Diodes Inc

NASDAQ:DIOD

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Good afternoon, and welcome to Diodes Incorporated Third Quarter 2021 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. [Operator Instructions] As reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Wednesday, November 3, 2021.

I would now like to turn the call over to Leanne Sievers, Shelton Group, Investor Relations. Leanne, please go ahead.

[Leanne Sievers, Shelton Group-Investor Relations]

Good afternoon. And welcome to Diodes’ third quarter 2021 financial results conference call. I’m Leanne Sievers, President of Shelton Group, Diodes’ Investor Relations firm. Joining us today are Diodes’ Chairman, President and CEO, Dr. Keh-Shew Lu; Chief Financial Officer, Brett Whitmire; Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Emily Yang; Senior Vice President of Business Groups, Gary Yu; and Director of Investor Relations, Gurmeet Dhaliwal.

Before I turn the call over to Dr. Lu, 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 third quarter 2021 ending September 30, 2021.

In addition, the 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, November 3, 2021. Diodes 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’ website at www.diodes.com.

And now I’ll turn the call over to Diodes’ Chairman, President and CEO, Dr. Keh-Shew Lu. Dr. Lu, please go ahead.

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Leanne. Welcome everyone. And thank you for joining us today. This quarter, we presented the fourth consecutive quarter of record revenue and our second consecutive quarter of gross margin expansion over 210 basis points, resulting in record gross margin and profits, underpinning our growth has been the success of our content expansion initiatives and particularly in the automotive market where revenue grew over 65% year-over-year and 7% sequentially, contributing to a eight-year CAGR of 30%. Additionally, our Pericom products continued to set new revenue records, achieving four consecutive quarters of growth primarily driven by traction in high-end computing and server applications.

Our growth in these higher margin end markets combined with increased loading at our LITE-ON Semiconductor facilities have enabled us to increase our top-line revenue and margins, even in the midst of this supply-constrained environment. Diodes is favorably positioned with a global manufacturing footprint that provides the flexibility to strategically expand our capacity and reduce costs, either by adding equipment to existing lines or converting equipment to larger wafers.

These ongoing actions are expected to support our continued growth and margin improvement into next year and toward our 2025 target of $1 billion in gross profit on $2.5 billion in revenue and 40% gross margin.

With that, let me now turn the call over to Brett to discuss our so-called financial results and our fourth quarter 2021 guidance in more detail.

[Brett Whitmire, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks Dr. Lu, and good afternoon, everyone. As part of my financial review today, I will focus my comments on the sequential change for each of the line items and would refer you to our press release for more detailed review of our results as well as the year-over-year comparisons. Revenue for the third quarter 2021 was a record $471.4 million, an increase of 7% from $440.4 million in the second quarter of 2021. Gross profit for the third quarter was also a record at $181.2 million or record 38.4% of revenue, increasing 13% or 210 basis points from $159.8 million or 36.3% of revenue in the second quarter of 2021.

I would also like to point out that our gross profit increased 63% or 250 basis points from $111.1 million or 35.9% of revenue in the third quarter of 2020. GAAP operating expenses for the third quarter of 2021 were $104 million or 22.1% of revenue. And on a non-GAAP basis were $99.6 million or 21.1% of revenue, which excludes $4.1 million of amortization of acquisition related and tangible asset expenses.

This compares to non-GAAP operating expenses in the prior quarter of $90.4 million or 20.5% of revenue. Total other income amounted to approximately $8.3 million for the quarter, consisting of $5.9 million of unrealized gain on investments, $2.2 million of other income, $765,000 of interest income, $800,000 in foreign currency gain, partially offset by $1.4 million in interest expense.

Income before taxes and non-controlling interest in the third quarter 2021 was $85.6 million compared to $70.7 million in the previous quarter. Turning to income taxes, our effective income tax rate for the third quarter was approximately 17.3%. GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2021 was a record $68.4 million or a $1.50 per diluted share, a 23% increase compared to GAAP net income of $1.22 per diluted share or $55.4 million in second quarter 2021. This represents 194% improvement from $0.51 per diluted share or $27.2 million in the third quarter 2020.

The share count used to compute GAAP diluted EPS for the third quarter 2021 was 45.6 million shares. Non-GAAP adjusted net income in the third quarter was a record $67.3 million or $1.47 per diluted share, which excluded net of tax $3.3 million of acquisition related intangible asset costs, $0.3 million of acquisition related and restructuring costs and a $4.7 million gain in value on certain LSC investments. This represents a 23% improvement from the second quarter 2021 of $1.20 per diluted share or $54.6 million and 137% improvement from $0.62 per diluted share or $32.8 million in the third quarter of 2020. Included in third quarter 2021 GAAP net income and non-GAAP adjusted net income was approximately $8 million net of tax of non-cash share-based compensation expense.

Excluding share-based compensation expense, both GAAP earnings per share EPS and non-GAAP adjusted EPS would have increased by $0.18 per diluted share for the third quarter 2021 and $0.15 for second quarter 2021. EBITDA for the third quarter was a record $114.5 million or 24.3% of revenue compared to $99.4 million or 22.6% of revenue in the prior quarter.

On a year-over-year basis, EBITDA increased 81% from $63.3 million in the third quarter 2020, further highlighting our significant operating improvements over the past year. 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 generated from operations was $98.9 million for the third quarter 2021.

Free cash flow was $57.8 million for the third quarter, which included $41.1 million for capital expenditures. Net cash flow in the third quarter was a negative $10.1 million, which included a paydown of $49.7 million of total debt. Turning to the balance sheet at the end of third quarter, cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash plus short-term investments totaled approximately $292 million.

Working capital was $619 million and total debt including long-term and short-term was $252 million. Our net cash position demonstrates our significant cash generation and earnings power.

In terms of inventory at the end of third quarter, total inventory days increased to approximately 99 in the quarter as compared to 96 last quarter, finished goods inventory days were 27 compared to 26 last quarter, total inventory dollars increased $18 million to approximately $322.1 million, total inventory in the quarter consisted of $8.9 million increase in finished goods, a $5.2 million increase in raw materials and a $3.8 million increase in work in process. Capital expenditures on a cash basis for the third quarter 2021 were $41.1 million or 8.7% of revenue. We expect to remain within our target model of 5% to 9% for the full year.

Now turning to our outlook. For the fourth quarter 2021, we expect revenue to increase to approximately $476 million plus or minus 3%, which represents a record on both an organic and a consolidated basis for a combined increase of about 1% sequentially at the midpoint, which is better than typical seasonality of down 5%. We expect GAAP gross margin on a consolidated basis to be 38.7% plus or minus 1%. Non-GAAP operating expenses, which are GAAP operating expenses adjusted for amortization of acquisition related and tangible assets are expected to be approximately 21% of revenue plus or minus 1%.

We expect net interest expense to be approximately $1.2 million. Our income tax rate is expected to be 18% plus or minus 3% and shares use to calculate diluted EPS for the fourth quarter are anticipated to be approximately 46.2 million shares. Please note that purchasing accounting adjustments of $3.4 million after tax for previous acquisitions is not included in these non-GAAP estimates.

With that said, I now turn the call over to Emily Yang.

[Emily Yang]

Thank you, Brett, and good afternoon. In the third quarter, revenue increased 7% sequentially, which is above the midpoint of our guidance and better than typical seasonality, driven by record revenue, market share gains and strong demand across all regions. Worldwide POS revenue was another record, driven by record POS revenue in Asia and Europe. Distributor inventory in terms of weeks was flat quarter-over-quarter, which remains below our defined normal range of 11 to 14 weeks.

Looking at global sales in the third quarter, Asia represented 80% of revenue, Europe 12% and Americas 8%. In terms of our end markets, computing represents 30% of revenue, industrial 24%, consumer 18%, communication 16%, and automotive 12% of revenue. We achieved record revenue in the automotive, industrial, computing and consumer end markets.

Now let me review the end market in greater details. Starting with automotive market, revenue grew over 65% year-over-year and 7% sequentially to add a quarterly record to revenues even in a supply-constrained environment. Since launching our entrance into the automotive market in 2013, we have achieved a 30% CAGR. Our ongoing success can be contributed to our content expansion initiatives that have resulted in Diodes’ content opportunity increasing to almost $100 per vehicle. As part of this initiative, we have also expanded our product portfolio for a broader set of automotive applications that has resulted in increased design-ins and design wins.

As evidence of our traction to cover more applications, during the quarter we had strong design-in momentum for gate drivers, high-voltage regulators, Hall-effect sensors and MOSFET in the brushless DC motors, electric power steering, cooling fans, water pumps, power windows, door locks, infotainment, battery managed systems and advanced driving assistance systems. Wireless charging USB Type-C charging and 40 AVO battery systems continued to drive demand for MOSFETs and protected low switches. We also saw strong demand for automotive-grade rectifiers in wiring harness applications as well as our bipolar transistors and LED linear drivers in various lighting applications, including rear brake lights, turning lights, soft lights and carpet lighting. AC/DC Buck converters also received strong demand in infotainment, forward lighting, taillights, instrument clusters, telematics and ADAS.

During the quarter, our Pericom products for the automotive space also continued to gain strong momentum with increasing design-ins for USB Type-A charging controllers, I/O expanders and crystal prism oscillators in the infotainment. Our broad portfolios of high-temperature crystal oscillators led the growth in the automotive business, contributing to the strong performance of the Pericom product line during the quarter.

In the industrial market, revenue also reached a quarterly record, growing 66% over the prior year and 17% sequentially across a diverse set of applications, including power supplies, power tools, smart metering, power distribution systems, machine automated systems and security systems. Bipolar transistors and synchronized controllers are gaining traction in power supply applications and PCI Express package switch from the Pericom product family are gaining momentum in embedded applications. Newly introduced stepdown LED drivers in a compound package won several new design-ins for LED lighting applications. Additionally, our Gate driver IC’s Trench MOS technology and voltage regulators are seeing continued success in the brushless DC motor, cooling fans and blowers, stepper motors, garage door controls and LED strip lighting.

Diodes also continues to support environmental sustainability through the efficiency improvement with our rectifiers in the green factory automated control equipment and high-speed robotics. Additionally, we gained increasing market share in inverter and Power-over-Ethernet applications with our MOSFET and SBR products. We also secured increasing design wins for applications such as programmable logic controllers, IoT, security, server motors, power supply, smart grip and energy. Also, we have been securing the new design wins from our Lite-On semiconductor image sensor product line in industrial automation machines including scanners, banknotes detectors, check receipt and PCB inspection.

In the consumer market, DC-DC converters and bipolar transistors have been gaining strong growth in monitors, TVs, set-top boxes and cable modems. Similarly, demand for our low power audio amplifier increased significantly along with new design wins for Schottky and SBR products in our speakers, wearable devices, smart routers and virtual reality applications. With the integration of LSC manufacturing facilities, Diodes is now well positioned to support the strong demand for our bridge rectifier product family in the consumer applications such as home theaters as well as smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Additionally, USB power delivery decoders and MOSFET gained an increasing number of design wins in the wireless power charging solutions. Our industrial small list MOSFET fab is ramping up to meet the most critical demand in small footprint applications. We also experienced further growth and new design wins for our USB MUX devices with high-voltage protection and ultra-high bandwidth features in the IoT applications.

Turning to communication, we continue to drive increasing demand for our Pericom products in the 5G market. Our SPDT switch has been designed into 5G active Athena units with major 5G equipment suppliers. We’re also seeing demand for pMOS to protect the 5G RF amplifier in the remote unit and NMOS in the 5G-based power station to reduce the power consumption. Also, during the quarter we achieved significant traction for our high PSSR performance LDOs, battery sets and SBR product in the smartphone application. Diodes also saw increased revenue from all typical applications for fiber optic equipment, including CWDM and DWDM modules as well as switch gears and switchboard applications. Building on the success of our high-performance crystal oscillators from Pericom. Our ultra-low jitter crystal oscillator family also experienced tremendous growth in the optical modules.

Lastly, in the computing market, revenue grew over 140% year-over-year to a record, driven by record Pericom revenue and the fourth consecutive quarter of growth.

Energy conservation trend continues in the commercial PC market, which requires our signal integrity Re-Drivers. We are seeing USB Type-C and display port Re-Drivers, pMOS USB power delivery, buck converters and Omnipolar Hall sensors, design wins in the notebook, Matador and AIO platforms. Additionally, strong demand for high-resolution displays propelled our HDMI display Re-Driver products to other volume peaks. HDMI 2.0 Re-Drivers are designed-in applications by mobile stations, gaming PCs and notebooks, and our newly released new channel LED drivers of inferior LED has been winning designs with major PC manufacturers. Along with Pericom products, Schottky and SBR products are also increasing our new design wins in cloud platforms and data center applications. LSC’s image sensor products have also been gaining new design wins in scanners and multifunction printers.

In summary, we are very pleased to have achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of record revenue, coupled with record performance across all financial metrics. The continued success of our content expansion initiatives is evidenced by our record revenue in key targeted markets like automotive, industrial and computing, which has also served as a key contributor to our margin expansion. With our expectations for another quarter of above seasonality results and record performance, we look forward to reporting our continuous progress. With that, we now open the floor to questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Tristan Gerra from Baird. Your question please.

[Tristan Gerra, Baird]

Hi. Good afternoon. You’ve mentioned market share gains in the quarter. Is that the ongoing share gains notably driven by Pericom? Or are you seeing a change or an acceleration in those share gains due to some of your competitors deemphasizing lower margin product, which presumably would be an opportunity for you to go at on some additional share there?

[Emily Yang]

Right. So Tristan, this is Emily. I think the market share gain is really across the board, across all the product lines, right? Not only just a Pericom. So, I think with our content expansion and our total solution sell strategy, driving additional designs-in and design wins, of course, with the current market situation also accelerated some of the design-in activities, right? So I would say it’s combination of everything.

[Tristan Gerra, Baird]

Okay, thanks for the feedback. And as a follow-up, how all the shortages potentially waiting on your ability to ship either at your level or at the customer level, meaning customers are waiting for other parts and might be doing some centring rebalancing. There was a large company that talked about at earlier discerning season. How do you see generally the supply potentially constraining you not necessarily this quarter, but to the next few quarters?

[Emily Yang]

Right. So I mean, first of all, we definitely are constrained, because overall, the situation for this run is quite dynamic. So what we have been doing is actually working with customers, understanding their true demand, and overcome different bottlenecks. So overall, we’ve seen the backlog is still extremely strong. We haven’t really seen any significant changes from the behavior from customers rebalancing their inventory at this moment.

[Tristan Gerra, Baird]

Great. Thanks again.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of William Stein from Truist Securities. Your question, please.

[William Stein, Truist Securities]

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. First I want to ask about the seasonal guide. I wonder if there’s a one of the end markets that we should think about more prominently representing this above seasonal expectation or is it spread across more than one?

[Emily Yang]

Right. So let me address that question first. I think overall, we’ve seen strength across all the markets. So let me just break it down a little bit. In the automotive, we’re still seeing it very, very strong. Industrial is also very strong. On the computing area, we’re seeing a lot of the strong demand driven by the cloud-based applications. Server, datacenter are extremely strong. Enterprise I feel is very strong. The only area we’ve seen a little bit I would say maybe soft, it’s actually consumer related, low-end PCs. But for Diodes, that was never really a big focus for us.

And then if we look at the communication, I think overall the backlog is still strong, especially driven by 5G-related stuff, including the smartphones. All the other, I would say wireless phones we’re definitely seeing a little bit I wouldn’t say slow, but stable demand in general. And then – so yes, so that’s communication, computing, industrial, automotive, yes, that’s about the 5 segments that we have seen.

[William Stein, Truist Securities]

It’s sounds like pretty broad-based. I wonder if you could give us an update on lead times maybe characterize, what personal portfolio perhaps it’s approximating 52 weeks or more? How that’s changed and maybe backlog if you can provide it? Thank you.

[Emily Yang]

Right. So overall, there’s no significant change in terms of lead times. Like I mentioned before, what we do is working with customers, especially the Tier 1, Tier 2 customers, understanding their true demand. Backlog is still very strong. Book-to-bill ratio really strong as well. And we also had record revenue, POS revenue, for the second quarter, and the strength is really across all regions as well. So as you can see, based on a lot of this kind of information, we did provide a strong guidance for Q4, which is 1% quarter-over-quarter growth. And compared to the usual seasonality of 5%, we see that as a strong guidance as well.

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

In addition, we implemented this [indiscernible] 6-month backlog. And from there, we still have very strong bookings and our backlog did not really get canceled. And we are almost all booked for the next 6 months capacities. So you can see the business still very strong.

[William Stein, Truist Securities]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Williams from Benchmark. Your question, please.

[David Williams, Benchmark]

Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the excellent results here. So maybe first, Dr. Lu, you had mentioned in your prepared remarks of the expanding capacity by adding equipment or converting to larger wafers. And just wondering if you could maybe provide some color as it relates to those remarks. And if this is currently in motion or how we should think about the capacity expansion efforts in the intermediate term?

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. This – there’s several of them. When we acquired AOC, they – some of their GPP product is the 3-inch. We will convert to 4-inch. Then some of the 4-inch wafer fab, we converted into 6-inch. And from there, you can see the capacity and the cost. Both will be – capacity will be increased and the costs will go down. Then on S-Pack II, we expand all this. We are half at 6-inch and the other half is 8-inch. We are actually ramping up all the 8-inch capacity. And so we supposed to fully loaded by end of fourth quarters. Then, you remember, we bought the GFAB from Texas Instruments.

And that GFAB, we have foundry service, but it went down 10% a year. And because that, we are ramping up our own demand into that 8-inch GFAB and even some of the 6-inch fab. So from there, we do have more capacity to support our sales by TI. Texas Instruments, in the contract, they reduce their foundry support, our foundry support to them, 10% a year. And so due to all those actions, we are able to increase our capacity. And at the same time, some of our own facilities, for example, the Pericom crystal 9 and oscillator 9, we actually implement or install two 9s, one in April this year and one going to be start to ramp by end of this year. So those is all here and there, we are able to increase our capacity to support future expected revenue expansion.

[David Williams, Benchmark]

Great. Excellent color. Certainly appreciate that. I think you’re one of the few that has had that kind of capacity coming into this shortage. So it’s good to see. I guess maybe from a component shortage perspective, are there areas where you’re maybe seeing any type of inventory excesses or where the visibility is less clear? And the reason I ask is a few others have spoken to potential builds and maybe preparation of scarce components becoming available, and just maybe thinking about the production numbers and the builds that aren’t yet in the production numbers. Do you think there’s any part of the demand trends that you’re seeing now, maybe that are pull forward because of those production builds that haven’t been – that aren’t in the numbers yet.

[Emily Yang]

Yes. David, this is Emily. Overall, we’re still seeing constraints really across all the product lines. We haven’t really seen any specific pockets of product lines. I’ve seen some of the I wouldn’t say drop, but it’s really relaxed. So we definitely don’t see that at this moment. So like Dr. Lu mentioned, we are pretty much booked with our noncancellation policy. And with our visibility on the backlog, we are pretty well positioned for the next few months.

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Well, I think it’s fortunately because we are gaining the market share. And because of solution sales, we are able to participate more in the customer design. Therefore, our revenue growth is really very balanced. It’s not just one here or there. Another thing is, we target in the product mix, like Emily just mentioned, automotive.

We are CAGR 30% that give us the potential growth in the future, right. And like, we focus on high end PC data center and those service and those really coming from our third quarter and we continue sit in the new revenue record of four consecutive quarters now. So if the growth to support for our goal, and even on consumer, we focus on IoT type of activity and therefore those are still growing – continue growing. And similar in communication, 5G related either base station or cell phone or high-end phone, those will continue grow in the future. Therefore, I am not confidence even the capacity may start to do stuff, but I don’t confirm our growth will continue.

[David Williams, Benchmark]

Fantastic color. And one more, if I can just squeeze me in here real quick, just on the gross margin side, do you have a sense of maybe what the magnitude of margin improvements been for maybe the volume and pricing versus just the value optimization? How sustainable are the margin trends do you think?

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Our principle is we only raised the price to reflect our cost increase. Okay. So when vendor raised the price for wafer fab or building material, we increase our ASP to reflect that cost increase, but majority of our gross margin improvement is not coming from the ASP increase. It is coming from our manufacturing efficiency, and our product mix and when you look at the manufacturing efficiency, you know, when we consolidate it, we always see, at 1Q this year, our GPE went down 300 basis point. And this is because the manufacturing efficiency is not as great as Diodes, but then, after we take over, you can see our quarter growth, 270% basis point, our third quarter grow 210 basis point, it’s all due to manufacturing efficiency and product mix, because from product mix, point of view is that we grow up much more in automotive area. And I already mentioned 30% CAGR and that gives you a much better gross margin, but manufacturing efficiency, I think LSC manufacturing, we have load it. And we are now get to about LSC, one of the fab is 91% in the third quarter. So those really getting to the improvement of the gross margin.

[Emily Yang]

Yes, I think on top of that, right, we talk about LSC synergies, right. Besides the manufacturing synergy, we still have three other area which has product customer base, as well as the market segments. There’s still a lot of room for us to continue to grow. We’ve also seen a new wave of opportunities, especially opened up a lot of new doors and new sockets at a lot of strategic customers. So we believe this is the beginning of it. And with our total solution sales strategy, our contact expansion focus that will continue to help us to drive the margin improvements in the near future.

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Our strategy is even this shortage in our capacity constraint. We have not raised the ASP. We only reflect the ASP increase by our cost increase. So our customer can understand why we need to raise ASP, but we take this opportunity to develop the deeper relationship with our key customer. We are able to open the door for the area, which we are not able to participate in the past.

Now the customer really welcome us to support and but this strategy of not raise the ASP too aggressively, we develop a long-term partnership relationship. At the same time, we are able to sell our portal solution into the customers’ hand. So those I believe is a better strategy than just raise the ASP and hurt our customers relationship.

[David Williams, Benchmark]

Fantastic. Thanks so much. And best of luck on the fourth quarter.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Matt Ramsay from Cowen & Company. Your question please.

[Ethan Potasnick, Cowen & Company]

This is Ethan Potasnick actually on for Matt Ramsay. Congrats on a nice results here. Just wanted to follow up on a previous question, in understanding, I guess the utilization of the LITE-ON fabs. Given already high level, how much incremental utilization is to come, and then from like a margin revenue perspective, if the fabs are getting close to full how much of the older, lower margin, lower ASP products are running through the facility that can be replaced by higher margin, higher ASP products and what impact that might have on the P&L going forward?

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Well, let me answer some and then I’ll get Gary to answer the rest of it. Okay. If you look at the making function of LSC, then some of the area [indiscernible], right then that portion is one we’re talking about one of the fab, which we call it JKFAB. And that’s one with half an audience now to almost 91%, right. But there are other fabs, which I mentioned convert from three inch to four inch, convert from four inch to six inch. Those it’s just we purchased the equipment in September this year and we install and converted to six inch. We ramp it up in one queue, then we fully ramp by second quarter. So that kind of support for the capacity going to support that growth of the LSC in the future.

Because like I said, LSC synergy other than making function, the products energy, and the market synergy and the customer energy, it took a time. So I prepare for that. It takes one to two years to be able to ramp it. And so we get the capacity ready to prepare for the mature of those synergies. Now you are asking how much percent we make – we know that area, we’re going to enhance, we are going to improve. But we did not put the forecast of how much percent going to be. It’s an ongoing productivity improvement, ongoing capacity increase, ongoing within that synergy for LSC. So we are not separate from the LSC on.

[Gary Yu, Senior Vice President-Business Groups]

Right, let me put more color on top of Dr. Lu’s statement on that. And it’s really difficult for us to break it out. What’s the low margin LSC before, and what is it now? Okay. But actually it’s not to mention about very beginning about JKFAB loading. Okay. From 50% of first quarter, this year up to 91%, it does increase the capacity utilization, but also reduce the idle costs on each item, no matter size product as a second source moving from the sub-count. Okay, or existing LITE-ONproduct. They do have a much better cost structure, than like three quarters before. So that does help us to bring up the competition of those device, no matters it’s LITE-ON product, or bios product.

[Emily Yang]

Right. So maybe, let me add one more comment. Your question regarding lower ASP margin replace about higher ASP or better margin product that is actually part of our product mix strategy that we continue to drive. And there’s still a lot of room for us to continue to improve, and that this will also include, I mean, LITE-ON semiconductors, a part of our overall portfolio. So we’ll continue to execute the strategy.

[Ethan Potasnick, Cowen & Company]

Okay. Totally understand. Thank you for that. And then just a quick follow-up if you could give us a little color maybe on what you expect from the different segments sequentially, given the guide?

[Emily Yang]

So I think I did went over the segments, right. So automotive is going to be strong. Industrial is going to be strong, PC higher end stuff. Cloud driven data center, surface will be strong, consumer focus, more on the IoT area and then communications really 5G driven. We don’t really break down and provide us guidance down to each of the segments. But that’s what we see in the market nowadays.

[Ethan Potasnick, Cowen & Company]

I understand. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today’s program. I’d like to hand the program back to Dr. Lu for any further remarks.

[Keh-Shew Lu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you for your participation on today’s call. Operator, you may now disconnect.

[Operator]

Thank you. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.