Himax Technologies - Q4 2022

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Himax Technologies, Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Mark Schwalenberg from MZ Group. Please go ahead.

Mark Schwalenberg (Director)

Thank you. Welcome everyone to the Himax fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. Joining us from the company are Mr. Jordan Wu, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Jessica Pan, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Eric Li, Chief IR/PR Officer. After the company's prepared comments, we have allocated time for questions in a Q&A session. If you have not yet received a copy of today's results release, please email [email protected], access the press release on financial portals, or download a copy from Himax's website at www.himax.com.tw. Before we begin the formal remarks, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the statements in this conference call, including statements regarding expected future financial results and industry growth, are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those described in this conference call.

A list of risk factors can be found in the company's SEC filings, Form 20-F, for the year ended December 31st, 2021 in the section entitled Risk Factors, as may be amended. Except for the company's full year of 2021 financials, which were provided in the company's 20-F and filed with the SEC on March 23rd, 2022, the financial information included in this conference call is unaudited and consolidated and prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting. Such financial information is generated internally and has not been subjected to the same review and scrutiny, including internal auditing procedures and external audits by an independent auditor to which we subject our annual consolidated financial statements and may vary materially from the audited consolidated financial information for the same period.

The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Eric Li. Eric, the floor is yours.

Eric Li (Chief Investor Relations and Public Relations Officer)

Thank you, Mark, and thank you everyone for joining us. My name is Eric Li, Chief IR/PR Officer at Himax. On today's call, I will first review the Himax consolidated financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year 2022, followed by our first quarter 2023 outlook. Jordan will then give an update on the status of our business, after which we will take questions. We will review our financials on both IFRS and the non-IFRS basis. The non-IFRS financials excludes share-based compensation, acquisition-related charges, and the cash award. We pre-announced preliminary key financial results from the fourth quarter 2022 on January 12th, 2023, where revenues and EPS both exceeded guidance, while gross margin came in moderately below the guidance range issued on November 10th, 2022.

Today, our reported results for revenue, gross margin, and EPS are all in line with the pre-announced results. Fourth quarter net revenues of $2,062.3 million increased 22.8% sequentially, substantially exceeding our guidance of an increase of around 4%-8% sequentially, despite the macro headwinds continuing to challenge our business. The increased sales momentum was attributed to our continuous effort to deplete inventory, particularly in the small and intermediate sized TDDI segments. IFRS and the non-IFRS gross margin both came in at 30.5%, a decrease from 36% and 36.3% respectively last quarter, and lower than the guidance range of 31.5%-33.5%. Price erosion from offloading excess inventory was the predominant factor that adversely impacted our margin profile.

Contributing to margin contraction was higher cost of the inventory, sourced primarily during 2021 and early 2022, when foundry and the back-end pricings were higher due to capacity constraints. IFRS profit per diluted ADS was $0.241, exceeding our guidance of $0.178-$0.208. Non-IFRS profit per diluted ADS was $0.273, beating our guidance of $0.21-$0.24. Revenue from large display driver was $43.5 million in Q4, an increase of 4.3% sequentially, exceeding our prior guidance of flat from last quarter. TV sales grew nicely as expected, increasing single-digit quarter-over-quarter and appear to have bottomed following several quarters of sharp correction, while both monitor and notebook sales were better than guided.

Large panel driver IC sales accounted for 16.6% of total revenues for the quarter, compared to 19.3% last quarter and 27.7% a year ago. Moving on to our small and medium-sized display driver segment. Revenue was $177.4 million, an increase of 25.5% sequentially and ahead of our guidance of a single-digit increase, primarily a result of increasing shipments of TDDI in all three sectors, namely smartphone, tablet, and automotive. Despite the challenging macro environment, our fourth quarter revenue for the tablet was up more than 100% sequentially, thanks to the strong shipment in high-end TDDI product, an illustration of our leading solutions being adopted by more customers for their next-generation product, supporting large-sized, high frame rate displays and high-precision active stylus features.

Meanwhile, the AMOLED total solution sales, including TCON and the DDIC, increased mid-teens quarter-over-quarter and accounted for more than 8% of total sales, mainly attributable to our tablet AMOLED total solution, supporting the mass production of premium tablet models for a global leading customer. Q4 automotive driver sales increased single digit quarter-over-quarter, better than guided as customer restocked, especially for TDDI. Automotive driver business once again represented the largest revenue contributor with over 30% of total sales in the fourth quarter, a result of our comprehensive product coverage and increasing automotive TDDI design wins across panel house, Tier 1s, and auto brands. It's worth noting that our automotive TDDI sales surged by more than 170% on a year-over-year basis, boosted by the robust adoption of the technology for customers' new generation car models.

Small and medium-sized driver IC segment accounted for 67.6% of total sales for the quarter, compared to 66.2% in the previous quarter and 61.2% a year ago. Fourth quarter non-driver sales also beat guidance with revenue of $41.4 million, up 33.8% from a quarter ago. Our TCON business was up a solid double digits sequentially, bolstered by higher shipment of large-sized display drivers, automotive driver, as well as tablet drivers for AMOLED. For automotive TCON, we anticipate business momentum to accelerate in coming quarters, backed by a strong order pipeline and the rapid expanding design win across different continents. TCON business represented over 8% of total sales in the fourth quarter.

Non-driver products in Q4 accounted for 15.8% of total revenues as compared to 14.5% in the previous quarter and 11.1% a year ago. Our IFRS operating expenses for the fourth quarter were $52.5 million, a decline of 27.9% from the previous quarter and down 6.2% from a year ago. The sequential decrease was caused mainly by decreased annual bonus and the salary expenses, partially offset by an increase in R&D expenses. As previously mentioned, we typically grant annual bonuses, including cash and ISU, to our staff at the end of September each year, which can lead to higher IFRS operating expenses in the third quarter compared to the other quarters of the year.

The year-over-year expense decrease was primarily related to the special bonus we awarded our employees at the end of Q4, 2021. Excluding the special bonus paid in Q4 last year, the IFRS operating expenses would have increased 2% year-over-year during the fourth quarter. IFRS operating expenses were $45.6 million for the fourth quarter, down 2.2% from the preceding quarter and down 6% from a year ago.

Fourth quarter, IFRS operating income was $27.5 million or 10.5% of sales, versus 1.8% of sales in last quarter and 39.4% of sales from a year ago. Non-IFRS operating income was $34.5 million, or 13.1% of sales, compared to 14.5% last quarter and 41.1% same quarter last year. IFRS after-tax profit was $42.2 million or $0.241 per diluted ADS, compared to $8.3 million or $0.048 per diluted ADS last quarter. We made a divestiture of long-term assets during Q4 2022, which resulted in non-operating income of around $11 million on an after-tax basis.

Fourth quarter non-IFRS after-tax profit was $47.7 million or $0.273 per diluted ADS, compared to $29.8 million or $0.17 in the previous quarter. Let's have a quick review on the 2022 full year financial performance. Revenues totaled $1.2 billion in 2022, representing a 22.3% decline compared to 2021. Unexpected lockdown in China, geographical tensions, and macroeconomic related factors created a challenging operating environment and impaired our business performance for the year. The halt in consumer demand and the significantly reduced visibility at panel houses and OEMs toward the end of first quarter adversely impacted IC demand and consequently, our sales.

Given the nature of wafer production, which usually starts months in advance, the abrupt drop in demand resulted in a rapid increase in our inventory. Revenue from large panel display drivers totaled $264 million in 2022, declined 37.7% year-over-year, representing 22% of total sales as compared to 25.7% in 2021. Small and medium-sized driver sales totaled $778.9 million, a decrease of 19.2% year-over-year, representing 64.8% of our total revenues, as compared to 62.3% in 2021.

Non-driver product sales totaled $158.4 million, a decrease of 14.7% year-over-year, representing 13.2% of our total sales, as compared to 12% a year ago. Our automotive segment continued to see extraordinary business momentum in 2022. Automotive sales enjoyed the highest growth among all product lines, up more than 50% on top of the remarkable strength in 2021, when sales grew more than 110%. For the year, sales of traditional DDIC for automotive were up over 30%, while automotive TDDI sales surged by more than 300%. As we mentioned repeatedly, automotive displays continued to be adopted at a rapid rate in number, size, and technological sophistication, implying higher content value of driver IC per vehicle.

As a market share leader in automotive display ICs, we continued to gain ground not only in DDIC, but also in TDDI, supported by over 200 design wins, with the numbers still increasing as we speak. While our overall annual sales declined due to the unusual and abrupt demand halt, several new sales streams have started to contribute during 2022, including ICs for AMOLED and ultra-low power WiseEye smart sensing. Both product lines enjoyed higher than corporate average growth margin in 2022. On AMOLED, we provided AMOLED DDIC and TCON for automotive and tablet displays. In addition, we are making good progress with leading panel houses for the development of AMOLED display driver for smartphone, TV, and notebook applications.

We anticipate the shipment of smartphone AMOLED driver to start in the second half of 2023 for key customers in China and Korea. On the WiseEye product line, we continue to support Dell for its production ramp up in a range of newest models using our first-generation WE1 solution. The halt of leading laptop vendors and the CPU platform players have shown strong interest in broadening AI use cases of future generation smart notebook by adopting our next-generation WE2 AI processor. Jordan will elaborate on this in a few minutes. Backed by a strong business pipeline and the robust design activities in numerous AIoT application with customers from all over the world, we expect strong sales momentum for WiseEye in 2023.

IFRS gross margin in 2022 was 40.5%, decreased from 48.4% in 2021. The decline was largely attributable to price pressure resulting from excess inventory level following the sudden halt in demand beginning in the second quarter. In addition, charges related to unmet minimum purchase order from contract with foundry and the backend suppliers entered during the unprecedented shortage in 2021 also led to the eroding margin. IFRS gross margin was 40.6% in 2022, decreased from 48.5% in 2021. IFRS operating expenses in 2022 were $229.5 million, up 12.8% from 2021.

The increase was primarily a result of vested portion of the annual bonus compensation awarded to employees in 2022, as well as previous year, along with increased salary and R&D expenses. IFRS operating expenses were $181.3 million, up 5.7% compared to 2021. 2022 IFRS operating income was $257.6 million or 21.4% of sales, a decrease from $545 million or 35.2% of sales in 2021. IFRS operating income was $306.8 million, in contrast to $578.3 million in 2021.

Our IFRS net profit for 2022 was $237 million or $1.36 per diluted ADS, as compared to $436.9 million or $2.50 per diluted ADS in 2021. IFRS net profit for 2022 was the $276.1 million or $1.58 per diluted ADS, as compared to $663.6 million.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

$463.

Eric Li (Chief Investor Relations and Public Relations Officer)

$400, sorry. $463.6 million or $2.65 per diluted ADS in 2021. Turning to the balance sheet, we have $229.9 million of cash equivalents and other financial assets as of December 31, 2022, compared to $364 million at the same time last year, and $227.9 million a quarter ago. The substantial decrease in cash was a result of annual cash dividend payout of [$2,017.9] million, particular offset by $82.9 million of operating cash inflow in 2022. We had $46.5 million of long-term unsecured loans as of the end of fourth quarter, of which $6 million was current portion.

Our year-end inventory was $370.9 million, down from $410.1 million last quarter and up from $198.6 million a year-ago. Accounts receivable at the end of December 2022 was at $261.1 million, up from $253.3 million last quarter and from $410.2 million a year-ago. DSO was 79 days at the quarter end, as compared to 97 days a year-ago and 74 days last quarter. Fourth quarter capital expenditures were $2.3 million, versus $3.4 million last quarter and the $2 million a year-ago.

The fourth quarter CapEx was mainly for R&D related equipment and in-house tester of our IC design business. Total capital expenditures for 2022 were $11.8 million, mainly for design tools, R&D equipment, as well as in-house tester of our IC design business, as compared to $7.6 million in 2021. As of December 31, 2022, Himax has 174.4 million ADS outstanding, unchanged from last quarter. On the fully diluted basis, total number of ADS outstanding for the fourth quarter was 175 million. Turning to our first quarter 2023 guidance, we expect first quarter revenues to decrease 12%-17% sequentially. IFRS gross margin is expected to be around 28%-30% depending on the final product mix.

The first quarter IFRS profit attributable to shareholders is estimated to be in the range of $0.035-$0.07 per fully diluted ADS. IFRS profit attributable to shareholder is expected to be in the range of $0.065-$0.10 per fully diluted ADS. To note, the EPS guidance already accounts for certain foreign exchange loss due attributable to NT dollar appreciation against the US dollar based on the prevailing exchange rate. As a reminder, much of our local incurred expenses, including the bulk of employee salaries as well as outstanding income tax payables, are NT dollar-based. I will now turn the call over to Jordan to discuss our Q1 2023 outlook. Jordan, the floor is yours.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Thank you, Eric. Historically, the first quarter has seasonally been the slowest of the year due to the Lunar New Year holidays. On the backdrop of sluggish global demand and the surge of COVID-19 cases in China, despite the government lifting COVID restrictions, many Chinese factories extended their shutdown period through the Lunar New Year. This added uncertainty to an already stagnant business environment, causing our customers to hesitate, to place new orders, while cautiously managing their inventory levels and further clouding our business visibility. As uncertainty persists, our objective first and foremost is to strictly manage our inventory level as we have been aggressive in doing so by sacrificing short-term gross margin to offload, excess stock.

We also continue to curtail our waiver starts while striving to win more projects from customers, specifically for the purpose of digesting our excess inventory. Our inventory position has much improved since its peak during the third quarter last year, and we anticipate it will continue to decrease to near our historical average, no later than the third quarter of 2023. With that said, our Q1 gross margin remains under pressure. As Eric mentioned earlier, the cost of our excess inventory is high from being sourced during high inventory, high capacity constraint in 2021, when foundry and back-end prices were at peak levels. Another contributing factor to Q1 margin contraction stems from market price decline of certain unsold inventories, which will necessitate write-downs.

However, we believe this effect will gradually diminish throughout the year as the market has shown signs of recovery across many business areas. Notwithstanding the pressure from the destocking process, we continue to work diligently towards improving our gross margin as a primary objective. Despite the expected short-term margin compression, we remain confident in our gross margin prospects, backed particularly by several high visibility product areas, most notably the higher margin automotive and WiseEye smart image sensing businesses, which look set to outgrow other businesses. Looking ahead, the semiconductor industry appears to be trending towards a post-pandemic era. While the supply chain gradually stabilizes and channel inventory reverse to healthier levels, we believe a decent recovery is forthcoming.

On the revenue front, we expect the first quarter to be the trough of the year, with sales rebounding in the second quarter and business momentum continuing to improve into the second half of 2023. With that, I'll begin with an update on the large panel driver IC business. Our first quarter 2023 large display driver IC revenue is projected to be up high single-digit sequentially. We expect monitor IC business to be on a recovery trajectory as customers have started to replenish chips due to reduced channel inventory after multiple quarters of destocking. Monitor IC sales in the first quarter are set to grow by a decent double-digit. TV panel prices also shows signs of stabilization from restocking demand, particularly for mainstream models that will likely strengthen into Q1.

Backing the seasonal factor, we anticipate our sales for TV segment to increase single digits sequentially in Q1. Conversely, on notebook segment, the highly publicized downward trend lingers on with further declines from enterprise IT budget cuts in tandem with customers continuous stringent inventory control measures. Turning to the small and medium-sized display driver IC business, we expect Q1 revenue for this segment to decrease by double digits sequentially. Q1 automotive IC sales are anticipated to be down mid-teens as our customers continue to reduce inventory for traditional DDICs. We see strong momentum for our automotive TDDI sales, which are poised to grow by single digits, backed by our solid new design pipeline, which has been rapidly expanded for many quarters. We anticipate customers' inventory adjustment in DDIC will find equilibrium, leading to a strong recovery in the second quarter.

Both smartphone and tablet IC sales are set to decline double digits quarter-over-quarter due to seasonality and customers' continuous destocking measures. For a more detailed update on the automotive segment. The trend for the automotive interior continues to be in favor of more stylish and diverse designs, made possible with increasing quantity and size of panels inside the vehicles equipped with advanced interactive display technologies as we have previously discussed. As a leader in the automotive display IC market, we provide a one-stop shop offering of the most comprehensive product portfolio for automotive display in the industry, ranging from traditional DDIC to new technologies such as TDDI, local dimming TCON, LTDI, and AMOLED. Our business visibility for automotive segment for 2023 remains much better than those of consumer electronic products.

We see a favorable trajectory in our automotive TDDI business, backed by a prompt expansion of TDDI adoption and our fast-growing new pro-project wins. As TDDI technology is essential for large-sized, interactive, stylish, curved, and freeform automotive displays required of future generation vehicles. We believe our automotive TDDI sales will be one of the primary driving forces for our long-term business growth. Moreover, we anticipate the market share of our automotive TDDI will surpass that of DDIC, which has already reached 40% globally. Furthermore, Himax is also the first in the industry to launch the LTDI or large touch and display driver integration automotive display solution, catering to the need for ever larger screens inside vehicles.

LTDI solution requires even higher levels of integration of display and touch technologies for the next generation, typically larger than 30-inch automotive displays, where the solution can cascade up to 30 chips in support of ultra-high resolution displays, usually more than 7Kx1K in high precision touch sensitivity. United with a top-tier automotive digital platform provider, our cutting-edge LTDI technology was showcased at CES 2023 by one of our leading panel customers for a 55-inch pillar-to-pillar in-sale touch display that provides seamless, intuitive, and advanced tactile experience for future generation smart cabins. Our LTDI is scheduled to start mass production in the second quarter of this year, substantially ahead of competition. More design collaborations for some modish vehicles are underway. Next, for an update on AMOLED.

We continue to gear up for AMOLED driver IC development jointly with major Korean and Chinese panel makers in various applications. For tablet, we are seeing shipments on the rise for premium models that adopt advanced AMOLED displays, of which Himax offers both DDIC and TCON, and has commenced production to certain leading brands. For automotive AMOLED display, we continue to win projects awards. For our flexible AMOLED driver and TCON with both conventional car makers and NEV vendors. Finally, we are making good progress with leading panel houses for the development of AMOLED display drivers for smartphone, TV, and notebook applications. We expect to commence our smart AMOLED driver production from the second half of 2023. Our AMOLED business, including display driver and TCON, is slated for strong growth in the next few years.

As a reminder, for smartphone AMOLED display driver, we already have secured meaningful capacity. Let me share some of the progress we made on the non-driver IC businesses. Starting with an update on timing controller. We anticipate Q1 TCON sales to decrease by mid-teens sequentially, hampered by decreased shipment of tablet product for AMOLED displays. On a positive note, our position remains unchallenged in automotive TCON for local dimming technology, which not only improves display contrast ratio, but also drastically reduces display power consumption, which is critical for large displays and EV models. With years of strenuous work on this high entry barrier technology, we have developed comprehensive local dimming TCON product offerings that can support a wide range of designs covering super high frame rate of 240 Hz and resolutions of up to 8K.

We have won numerous project awards from various name panel makers, Tier 1s, and car makers for premium new car models with a small number of which already commenced mass production recently. Local dimming TCON is fit for robust growth starting 2023. We anticipate Q1 automotive TCON sales to increase more than 100% year-over-year and represent over 2% of our total sales. Switching gears to the WiseEye AI total solution, which incorporates Himax proprietary ultralow power AI processor, always on CMOS image sensor, and CNN-based AI algorithm. We continue to support the mass production of tablets, notebook, and other endpoint AI applications such as automotive, automatic meter reading, shared bike parking, video conference device, door lock, and medical capture endoscope.

We are more committed than ever to strengthen our WiseEye product roadmap and retain our leadership position in ultra-low power AI processor and image sensor for endpoint AI applications. At this year's CES, we came up with several industry-leading ecosystem partners and customers to jointly introduce our neo-modern ultra-low power TinyML solutions in various real endpoint AI applications, including surveillance camera with Novatek, a leader in surveillance system SOC, a smart home with Useful Sensors, a startup founded by Pete Warden, the former Google TensorFlow tech leader. We also joined forces with Seeed Studio in smart agriculture and Wentai Technology in smart office, both leading players in their respective areas. These are just a few examples of real adoption of our ultra-low power WiseEye solution in the emerging endpoint ultra-low power image AI era.

We continue to see increasing development, continue to see increasing deployment of our WiseEye solution in diverse applications, driven by the mega trend of AIoT and growing demand to add image AI capability to everyday objects. To highlight our surveillance camera demonstration, Himax and Novatek jointly showcase a leading ultra-low power pre-roll AI solution, enabling battery operated surveillance camera with comprehensive event recording capability through what is called negative time recording. The pre-roll function, powered by our WE1 processor, features an always-on video recording operation at a slow frame rate using only single-digit milliwatts of power consumption. Meanwhile, the WE1 AI processor intelligently senses specific motion events, such as certain human behavior or suspicious activities.

All these are taking place while the core vision processor remains power off. Once the classified event is identified, the WE1 processor activates the core processor, which then initiates a high-resolution recording of the event while stitching the pre-roll video clips of the WE1 processor thereto. This is a substantial improvement compared to what existing surveillance solutions offer in terms of security, as users receive a thorough video stream complete with pre-roll video clips of what preceded the motion events. It also significantly reduces the overall power consumption made possible for battery power surveillance system. With these significant features in pre-roll and ultra-low power, WiseEye is gaining traction in various surveillance fields, covering doorbell, door lock, and dash cam. Numerous engagement and design projects have been in progress with surveillance customers across different domains after CES.

Also during the CES, we debuted our next generation WE2 AI processor that offers 40% peak power saving and 30-fold inference speed, implying over 50 times power efficiency on a per inference basis compared to the first generation WE1 processor, which is already leading the industry among AI processors aiming for similar market, similar target markets. With the exceptional local inferencing capability, the new WE2 AI processor performs the face landmark detection to identify facial regions, including eyes, mouth, nose, and jaw, to enable advanced, accurate, and precise facial expression recognition, such as head pose estimation, gaze direction, fatigue detection, et cetera.

These new features provide additional vital intelligence to a broad array of applications on top of the success of our leading WE1 AI processor that provides contextual awareness with the ability to visually detect user engagement levels based on presence, movements, and facial direction. Several leading laptop names have shown strong interest in our WE2 processor after witnessing our live demonstration at CES, leading to many follow-up engineering activities. We continue to partner with leading notebook CPU and AP SoC players with the aim of expanding our engagement with leading global laptop names and IoT players working on the enrichment of various AI new AI features and use cases for next generation smart notebook and IoT applications.

Given a consistent product roadmap, improving product performance, and broader customer traction from various domains, we believe that WiseEye will emerge as a multi-year structural growth driver for Himax. Lastly, for an update on our optical-related product lines, including WLO, LCoS, and 3D Sensing. Himax is one of the few companies in the technology industry with a wide array of optical-related product lines that are critical for the realization of metaverse. Our technology leadership and manufacturing expertise are evidenced by the growing list of AR/VR goggle device customers and ongoing engineering projects. We continue to work on strengthening our optical-related technologies suite, while collaborating with some of the world's largest technology companies that remain deeply committed to investing in its development. To look or quickly review some of our recent progress. First, on 3D Sensing.

We see increasing adoption of our optical components and/or 3D Sensing technologies that enable new ways people interact with AR and VR applications. At CES 2023, we introduced a series of next-generation 3D vision processors to support a variety of state-of-the-art 3D Sensing technologies in Time-of-Flight and structured light. Our structured light AI processor can provide 3D eye tracking functionality to report the exact eye positions with the industry's highest response rate and low friction to enable high precision and dizzy-free spatial reality applications. We feature a live demonstration of a 3D naked eye display at CES with our eye tracking technologies becoming the hot focus point. Viewers experience a 3D holographic view from all angles without needing additional wearables to enjoy immersive and advanced visual experience without the side effect of feeling nausea or dizziness. Moving on to WLO.

On 3D gesture control, our WLO technology is deployed to empower 3D perception sensing for precise controller-free gesture recognition in VR devices. Our collaboration with a leading VR player is going smoothly, and we expect volume production starting middle of this year. On 3D scanning for object reconstruction, our 3D sensor technology, which incorporates both our 3D projector and 3D decoder, is being deployed by a leading customer's 3D scanning device for the purpose of generating real-time digital twins, avatars, and 3D environment surroundings that ultimately help users transit and connect seamlessly between physical and digital worlds. The collaboration is ongoing, with promising progress, and we expect it to hit the market next year. As I mentioned before, Metaverse-related deployments or developments are early in the life cycle, but overall remains an attractive opportunity for us potentially.

Himax is well positioned with years of research and development, a unique product portfolio, production history, and key partnerships to capitalize on its growth as the industry continues to emerge and mature. For non-driver IC business, we expect revenue to decrease mid-teens sequentially in the first quarter. That concludes my report for this quarter. Thank you for your interest in Himax. We appreciate your joining today's call. We are now ready to take questions.

Operator (participant)

To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Jerry Su, Credit Suisse, your line is now open.

Jerry Su (Director)

Thanks for taking my question. Hi, Jordan and also Eric. My first question is that, you know, on your prepared remarks, you mentioned that the fourth quarter gross margin was impacted by some charges related to wafer foundry and also the back end for some met minimum loading. I want to know is this still impacting your first quarter and also second quarter margin?

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Thank you, Jerry. Should I address the first question first, right?

Jerry Su (Director)

Yeah. Yes, please.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Okay. To give you a sort of more comprehensive story, such charges, i.e. the charges related to our not fulfilling the LTA application volume application vis-à-vis our wafer foundry or back end partners, and the resulting penalty incurred. Such charges in 2022, meaning last year, total about 1% of total sales of last year. Okay. Certainly it's very much back-ended loaded, as you can imagine, because in the first half, in the first quarter of last year, there was actually still a shortage of supplies. There was no such issue.

It was starting mostly in the second half that we started to have to face such issues. The penalty, such penalty, will still exist in Q1 this year, which will be a bit larger than that for Q4 last year. We are not disclosing the detailed number here because they are not really the predominant factor of leading to the slight constriction of our gross margin, Q1 versus Q4. However, if you look ahead into the rest of the year, we believe when our inventory level becoming more normal and order starts gradually normalizing, then there will be certainly be less charges of this nature going forward for this year.

Bear in mind, we, I mean, you know, certainly all these contracts are entered into when the industry was suffering from, you know, serious capacity shortage. We believe quite a number of such contracts, while they may appear to be a bit problematic in some cases in the short term, they remain important countries for us going forward or in the long term. You know, I would point out to our 28-nanometer LTA for smartphone OLED, and certainly equally important for our DDIC and for automotive sector, which is a very strong supporting factor for success in the automotive market. There are other LTAs primarily in the areas of, you know, smartphone and tablet TDDI.

We are indeed facing demand issues. We project this again, when the industry recovers over time and also when our inventory level, you know, comes down to a more normal position, then there will be, you know, a lot less problematic. In the meantime, we are certainly in discussion with our foundry partners, you know, trying to achieve some flexibility in terms of execution of such contracts.

For example, you know, we may agree to extend the duration in exchange for a smaller penalty in the short term, or we may change product line, you know, by loading certain other products to them, more certain other products than in exchange for, you know, our shortage to meet our commitment for the LTA areas. There are such negotiation and discussion going on, and we are in good progress so far. I think while how much such penalty we incur throughout the year will depend largely on the market situation. As we mentioned earlier, we believe the market will be recovering throughout the year, so we are not pessimistic about this going forward this year.

Jerry Su (Director)

Okay. Thank you. Second question, is regarding, you know, the guidance outlook. For the first quarter, revenue, I think you have guided, large drive IC and also timing controller to decline sequentially. This seems to be a little bit different from your peers. I think they are guiding for up Q-o-Q. Can you give us some color on what you are seeing, on industry trend and, you know, and why there's such a difference? On the automotive side, I think last year had a very strong growth, 50% year-over-year. How should we think about the growth, for 2023?

Also want to know, what's your opportunity in MiniLED and also the MicroLED display for automotive, and how should we think about the midterm growth rate for this automotive business? Thank you.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Okay. There are a lot of questions. Let me see. To recap, your first question is about the large panel display and TCON. Different from peers. Okay, being different from peers. The second question is about automotive, only prospect for this year, basically, right? Third question is MicroLED. Sorry. MicroLED and MiniLED.

Jerry Su (Director)

Yes, correct.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Okay. Can I address the second question first, automotive? I think it's probably the most important among the three questions, given our exposure to the automotive market. We did suffer from a few quarters of sequential decline. Bear in mind, in Q1 last year, we were still suffering from shortage with our supply, you know, being short of the demand. There's a sudden stop of demand, a major disruption in China particularly, because there was a sudden lockdown across a big geographical area. Especially, for example, in Sichuan, which is a local, a major center for automotive manufacturing. A lot of our customers are stuck. You know, they didn't know how to re-react to the overall lockdown.

While we ship a lot of ICs to them with their solid demand in hand at the time, they were not able to produce them or ship their products because of lockdowns. Inevitably, the second quarter ICs we shipped to our customers became their inventory. The such inventory will then be digested throughout Q3, Q4, and even up to Q1 this year. Okay? That explains, you know, big picture-wise, you know, why the automotive DDIC will suffer some decline sequentially over the last few quarters. However, our TDDI automotive, even during such period has demonstrated a very strong momentum, you know, growing sequentially and certainly year-over-year strongly.

Because it's a relatively new product and also it's in hot demand, relatively speaking, because they are newer products and which are typically designed for new models, many of which are EV models. EV models in difficult times are encouraged by the government, incentivized by the government, so they are in better demand compared to traditional models. Therefore, our TDDI for a few factors I mentioned, are still enjoy very good momentum and growth even during this period, this type of period or this period of difficulty. We believe DDIC will rebound strongly from Q2 because after about three quarters of inventory digestion, I think our throughout the ecosystem the inventory level has been back to normal.

However, whether we will enjoy the similar strong growth as we enjoyed over the last two years, bear in mind, in the year before, we had 110% growth year-over-year. Last year, even the economy, we are facing headwinds, we still enjoy 50% automotive growth. In DDIC this year, such similar growth will be unlikely, I think for a few reasons. One, our market share is already close to 40%. It's arguably as high as one can get. Our DDIC demand is now going pretty much in line with the market and the automotive market for a few factors, I think you know this better, are unlikely to see a major ups growth this year.

We don't think our DDIC will enjoy the similar growth rate compared to last year. Our TDDI for automotive will definitely continue to enjoy very strong growth with high double digits, you know, very decent double digits year-over-year. With, you know, quarter-by-quarter sequential growth and half-over-half sequential growth, I think are very well expected. We simply enjoy very good design win pipelines. In my prepared remarks, I talked about more than 2,200 projects of design wins, actually, out of which only about 20% are currently in mass production. There are still a lot of upside, not just this year, in the next few years.

So for last year, our automotive TDDI already accounted for about between for about 17% of our automotive sales. Bear in mind, industry average is single digits, so we are already 17%. We expect by year 2025 or 2026, this number will be more than 40%. That explains our confidence. That demonstrates our confidence that automotive TDDI will continue to enjoy very good growth going forward, not just this year, but also next few years. On top of that, there are a few things that are very exciting, equally exciting. You know, in our prepared remarks, we talked about timing controller with with local dimming feature.

We are the clear industry leader, or arguably the only company providing a solution right now in the marketplace. We are getting very good project wins across the board with customers starting from premium models and now certain customers even thinking about, you know, making it more into a mainstream model. This, I think, this year, will be again, very high double-digit growth and strong growth for the next few years as well. LTDI, large display touch and driver IC integration. Likewise, we talked about our early mover advantage and CES demo and second quarter this year, commencement of production ahead of the industry again.

This will be a long-term growth engine as well. Finally, OLED. OLED will, in our view, will continue to be a premium niche market for automotive, but we already have a few customers, putting our product into mass production. We are designing ASICs, collaborating with certain leading customers for OLED players. I think this is long-term looking good as well. I think, with automotive business, I think, our overall market share is set to further growth from the existing already very high level of close to 40%. This visibility is one of the strongest of all sectors. This, I think, will continue to represent our, our single biggest revenue contributor over the years.

As for large display, I think our view for the whole year is going to enjoy the growth. Q1 versus Q4 to us is seasonality. We have seen TV market stabilizing, price rebounding, and all indications are basically saying, telling us that TV market, especially high-end, point interface, 4K TVs, I think where we have a good presence, directly, in partnership with leading brand name customers. I think starting from second quarter and into the second half, this is set to enjoy good growth. Monitor and notebook prospect are more questionable. I'm saying they do, we do have limited visibility.

We are starting to hear from end customers, leading end customers that there's a good likelihood their destocking process will be coming to a conclusion probably towards the end of 2Q, with hopefully the 3Q and going forward, slowly and gradually picking up their restocking process. Again, I think we are watching the market closely, especially for monitor and high monitor, where we enjoy a very good market position. I have to say, the business prospect is not very good for the time being, the visibility. MicroLED, we believe, we haven't talked about this in public and in our prepared remarks a lot, we are actually doing a lot of work for MicroLED.

In short, we are a lot more focused on ultra-large display MicroLED, where we are developing, you know, a total very comprehensive solutions covering display drivers, timing controller, PMIC and others for, you know, for certain strategic partners. Also with various leading panel makers we are working on, for example, you know, ASIC timing controller designs, et cetera. In the next year or two, this remains a niche, very, very small niche market. It's an emerging market only. That is why, in the interest of time, we have decided not to talk about it too much. Our view on very small displays, for example AR/VR related MicroLED application, our view is a lot more negative. For a lot of technical reasons, that is our view.

We are putting a lot less resources into them. Although there are inquiries from our customers, for development, but we are a lot more hesitant and conservative in that regard. For MicroLED, our focus will be in ultra-large displays. Surely in the next few quarters we will give people a lot more updates as our developments unfold into a more mature stage. We are not very much into a small size AR/VR kind of MicroLED, because we are not too keen about such technologies prospect.

Jerry Su (Director)

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your answer.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Okay. Thank you, Jerry.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Jason Tsang with CLSA. Your line is now open.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Hello. Can you hear me?

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Yes.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Hello. Yeah, thank you for taking my questions. My first question is, can you give us some details on your pricing trend in coming quarters? Do we plan to, you know, lower the maybe wafer price or packaging price in coming quarters or in Q1? I mean, maybe for your non-LTA shipments. Thank you.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Whether it's LTA or non-LTA, I think our foundry partners have made it rather public that they are not about to, in any meaningful way, lower their listed price in this year. I think the reason is quite simple. You know, they are seeing high inventory levels across the board, which they are customer, meaning design houses. You know, by lowering the price they are unlikely to stimulate the demand, so why bother? So whether it's LTA regulated price or non-LTA binding price, we are not anticipating the listed price from foundry to go down in any meaningful way this year.

However, when it comes to good new orders, I think their doors are always open for, you know, specific, deal by deal, case by case, negotiations. Right. That is first point about the on the supply side. On the demand side, there are I would say three points I want to mention. One, there are indeed overall price pressure upon us because the economy, the overall economy, the macro factor is just very bearish. We have all seen our panel customers are losing money, right. In a rather meaningful way. I think they are under a lot of cost pressure as well. Such pressure will to some extent be transferred to us.

Certainly, I mean, we will not, you know, agree to all their price demands and there will be a lot of negotiations, but, you know, there are some indeed some price pressure. That is my first point. My second point is the products with excess inventory. I'm talking about mainly smartphone TDDI, followed by tablet TDDI. You know, primarily the, in these two areas where across the board we are seeing our peers having certainly pretty meaningful excess inventory. The demand is, the demand visibility is not positive either, right? So there will be price competition in order to offload everybody's inventory level. That is certainly a price pressure.

We are taking a similar position, right? Not to mention, you know, the inventory were prepared when our costs were at its peak. The gross margin over here certainly are not looking pretty in the foreseeable future. All these have been factored in to our guidance or, you know, our prospect for the whole year. That is the second question. However, there are other areas where the pricing environment is a lot more healthy. You know, for example, our automotive sector, I talked about the demand and our revenue decline over the last few quarters.

Even during those quarters, the price erosion, the extent of price erosion was nothing to compare with the same for smartphone and tablet. Smartphone, automotive has been a lot more stable. I think we are seeing the same throughout this year, the rest of this year, as we anticipate, as I said earlier, good rebound right from the second quarter and certainly second half versus the first half. TDDI certainly, we are seeing very strong demand. There are indeed still certain sectors where the pricing environment is relatively healthy. Our unique timing controller, you know, our WiseEye certainly is a unique product areas and some other things. AMOLED as well, more stable, compared to...

I would say, last year we suffer quite a bit for large display driver because the market was just not very good. Ditto for smartphone and tablet TDDI. The bearish environment still lingers on for smartphone and tablet TDDI, while large panel has been stabilizing, I would say. Does that address your question, Jason?

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thank you. My second question is, you know, during this down cycle, especially demand weakness, do we also see, you know, market competitions? I mean, maybe market share pressures for our large display or small display side?

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

I think the pressure comes primarily on last display first. Our strategy has been I cannot say there's no such pressure coming from competition, but our strategy for TV has been to form a strong partnership directly with the leading end customer. With the leading end brand customer, for their, you know, relatively, you know, higher models. Certainly even with that, we are still subject to certain fluctuations. I think the competition is a lot less compared to the mainstream, you know, TV models with the, you know, general panel maker customers, or you know, mainstream, you know, monitor or notebook models.

For monitor and notebook, what's interesting to note is that leading certain leading end customers, especially Americans, are, you know, facing the the struggle in between the U.S. And China, are hedging their bet by asking their supply chain to to be to be away from China. That certainly benefits us somehow. Certainly we are also working very hard with our Chinese ecosystem suppliers. This seems to be, although panel makers are still predominantly Chinese, but when it comes to components, especially ID components, there is still such a discussion. I think certainly we'll shift our focus from more towards leading non-China end customers.

Although we are all dealing with mainly Chinese panel makers, but leading non-China end customers and less on Chinese end customers. I'm talking about large panel, whether it's TV, notebook or monitor. I'm talking about large panel. I think there appears to be this trend and actually it's not coincidence, but even before the two governments struggle, you know, becomes apparent, before this, we have actually strategized ourselves as such by focusing, you know, facing shortage. We need to make a choice. We need to bet on certain customers and, you know, in a way bet against, you know, certain other customers. We have been strategizing ourselves by, you know, forming partnerships with leading international end customers.

Such strategy kind of plays well when it comes to, you know, this new development in between China and the U.S.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. My last question is, I know that LTPS, LCD now is improving on the automotive applications. Can we expect that this kind of migration can boost the adoption rate on the automotive TDDI?

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Yes, indeed. As the resolution becomes higher and, you know, refresh rate becomes higher, touch panel, you know, fancier tech panels, I think, the, you know, higher end fancier panels, there's a trend towards Low-Temp Poly panels as opposed to. I mean, the traditional amorphous silicon panels does enjoy cost advantage, but, when it comes to higher end, higher resolution, higher refresh rate panels, Low-Temp Poly does enjoy advantage. And we are seeing, you know, many such projects together with our TDDI solutions, you know, going hand in hand. Yes.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

I want to have the follow-up questions. Do we have the, you know, penetration rate of automotive TDDI? Do you have some kind of this kind of number?

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

For the overall industry, I don't have the number in hand, but I did mention earlier, that, for Himax alone, last year, automotive TDDI accounted for about 17% of our total automotive sales. Certainly automotive TDDI in terms of ASP is a bit higher than traditional DDIC. In terms of revenue, percentage, that gives you an idea. However, bear in mind our number is substantially higher than the industry average, which we believe is way below 10%.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Below 10%. Okay.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Way below 10%.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Yeah. I would say our such percentage number is probably kind of double the industry average. Certainly we expect this number to steadily increase. It's not going to be as dramatic as how we saw in smartphone and tablet, you know, in the last few years. I mentioned for Himax, our sales, you know, we expect the number to be up from around 17% last year to about 40% or above by 2025 or 2026. That is certainly a major good news for us. Yeah.

Jason Tsang (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. That's all of my questions. Thank you.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

Thank you, Jason.

Operator (participant)

I show no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Jordan for closing remarks.

Jordan Wu (President and CEO)

As a final note, Eric Li, our Chief IR/PR Officer, will maintain investor marketing activities and continue to attend investor conferences. We'll announce the details as they come about. Thank you. Have a nice day.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.