottky barrier diodes, SBR, and Zener diodes in DC fans, power over Ethernet, and adapter applications across industrial power segments. Also, during the quarter, our Y-Wing LDOs received solid demand from fans, power tools, and e-meter applications, while our multi-channel LED drivers ramped up in signage applications. We are also seeing traction for SBR products in power supply applications for telecom, desktop PC, and server switch mode power supplies, and our protection devices are winning designs in battery management systems. In the computing market, the highlight continues to be strong demand momentum for AI-related applications, and with the current chipset refresh cycle, we are seeing increasing opportunities and strong share gains. Our PCI Express 3.0 packet switches are leading the momentum in the AI applications but are also expanding beyond AI servers into other applications like industrial and security.

In fact, we have multiple design wins for our packet switches from various applications across all regions that should drive further growth for our products. Also, during the quarter, we are seeing increased adoption of HDMI, DisplayPort, USB speed redrivers, crossbar MUX switches, as well as clock buffers with level shifters in various computing applications like workstations, gaming, notebooks, desktops, docking stations, monitors, and mini PCs. In terms of product introduction, we introduced several new products, including PCI Express 6.0 redrivers, clock buffers, and clock MOSFETs that are seeing strong momentum in server and data center applications. The demand for high-speed data processing has significantly increased in recent years, and Diodes Incorporated is well-positioned to gain increasing shares with our broadened product portfolio.

As an example, our SDR products provide excellent surge protection for high-speed data applications, along with our 40 volt boost controllers and DC-DC buck converters in server and data center applications. In the consumer market, the revenue increase was the strongest of our end market and was mainly driven by customers' ramp-up of new designs for applications such as wearables, audio, charging, camera, game consoles, and personal care, combined with overall market share gain. During the second quarter, we saw rapid adoption of our MIPI D-PHY redrivers in robots, ROMs, mixed reality, and embedded eMMC switches in gaming console applications, while current-limited power switches saw solid demand from physical interface power ports such as USB and HDMI. Also, in the consumer market, our LED drivers and power factor correction LED controllers had multiple design wins for IoT devices and personal care devices.

We also achieved solid growth from audio products in the consumer applications like health monitors and trackers. With our small signal diodes, as well as Zener diodes, we saw strong increases, while our protection devices and LDOs are being designed into tablets and smartwatches. Lastly, in the communications market, our timing solutions are seeing growth driven by AI and IoT applications in the networking segments for switches and routers, while our ultra-low jitter family of crystal oscillators dominates in the smart network interface cards in data center, AI server, and networking applications. Our 5 volt high PSRR LDOs saw solid demand from camera networking applications. In summary, we are very pleased with the solid momentum in our business as we continue to see improving market conditions and demand across our end markets.

As the demand continues to drive utilization improvement and inventory digestion expands across the automotive and industrial market in particular, we are very well-positioned with a broadened portfolio of products and increasing design wins to drive the continuous growth and future margin expansion. With that, we now open the floor to questions for the operator.

Speaker 5

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from David Williams with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Hey, good afternoon everyone, and congratulations on the really strong results here. It's great to see.

Speaker 1

Thank you, David.

Speaker 0

Maybe first, just kind of thinking about the geographic drivers, and Asia is clearly doing better for you all, and it sounds like this is more design and more demand coming in. I guess how do you parse out how much of this could potentially be related to tariff-driven pull-ins, which we've heard from nearly all companies reporting this earning season? Is it fair to assume that some of this demand is related to that, or do you feel like you're able to isolate that out and maybe that's not what's driving some of this demand?

Speaker 3

Hi, David. This is Emily. I think what we've seen, the tariff pulling is really small, immaterial overall, right? What we're seeing is really driven by the strong demand and also the market share gain, together with some of the new designs and new programs ramping up.

Speaker 0

Okay, so you feel pretty comfortable that it really is kind of self-directed and not really related to the tariff pull-in? Is that fair?

Speaker 3

Sure. Fair, yes.

Speaker 0

Okay, all right, very good. If you kind of think about how much digestion still remains, and you talked about pockets remaining in automotive, how do you think about what is left there remaining? I know it kind of depends on your OEM, but like say geographically, is there a way to kind of think about the inventory levels where there's still excesses that need to be digested?

Speaker 3

Yes, I think overall you are absolutely right. A lot is driven by the OEMs. What we see in the market's build dynamic varies a lot from customer to customer, program to program, and part to part, right? It's kind of hard to draw a line, say everything equal. All in all, we're actually seeing a lot of improvement. If we look at the automotive, even we maintained 19% quarter over quarter as a percentage to the product revenue. If I compare the actual year to year, we actually increased about 23.5%. I believe that can give you a strong indication that even though we still have some inventory digestion that we're going through, the market overall is improving.

Speaker 0

Very well. Just one last one, if I may here, just kind of thinking about your new products. How should we consider maybe the differential on the margin opportunity, maybe over some products that you're replacing? I know you've got a lot of new products that are coming in and really a big driver of the margin, but is there a good way to think about what that differential could be?

Speaker 3

Yeah, let me address this question. Product mix improvement initiative has been a key focus for Diodes Incorporated for a period of time. In general, when the product, they usually have a production cycle. The newer the product, the new release product usually provides some additional features and functions, and the customer is actually willing to pay more of the premium for the functions and features. A lot of times, it can be also a cost improvement, smaller dies, and better packaging, and stuff like that, right? That's usually the behavior for new products. For a product, if we sell this for more than like 15, 20 years, every year there's a price degradation. A lot of times at the end of the production cycle, the cost is more expensive at the end, right?

That's the reason why we're pushing a lot of new product introduction, not only to gain additional market, but also to improve the overall cost structure by providing more functions and features and basically a value add to the customers.

Speaker 0

Thank you.

Speaker 5

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one to join the question queue. The next question comes from Tristan Gerra with Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi, good afternoon. You talked about AI being a driver. Is it fair to assume that a lot of that is your PCI Express packet solution? Any way to quantify as a % what it's now representing of your data center revenue, and also what type of growth should we expect? I think you've described in the past that it's not just AI data center, but it will be also general purpose data center. How can you include that opportunity as a %?

Speaker 3

Hi, Tristan. This is Emily. Yes, so AI related, you know, on the hyperscaler with some of the design. Packet switch is definitely one of the products, but there's also a lot of other AI related products that we are selling into the market. When we look at the AI, it's actually a whole ecosystem, not only just on the server, but there's also DDU. There's different units that's attached with the system together, right? We don't really have a percentage that we can share, but I think just like I mentioned earlier, we actually expand this beyond just the AI servers. There's actually a lot of industrial and security related stuff, and we start seeing multiple designs across all regions. That's the reason I mentioned this is going to continue to drive a lot of momentum for us for the quarters to come.

Speaker 1

Right, and Tristan, I would like to put more color on that. You know, when you're talking about PCI Express, PCI Express is only one of the hero products we're promoting to AI related applications. However, as we continue mentioning about the system solution or total solution, it's really what we want to drive for. If we have one or two hero products in one segment, I really want to bring our advanced analog mixed signal and also auto discrete components to seal together. That's going to create more value on this only one device only.

Speaker 2

Okay, thank you. That's very useful. We've seen at least one large company, you know, clear analogue tier starting to raise pricing. How should I look at that? I mean, we're clearly in an environment where there is overcapacity. I think obviously your positioning will be to gain share, but I wanted to kind of get your sense of the higher cost of raw materials, you know, impact on pricing, and what you expect, you know, for the rest of this year. It does have implications in terms of how companies are managing inventories.

Speaker 3

Yes, Tristan, we definitely read the news as well. We are monitoring the situation very closely. Like I mentioned before, anytime any of my peers make strategic decisions, price increases, exit certain markets, it always creates opportunity for Diodes Incorporated overall to work with the customer. During the last price increase during the COVID time, I also openly talked about it. Our view for the business is actually a relationship with the customer long term. It's a lot more important than the short term benefit, right? We want to continue to work with the customers and be a strong supplier to them for our long term. The partnership is the key focus for us overall, and we are not changing our strategy.

We want to leverage this type of opportunity to continue to expand our print positions and continue to grow the relationship into the deeper level and continue to expand our overall design in, design win, demand creations with the customer together. That will be our focus and will be our strategy moving forward.

Speaker 2

Thanks again. Just last quick question, if I may. In terms of qualifications for customers in analog migrating back to in-house capacity, are we still looking at the first half of next year? What's the timing on this shift from outsourcing?

Speaker 1

Yeah, as I mentioned so many times, Tristan, we are proactively qualifying our product and process into our internal wafer fab, right? As I mentioned, the progress went very well so far, and we're seeing quite a few key customers already working on our PCM requirements and working on that to see if we can continue to support them with our internal wafer fab wafer facility. This is a very important message from Diodes. I really want to emphasize to everybody here, we really want to qualify our internal wafer fab to offset the headwind from our wafer surface agreement that kind of slowed down demand in the future. We do see good progress on that too.

Speaker 2

Great, thank you.

Speaker 5

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then one to enter the question queue. The next question comes from David Williams with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Thanks for letting me ask a follow-up. Really, I just wanted to say, Gary, congratulations on the CEO official naming there. It's great to see.

Speaker 1

Thanks, David.

Speaker 0

It was after earnings last quarter. I want to make sure and squeeze that in there. While I have you, one other quick question, and maybe Brett or Emily or whomever, on the utilization, can you tell us about where your utilization is running today and maybe what the mix impact was on the margin side?

Speaker 1

Utilization really varies from different fab and AT, even from different product lines, right? Some product lines, the high-end product lines, the demand is really strong, the utilization is really good. For those big commodity, we kind of intentionally try to give away from them, the utilization for this kind of capacity is kind of low. I won't be able to give you the detail about exactly the utilization yet, but what we do for the past couple of quarters, we continue to consolidate or migrate those low-cost commodity idle capacity into supporting the high-end market and high customer demand kind of requirement. With our hybrid manufacturing strategy, as I answered the question before, we continue to load our external product and the process into internal. We are doing the qualification process, and even we issue the PCM for the key customer in different segments.

So far, the progress is really good. I can guarantee you, in the future, our loading will continue to grow. With this kind of strategy, we really want to go for that.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think on top of that, we did actually have a very good result in the second quarter. We also guided above seasonality growth for the third quarter. When the revenue continued to increase, of course, supported by POS growth, we actually will continue to minimize the underloading costs, right? I think on top of that, one of the things we also kind of drive for margin improvement is continue to drive the product mix initiative improvement from that point of view. Auto industrial will remain our key focus, and we want to continue to drive the growth. New product introduction, we talked a little bit earlier, will be another key focus for us overall. You know, some good products like the paracom division of the product family will continue to be the focus, right?

I think combined with what Gary just mentioned and combined with continued cost-down-driven manufacturing efficiency, we are actually confident that you're actually going to start seeing some margin improvement as well. Even you didn't ask it, but I want to make sure I put it there because I think that's really the real question behind that you want to ask.

Speaker 0

Right. Yeah, very well. Thanks so much for the color there, and congrats again on the execution. Keep up the good work.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thanks, David.

Speaker 5

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Gary Yu for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you, everyone, for participating on today's call. We look forward to reporting our progress on next quarter's conference call. Operator, you may now disconnect.

Speaker 5

Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.