MediaTek Inc

TWSE:2454

Earnings Call Analysis

MediaTek Reports Strong Q3 Growth and Optimistic Q4 Outlook

MediaTek's Q3 2024 revenue reached NT$131.8 billion, increasing 19.7% year-over-year and exceeding guidance. The gross margin was 48.8%, up from 47.4% a year ago. Their flagship product, the Dimensity 9400, is gaining traction, driving a projected 70% growth in flagship revenue this year. For Q4, MediaTek anticipates a revenue range of NT$126.5 to NT$134.5 billion, representing a slight sequential decline or growth, and maintains a gross margin target of 47%. The company remains committed to shareholder returns, announcing a semiannual cash dividend of NT$29 per share.

MediaTek's Third Quarter Success

In the third quarter of 2024, MediaTek demonstrated solid financial performance, reporting revenues of NT$131.8 billion. This figure reflects a 3.6% increase from the previous quarter and a robust 19.7% growth year-over-year. The gross margin remained stable at 48.8%, a slight improvement from the previous year, signaling effective cost management and product pricing strategy.

Strong Operating Income Growth

The company's operating income for the quarter reached NT$23.9 billion, marking a 33% increase year-over-year, even though it decreased by 4.4% sequentially. The operating margin was recorded at 18.1%, showcasing a healthy margin performance when compared to the industry standards.

Performance in Revenue Segments

MediaTek's mobile phone segment contributed significantly, accounting for 54% of total revenues, growing 33% year-over-year and 4% sequentially. The successful ramp-up of Dimensity 9400, a flagship 3-nanometer SoC designed for high-performance and AI applications, is expected to uplift revenues further, despite seasonal slowdown in other smartphone segments.

AI and Edge Computing Collaborations

The introduction of the Dimensity 9400 exemplifies MediaTek's commitment to leading in AI technology. This new SoC engages users through Agentic AI applications, enhancing experiences in mobile devices. Collaborations with major tech players, including Google, are positioning MediaTek as a key partner in AI and edge computing, which is seen as a major growth area going forward.

Guidance and Expectations for Future Growth

For the fourth quarter, MediaTek anticipates revenue to range between NT$126.5 billion and NT$134.5 billion, reflecting a possible decline of 4% to a rise of 2% compared to the previous quarter. The gross margin for this period is expected at 47% (+/- 1.5 percentage points), indicating continued financial stability amidst fluctuating market demands.

Long-term Strategies and Shareholder Value

MediaTek has completed a four-year special cash dividend program, returning NT$385 billion to shareholders. Recently, a semiannual cash dividend of NT$29 per share was approved for the first half of 2024, demonstrating the company’s commitment to shareholder returns while investing in growth areas like automotive and ASIC computing.

Market Challenges and Opportunities

MediaTek faces intense competition, particularly from Qualcomm, amidst ongoing geopolitical challenges that could impact the semiconductor industry. Nevertheless, the management expresses confidence in its ongoing projects and R&D in high-growth areas, which should help mitigate these risks and capitalize on market opportunities.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the MediaTek 2024 Third Quarter Investor Conference Call. Financial results and presentations for today's call are available on the Investors section of the company website at www.mediatek.com. Now I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Jessie Wang, Deputy Director of Investor Relations. Ms. Wang, please go ahead.

[Jessie Wang, executive]

Good afternoon, everyone. Joining us today are Dr. Rick Tsai. MediaTek CEO; and Mr. David Ku, MediaTek's CFO. Mr. Ku will report our third quarter results, and then Dr. Tsai will provide our prepared remarks. After that, we will open for Q&A.

As a reminder, today's presentation will provide forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. The statements are subject to various risks and factors, which may cause actual results materially different from the statements. The presentation material supplement non-TIFRS financial measures.

Earnings distribution will be made in accordance with financial statements based on TIFRS. For details, please refer to the safe harbor statement in our presentation slides. In addition, all contents provided in this teleconference are for your reference only, not intended for investment advice. Neither MediaTek nor any of independent providers is responsible for any actions taken in reliance on content provided in today's call.

Now I would like to turn the call to our CFO, Mr. David Ku for the third quarter financial results.

[David Ku, executive]

Thank you, Jessie. Good afternoon, everyone. Now let's start with the 2024 third quarter financial results. The currency used here is all NT dollars. Revenue for the quarter was $131.8 billion, up 3.6% sequentially and up 19.7% year-over-year. Gross margin for the quarter was 48.8%, flat from the previous quarter and up 1.4 percentage points from the year-ago quarter. Operating expense for the quarter were $40.5 billion, compared with $37.2 billion in the previous quarter and $34.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. Operating income for the quarter was $23.9 billion, down 4.4% sequentially and up 33% year-over-year. Non-TIFRS operating income for the quarter was $24.3 billion.

Operating margin for the quarter was 18.1%, down 1.5 percentage points in the previous quarter and up 1.8 percentage points year-over-year. Non-TIFRS operating margin for the quarter was 18.4%. Net income for the quarter was $25.6 billion, down 1.4 percentage sequentially and up 37.8% year-over-year. Non-TIFRS net income for the quarter was $25.9 billion. Net profit margin for the quarter was 19.4%, decreased 1 percentage point from previous quarter and increased 2.5 percentage points year-over-year. Non-TIFRS net profit margin for the quarter was 19.7%. EPS for the quarter was $15.94 down from $16.19 in the previous quarter and up from $11.64 in the year-ago quarter. Non-TIFRS EPS for the quarter was $16.15. A reconciliation table for our TIFRS and non-TIFRS financial measure is attached in our press release for your information. And that concludes my comments.

[Jessie Wang, executive]

Thank you, David. And now I would like to turn the call to our CEO, Dr. Rick Tsai, for prepared remarks.

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. MediaTek delivered solid third quarter results. Quarterly revenues were at the high end of the guidance range with all 3 revenue groups achieving both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth. Quarterly gross margin exceeded guidance range due to a favorable product mix. Before we dive into business updates for the 3 revenue groups, I'd like to share some of our recent developments. Earlier this month, we unveiled our first flagship 3-nanometer SoC, Dimensity 9400, a powerful chip designed and optimized for edge AI applications. Dimensity 9400 offers leading platform performance and outstanding power efficiency for premium user experiences. It continues the all big core design built on Arm's latest v9.2 CPU to demonstrate strong computing capability. Combined with the most advanced GPU, Dimensity 9400 brings PC-level graphics and gaming experiences to mobile devices. In addition, as an AI enabler, we integrate our 8th generation NPU into Dimensity 9400 to unleash more AI features.

For example, Dimensity 9400 supports AI applications that are capable of providing intelligent recommendations for tasks such as hotel and flight scheduling or meal ordering by mimicking human behaviors. The AI first analyzes users' past preferences, calendar entries and other relevant information to come up with practical solutions. It then automatically completes the task based upon users' final decision. We referred to this capability as Agentic AI. And our customers' flagship phones are leading the industry to bring Agentic AI applications to the market. To further accelerate the development of Agentic AI applications, we work closely with Google and the ecosystem to create a unified interface that allows these applications to run more efficiently. we also optimized our SoC to support the latest large language models, such as Google's Gemini Nano multimodal models and Meta's Llama 3.2 model.

We believe these efforts will significantly reduce the development time of Agentic AI applications and help foster the creation of potential killer applications. With our leading products, close collaborations with the ecosystem and the world's broadest edge device footprint, we believe that we are an ideal partner for edge computing players. We aim to empower a wide range of AI-capable edge computing devices such as smartphone, laptop, tablet, automotive and more with our robust and efficient technologies. On the cloud side, we remain fully committed to executing our enterprise ASIC strategy, aiming at a sizable USD 45 billion custom AI accelerator market projected for 2028. With our key capabilities in the leading 112G and 224G SerDes IP, complex IC integration, advanced process nodes and advanced packaging, we continue to actively engage with CSPs for more AI accelerator opportunities.

With that, now let me talk about the recent business performance of our 3 revenue groups. Mobile phone accounted for 54% of total revenue in the third quarter, growing 33% year-over-year and growing 4% sequentially. In the third quarter, demand for our 4G SoC from emerging markets increased sequentially, while demand for 5G SoC was flat. For the fourth quarter, the strong ramp of Dimensity 9400 is expected to offset the lower seasonal demand for the mainstream and entry segments. Therefore, we expect mobile phone revenue to grow sequentially in the fourth quarter. Our Dimensity 9400 has received high recognition from both customers and the market. Compared with Dimensity 9300 at the same stage, there are more models adopting Dimensity 9400, including flagship smartphones from Vivo, Oppo and Redmi.

We have also observed strong sales momentum for smartphones powered by Dimensity 9400. For example, Vivo announced that the sales of its X200 series have reached 200% of the previous generation sales during the same period, breaking Vivo's sales record with new devices. With the encouraging development, we now expect flagship revenue to grow by more than 70% this year, exceeding our prior expectation of more than 50%. Now let me move on to Smart Edge platforms. This group grew 8% year-over-year and grew 3% sequentially in the third quarter, accounting for 40% of total revenue.

In the third quarter, both connectivity and computing devices grew above the company average. Broadband connectivity continues to enjoy a good momentum as the industry transitions to WiFi 7 and 10G-PON. For computing devices, our tablet business has benefited from the trend of higher generative AI adoptions. Among all the Android tablet brands have -- almost all the Android tablets brands have chosen MediaTek's flagship SoCs for their premium AI tablets, including Samsung. There are numerous MediaTek-powered AI tablets in the market today, and we believe there will be more to come.

For automotive, we continue to secure new projects, for auto cockpit solutions, especially with leading Chinese automakers, and we expect the share gains to continue. We believe they are all constructive mid- to long-term growth trends for our businesses. However, for the near term, we expect Smart Edge platforms revenue to decline in the fourth quarter due to lower seasonal demand for consumer electronics.

Now moving on to Power IC, which accounted for 6% of total revenue in the third quarter, growing 3% year-over-year and growing 5% quarter-over-quarter. For the fourth quarter, we expect power IC revenues to be flattish sequentially. That said, we expect new applications such as data center, automotive and industrial to continue to grow faster than the others in the future. For the fourth quarter, the strong revenue ramp of Dimensity 9400 is expected to partially offset the weak seasonal demand for consumer electronics. We now expect our fourth quarter revenue to be in the range of TWD 126.5 billion to TWD 134.5 billion, declined 4% to up 2% sequentially and declined 2% to up 4% year-over-year at a forecasted exchange rate of TWD 31.7 to USD 1.

Gross margin is forecasted at 47%, plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. Quarterly operating expense ratio to be at 32%, plus or minus 2 percentage points. With that, we are able to exceed our annual revenue growth target of mid-teen percent in U.S. dollars and achieved the gross margin target range of 46% to 48%. In addition, we have completed our 4-year special cash dividend program in the last 4 years, combining regular and special cash dividends. We returned TWD 385 billion to shareholders in total, demonstrating our commitment to reward long-term shareholders. This morning, the Board has just approved our semiannual cash dividend of TWD 29 per share or TWD 46.4 billion in total for the first half of 2024, which is based on a payout ratio of 80%.

We remain committed to creating and delivering value to reward our long-term shareholders. For the future, we are confident in our mid- to long-term strategy to capture the growing business opportunities backed by our strong position in technology road map and our broad scape of technology portfolio. This concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you.

[Jessie Wang, executive]

Thank you, Rick. Operator, we are now ready for Q&A session. May we please have the first question?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first one to ask question is Gokul Hariharan from JPMorgan.

[Gokul Hariharan, analyst]

Congrats on the good results. First of all, on the flagship segment, I think the growth seems to be pretty strong this year also around 70% growth. Could we talk a little bit about how do we see the growth over the next couple of years? How much more market share gain is still left in the Chinese OEMs for MTK? What are your prospects? How do you think about your prospects with some of the other leading global brands, especially the big Korean OEM that you've been targeting? You've had some success with the tablet products.

And also, Rick, I think in the last call, you had some updates on the flagship addressable market, the TAM size and how fast it is growing. Could we get a bit of an update on that flagship addressable market given it feels like the growth in flagship segment itself seems to be faster than what we anticipated maybe 3 to 6 months back?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Thank you for the question. Flagship SoC, well, I think first, I think its market share among all smartphone continues to grow, I think, globally and in China domestic market. The rate of which, of course, we still -- we will see fairly soon. The global -- we also know that we also forecast the global smartphone shipment for 2024 will grow by about, as we said before, 2% to 3% over 2023. That the fundamental growth and the smartphone -- I'm sorry, the flagship smartphone market share among all smartphones is growing. So we certainly -- by the way, we also believe 2025 will see a similar pattern compared to 2024.

So for MediaTek, I think first, we certainly expect that we will definitely gain from this secular growth of the flagship phones, especially in the China market. Secondly, we also strive to gain more market share in the China market first. We have -- I mean, if you look at our Dimensity 9400, its performance capability, power consumption, every aspect and not to mention the edge AI capability and the ecosystem building, the momentum is definitely here, very good momentum. Our -- well, next year, I guess we're going to call that 9500. We have certainly good, a very strong, very good product in line. Of course, we'll talk a lot more sometime next year. So we are -- we remain quite positive for our flagship SoC outlook. Outside of China market, we certainly also strive to have market share penetration, but we will not make any prediction or forecast at this time.

[Gokul Hariharan, analyst]

So Rick, just a follow-up. So do you think you can still maintain this kind of growth rate into next year for flagship? Like 70% is obviously an impressive growth rate. I think last year was also pretty strong. Do we think we can maintain this kind of growth rate? Or it's going to be a little bit slower given the market share is already relatively high?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

We don't think we will be able to have this 70% growth next year as we do in 2024. Well, number one, we certainly already in China market, we have about 30% market share already. The further gain will take certainly very much more effort, which we will achieve higher market share. But 70% is probably too high expectation.

[Gokul Hariharan, analyst]

Fair enough. My second question, just broadly on overall China demand, not just smartphone, but also some of the other smart edge applications, given there's been some excitement about China demand in home appliances and stuff like that after the Golden Week and some of the stimulus programs. How does MediaTek think about overall China demand given that you actually have a fairly good and broad representation of China demand? Are you starting to see some pickup in pockets of demand in China digital consumer products? Or still you think that the demand is not that strong? And any expectations in terms of how you think about 2025 for the China market itself?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, it's still a bit early. After all, I think the government actions started to come out, I think, late September and continue to -- seems to come out kind of in a continuous manner. But -- so whatever I say right now is preliminary. What I believe we have seen, I would say is better than expected compared to, let's say, definitely a year ago, our view of the China market demand, I cannot really quantify very well how much better. But if we look at the smartphone, we look at the broadband connectivity, we look at TV, there was more uncertainty a year ago about the China's economy. Now we feel -- I cannot say we are optimistic. I cannot say that. But we certainly feel, how should I say, more comfortable with China's economy now and going forward.

[Operator]

Next is Laura Chen from Citi.

[Chia Yi Chen, analyst]

I have a question about the AISC business. I recall, Rick, you mentioned that the business model will be more flexible. So does that mean that MediaTek may only in charge with some of the design process and work with other design service peers or IP providers in the longer term? And how should we think about your AISC business potential in the longer term? I recall that, Rick, you mentioned about like quite a few billion market potential. So we also expect that probably we'll be able to see the contributions in late 2025 or 2026. So can you give us a more update on the ASIC side? That's my first question.

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

We remain very excited and well, maybe a bit more venture some optimistic of our data center AI ASIC business. We are right in execution phase of our projects. It is indeed, as you said, a strong function of the business model and the collaboration model. MediaTek, in addition to our very strong fundamental capabilities, as we described already in my opening remarks, the business model we have, first of all, is flexible. We work closely and collaboratively with our customers and potential customers. We are really -- we are definitely doing business for both very good revenue and also with operating margin strongly in mind.

We certainly want to create accretive operating margin compared to the company's overall operating margin. I really -- this is really one of the company's top priorities for our future business growth. And we are determined to make that happen. And I'm very sure it will happen. The time line is indeed very late 2025 and sometime in -- starting in 2026.

[Chia Yi Chen, analyst]

And also following that, when you work on your AI ASIC project, any difficulty to secure sufficient advanced packaging capacity? Yes, can you share with us how would you like to secure the capacities into the longer term?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, we all know who the major advanced packaging supplier technology and capacity is and we have also over the years, not only manage, but also enhanced our collaborative relationship with TSMC. As you can at least -- you can tell, first of all, from our process node improvements every year, every couple of years, we move a node and with no slip both from a ramp and from yield point of view. So the very strong collaborative relationship paves the way certainly for the advanced packaging collaboration and the technology readiness as well as the capacity requirements. We certainly still need some time for that very large capacity requirement, but we are already working very closely with TSMC.

[Chia Yi Chen, analyst]

So would you also consider to work with OSAT partner on advanced packaging if they are ready?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Yes. It depends on -- you see advanced packaging can have a spectrum of definitions in terms of its capability. And actually, we do have products, which we are already working with OSAT suppliers using, well, not the TSMC level CoWoS technology, but it's certainly much better and higher in capability than the kind of commodity processes. As we -- as this trend continue to grow, and we believe OSAT providers will pick up their capabilities and the whole industry will benefit from, I hope, a very good ecosystem, certainly led by TSMC with the OSAT supplier to provide a very reasonable capability and the supply and commercial.

[Chia Yi Chen, analyst]

And my second question is on the ARM-based AI PC. We see most of the issues nowadays are at the software and the applications. So can you share with us the MediaTek approach? And how can MediaTek avoid this kind of legacy applications and software compatible issue?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, Laura, I'm sorry that I have to say, at this moment, I cannot really comment very specifically other than to say that we are following the progress and the difficulties that the Arms computing AI PC is encountering. We will certainly provide you with more information sometime in the future.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next one to ask question, Sunny Lin from UBS.

[Sunny Lin, analyst]

Very good results and guidance. So my first question is on the flagship smartphone 5G SoCs. And so in the short term, with the strong demand of D9400, are you seeing some supply tightness and, therefore, we should expect the trend to sustain into Q1? And then a bit longer term, maybe in 12 months, now with Qualcomm having this lawsuit with Arm, especially given the recent escalations, are you seeing any opportunities in terms of the client engagement or share gain opportunities?

[David Ku, executive]

Sunny, I think, overall for the Dimension 9400, the overall design-in and design win situations are very good. For example, during our product announcement, I think pretty much all the Tier 1 customers getting on stage talking about the adopting our solution. So for this quarter, fourth quarter, I think overall ramp-up situation is actually pretty good.

And also, we are seeing the pipeline remains strong and both for the current generation and also we talked about N-1, basically actually the previous generation, which will continue to grow in the first quarter and, by and large, next year as well. From a supply chain perspective, I think, overall, we're getting pretty much what we need for this quarter. And actually for next quarters, I think, we are pretty much getting what we need as well, so this should not be gating item.

[Sunny Lin, analyst]

Got it. Sorry, David, a quick follow-up. Did you mention that overall, the flagship should continue to grow sequentially into Q1?

[David Ku, executive]

No, this is not what we guide, I would say, from the design-in, so flagship design-in perspective, we will continue. But for the overall, we still need to see the Q1 seasonality, which we will provide later.

[Sunny Lin, analyst]

Got it. Well, so my second question is on the smartphone SoC gross margin. Obviously, in Q3 and also Q4, overall, the margin is better than expected. And so what's the reason behind? And how should we think about the trend for the next few quarters? I think on the cost side, obviously, TSMC is raising the cost for 5- and 3-nanometer from early 2025. Arm is also raising the licensing fee. And so would you be able to pass through all of this cost increase?

[David Ku, executive]

I think, our goal, like we explained earlier this year is trying to maintain the gross margin within the range, which is 46% to 48%. I think we just disclosed the third quarter's gross margin number and also give our guidance. Overall, I think we feel comfortable to basically end for this range. For next year, in general, I guess that's still going to be our range. And also, like we explained earlier in last quarter, we were trying to sell our value and pass on some of the cost up to our customers. I think that still remains our strategy and goal.

[Operator]

Next one to ask question -- I'm sorry, Bruce Lu from Goldman Sachs.

[Zheng Lu, analyst]

My question is regarding to the edge AI replacement cycle. I mean from one hand, you guys are promoting the 9400, which has pretty good customer acceptance. And either for smartphone -- AI smartphone or AI PC, chip vendors are trying to promote using their flagship chip or the most advanced chip, which obviously has a lot of AI power. But if you want to see a higher adoption for AI or the faster replacement, we expect to -- when would we expect to see the mid-end range of the edge AI device can have like a meaningful AI function? Or can we expect certain shorter replacement cycle for edge AI for 2025?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

This generative AI acceptance is just function of both hardware -- maybe not both, hardware, software and ecosystem. As I said in my opening remarks, one thing MediaTek is really working very hard, and I would say, very well is to develop ecosystem partnership to enable the edge AI applications among all OEMs. Also, we are in the process of expanding with the global players such as Google together with their large language models or their smaller large language models like Gemini Nano or Llama 3.2, I truly believe our efforts in enabling the ecosystem will bear fruit in the next couple of years because that will, I believe, excite the many potential smaller third-party developers to come up with very useful or very interesting applications.

On the other hand, we also -- I have talked to high-level people in the U.S. They are also working to make their models more efficient, smaller and more efficient, so they can run on the edge devices. So my feeling is for the mid-end devices such as smartphone to be useful for the generative AI application, that will take probably another 3 years -- 2 to 3 years. That's just my estimate.

[Zheng Lu, analyst]

So the next question is for the -- again, for the ASIC business. You mentioned that the addressable market is about like $45 billion in 2028. Can you provide like the second level breakdown for this $40 billion addressable market, what kind of like ingredient inside for CPU or customer ASIC or GPU or any breakdown for that? Can you achieve like 10%, 20% market share by 2028? Can we have like multiple customer road map in the pipeline?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, maybe it's still to cause a segmentation. $5 billion out of that $45 billion, we believe will come from more -- more from the CPU type of AX accelerator regime. The other 40%, I cannot tell exactly, but the customized ASIC as well as DPU or SmartNIC type of business will constitute all those $40 billion. And when we look at -- we have looked, not just looked, we have really investigated in great details of those different segments and their technology requirements and the potential customer list. And we do have a strategy and a plan to pursue the ones that will fit the best with our capability and our partnership relations with Arm, with NVIDIA. So that's why I said earlier that I'm excited and optimistic about our future in this very large segment. I believe we will do -- well, I certainly hesitate to give you a very specific percentage, but it's not going to be an insignificant percentage. Otherwise, I wouldn't be that excited.

[Operator]

Next, we have Brad Lin from Bank of America.

[Brad Lin, analyst]

So first of all, congrats on the solid results. So I have 2 questions. So the first question is on the automotive. Could the management elaborate the strategic priorities of the auto business? Obviously, the auto-semi is quite big, right? So -- and then what is the contribution currently for this year? And what will be the trajectory of the automotive business over the next 2 years? That would be my first question.

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

I'll give you first, automotive is a mid- to long-term investment. We are committed to that because we recognize this is a mid- to long-term, large, also stable market. MediaTek, again, has a very good fundamental capabilities and strategic partnership relationship with NVIDIA that will enable us to pursue these long-term opportunities. And we have a 3-nanometer product actually, which will be taken out soon and very high-performance cockpit chip. And we will have -- we have another one to follow. We are putting very significant resources into this business. We -- and we have -- in addition, we are making a real and strong progress in China market so far, which is, of course, the fastest growing market in the world now.

So I'm very happy with the progress. Although I also understand it's not a short-term type of thing, but that's exactly our strategic intention. We want to build business that can give us long-term stable revenue and profitability also. The current revenue is not big. It's probably a low single digit of our total revenue range. But if you look at where we were just 2 years ago or something, I would say, our people have done a very good job.

[Brad Lin, analyst]

So my second question will be on the geopolitical thing. So well, what are the key risks MediaTek may identify due to the, well, maybe rising geopolitical tensions and what strategies are in place to manage this risk?

[David Ku, executive]

Sorry, can you repeat the question again because actually the voice somehow actually is a little bit blurred.

[Brad Lin, analyst]

Sure. So my second question will be on the geopolitical risk. So what are the key risks that MediaTek identifies due to the geopolitical tensions and what strategies are in place to manage this risk? Obviously, well, Trump talks about some kind of the tariff and potentially more restrictions on the technologies, and many of the areas can be well impacted. I know we have not been impacted by that, but does management see there is any potential risk coming?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, this is, of course, very big and very difficult subject. I don't think anybody -- any company can really elaborate this risk very well. Not to mention there's a critical election coming in about 1 week. So I will not really comment on the specific risks; however, I will say for MediaTek, we have a very structured and a strong compliance program. We will comply with the rules, regulations from all governments. We will not do, shall we say, strange things, period. We will protect our company and our shareholders vigorously.

[Operator]

The line now is open to Charlie Chan from Morgan Stanley.

[Charlie Chan, analyst]

So my first question is regarding your view about the -- what China AI smartphone need to improve from here to see a real replacement cycle because I was there for your Dimensity 9400 launch events and visited your booth after the product launch. And I would say the new features like edge training like LoRa or AI Agents, video generation are pretty interesting. But after the events, do you receive any customer feedback that whether the smartphone sales is indeed improving? And also, I think Apple Intelligence already rolled out, right? So if you kind of compare China's AI ecosystem or apps, how far do you think it is compared to Apple Intelligence? That is my first question.

[David Ku, executive]

Charlie, David here. So maybe the second question first about the D9400 and also what's the market situation for the flagship? And also how is the sort of AI functions on the flagship. First of all, I think, for the AI functions, it's actually been well received and very popular and welcome in the marketplace. Some of the customers even have one sort of the hardware AI key, okay? So that's just the software, they just connect the software function and the service with one hot AI key. So what you can do, consider the smartphone camera become your eyes, you can just end on whatever subject and click the AI key and use your natural voice, natural language to ask whatever question you like. Then the smartphone will provide you the service and answer and feedback. So that's just one example.

There are some other examples. So overall, I guess, in terms of landing the actual AI service on the phone versus like other operating system players, I think, for our China customer, they are moving really, really fast, okay? Not just demo or talk about the idea, if you go to China right now, some of our customers already launched their D9400 product already. They can actually play around and use the AI function for their mass production phone brought. You don't need to wait for 1 quarter or 2 quarter later to update your software. So that's the first thing first. So speed of landing is actually very good. In terms of the usage, I believe actually like our CEO explained earlier, it's still emerging and developing for the whole ecosystem.

We do believe actually with the good hardware and computation capability plus a very aggressive customer go-to-market strategy, we will invite more players along the ecosystem to continue to improve and grow the AI ecosystem and service and features. And so far, I guess, again, this is the first wave of the product launching. Overall, the feedback we got, specifically on the AI side, they all feel exciting because after all, that's probably one of the new area people can continue to differentiate and provide true much better user experience on the smartphone side. I think that's actually on the AI smartphone and also linked to the flagship.

On the overall market demand, again, like what we commented earlier, I think this year, for 2024, at least for the China demand is actually slightly better than our original expectation. If you recall earlier, when we're giving out the full year guidance, we're talking about in U.S. dollar terms, we probably will grow mid-teens. Right now we are probably slightly exceeding that. I think that's just one indicator or evidence or consequence of a slightly better market demand.

For next year, we still need some more time to finalize our view. But at least actually for what we see for fourth quarter and what we see some early signal from the first quarter, I think, in general, it's just probably the better way to talk about is just stabilizing and much more comforting. But in terms of the overall trend, I guess, we still need some more time.

[Charlie Chan, analyst]

So a follow-up to this is actually to Bruce's point, right, if the landing of those new features or local features in China AI is so fast, why not also enable your mainstream phones to have this kind of NPU or AI compute power?

[David Ku, executive]

I think for the AI hardware AI function or NPU, I think, we would definitely have plan to go beyond flagship. I think that's a positive answer.

[Charlie Chan, analyst]

And my second question is also on this Qualcomm disputes on licensing. So yes, we actually put out notes by putting our Morgan Stanley's coverage and thoughts together, right? So in general, we think there should be a settlement. But in that case, do you think that is going to benefit MediaTek or not? Because the rationale here is that if there will be a settlement, Qualcomm probably need to pay it out for the royalty. So there's going to be a level of playing ground for you. But my concern is also that Qualcomm probably can access or update to most powerful Arm's GPU or CPU cores. For example, this year, your Dimensity 9400 mobile gaming is so powerful, right? So if Qualcomm were to update their kind of GPU to a similar level, whether you still have the similar advantage in the flagship market? So just that question about the potential impact.

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, about the dispute between 2 industry peers, we cannot really comment. Except to say, MediaTek has been working very closely with Arm. Again, as evidenced by the tremendous capability demonstrated by our Dimensity 9400 SoC. And we -- as far as we can tell, we have access or, I would say, the very earliest access to our partners of the leading-edge core and also any of the features. We have a relationship that we -- it's not just kind of a hands-off type of a relationship. It's a collaborative relationship. The working between 2 companies' R&D teams is very close. The goal is to -- because it's truly a win-win type of relationship. So I wouldn't be concerned about whether MediaTek will be at a disadvantage. Whatever, the dispute will end, but our strategy and our action is to build this win-win strategy and relationship as we have and we will continue.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, with the interest of time, we are going to take the last one for the last 2 questions, and that would be Brett Simpson from Arete.

[Brett Simpson, analyst]

Rick, I had a question on the flagship, the flagship smartphone business. You mentioned 30% share in China. Is that an achievement that you reached with the D9300? Or is that a forward-looking statement looking at how you see your share developing with the 9400? And you mentioned China in your prepared remarks a lot, but you didn't mention non-Chinese customers. And I guess if I look at players like Samsung, we know the Exynos product division is struggling to kind of sustain their flagship position, and we look at Pixel and that chip doesn't seem like it's getting much scale. So when you look at the landscape for Android into non-Chinese customers, do you think the 9400 will start to see some meaningful penetration into these types of customers?

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Brett, well, the market share, I mentioned 30% about applies to year 2024. Of course, we -- as I said, we strive to increase our penetration as time goes on, certainly in 2025. As to the non-China players, I cannot again really comment directly on, and suffice to say that we -- I think we have demonstrated capability of our 9400 SoC very well. The decision, of course, is not for us to make easily. But I can assure you that we will spare no effort to try to gain as much market share as we can.

[Brett Simpson, analyst]

That's clear. And maybe just a follow-up for yourself or for David. MediaTek's OpEx to sales is one of the highest in the industry. I think you're obviously in investment mode in areas like automotive and the ASICs compute, et cetera. But how should we think about this trend, this OpEx to sales trend over the next year or 2? Are we going to see some operating leverage from the business model? Or are we going to continue to see elevated spending relative to other players in the industry?

[David Ku, executive]

Brett, first of all, I think actually if you look at the history of our OpEx, it's really just on the different cycle. Like you say, sometimes we need to do the investment first, and after 1 to 2 years, well, the revenue comes up. So when you look just on the longer term, I think, overall, if you're using 2 or 3 years average on the OpEx ratio, I think, we are doing quite okay compared to the industry peer.

So overall, I guess, for going forward because there are some other new areas we are still trying to invest in. So maybe from a certain period, okay, you're going to see some sort of fluctuation. But again, once when the new revenue coming in, you're going to see a much better ratio. But overall, if you look at our overall headcount, we've been actually controlling the overall headcount very nicely. So the incremental spending is actually mainly on the engineering spending, for example, the high end, the mask, and all related. And again, that should be considered about the investment for the future revenue.

[Lih Shyng L. Tsai, executive]

Well, Brett, I'll add one comment. Your comment is very, very good, well received. It is management's, one of our -- certainly one of our jobs to manage our OpEx ratio to the level that will benefit our shareholders more. And we understand that and we're working very hard on that. By the way, I will quote your question to my management team. Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for all your questions. And now I would like to hand it over to Mr. Jesse Wang for closing comments. Ms. Wang, please go ahead.

[Jessie Wang, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes MediaTek 2024 Third Quarter Conference Call, and an audio replay will be available in 1 hour after the call at the Investors section of MediaTek's website. We would like to thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.