Asustek Computer Inc

TWSE:2357

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Operator]

Good afternoon. Welcome to ASUS's earnings call for 2021 Q2. Today's earnings call will have CFO, Nick Wu; and our co-CEOs, Mr. Hsu and Mr. Hu. So in our first segment, we will have Mr. Wu talk about our Q2 results. And for -- and then our co-CEOs will talk about our business and our outlook. [Operator Instructions]

Now we have CFO Mr. Wu to talk about our earnings.

[Nick Wu, executive]

Good afternoon. please look to our fifth slide. Here, we have disclosed our profits and losses for our ASUS brand for Q2 2021. Our net revenue was about TWD 120.4 billion for a quarter-over-quarter growth of 11%, and year-over-year 42%. Our operating profit was TWD 13.5 billion for a 17% growth quarter-over-quarter and 179% year-over-year. Our earnings per share was TWD 15.3.

So for our 2 key metrics, gross margin and operating margin, it has been 21.4% and 11.2%, respectively. So despite facing shortages in our components, we still had excellent performance, performing above our expectations. All of our product lines grew in terms of shipments and earnings. And in the second quarter, our expansion of operations, broadest economies of scale. And the -- and this economy of scale contributed to an operating margin of 11.2%, a new high. In the second quarter, our phones, mainly our gaming phones -- due to new product cycles and high sales shipment volumes, the phone segment actually had excellent growth. It actually broke even for this quarter. As for our video card business, due to the -- due to prices driven by digital currency growth, it also had very positive margins. So in the end, our second quarter results were very positive.

So please look to the next slide, Page 6. This slide discloses our nonoperating items for the brand. And as you can see, we saw an investment loss of TWD 348 million. the chief contributor was Askey, which saw a loss of TWD 884 million. The other investments actually saw a profit of TWD 536 million. For Askey, we are still in the middle of a product transition, and it has fallen short of expectations. Askey is also facing the shortages, the industry-wide shortages. So there has not been enough shipments to achieve economies of scale. So this is why the performance was challenging. However, Askey has also proposed improvements. And we forecast that for the second half of the year, there will be improvements. For the second quarter, we also saw an exchange gain of 1 billion -- TWD 1.6 billion. So the total non-OP items were TWD 1.4 billion.

Now please look to Page 7, which is our balance sheet. You can see that in terms of cash and equivalents, we have reached TWD 59 million. Our accounts receivable is TWD 80 million. And all of this is a result of our high revenues and our investments. You can see that our inventory is up to TWD 129.4 billion, and this is because our entire industry is facing demand, outstripping supply, and shortages in our supply chain. So ASUS is doing some strategic stockpiling of components and preparing our inventory for expected high growth in the third quarter, and that's why our inventories have -- are up compared to the previous quarter. Our cash conversion cycle is still at around 95 days.

Okay. Now please look to Page 9, where we have disclosed our product mix. You can see that PCs account for about 62% of our product mix. And our components, including display -- video cards are 35%. And phones account for about 3%.

Next, looking at our region mix, Europe accounts for 31%, Asia accounts for 43% and the Americas account for 26%. Please look to the next page. This is our outlook for the third quarter in terms of operations and shipments. So you can see that although we still -- are still experiencing shortages of components, we still expect to achieve 15% to 20% growth quarter-over-quarter for PCs and a year-over-year growth of about 10%.

As for components, due to the price of digital currencies reaching a peak for the first half. There were some opportunities that ASUS was able to see -- to seize, rather. And in order to convert this opportunity to profit. But looking forward to the second half, we expect that the component market -- components market, particularly the video card market, will return to the previous state of shortages driven by gaming. So there will be a decrease in the prices driven by digital currencies. So for the third quarter, we are forecasting a 5% to 10% decline quarter-over-quarter. However, we do still expect to reach a year-over-year growth of about 10% despite the relatively high base of the previous year.

Now let's -- I would like to hand it over to Mr. Shi to talk about our strategy and outlook.

[Hsien-Yuen Hsu, executive]

Good afternoon. I'm Hsien-Yuen Hsu, and I will like to talk about our operation strategies. This year, due to the pandemic, our earnings call is online, and some of our staff is working online from home as well. So if there are any issues, please forgive us.

So here, I'm listing our 3 key business objectives, which remain unchanged. First, to manage market dynamics. Of course, over the past 2 years, we are facing a black swan event, that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, PC demand has been very high over the past few years. Now that Europe and North America are progressing with their vaccine rollouts and ending their lockdowns, many investors are worrying about the upcoming changes to the PC market. So I would like to talk a little bit about our perspective.

For 2021, the various market research firms are very optimistic for PC shipments. The IDC is forecasting a total shipment of about TWD 390 million. But after the first 2 quarters, we all know that our industry is still facing component shortages. And so looking at actual shipments, we think that this year's overall market will see about 340 million to 350 million units shipped. So there will be a 40 million to 50 million gap in supply and demand that we do not -- that we forecast will be met next year. And of course, due to COVID, many companies are working from home and many cities are locking down. So a lot of the in-office equipment has faced delayed refresh cycles because nobody has been coming into the office for the past 2 years. So a lot of the computer equipment in the offices have not been updated for a long time. So we expect that with the lockdowns coming to an end, the demand of refreshes will contribute to overall market demand.

And for the second half of the year, Microsoft will release Windows 11. Of course, there are many changes to this new operating system with many new features and many new services. So we anticipate that these new features will drive hardware demand in the future due to higher hardware requirements. Because in the past, traditionally, when Microsoft introduces OS upgrades, they want as much hardware to be able to run the upgrade as possible. But now with the new features, the hardware requirements have actually gone up quite significantly. So we do forecast that Windows 11 will drive demand for upgrades.

In addition, lockdowns have driven demand for learning from home. So in Europe and in the U.S., we are seeing an increase in the number of PCs per home. So due to these factors, we do believe that the outlook is positive for the next year's PC market. Of course, some research firms believe that there will be a decline next year-over-year for the PC market. But listening to Lenovo's earnings call from the past few days, they are still projecting 340 million PC shipments per year. And compare -- this compared to our shipments for this year, we do not believe -- we do not foresee a significant downturn in the market. There will only be changes of a single-digit percentage points, we believe. So due to the factors above, we are quite optimistic. And ASUS does not have a particularly high market share in the PC market right now. So we have set aggressive internal targets for growth.

So for the next year, we are quite optimistic. And of course, we will strengthen our own competitiveness of our products as well as the efficiency of our operations so that we can have better results in the future. The next objective is to expand the addressable market. Over the past 2 years, we have devoted many resources to the commercial and education segments. In the past, ASUS' strengths have laid in the consumer segment, and we have not had so much investment in business and education. But even before the pandemic, we actually spun off our commercial business into its own business unit. But of course, for the commercial segment, we need to build a solid foundation first. And in the past few years, most of our growth have come from Chromebooks. Our Chromebook segment has seen very strong growth for the past 2 years. And so this has laid a very strong foundation for our commercial segment. But of course, we still need time to make the move for the commercial segment to contribute significantly to our shipments and profits. We will keep you updated on this.

And of course, we are focusing on areas of growth. That's our third objective. The overall PC market has not seen particularly strong growth. But for some segments, for example, gaming, growth has been quite significant. And ASUS is extremely competitive in the gaming segment. We've invested a lot of resources. So a lot of our revenue comes from gaming-related products. And this is something that Samson, I think, has more to say about.

Another potential segment for growth that we have identified is the creators segment. So for this segment, we have been investing a lot into the design and planning of our products. And we believe that this segment will be a big help for our PC business. Samson also has more on this in his presentation.

So in addition to pursuing volume, we also want to have a good brand position. And so this is our Golden Triangle strategy. Design thinking is the first is the first leg of this triangle. Design thinking drives and informs all of our product designs. We want to think about what the pain points our consumers based on how to solve them. And we use CRM and connected services to continue to improve our market position. And this drives better results. And finally, we used the Net Promoter Score, the NPS to assess consumers' responses to our products and how satisfied they are with our CRM, our connected services. The Net Promoter score is the main metric. So all 3 form a loop or a cycle to improve our products, our services and our business.

So here, we can see that for the second quarter of this year. our open platform products and system products have all seen -- have both seen strong revenue growth. For open platform, it's over 40%. And for system product, it's over 30%. In the past, ASUS has been focused on PC products. But starting in the end of 2018, we announced a strategic transition into businesses that we believe have high potential. And specifically, we identified AIoT products as an important industry. So we have a business group devoted to AIoT. And right now, we are focusing on 3 major aspects: smart manufacturing, smart health care and smart retail.

And let me give you a brief overview of all 3 aspects. So in terms of smart manufacturing. Well, we have just started. So the overall revenue and profit is still a very small share of our company. So I would like to just talk about some of our customer engagement. There are a lot of numbers on this slide, 24 Alpha sites, 1 partnership with a leading global company. I would like to talk a little bit about this partner. We are partnering with a leading robot supplier. And we have showcased a flexible mixed line manufacturer, bringing together the supplier's robots and our AIoT technology for -- to satisfy the demand for high mix, low-volume manufacturing. We also have 2 MDI products. Our AIS team officially launched the AIS Vision and AIS Detector products this July. And through the AI software toolkits, we can simplify the AI life cycle cost -- life cycle management cost. And the AIS detector can inspect products for their quality allowing for standardization and automation and offering life cycle tracing for the product. We have 33 potential customers that are from a variety of industries. And so I think this is quite exciting, and I do anticipate that there will be very positive results in the future. So we will keep you updated.

So in this slide, we have -- we are showing the aspects of smart manufacturing that ASUS can be involved in, and all of these are our focuses. For example, at the AIS Detector, it's actually part of #10, smart inspection. And in the future, we will continue to develop solutions for our customers. I would also like to say to our investors in the past, ASUS was a brand company. And so we work with a lot of EMSs for manufacturing. But in our current plans, we are planning to launch a smart manufacturing line within 6 months, and we hope to have our own plant manufacturing plant within 2 years.

Why? Well, there are a few reasons. The first reason is the China-U.S. trade war. We know that the U.S. is levying extra tariffs on many products that are manufactured in China. So for us, this is -- this has a pretty large impact. And another reason is for server and AIoT products. We are looking to satisfy high mix, low-volume manufacturing. And some for some products made in Taiwan is a major draw. So we are also looking to satisfy that. And we are also looking to offer higher quality products for industries such as health care or military or railways. They require very high quality manufacturing that we believe we can satisfy. And initially, we want to satisfy low-volume orders and to showcase our experimental products in the smart manufacturing space. And we hope that to showcase our competence and create synergy across our group that can integrate hardware and software. So once we have results for the manufacturing line, we will have more details for you.

Okay. So next, let me talk about our smart health solution. ASUS offers an AI-powered medical coding service. This is the first product in the world that can cover the entire chain from patients entering to discharging from the hospital. This has introduced -- this has been introduced in Taiwan, and we are also working with Oliver Health in the U.S. to help 775 hospitals and medical centers in the U.S. to lower human error and costs in the billing process, which -- allowing for higher efficiency and more efficient use of human resources. Through intuitive keyword searches, providers can easily choose the right coding through -- and look through various keywords and abbreviations. And it's easy to integrate with the workflow. So doctors have had very high satisfaction, and we offer both diagnosis and surgery codes and treatment codes which will allow us to improve the efficacy.

We also offer AI insight to allow users to see the logic behind the codes that the system suggests. Finally, we aim to make it easy for this product to be integrated with existing hospital workflows. So that the smart coding service can be easily integrated into existing processes. In Taiwan, our customers have been very satisfied with the integration of this system.

And next is our smart retail case. We are collaborating with the biggest grocery store chain in Germany. In Germany, there are over 10,000 stores. But of course, we started out with a pilot program to help with inventory management of fresh produce. For our customers, the pain points include that, first, it's very difficult to manage the amount of inventory on shelves. It requires a lot of human effort on part of their employees. But through our smart retail solution, we have an IPC, an industrial PC, that is easy to configure and easy to fit into the environment of the retailer, and it's also highly expandable. We have many -- we can install multiple cameras to monitor the state of the various shelves to see how many goods remain on the shelf. And we have an integrated solution, including AI models and AI servers for real-time recognition with very high accuracy.

This system can be deployed very quickly. And the customer has been very satisfied so far. They see that the system can help them increase their revenue because there will never be empty shelves. The customers can always find what they want, and it also helps their employees work more efficiently.

Next, let me talk about our gaming phone segment. There has been a lot of concern from our investors and from the media about the performance of our phone unit. Many people worry about it being a drag on ASUS as a whole. But for the second quarter this year, our phone business actually broke even. This is much improved from the past. And after we launched the ROG gaming phone, the market response has been excellent. And for this year, we are looking to greatly expand our phone shipments. So in addition to our gaming phone, we are also launching a smaller ZenFone because we have seen that some customers still have a demand for smaller phones that can be easily used on 1 hand. So with these 3 phone models, we do expect that we will be able to hit our shipment target for this year.

Next, I would also like to showcase this phone on the lower right of this slide, which has a Snapdragon icon. So if you've been following the phone market, you probably know that Qualcomm announced this phone in July. And this phone was actually developed jointly between ASUS and Qualcomm. Qualcomm decided on the specs, but the design and manufacturing were handled by ASUS. So we are showcasing this phone here because I think this really shows that although ASUS has not seen very high sales for our phones, our quality and technological capacity are still very well regarded in the industry. And that's why Qualcomm collaborated with us to make this phone. And it really shows that in the industry, we are still very well regarded, and we are sure that this will be a great help in the further expansion of our phone business.

Okay. So now let's have Samson give his presentation.

[Samson Hu, executive]

Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon to our investors and our friends from the media. I am Samson Hu. And I would like to talk about our performance for the first half and our outlook on our business strategy. So in the first half of 2021, thanks to our Golden Triangle strategy, and our product segmentation strategy basis saw excellent growth in our PC shipments. It grew by 40%. The overall market grew by 31%. So ASUS' growth beat the market by nearly 10 percentage points and met our targets.

So in the next slide, you can see our growth by segment. You can see that for the first half of this yea, our regular PCs grew by nearly 20%. Our gaming PCs grew by over 50%, and our commercial and education PCs grew by over 120%. So all 3 segments saw a very positive growth.

If we break down our gaming PC business by region in the first half of this year, we can see that in Europe, growth was over 35%. In North America, it was over 85%. In the Asia Pacific, outside of China, it was over 45%. In China, it was over 60%. And globally, worldwide, the growth in the gaming PC business was over 50%, again, beating the market average of 32% by nearly 20 percentage points. So we are still performing far better than the market.

Looking at the next slide. In the gaming market. We are not just looking for high shipments. We are also looking for -- to improve the positioning of our ROG brand. So looking just at the premium segment, the average market share -- the market share -- or rather as a percentage of gaming note -- of total shipments, ASUS' premium ship segment was 37%, which is higher than 26% for the market as a whole. So whether during the current pandemic times or the post-pandemic era, we are -- we do forecast high growth momentum for the gaming segment as a whole. And ASUS has been very proactive in planning for this segment.

The share of gaming products for -- of our in-house -- or rather the in-house share of our gaming product is continuing to grow, and it is now nearly 45% of our revenue as a whole. In the future, we will continue to pursue a comprehensive strategy to drive forward growth in the gaming segment.

When it comes to gaming, again, it's not just our products, our brand and our community are also very important. So this is another Golden Triangle for us. In terms of our product, ASUS has always been committed to providing the best user experience and the most comprehensive product portfolio of products and solutions for gamers.

Looking at the next slide, in terms of our community engagement, we can view this through several -- on several levels. First of all, through our ROG forums, we engage with our core audience, our core power users. But in addition, we are also engaging with the entire ecosystem, including the various vendors or developers of gaming content. And in addition, over the past 2 years, we've seen that the overall gaming audience is not just the hard core audience that we are familiar with. The gaming community is actually growing more and more diverse. And we are seeing more and more integration with lifestyle and with entertainment. So as a leading brand in the gaming industry, ASUS has been very active in leading the integration of gaming and with social -- the social sphere and lifestyle as a whole. And we are also looking to engage with various subcultures such as anime or fashion or lifestyle or sports, et cetera.

So we -- there are more details on our next slide where we see some of the collaborations between ROG and various other entertainment and lifestyle brands and personalities. We've actually seen that a recent BBC news report pointed out that the pandemic has made gaming into a very important social platform. many people are building meaningful connections through gaming. And this fits very well in ASUS' direction for the past 2 years or so. So we are very confident that through diverse development, the ROG brands will continue to grow in influence, and this will continue to drive the growth momentum of the brand. This is very important for us.

Can we look at the next slide? So in addition to gaming, our product segment -- in our product segmentation strategy, creators -- the creators segment is also very important. So for professional creators, we are continuing to develop a powerful ecosystem for them through our ProArt sub-brand, including products and solutions, and we hope to build the products, the solutions and the services that can satisfy the needs of professional creators. As for the amateur or the casual creators, we are also introducing the new ZenBook Pro and VivoBook Pro to satisfy their need. And here, I would like to say that next month, we will actually have a launch -- a worldwide launch event for creators in which we will reveal our new strategy and our ambition for the creator segment. So I hope you all look forward to it as we do.

So looking forward to the second half and the next year, we are still -- our outlook is still positive in terms of the new digital trends that are driven by the pandemic, including digital lifestyle, digital education and remote work, work from home. We believe that all of these trends are irreversible. They are a new normal. And this will turn the PC with its productivity features to, once again, become the most important digital product, with very hard demand for the next few years. Plus as my colleague, Hsien-Yuen Hsu mentioned, Microsoft will launch Windows 11 by the end of the year, and there are many new features with the OS that are not compatible with many of the older PCs. So this will bring about a lot of opportunities for product upgrades.

So ASUS believes that the demand momentum for the PC market will continue for the next few years. And ASUS will continue to execute our Golden Triangle and our product segmentation strategies to achieve higher-than-market growth. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you to our co-CEOs and CFO. [Operator Instructions]

Our first question is from JPMorgan. They ask, what do the supply of components for the third and fourth quarter look like? And will the shortage be reflected in prices? And what specific components are facing as a shortage?

[Samson Hu, executive]

Okay. I'm Samson. I will answer this question. As you all know, the component shortage issue has been discussed for an entire year now. And now it remains a happy headache for us. For the third quarter, we are still seeing very strong demand for PCs. And even in the fourth quarter, there is very high visibility for orders. So the overall industry is still seeing demand outstripping supply. ASUS is continuing to work with our supply chain partners to respond to changes in component supply. And we are working with our internal R&D to introduce second or even third sources for these components. So where are these shortages? They are still chiefly in the IC segments, particularly the power supply ICs has been facing the worst shortages. We also faced shortages sometimes in terms of logic ICs and other smaller ICs as well. The overall gap in supply is still about 20% to 30%, just like in previous quarters. Of course, this is due to very strong demand. But the supply, particularly in the semiconductor supply chain, is not growing fast enough. And this is not just in the PC industry, the phone and automotive segments are also still seeing shortages in semiconductors. So we do foresee supply shortages for components until the end of the year. That is what we are seeing. Thank you.

[Operator]

For our next question, it is on phones. DigiTimes, KGI and Morgan Stanley are all asking similar questions about the phone segment.

So what is ASUS' outlook on this year's shipment for phones? Will phones continue to break even as a business? And what is your view on the strategic implications of your collaboration with Qualcomm?

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. I would like to answer this question. In 2020, our phone shipments was about 400,000 to 500,000. And we wanted a growth of 100% for 2021. So our target was 800,000 to 1 million. And looking at our forecasts right now, it is very likely that we will be able to hit this target. Of course, the fact that our phones broke even in the second quarter is a huge improvement from our past performance. But of course, the phone market still has a seasonality factor. So it's hard to say that we will be able to maintain this kind of performance for every quarter, especially since we are still facing component shortages and uncertainties in terms of COVID-19 because you might know that China is also facing outbreaks of the Delta variant and some cities are reintroducing lockdowns. So this will impact our supply chain. But our entire phone business unit is working very hard to reach this target of breakeven, but it is impossible to say whether this will come true.

As for our collaboration with Qualcomm. As you all know, Qualcomm is a key player in the premium segment of the phone market, and it will be very helpful for ASUS to maintain a good relationship with them. And of course, Qualcomm chose ASUS as a partner because of ASUS' technological capabilities. So our R&D team worked very closely with Qualcomm in this project. And for us, for ASUS, this is a very important asset, this kind of experience. ASUS is committed to the premium phone segment. So this collaboration with Qualcomm is, of course, very positive for our business. And so we believe that this partnership is very positive for us, and that is why we pursued it.

[Operator]

So the next question is about digital currencies, cryptocurrencies. Now that cryptocurrencies are trending downward, what is the effect on profits? And how does this affect your outlook on your margins for the third quarter?

[Unknown Executive]

I will answer this question. In the first quarter, video card demand was already outstripping supply. And the peak in cryptocurrency prices drove prices even higher and margins even higher, even though demand was already so high. And we do believe that cryptocurrencies pushed the price and margins even higher, but we can't give very precise numbers, but do believe that 1% to 2% of margin was contributed by cryptocurrency. So as we said, we do believe that this is a market opportunity. And market -- ASUS was able to seize on this opportunity to and convert it to profit to converted to value. And looking at current trends, the video cards market will transition back to normal, where it's driven mostly by gamers, the additional price increases are going away. But overall, we have already priced these changes into our third quarter outlook. So for the third quarter, we do believe that the impact of cryptocurrencies will lessen and the operations will return to normal, but the profits will remain healthy. And from a year-over-year perspective, we do believe that our margins and profits will be fairly stable.

[Operator]

The next question is from DigiTimes. How -- what is ASUS' perspective on Windows 11 support for Android apps? And how will this affect the laptop market? What plans or innovations does ASUS have for this change?

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. Let me take this question. Windows 11, of course, has several important new features, but of course, the support for Android apps has attracted a lot of attention. Of course, for PC users, this is a very new experience. But of course, nowadays, for many PC users, they have their phone close by as well, and they might have mobile apps open on their phones at the same time as they're using their PC. This is another form of a multiscreen experience. And Windows 11 is offering Android app support because of this trend. But to be honest, we still need some time to look into this feature. Because, well, first of all, from what Microsoft is telling us, it is only supporting Android apps in the U.S. market. And second, there will be higher hardware requirements for Android app support. So if the hardware is not good enough, it might not be able to run Android apps very smoothly.

In addition, Android app support is not through Google Play. It's through the Amazon App Store. So now that gives us a little bit of concern. Because, of course, Google and Microsoft are competitors on the market. So it is strategically understandable for Google not to offer Google Play support through Windows. But if these Android apps need to be downloaded through the Amazon app store, then the question is, will these apps support GMS. As you all know, for Android apps, GMS support is crucial. When the U.S. government ordered Google to stop offering GMS services to Huawei, Huawei had to devote a lot of their resources into developing the HMS alternative to GMS. So that really shows us that GMS is extremely important to the Android ecosystem. Right now, we do not have the Windows 11 software yet. So we do not know if the apps procured through the Amazon app store will also support GMS. Because if they don't -- if these apps do not support GMS, then the use of these applications will be quite limited. Because many Android apps rely on GMS for their notifications, for their location services, et cetera. So for example, if you download an app to make restaurant reservations, and you're running it through Windows, but you realize that it doesn't support location services through Google Maps. If that happens, then this app will not be very useful on Windows. So this will greatly impact the user experience.

So of course, we do have -- we are very positive on Android app support in Windows 11, but we do still have concerns about how far the support will go. And if it's not -- if there's not full support, then it could impact on the customer experience. So this is something that we are not going to be certain about until we actually get the software.

[Operator]

Okay. The next question is from BoA Merrill Lynch. In the market, there is -- there has been talk of a change in demand to Chromebooks. And what does ASUS think about that? And what is your long-term strategy for Chromebooks?

[Samson Hu, executive]

Okay. This is Samson. I will answer this question. So for the past 2 years, due to the pandemic, Chromebooks have been very -- have seen a lot of demand because of the need for learning from home, and this has driven very high growth for Chromebooks. Of course, many governments are devoting their educational funding to supporting this as well. And it is true that for the second half of this year, we see a trend of Chromebook slowing down in growth momentum because for many mature markets such as the U.S. the education market, the K-12 market, is more or less saturated, meaning that in the U.S., almost every K-12 student already has a Chromebook. It's almost 100% saturation now. And we are also seeing similar trends in Japan. As you know, Japan also has a program called GIGA, the GIGA program for education. And in Japan the K-9 market, up to ninth grade, is also more or less saturated. And for the next year -- and for the first half of next year, in Japan, only 10th to 12th graders will see any kind of significant market demand. So because we're seeing that mature markets are becoming saturated, the demand is fulfilled and educational funding is also exhausted. So we do see a short-term downward trend for the second half and for next year in the Chromebook education market. But long term, even though mature markets are more or less saturated, we do see that emerging countries, for example, countries in Southeast Asia or in India or even Taiwan -- because Taiwan is also promoting digital learning. So I do think that digital learning brought on by the pandemic will continue because governments around the world are seeing the importance of digital learning. Even so -- even after the pandemic, they believe it is important for every child to have access to digital learning. So we do believe that there may be a slight downward trend for Chromebooks for the second half of this year and this next year, but we do think that there will be a pickup in demand for emerging countries. So that's Chromebook for education.

For the commercial market, we are also seeing Google working very hard over the past 2 years to fulfill commercial needs, particularly in terms of legacy programs, legacy applications. Google has been using virtual machines to solve this issue. And we are also seeing Chromebooks being used in the banking and finance sectors in the U.S. And we do believe that in the future, the commercial market will also become an important support for growth in the Chromebook market. So that's our long-term view on Chromebooks. That's what we're seeing.

[Operator]

Next is a question from Credit Suisse and KGI. What is -- what does channel inventory look like for PCs? And how does it compare to safe inventory levels in the past?

[Samson Hu, executive]

Okay. This is still Samson. Let me answer this question as well. So channel inventory is at different levels in different countries. Overall, compared to pre-pandemic times, our inventory is still at less than half the levels of pre-pandemic inventory. Less than half. So in normal times, we usually have about 10 to 12 weeks of inventory. But now for most countries, we have less than half that. The few exceptions include the United States, where inventory is now back at 10 to 12 weeks in our retail channels. Of course, this is because the U.S. has been relatively fast in terms of the vaccine rollout and they are reopening the economy. So -- but overall, inventory levels in most countries is still at only about half of pre-pandemic times. So that's why, as we said, we're still seeing very strong orders for the second half of the year. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the Economic Times. So you mentioned ASUS' investment in smart manufacturing. Exactly how much will be invested? Will the plant be in Taiwan? And what products and what strategic goals will be fulfilled?

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. Let me answer this. I have already given a short answer in the presentation. For us, for ASUS, the smart manufacturing plant has 2 major goals. The first is to support our products, mostly for our AIoT products. This is for the high mix, low volume manufacturing products. And the second is to support products affected by the trade war, the products that may be -- may have additional tariffs if they are made in China. So initially, we are probably going to target server products. So this is the first consideration for smart manufacturing. Our second consideration is that we want to prove the worth of our AIoT smart manufacturing solutions through our own plants. So now that if they can prove their work, then we can more easily sell them to our customers. And if there are any adjustments, we can do them faster if we own the plants ourselves. So we will start with a small-scale manufacturing line in about 6 months. That's the current plan. And later after this line is running smoothly, we will expand to a full plant. Our investment is about TWD 3 billion. And currently, it is planned for Taiwan. The time line is, like I said, 6 months for the manufacturing line. So I will probably have more to say about it in our next earnings call. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from AIA. The question is about the strategy for commercial laptops. And what are the targets -- profit targets? And what is the business like compared to the other laptop segments?

[Samson Hu, executive]

Okay. This is Samson. I'll answer this question. Like I said -- like Hsien-Yuen Hsu said, rather, commercial PCs was not really a focus for ASUS in the past. But over the past 2 years, we launched a business unit for commercial, and we've invested quite a lot into it. I think to really succeed in the commercial segment. First of all, we need a very comprehensive product line. We do believe that we have achieved this after 2 years of hard work. But the successful commercial business also requires good infrastructure. Because of the way customer demand and orders work in the commercial segment, we need very strong logistics support to provide the right amount of supply for our customers. So over the past 2 years, we have improved our supply chain. We have improved our logistics to meet the needs of our customers to have better flexibility and be able to deliver as soon as possible for our customers. This is the infrastructure that we've been building up for the past 2 years. And of course, in several countries and regions, they require local assembly for the commercial segment, and we are also building this capacity up as well. We do believe that a lot of this infrastructure will be ready in the first half of next year for some countries. As for the markets -- what markets we're focusing on, we have looked at our own strengths and weaknesses. So looking at -- with that in mind, we have -- we are focusing on the markets in which we have high brand awareness in the consumer segment. So that includes Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia and some European countries as well. So we are looking to focus on these markets to start with. As for our targets for the commercial segment. Well, our current market share is very low. It's in the single digits. And our target is, in the next 3 years -- over the next 3 years, we will become somebody in the commercial segment. We will have 2-digit market share in some of our markets. That is the target that we set. So our overall commercial strategy is -- as we said last time, we still have a lot of room to grow in this segment. So we are first going to pursue volume and rapid expansion of our volume so that we can achieve economies of scale and reach a certain level of market share. As for -- and for profit, of course, we are going to control costs within a reasonable range. But in terms of our KPIs, volume will be more important than profit. We hope that through building up our product lines and our infrastructure, and through a pragmatic choice of product -- of markets to focus on, our hope is that within 2 or 3 years, we will have 2-digit market share in our key markets. Thank you.

[Operator]

Okay. The next question is from HSBC. And it's about the visibility in shipping for the fourth quarter and whether the shortages can be reduced, mitigated. And does ASUS see double-digit growth for '22 as well? And what does the visibility look like for component shortages next year?

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. This is a good question. Of course, for the past year, and we believe for the coming year as well, supply chain will be a major issue. In the past few calls, we have said that right now, what we say in the industry is that capacity and components are king. And we believe this is true for the coming year as well. So ASUS has made supply chain management, an important priority for the past year -- for the next year, rather. We are continuing to work with our supply chain partners. We are discussing with them on how to mitigate the issues. So for the fourth quarter and for 2022, the entire year of 2022, we have identified the required volume for components, and we did this as early as last month. In July, we've identified the volume of components that we need, and we've communicated that with our key partners. We've signed the MOUs, and sometimes even long-term agreements or LTAs with them. And -- so for the past year, the major shortage has been for IC components, not just the key IC components, but even the smaller IC components as well. And we've signed on more MOU and LTA partners. So we have more supply chain partners than we do what did last year. This is very important for us.

And for -- as for manufacturing capacity, our OEM manufacturing capacity, we are also working closely with them, first of all, to secure their capacity for the fourth quarter and for the next year as well. And we have made the commitments needed because for these manufacturing partners, capacity requires investment for -- investment into line due to manufacturing lines into staffing and into equipment, et cetera. So we need to make the commitments for them to incorporate it into their planning. So another aspect of our collaboration with OEM manufacturers is in turnkey parts because this is something that the OEMs usually take care of in their daily work. But through our collaboration with them, we have made some optimizations. First of all, as you all know, most of ASUS' products were developed by our own R&D team. So we still -- we -- our model, when we collaborate with manufacturers, is still the OEM model. And it's mostly ASUS' engineers that decide what parts go into our products. But we have made some optimizations here. Specifically, when it comes to parts -- when it comes to especially turnkey parts, our engineers communicate with our manufacturers so that the parts that go in are from a common pool. And this helps them in the future as they secure turnkey parts as well. Second, for OEM manufacturers, there -- we are also -- we have also given them our forecasts for turnkey parts over the past -- over the next year. We have given them the forecast, just like with our IC suppliers, we have shared with them our plans so that starting now, they can start their planning. So these are some of the ways in which we are better at collaborating with our partners to support the capacity and the components we need for the next year. Thank you.

[Operator]

So now we do believe we have addressed all of the questions that have been asked. So now let me hand it over to our 2 Co-CEOs for some closing remarks.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. First of all, thank you all for participating in this call. And all of our management and all of our staff are working very hard to respond to the changes in our environment because COVID has really impacted our industry in many ways. For example, as we said earlier, many places in China are seeing outbreaks of the Delta variant. And the Chinese government is very -- is responding through lockdowns and through movement restrictions, and this obviously impacts our manufacturing activities as well. This is all unexpected. So over the past few months, I think it's the same for all companies. Flexibility and response time has been very important. And this is something that we are really working with internally to respond to these changes very quickly.

In the second quarter, we have seen -- our performance has been quite good, and we hope that it will continue. And we hope to deliver similar results to our investors in the future and our shareholders. So finally, thank you, and we wish you good health.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. I would also thank you -- I'd like to thank you all for your support and advice for ASUS in the past years. This is what really drives us to improve and grow. In the next -- in the previous 2 years and for the next year, as we face the pandemic -- and the post-pandemic era, these are all new topics for the market. But Overall, we have a positive mindset regarding the challenges brought by the pandemic. We believe that in our response to the pandemic, we have made good improvements to our overall health as a company and our resilience. So this is very positive. And that is why we are confident about our ability to face future challenges and future opportunities. So we will continue to pursue our Golden Triangle and our product segmentation strategy to face these new challenges and opportunities. So once again, thank you for your support, and we wish you good health.

[Operator]

Okay. Thank you. And this concludes our earnings call.

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