2021 3Q Amkor Transcript

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EDITED TRANSCRIPT

AMKR.OQ - Q3 2021 Amkor Technology Inc Earnings Call

EVENT DATE/TIME: OCTOBER 25, 2021 / 9:00PM GMT

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OCTOBER 25, 2021 / 9:00PM, AMKR.OQ - Q3 2021 Amkor Technology Inc Earnings Call

C O R P O R A T E P A R T I C I P A N T S

Giel Rutten Amkor Technology, Inc. - President, CEO & Director

Jennifer Jue Amkor Technology, Inc. - Senior Director of IR and Finance

Megan Faust Amkor Technology, Inc. - Executive VP & CFO

C O N F E R E N C E C A L L P A R T I C I P A N T S

Arthur Michael Winston Pilot Advisors, L.P. - CEO, President, and Chief Operations Officer

Randy Abrams Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division - MD and Head of Taiwan Research in the Equity Research Department

Vijay Raghavan Rakesh Mizuho Securities Co., Ltd., Research Division - Research Analyst

P R E S E N T A T I O N

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Amkor Technology Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Hillary, and I will be your conference facilitator today. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Jue, Head of Investor Relations. Ms. Jue, please go ahead.

Jennifer Jue - Amkor Technology, Inc. - Senior Director of IR and Finance

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Amkor's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Giel Rutten, our Chief Executive Officer; and Megan Faust, our Chief Financial Officer.

Our earnings press release was filed with the SEC this afternoon and is available on the Investor Relations page of our website, along with the presentation slides that accompany today's call.

During this presentation, we will use non-GAAP financial measures, and you can find the reconciliation to the U.S. GAAP equivalent on our website. We will make forward-looking statements about our expectations for Amkor's future performance based on the environment as we currently see it. Of course, actual results could differ. Please refer to our press release and other SEC filings for information on risk factors, uncertainties and exceptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from these expectations.

Please note that the financial results discussed today are preliminary, and final data will be included in our Form 10-Q.

And now I would like to turn the call over to Giel.

Giel Rutten - Amkor Technology, Inc. - President, CEO & Director

Thanks, Jennifer. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today.

We delivered outstanding financial results in the third quarter with record revenue of $1.68 billion and record profitability. Strong execution, high factory utilization and controlled spending resulted in record quarterly EPS of $0.74. When combined with the strong first half results, we generated $1.74 of EPS in the first 3 quarters, doubling last year performance in the same period. Revenue was up 24% year-on-year, and 20% sequential growth comes on top of an excellent second quarter. Continued momentum drove record performance in all end markets, most notably in communications and consumer, where we saw sequential revenue increases of 28% and 22%, respectively.

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OCTOBER 25, 2021 / 9:00PM, AMKR.OQ - Q3 2021 Amkor Technology Inc Earnings Call

Our communications business grew 24% year-on-year, representing 43% of total quarterly revenue. The main driver for growth here is the strength in the smartphone market, particularly in 5G, with current industry forecast of nearly 500 million 5G-enabled smartphones to be built this year.

We expect 5G to remain an important growth driver, and we continue to invest in technology and manufacturing scale to support our customers in these growing markets.

In the automotive and industrial markets, we achieved another quarterly revenue record with sequential growth of 9% and year-on-year growth of 42%. The growth underlines a strong recovery in this market, although supply chain constraints, especially in wafer and substrate supply, dampened further growth.

The strong recovery of our automotive business is mainly due to significant trends of new products in this domain, particularly supporting the rapid proliferation of ADAS functionality and the accelerated electrification of car models. Amkor is well positioned to support these innovations with a solid technology portfolio and an established automotive qualified manufacturing base. In ADAS, we are ramping the assembly of the latest generation processors using our advanced flip chip technology and the portfolio of radar and optical sensors using wafer-levelfan-out technology.

For electrical vehicles, we are enabling the assembly of high-power silicon carbide devices in our Japan factories, utilizing unique wire bond and lead frame technology. Although we foresee some short-term and midterm constraints in automotive supply chain, we believe the long-term growth drivers in this market remain in place, resulting in the continued expansion of semiconductor content per car. Market forecasts show growth rates in the automotive market that exceeds the average semiconductor industry growth.

Strength in the consumer market resulted in a better-than-expected sequential increase of 22%. We continue to diversify our product and customer portfolio in IoT wearables, and we ramped several new products in the third quarter. We expect this market to be an important driver of growth, and our overall product and customer pipeline for advanced SiP solutions in this sector remains strong.

Revenue in the computing market set another quarterly record, with sequential growth of 9% and year-on-year growth of 28%. Further upside was tempered by constraints in material supply, especially high-end substrate materials. During the quarter, we experienced solid performance in all computing applications and a further strengthening of our project pipeline. We continue to invest in technology and manufacturing scale to capitalize on opportunities in emerging segments like AI and high-performance computing.

Finally, our test business grew 19% year-on-year in the third quarter to a record $225 million as we broaden the scope of our test services for 5G communications and system-level testing.

Our manufacturing organization did an excellent job managing the steep production ramp in the third quarter, most notably for advanced packaging in our factories in Korea. During the quarter, we added capacity and ran several new products while working through obstacles in the supply chain caused by COVID restrictions and supply constraints for material and equipment. We work closely with our suppliers and customers and managed to keep the impact limited, although we experienced some revenue impact for our SiP business due to short supply of critical ICs.

We expect the constraints on material and equipment supply to continue into next year. To mitigate risk, we have expanded agreements with several of our suppliers as well as most of our top customers to warrant the better supply assurance in future periods.

In the U.S., we continue to monitor investment policies to incentivize domestic semiconductor manufacturing, and we are exploring a possible factory location to align with the U.S. investments of other major semiconductor companies.

Our CapEx target for the year remains at $775 million, with major investments for wafer-level and flip chip technology, SiP and test capacity as well as facility expansions.

Now let me turn to our fourth quarter outlook. We are expecting the fourth quarter to be another solid quarter with revenue of $1.64 billion at the midpoint of our guidance. This represents a year-on-year increase of 20% for both the quarter and the full year. For 2021, we expect double-digit percentage growth in all end markets, and we remain confident in our strong market position and the overall demand environment.

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OCTOBER 25, 2021 / 9:00PM, AMKR.OQ - Q3 2021 Amkor Technology Inc Earnings Call

Megan will now provide more detailed financial information.

Megan Faust - Amkor Technology, Inc. - Executive VP & CFO

Thank you, Giel, and good afternoon, everyone. Amkor delivered strong financial results in Q3, setting new records for revenue, gross profit, operating income, EPS and EBITDA.

Third quarter revenue of $1.68 billion was up $274 million or 20% from the second quarter. And as Giel noted, all of our end markets set new revenue records.

During the quarter, we successfully navigated through several disruptions in the supply chain, specifically material constraints for wafers, substrates and components. These disruptions primarily impacted the communications end market, where our growth was hindered but still in line with historical seasonality. This was partially offset by upsides in our consumer advanced SiP portfolio for IoT wearable products.

Revenue for advanced products grew 26% sequentially and represents around 70% of our business. This significant growth is driven by new product introductions, primarily in advanced SiP, supporting the communications and consumer end markets.

Our revenue for mainstream products grew 4% sequentially and 27% year-on-year, principally due to recovery in the automotive market.

With high levels of utilization, gross margin expanded 150 basis points year-on-year to 19.3%, and our gross profit of $325 million is an all-time record.

Operating expenses for the quarter came in as expected at $113 million. Our focus on controlling OpEx during a period of significant growth contributed to record operating income of $211 million.

Operating income margin expanded 160 basis points sequentially to 12.6%.

Net income for the quarter was $181 million, resulting in an all-time record EPS of $0.74.

We generated record EBITDA of $358 million in Q3, and EBITDA margin was 21.3%.

Shifting to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $790 million of cash and short-term investments and total liquidity of $1.2 billion.

At September 30, total debt was approximately $1 billion, and our debt-to-EBITDA ratio is 0.8x, well below our target of 1.5x. With respect to our capital allocation policy, we will reinvest in the business, supporting technology and capability advancements in R&D as well as capacity expansion for organic growth. This may be equipment as well as facilities expansion when needed. Target capital intensity in the low teens and efficient utilization enables profitable growth.

We will continue to optimize our debt structure with respect to amount, cost and duration. We have reduced our interest expense by over 20% or $11 million for the 9 months ended September 30 compared to the same period in the prior year. We also have access to reserve liquidity for unforeseen events or opportunities.

As it relates to strategic investments, we target technology enhancements adjacent to our core competencies and geographic diversification supporting our customers' supply chain needs, for example, in the U.S. or other locations that are developing a semiconductor supply chain.

Returning capital to shareholders remains a priority, and we expect to grow the dividend over time. Our solid financial position provides flexibility to achieve these priorities.

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OCTOBER 25, 2021 / 9:00PM, AMKR.OQ - Q3 2021 Amkor Technology Inc Earnings Call

Moving on to our fourth quarter outlook. We expect continued strength in the market with revenue to be between $1.59 billion and $1.69 billion. Considering the midpoint of our Q4 guidance, 2021 revenue growth is estimated to be around 20% over prior year. Gross margin is expected to be similar to Q3, between 18% and 20.5%. We expect to maintain operating expenses at around $115 million. We expect our full year effective tax rate to be around 15% due to discrete tax benefits and favorable foreign currency movements.

Q4 net income is expected to be between $140 million and $190 million, resulting in EPS of $0.55 to $0.75. Our forecast for capital expenditures for the full year remains at $775 million for a capital intensity in the low teens.

With that, we will now open the call up for your questions. Operator?

Q U E S T I O N S A N D A N S W E R S

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Randy Abrams of Credit Suisse.

Randy Abrams - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division - MD and Head of Taiwan Research in the Equity Research Department

Okay. Yes. Good job on the results, especially factoring the supply constraints. I wanted to ask on the fourth quarter guidance where at the midpoint is a small revenue decline. Could you elaborate -- some years, I think it's flat, plus or minus. For fourth quarter, how much of that is a supply constraint impacting sales versus -- I'm curious if you're also seeing any areas of pushout due to customers also facing some mismatched shipping product. So if you could elaborate a bit on the sequential decline [granted] off a high base in the third quarter.

Giel Rutten - Amkor Technology, Inc. - President, CEO & Director

Randy, this is Giel. Let me try to give you a first flavor of Q4 guidance.

Now the fourth quarter for Amkor generally is a little bit up or down. It can be up a few percent or down a few percent. The guidance is currently 2% down. Mostly, we see a correction in the communication market where we see still some constraints in components, specifically also critical ICs.

I don't see a correction, as you mentioned, in the end markets where, let's say, end customers are correcting their build plans based on imbalance in the supply chain. So to me, it's still a continuation of the third quarter with limited supply of specific ICs.

Randy Abrams - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division - MD and Head of Taiwan Research in the Equity Research Department

Okay. And if you could elaborate on constraints. You talked about a couple in the remarks, but auto, the constraints you're seeing in the -- and if you could give us a look at how you see the constraints evolving. So I think auto was one area. High-end substrate was an area, and if you could elaborate more on the constraints in ICs. Are these mostly small IC like power management? Or is it across different ICs? So yes, if you could elaborate a bit on the constraint and how you see it continuing, looking forward as we go into next year.

Giel Rutten - Amkor Technology, Inc. - President, CEO & Director

Okay. No. The way that we see and experience constraints is slightly different in each market segment.

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