Delta Electronics Inc

TWSE:2308

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q4

[Unknown Executive]

This is the first time we met each other after the Chinese New Year, so I would still like to say Happy New Year to everyone. So again, we will have our IRO, Rodney, to report the fourth quarter earnings and result of 2022 in the first session, and then we will have the Q&A session after that.

[Rodney Liu, executive]

So thank you for coming today. Now we are going to review the financial numbers for Q4 2022. So as usual, all the financial numbers are -- have been audited by CPA. The Q4 revenue was TWD 105.6 billion, representing a 26% year-on-year growth and only 1% sequential decline from Q3, and 1% sequential decline was partially related to the stronger NT dollars against U.S. dollars in Q4.

Gross profit in Q4 grew by 32% year-on-year, but declined by 8% quarter-on-quarter. As previous quarters, there was a surge in marketing events and business trips after the reopening. Therefore, the Q4 expenses grew by 25% year-on-year and 1% quarter-on-quarter, where wage inflations also added to the increases in R&D and SG&A expenses compared to a year ago. So the R&D expenses as a percentage of sales slightly increased to 8.3% in Q4 versus 8.0% in Q3 and 8.2% a year ago. The expenses ratio of SG&A was 9.6% in Q4 and Q3 versus 9.8% a year ago. So the OpEx ratio in Q4 was 17.8% versus 17.5% in Q3 and 18.0% a year ago. So with the disadvantaged GP margin, OP margin in Q4 contracted to 10.2% versus 12.7% in Q3 but significantly improved from 8.7% a year ago.

So business-wise, we [ found ] decent year-on-year growth in all segments and some sequential increases in automation and infrastructure. There was only a slight seasonal decline in Power Electronics. Earning-wise, we found a significant year-on-year growth for Power Electronics with only a slight seasonal contraction in Q4. On the other hand, the profit contractions for Automation and Infrastructure were mainly due to mixed issues and write-downs.

And for the revenue contribution, Power Electronics, Automation and Infrastructure were 58%, 15% and 27% of sales in Q4 versus 60%, 13% and 27% in Q3 and 59%, 14% and 27% a year ago. With some foreign exchange loss, the nonoperating profits in Q4 was TWD 0.7 billion lower than previous quarters. In Q4, we had TWD 11.5 billion profit before tax, up 36% year-on-year and down 24% quarter-on-quarter.

EBITDA in Q4 was TWD 16.7 billion, up 29% year-on-year and down 17% quarter-on-quarter. Q4 tax expense was about TWD 2.4 billion, representing a 21.1% effective tax rate. Noncontrolling interest was similar to Q3, but surged significantly compared to a year ago as result of Delta [dollars] earnings growth. The net profit after tax in Q4 was about TWD 7.9 billion, up 26% year-on-year and down 29% quarter-on-quarter. So the EPS in Q4 was TWD 3.05.

Now we have a look at accumulated numbers for the whole year. The revenue was TWD 384.4 billion, up 22% from a year ago. GP was up 23% year-on-year, with a GP margin of 28.8% versus 28.7% a year ago. The operating expense was up by 18% year-on-year with SG&A up 19% and R&D, up 17%. Thanks to the better economies of scale, the OpEx ratio shrank to 18.0% from 18.7% a year ago. SG&A as a percentage of sales dropped to 9.8% from 10.1% a year ago and the R&D expense ratio also contracted to 8.3% from 8.6%. So here, we also -- and then by segment, we found this in revenue growth across the board.

Profit-wise except for automation, which was significantly impacted by the [indiscernible]. We found substantial profit expansions for demanded segments. So here, we also provide a sales contribution for each segment for your information. So we had about like TWD 4.6 billion nonoperating profit, slightly better than a year ago.

So in total, we had TWD 46.1 billion of profit before tax income, up 29% from a year ago. Our EBITDA was TWD 65.6 billion, up 24% from a year ago. The tax expense was around TWD [indiscernible] representing 19.7% effective rate. The controlling interest recorded [doubled] as a result of these earnings compared to a year ago.

Therefore, net profit after tax in 2022 was TWD 32.7 billion versus TWD 26.8 billion a year ago, representing a 22% growth. So the EPS of 2022 was TWD 12.58 versus TWD 10.32 a year ago. So the proposed cash dividend this year is TWD 9.84 per share. So speaking of this cash dividend, I think we are going to [indiscernible] elaborate on it. So for the net profit after tax for the current year in 2022 was [ TWD 327 million ] And for the earnings available for distribution for the current year was [ TWD 426 million ] And you can find details in the [indiscernible].

So as you can see from the table below [Technical Difficulty] due to the significant appreciation of U.S. dollar against Taiwanese dollar [indiscernible] we had a substantial book value in this [indiscernible] difference on the calculation of foreign financial statements, which results in a significant increase in other comprehensive income. And therefore, we have reversed the special reserve in accordance with the regulations. Considering the fluctuations, I mean, in foreign exchange changes, so here we -- hereby, we proposed an amendment to the dividend policy. Before the amendment, amount of dividends distributed to shareholders should be no less than 60% of the distributable earnings of the current year. But after the amendment, amount of dividends distributed to shareholders should not be less than 50% of the net profit after tax of the year.

So the reason why we proposed this amendment to this modification to the dividend policy, as you can see from the table, the table of historical cash dividends, because of the fluctuations of foreign exchanges and strong appreciation of the U.S. dollars against Taiwanese dollars and [indiscernible]. We had this, I mean, profits on the P&L, but actually, I mean, the profit from this, I mean, appreciation of U.S. dollars is -- it's only the book value. So without any cash in and cash out. So going forward, considering the future CapEx and investment plans, so we decided to make this modification for to -- I mean, to the dividend policy. And in this case, that we can also, I mean, have a more consistent in terms of our -- the company's cash flow and the dividend payouts. So we hope to win the support from the shareholders.

[Unknown Analyst]

So as we know that we actually saw the pretty strong growth, I mean for your EV solution business. So how do you see the outlook for your EV business this year?

[Unknown Executive]

So EV is actually a very hot thing and very hot topic today. So actually, there are some mega trends, I mean, in this hotel industry. So in old days, I mean, when Tesla just emerged, people or many other automakers didn't really expect Tesla to become a game changer, I mean, in this industry. But today, even for the automaker that didn't really believe in the future of EV, which is a Japanese OEM, they also started to, I mean, invest more into their new models of EVs.

As we can see from the latest article -- the recent article on The Economist, they actually mentioned the new model of Ford, which is F-150. So this pickup trucks actually contributed a lot of, I mean, sales contributions to Ford. And is -- I mean it suddenly became the mainstream model in the pickup truck market. So as I heard from a friend, I mean who lives in the U.S., United States, he told me that if he wants to, I mean, to order a new pickup truck going forward, and he has to wait for at least a year.

So the demand for the EVs, not only for the passenger car, but also for the trucks are very, very strong in the market. And then I mean for the EV cars or for the electric trucks, they cannot only be the vehicles. I mean they can only be the vehicles and moving people from 1 place to another place, but also it become a type of energy storage system to provide the -- to provide additional energy to the household. And a good thing, I mean the good thing for this market or for this EV business is it's not like other ICT business or industry. Once your -- I mean once you get the models or once you get the project wins from the customer and then you can have this business at least for maybe another 5 years because the -- I mean the life cycle for the electric vehicles can be pretty long.

Actually, we are not allowed to provide any financial, I mean, guidance or official guidance to the investors or to the public, but the only thing I can say is we continue to expect pretty decent growth, I mean -- pretty decent growth for our EV business this year. So I mean, as I said, I couldn't really talk about like the accurate, I mean, growth number or provide such I mean, number for you. But we do expect pretty decent growth for our EV business this year.

[Unknown Analyst]

And then we also expect this business started to make some minimal profits this year. Do you think that you are able to achieve even faster growth for your EV business compared to 2022?

[Unknown Executive]

Yes, perhaps.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can you give us more colors on this slightly shier GP margin in Q4 and also give us some guidance or the GP margin outlook for the whole year.

[Unknown Executive]

So the shier GP margin in Q4 was mainly related to the unfavorable product mix and some one-off write-off of inventories as well. So this one-off write-off accounted for the cost of goods sold like around 1%. So for the -- for GP margin for the whole year, I mean, this year, I think that as the Chairman just mentioned, we actually expect to see I mean the faster growth of our EV business, but this business actually carried lower GP margin and very minimal OP as well. So they might be dilutive to our margins, but will still contribute I mean on the bottom line because of less drags from loss.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can you give us slightly more details about like sales contribution within the automation segment? For example, like how much was from the industrial automation and how much was from the building automation? And how do you see the margin profile going forward for the automation segment?

[Unknown Executive]

So in Q4, because of the weakness of the market, so the Industrial Automation business was actually under some pressure. And on the other hand, building automation business was growing really, really fast. As you probably already know, our subsidiary, VIVOTEK was growing substantially last year. But half -- like more than half of its business was ODM business, which carried lower margins. So that was the main reason we saw shier margin -- shier margins of automation segment. So simply put, it was actually because of the product mix, the unfavorable product mix of the Automation segment.

[Unknown Analyst]

How do you see any opportunities or any chance -- or have you already seen any evidence of market recovery, especially in China?

[Unknown Executive]

I think we do expect to see some improvements in the Industrial Automation business, especially because we had a relatively lower base last year. And then actually, there is still structural issue in terms of the labor shortage in the China market. So anyways, the factories will only need to upgrade the automation equipment or their automation level in order to survive the next generation of manufacturing. So in long run, we still have pretty high expectation for industrial automation despite the short-term weakness of the market.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can you give us some idea about your plans for Delta Thailand going forward?

[Unknown Executive]

So where we produce our products is still subject to the clients, I mean the customers' choices. So for example, if the customers, they prefer their products to be produced in Thailand or in China or in Taiwan, if they prefer their products to be produced in a place, then we will have the local team there to serve the clients.

From the perspective of the group, whether -- either the products are made in -- by Delta Thailand or by Delta because we actually consolidate all the numbers and revenues of Delta Thailand, so it doesn't really make a big difference.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can I say that it is possible that customers, he -- I'm sorry, they prefer their products to be shipped by Delta but be produced by Delta Thailand.

[Unknown Executive]

I think there are actually customers, they have their preference. For example, the European clients, they may prefer to have their products to be produced in Thailand or Taiwan. And then we also have the teams to serve the clients. So simply put, that is all based on the preference of the clients, so it's all about the clients' choices.

[Unknown Analyst]

So how do you see the outlook for Q1?

[Unknown Executive]

So we do -- we, of course, we still do expect to see the year-on-year growth for Q1. Actually, we still have multiple growth drivers, including like EVs, data centers, telecom powers and energy storage system and so on and so forth. So we -- unless there are some uncertainties or like any uncertainties in the macro environment. Otherwise, we do expect to see the year-on-year growth.

[Unknown Analyst]

So compared to last year, would you say that you are being more optimistic about the sales momentum for your EV solution business this year?

[Unknown Executive]

I think actually all the -- all the projects we have ahead, actually, the orders or the project wins we had, I mean -- Well, we won in few years -- a few years ago. So in terms of the expectations, actually, there are not so many differences, but only because this year, I think the supply chain, especially the auto supply chain, the situation in the auto supply chain is better than last year, especially the first year -- the first half of last year. So we may see the acceleration of this revenue growth for our EV Solutions business.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can I say that like for each business, you are being more optimistic this year compared to the end of last year?

[Unknown Executive]

I wouldn't really say so because for the consumer-related businesses, for example, the smartphone, power trucks and the novel power supplies and fans and so on and so forth, I think the market is still under some pressure. And also for the 5G deployment, I think as I always said in the analyst meetings, the major bottleneck is still the lack of the killer applications. So that is the main reason for the slow deployment of 5G.

[Unknown Analyst]

So the next question is how do you see the impact of the fluctuations of the foreign exchanges?

[Unknown Executive]

So we actually -- in terms of the sales, we -- the majority of the sales are in U.S. dollars and the costs are in U.S. dollars as well. So the fluctuations of foreign exchange actually only has very limited impact on GP margin. So we actually adopt a natural hedge policy for our GP margin for the foreign exchange.

[Unknown Analyst]

How do you see the artificial intelligence like ChatGPT? How do you see the impact on Delta? Or is there -- are you seeing more opportunities because of this?

[Unknown Executive]

Yes, I think so because there is some growing demand for the computing capability, which also results in increasing demand for energy management and cooling and also the upgrade for the networking equipment in order to have wider bandwidth. So I think we are going to benefit from this kind of trend, especially for our infrastructure segment and infrastructure-related businesses. But in terms of the internal locations, we are still observing this trend and starting on this.

[Unknown Analyst]

So I heard about it, there is still pretty significant labor shortage issue in China, especially after the reopening. So how do you see this issue?

[Unknown Executive]

So I think the way we handle or we solve this problem is we will accelerate our pace of factory automation and small manufacturing. Let me give you some numbers. So actually in 2022, our entire labor actually declined by 20% on a year-on-year basis, but our production value was actually growing in 2022. And now I think going forward, we will continue to deploy more and more small manufacturing and automation within our old factories. In the old days, the direct labor was about was like about 5.4% to 5.5% of our cost of goods sold. But today, it was actually around 4% or less than 4% of our cost of goods sold. So going forward, we will continue to see the decline in this direct labor cost.

[Unknown Analyst]

So for the CapEx plan in 2023, I think the CapEx investments in 2022 was around TWD 2.2 billion. So because of some labor shortage and some material shortage last year, so some of the projects especially the construction progress have been delayed to this year. So we may see some increases, year-on-year increases, for the CapEx investments compared to the last year.

[Unknown Executive]

So for the CapEx investments, I think, by nature, we are not really CapEx intensive company. So our CapEx level is not like the upstream, especially the semiconductor industry. So our CapEx investments as a percentage of our revenues is actually not a really big number.

[Unknown Analyst]

How do you see the dividend policy? So could you please give us like more colors or details or elaborations on this dividend policy?

[Unknown Executive]

I think we have already. We already -- is when the proposal of this dividend policy modification at the beginning of the meeting. But I think the whole idea is we want to be more consistent in terms of the real cash flows and the dividend payouts. So at the end of the day, we want to maintain a stable payout ratio and the dividend, the stable payout ratio for our investors and shareholders. So that is the whole idea.

[Unknown Analyst]

So how do you see your market shares? I mean, the EV market, so which are your biggest customers? Can you give us some names?

[Unknown Executive]

So I think it's pretty hard to say because we actually provide a range of different products. But considering, we actually nearly cover like all the Western OEMs. So we believe that our market shares is actually quite substantial.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can you give us the breakdown of your capacity?

[Unknown Executive]

So I think currently, China still accounts for like about more than 60% of our total capacity. And Delta, including its subsidiaries, accounts for another 20-plus percent, and then the rest is coming from the -- from Taiwan and other countries. Although we continue to have this capacity expansion plans, but -- as I said earlier, there are some project delays because of the labor strategy and material shortage last year. So for many of the new projects, we haven't really -- they haven't really running at their new capacity yet. So in terms of the capacity breakdown, it's actually not that different compared to the number we mentioned previously.

[Unknown Analyst]

How do you see the outlook for your EV charging -- EV charger business?

[Unknown Executive]

So the -- actually, I think the -- for example, the U.S. market, one of the biggest operators, which is EVgo, is actually our customer's customer. But I think in many countries and especially in the U.S., in China, the governments, they are pretty proactively deploying the EV charging facility. So that's why we actually have pretty high expectation for our EV charging business.

[Unknown Analyst]

So I have a follow-up question for the EV charging business. So we all know that the market for EV charging business is really big. But also, the competition there is quite fierce. All the companies, they have this power management-related technology. They all want to penetrate into this market. So how do you see your competitiveness there?

[Unknown Executive]

Well, the market itself is indeed pretty crowded. Well, technically speaking, if you look at the design of the product, you may think, okay, the size of the product is actually not that difficult. But as a matter of fact, it actually requires pretty high expertise, especially considering to the safety issues of fast charging. So for example, for DC to DC fast charging, it actually requires the expertise, experience in the power management technology. So I think some companies, especially for those, they are not the experts in the power management industry, they may not yet think of the potential risk of this.

So actually, in terms of our business plan or the product portfolio, EV charger is only part of our whole business plan because our ultimate goal is we want to build up a smart grid for the cities by providing the integrated solutions and products, so we actually have the energy storage systems and our solar inverters and our EV chargers and so on and so forth. So EV chargers is actually only part of this smart grid. Well, simply put, I think it's just like many other or any other new businesses or emerging businesses. At the beginning, there are always -- I mean, many people are players, they want to penetrate into these new markets. But not everyone can really survive in the market unless they really have the expertise in this market.

[Unknown Analyst]

Can you give us the sales contribution of your energy storage system business last year?

[Unknown Executive]

So well, in terms of the sales contribution, it was actually pretty minimal last year. It was only like TWD 1.2 billion last year, but we did -- in terms of the growth potential, we actually -- we expect a pretty high growth potential for this energy storage system.

[Unknown Analyst]

So what about your power trucks for the auto market?

[Unknown Executive]

Currently, the auto truck accounted for like more than 10% of our passive component business. So maybe I can provide a little bit more colors on this. So for the auto trucks, we actually see pretty much growth potential for these auto trucks not only because of the growing volumes on the vehicles, but also with a much higher specs and requirements for the auto trucks compared to the IT trucks.

So for example, for those trucks that installed in the vehicles, they have to handle the extreme environment. For example, also including the vibration and heat and coolness in the vehicles. So the request in terms of the specs for auto trucks is actually much higher than the IT trucks.

[Unknown Analyst]

So what's your -- well, let's talk about your ESG. Do you have any focus in terms of your ESG development this year?

[Unknown Executive]

So I think one of the new focuses of our ESG is we started to make some efforts in the biodiversity. In addition to the biodiversity, I think our -- we also -- we are targeting to achieve the RE100 target before 2030. And also, we are committed to achieve like net zero in our global operations in 2050.

[Unknown Analyst]

So can you talk about the midterm drivers, growth drivers and the midterm -- long-term growth outlook?

[Unknown Executive]

So I tried to answer this question. So Delta, we do 10-year strategic plan every year. So on average, the company will grow at double digit compared to the previous years. I suppose you -- the midterm you were talking about is 3 to 5 years. For the drivers, EV is certainly one of the most important drivers, and the EV-related products such as [passives] for the auto trucks, we are also now selling more and more auto trucks. And then on the other hand, we are also selling more and more cooling fans to the vehicles as well.

So now we are selling more and more fans to the car companies. So for example, that we provide -- we actually provide the fans, supply the fans for the seat cooling and also for the engine coolings and infotainment system cooling as well. So EV is going to be one of the biggest drivers for sure, and data center is definitely be another important growth driver as well. We not only cover the hyperscaler customers but also many telecom operators because they are also very keen to make a transition from the voices -- from the voice center to the data center.

And another growth driver would be our Building Automation business. So actually, the buildings consume like 30% to 40% of total electricity in the road. So by deploying our Building Automation system, we actually hope to make some contributions in reducing the energy consumption in the buildings. So we believe that there, that is where we can make some contributions. So those would be the long-term -- mid- to long-term growth drivers to the company.

So I think time is up, so thank you for coming today. Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]